How do ideas and Sparks appear to you? I get asked often where all the words live in me. Truthfully, I don't know. They make themselves known to me, most often as a quiet but serious voice inside, and almost always from seemingly out of nowhere. My entire life, all my best writing has arrived like this and fallen out of me, like cool, clear water from a simple glass pitcher. Because I don't really think it comes from me. It's much more accurate to say my writing comes through me.
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Phyllis sits at the head of the table
My bedroom is at the end of a hallway that runs the long length of house. Every morning, making my way down that hallway, I have fallen into the same detailed narrative: There's a man, quiet and so still he almost seems asleep, sitting at the head of the table where my creative work things are splayed out: my grandparents' courtship letters, my books, last night's lecture notes from the course I am teaching, rocks, leaves, sticks and other bits and bobs picked up from my daily country road walks.
