Most of my work starts in my body. Ideas demand attention while walking, lifting heavy things, washing dishes, and lying awake trying to slow my breath at 3 a.m. Stories come together in little sensory scraps that don’t match up. They are patches; red leather, plum colored velvet, raw linen, a stained flowered triangle torn from an old bedsheet. 

All the bodies I've inhabited exist in my writing. My current dwelling is a peri-menopausal female body made of wet clay that refuses sleep.

People I love populate my writing, some people I hate too. But writers know these are shadow puppet versions. I do my best to write the truth of them as I know it at a particular moment. It's my truth but I can't promise that it matches theirs.

Everything starts in longhand. I give myself permission to create a mess, to keep writing without trying to make sense.

This is how I must start otherwise I’ll give up as soon as I feel uncomfortable.

I belong to two writing groups. We are all writing different things. We are published and unpublished. There are many differences among us but the commonality is we care about writing: our own and each other's.

Some days life and writing feel like the same thing. Some days they feel like an egg with a double yolk. Extra, golden, connected.

There's always fear, of course,  that it's not good enough. There's always fear that no one will understand, that I've exposed too much or that I haven't been honest enough.

Committing words to the page while being willing to let everything change and breathe feels similar to the struggle to accept and love my body as it ages, aches, transforms. 

I try to stay curious.

What finally emerges is often unexpected.

And then I let the words fly free.