Besides being a writer, I’m also an artist and a musician. I make wheel-thrown pottery and clay
sculptures, and I’ve played the flute for over forty years, belonging to three different bands along
the way.
All of these, I think, grow out of the same impulse—the desire to communicate emotion. Any
kind of creative endeavor is (or should be) a dialogue. For me, art, music, and writing are about
not only expressing my own feelings, but triggering others to feel. While I hope my plots and
settings are interesting and engaging, the best compliment I can get for my stories is, “Wow, that
scene really grabbed me by the heart and swung me around a few times.”
Part of why I want to have this effect on others is that I know how powerful it is when I’ve experienced it myself. The first time I heard Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, age around fifteen, I burst into sobs. I was visibly trembling when I sat in front of Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère on our visit to the Courtauld Gallery in London. And poignant scenes in books and movies absolutely destroy me. The end of Lord of the Rings, Shawshank Redemption, and Contact. The scene in Red, White, and Royal Blue where Alex and Henry dance together in the otherwise empty museum, and Henry says, “I’ll try to be brave for both of us.” The Twelfth Doctor’s heart-wrenching monologue about the foolishness of war in the Doctor Who episode “The Zygon Inversion.” Yeah, if you’re embarrassed by people crying, do not go to see a movie with me.
The other part of why I want to touch people’s emotions, though, is because in person, I’m
ridiculously shy. I get tongue-tied way too easily, and at parties I raise social awkwardness to the
level of performance art. So writing, art, and music have become my voices, my way to
communicate when the spoken word is just too hard to manage. It allows me to reach out to
others despite my anxiety.
I hope that in my stories, I’ve managed to accomplish that—touching readers’ hearts, getting
them to feel strongly and deeply. Because, after all, it’s that capacity for experiencing emotion
that makes us human. We all respond in different ways and to different things, but the important
thing is that we do all respond, and have that sense of connectedness and empathy with our
fellow travelers on this little planet.
And perhaps, by my writing, music, and art, I’ve made someone’s journey a little richer.
