Sadly, through events and shenanigans outside of school, my behaviour deteriorated in fourth year, and I was thrown out at the age of fifteen, with a pass in English and no other qualifications to my name. I had only been allowed to sit my Maths and English exams at the end of the year. I didn’t even bother turning up for my Maths exam. How my schooling ended is an immense regret of mine. But, what’s done is done.
Why I Write
Because you exist. Because writing allows me to discover myself, even parts of me that had previously lay hidden, dormant, that I had never before known existed.
Arts and Crafts and Prose
The art of writing is what you’re trying to say, that’s the art. Sometimes you’re being very direct, pointing to, well, the point, with a big arrow-shaped cut-out, but a lot of times, it’s subtle. It’s scene setting and characterization and world-building. Sometimes the street corner is the plot and character both. The art is maybe why you’re writing, whereas the craft is how you’re writing.
Writing in Crayon: Celebrating the “Disparate”
In my writing and reading life, I thank as "family": Cervantes, whose Don Quijote battled lies with the swords of the imagination; García Márquez, whose notes from life "helped themselves to coincidences forbidden to fiction"; Isabel Allende whose magical humor lends resilience in tragedy. And as I write these days in a vein of the "fantastic" in my novel, I include Julio Cortázar, with his alternating currents of glittering worlds.
The Absolutely True Story of a Devoted Reader
I didn’t discover Sherman Alexie until well after college, but when I did, I felt at home. He was the first author I read that talked about the experiences of going to Indian Health Services, of being different from both white people and his own family and tribe, and of the struggles of modern Natives in the U.S. I laughed aloud when I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and then I basically demanded everyone I know read it.