Are you okay? What are you thinking?

I started writing short fiction two years ago, after retiring from teaching.

A couple of qualifications here: First, I've written short fiction before, as early as grade school. I won the Liars' Contest at summer camp one year for an improvised tall tale about a ten-year-old boy who goes to sea and saves the world. And there were a few other attempts. Second, I'm not completely retired. I still teach AP Literature and Composition at Haddam-Killingworth High School, and will continue to until they either kick me out or carry me out. But two years ago, I started getting serious about writing, and cranked out a number of stories, seven of which have been published in various online and print magazines or journals.

Everyone asks me where I get my ideas from. Writers always get asked that. And it's a reasonable question.

In my case, a story always comes from some personal experience, or from something I've seen or heard about. The first (at least, I think it was the first) piece that I wrote and carried to completion became the anchor for my published collection. In March, 2018, I took a bus to Washington, D.C., to attend the March For Our Lives rally. It made an indelible impression on me, seeing so many people of so many backgrounds and ages and colors all united in a single cause. Emma Gonzalez's speech, when she froze, silent, for four-and-a-half minutes, moved me. A lot. I'd taken my camera--the good one, the SLR--and was taking as many pictures as I could, planning on documenting the event through the faces in the crowd. One image particularly struck me. A pretty Black girl who looked to be about fourteen had a huge Nikon camera slung around her neck. She was watching the speeches on the Jumbotron with fierce concentration. I snapped her profile. What was she thinking? What had brought her here? Was there a story in that girl's intense expression, her determination, her own private vow of "Never again, never again"?

I had to get the story down before I forgot it. The boy in "Are You Okay?" is my imagined self at the age of sixteen or so, inspired by important causes and naive enough to fall in love at first sight. I guess my attempt to create a story arose from my desire to see if I could actually do it: construct a narrative that was not merely realistic, but honest, and expressed some truth that was more profound than mere fact.

I don't promise that I'll be particularly regular with these blog entries, but I want to connect with my readers. To ask them, if you will, "Are you okay?" and to tell them, truthfully, what I'm really thinking.

Home

"Are You Okay?" And Other Stories on Barnes & Noble and Amazon