If you do your best work, you won’t be able to predict how it will act in the world, or upon the world. And this is good, because it may be smarter than you. It might do better work if you’re out of the way.
The point of staring, really—and I’d say all poets know this—is to see below the surface of what you’re looking at
Because part of being a writer is having something to say, even if you don’t understand where it comes from or even exactly what it means.
Too much control, well, you’ll write a well-crafted story where the sentences may be pleasing, but it lies flat on the page. Too much release, then you can end up confusing and frustrating your reader, or lost in the woods because you got excited and ran off the trail.
Because this form asks the most of its readers as far as co-creation, we have to be able to see where the form can falter, if we falter as writers.
Let’s define that gap, that bridge, between the work of art and the audience as “the interface.
This is another great thing about being a writer. The form gives you a safe space to work out whatever “is within you.”
If you wish you could forget something, if it won’t go away after years, it’s because there’s story material there calling out to you.
Unlike a beginning, which can be anything, we want an ending that can only be one singular thing.
Those questions are a part of you as much as the pain and the longing.
