Just here to write and to read what others write. Literature connects us across time and space. It always has.
I’d love any feedback—good feedback helps. I want to give feedback too; we all get better this way.
Writing matters. It changes how we see things and how we relate to each other. I write about this and other human things.
Why now? Life happened. Things lined up and the time felt right. I think most people here want the same things I do: to share our work, to improve, to contribute something that matters.
It’s a good enough reason for me.
Stories
I write stories—mostly short ones. Somewhere on the spectrum of literary science fiction, high fantasy, magical realism. Stories let me ask big questions and explore.
Sometimes I write short vignettes about life, too. A walk in a snow storm. Feeling gravity in my bones. Standing on an empty road at night. The existential moments in which we see ourselves and feel the weight of being.
I’m also writing a novel and I’ll experiment with that here. I’ll probably work on another one just for Substack subscribers. You’ll see it here, one piece at a time. Let’s see where it goes.
Poetry
Poetry may find us when other things fail, speaking from far away and long ago, or from some place nearby. Wherever or whoever it comes from, we might hear our own voices in it or remember things we’ve forgotten.
I’m not a poet, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I write enough to know that poetry makes sense to me in a way other languages don’t. Except silence. Silence I understand perfectly.
Sometimes I follow rules, sometimes I don’t; I’m just trying to figure things out, to connect, to see clearly with words that feel right.
I write about a place I call the Infinite Plain. It’s inside my head but it feels real. Characters move through it, discovering things. Spiritual things. Questions that don’t have easy answers. The Plain stretches out forever. What happens there is what happens in life: we walk, we falter, we get up, we keep walking. Sometimes we see something that matters. The spirit wants things: sometimes it’s God, sometimes it’s meaning. I look for these things there, making my ascent.
That’s all poetry is. Walking until we see something that matters. Then writing it down before we forget.
Commentary
People tell stories and I listen. Sometimes they talk to me directly, sometimes I read what they wrote. Either way, I like to hear how they think. How they see things. How they believe. I write about these conversations. About what people say when they describe their lives, their dreams, what they think matters.
Words connect us and it doesn’t matter if we’re talking face to face or if I’m reading something they wrote years ago. The connection happens or it doesn’t. I read poems closely. Line by line. See what the writer was really doing. I write about books and film: what worked, what didn’t, based on no expertise than what intuition claims to have or what I remember at the time.
If people ask me questions about my own work, I’ll answer them here, too.
All of it comes down to the same thing. We use words to reach each other. Sometimes we make it across the distance. Sometimes we don’t.
It’s worth trying either way.
Journalling in public
This is a bit more meta and a lot more personal. I’ll keep a public journal if it relates to the themes of my writing or if I have something to say. Maybe also if it adds value to some of what I’ve published: the raw source material. If you want to know.
A lot of interesting things happen in my life—in our lives. Fate, dreams, feelings, moments.
