"Vulnerability and Human Connection" | Honored to be the 2015 Very Short Fiction Award winner for Glimmer Train, and so I got to write an essay for the bulletin! Because I feel my feelings, I wrote about, um, feelings. |
"I wrote my first published story on a ranch in South Dakota. I'd had a bad year, had moved west, probably in part to escape myself. At the suggestion of a friend, I was writing in order to address the shame and vulnerability I was feeling regarding a difficult real-life event. Shame lives in dark corners. When you talk about it, it's like shining a light on a pile of shadows—they scatter, they abdicate. Vulnerability is complicated. Responding to and accepting it takes time and practice and an understanding of human frailty. We're not all coming out of the cradle with the same skill sets or the same wounds. Human connection and empathy are necessary for successful writing, yet sometimes we shy away from them, because unprepared, we find them immobilizing."
See the full essay HERE
See the full essay HERE