The very act of writing and talking things through facilitates our ability to discover and articulate things we sometimes didn’t even know we knew, arrive at answers we didn’t know we had.
In the past several weeks, I have read submissions about war and horrific physical injuries, debilitating ailments and incurable diseases, families shattered by divorce or marital infidelity, death and suicide, drug addiction and abuse, homophobia, transphobia, and so many other sources of trauma that I often find myself ruminating on these narratives well after my shift at the Center for Literary Publishing has ended.
Not that being odd is currently under literary attack or anything, but I’ve been thinking about how certain pieces of writing are perfectly misshapen—a trapezoidal-peg-round-hole sort of thing—just enough to defy clear categorization.