Lidia Yuknavitch says your life is a zeitgeist and your body is an experience collector. She reminds us that we have stories inside of us. Wasn’t Emily Dickinson a recluse? Viriginia Cleo Andrews was disabled and confined to her home. How many writers holed up at home and drank themselves to death, but not before producing classic, revered pieces of writing? (Do not recommend).
I don’t know about you, but when I sit down to write, whether pants’d or plotted, I am in awe of all the info I channel out of myself. My brain, my body, my experiences (both “real” and “imagined”) are uniquely mine. I’ve never been to most of the places I write about. I’ve never lived in the 1950s or 2040s, and I’ve never worn a magic mood ring or or been a mermaid, or killed someone… but I do have imagination.
I have human experience and I see through human eyes. And then I take what I see and feel, and think and transcribe it onto the page in the form of fantastical stories, all from my tiny lovenest of an apartment.
