Edna, Flicka
and Me
Facts…they lie unquestioned, uncombined
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
But there is a loom. I know. I sit at that loom almost every day and weave, or try to weave, the fabric. I’m a nonfiction writer – I believe, celebrate and honor the power of fact. But I am also a storyteller, and so I believe also – and equally – in the power of literature.
This sounds maybe more high falutin’ than it needs to. (But it was an excuse to start with a poem by Ms. Millay, the woman you have to love for writing: My candle burns at both ends/ It will not last the night/ But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends/ It gives a lovely light!)
There. That’s a double dose of Edna, and I haven’t even started yet..
What I mean about my writing is that I am fascinated by true stories – real people, real events. I love research, whether it’s becoming part of a world I write about, as in Dancing with Rose, or tooling around the Mojave tracking down and interviewing desert rats, as I did for Happy Bottom Riding Club or hunching over FBI documents in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., as I did for Clever Girl.
It’s the excitement of the chase…the pursuit of the true story, the ins and outs, the details, the particulars. Discovering, uncovering is half the fun.