Part Of My Mind Is Working On

Because I'm Not Writing All The Time (thank Goodness), My Mind Is Sometimes Pleasantly Blank.

Nearly Every Morning, A Certain Woman In Our Community Comes Running Out Of Her House With Her Face White And Her Overcoat Flapping Wildly. She Cries Out, "emergency, Emergency," And One Of Us Runs To Her And Holds Her Until Her Fears Are Calmed. We Know She Is Making It Up; Nothing Is Has Really Happened To Her. But We Understand, Because There Is Hardly One Of Us Who Has No Been Moved At Some Time To Do Just What She Has Done, And Every Time, It Has Taken All Our Strength, And Even The Strength Of Our Friends And Families, Too, To Keep Us Quiet.

I Don't Pare Down Much. I Write The Beginning Of A Story In A Notebook And It Comes Out Very Close To What It Will Be In The End. There Is Not Much Deliberateness About It.

The Style Developed Over Decades, Really, But I Started Out Writing Pretty Traditional Stories, Then Became Impatient. It Was A Writer Named Russell Edson Who Showed Me That One Could Write In Any Way At All.

I Don't Believe, In The End, That There Is Any Such Thing As No Style. Even A Very Neutral, Plain Style, One That Doesn't Use Colloquialisms, Lyrical Flourishes, Heavy Supplies Of Metaphor, Etc., Is A Style, And It Becomes A Writer's Characteristic Style Just As Much As A Thicker, Richer Deployment Of Idiom And Vocabulary.