"We Tell Ourselves Stories"
I don’t remember the first time I read Joan Didion’s essay “The White Album,” and its opening line, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I do remember recognizing the truth of that quotation. I remember stopping, writing it down, memorizing it—knowing it mattered.
Stories, at their best, can transport us into new worlds, affirm our own worlds, or offer hope about change or growth. At their worst, they work as veils to keep us from acknowledging or seeing parallel stories, the ones hidden or covered—the ones that would make us stop, turn, and reconsider everything if we truly faced them.
I was born in 1956, a middle child in middle America in the middle of the baby boom. My fascination with folktales and fairy tales comes through in the plays and stories I write, all blending folktale and absurdist elements to explore the irony and humor of human interaction.
I also teach college writing classes. Along with my students, I explore the notions of how something made-up—fiction—can also tell truths and how something not made-up—non-fiction—is often fiction in disguise. I am drawn to the conflict of how we see ourselves, how others see us, and how we wish to be seen.
I like stories that take me into landscapes foreign yet familiar because I think the paradoxical yearning for change and sameness makes us characters in our own stories—drives us forward and makes us wonder just how closely linked truth and fiction really are.
Are we all fiction pretending to be non-fiction, or are we just fiction? All the time? More often than not, are we living lies and only imagining ourselves as living truths?
See my newest addtion to the fiction page, a story told in video called “Ben Cartwright’s Long Lost Son”: watch the video
Read more about my story, my work, or take a peek at my resumé.