Sarah: I do write my stories in different ways. But I don’t think about the form consciously, as I know David would agree. I’m writing poems all the time. I’m working on a poem all the time. I shouldn’t say I’m writing poems all the time, I’m working on one poem or another all the time. Some of the books have been in that poetic form, other in letters and other just storytelling. But the way I get there is some unconscious process that has to do with the word David used earlier about his art, it has to do with rhythm.
It’s the rhythm in the person about whom I’m speaking and that person’s life and what it represents. It’s also the rhythm of the days I’m going through when this story emerges. There’s something as I said unconscious that pulls together with regard to the very nugget of the idea that becomes language, very quickly for me. I don’t think visually. I don’t have the story in pictures as I’m writing, it’s all about language and the rhythm of the language has such power for me. Again like David said in his art the rhythm is so musical, so important musically for me.
And so that all moves towards whatever the
whatever the structure is. And it’s not something I decide consciously at all. That’s a really interesting subject for me to think more about. I wanted to respond to something you said too about my stories always being no place like home stories. I’ve thought a lot about this particular one, The Quiet Place, and for me that going home, getting there, is as much about finding one’s home within oneself. That job we have as we mature, as children, and later as adults in our further growing up, which takes a long time for everyone.
That getting to our core, our central self is such an important job. And it’s a long, long trip for most of us. But that’s my going home process too in my stories.