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Where Does the Writing Come From?

Sky mirror 2bWhen I listen to Itzhak Perlman’s violin in the Theme from Schindler’s List, it reaches a wordfree place inside me that resonates and curls around the melody. It brings me a kind of hovering freedom that hurts. The plodding and soaring notes take me wide, across time to other people, and simultaneously, they bring me into myself, solitary.

Readers often ask me how I get inspired to write, as in, where did you get the inspiration to write Birthmarked? I have an answer for that which covers where the earliest ideas came from, but in a way, the answer is deceiving. It implies that a writer gets a light bulb idea on a given day and takes off with it, embellishing on the way.

It helps to have an initial idea that fascinates. That much is true. But when writing is the job that meets you every morning when you wake up, “the inspiration to write” is kind of an irrelevant issue. I don’t have a choice. This is my job. Doing it badly or well, I’m going to do it all day and produce words or revise the ones I wrote before. It’s the only way to make progress.

Yet, the writing still comes from somewhere, and that’s why I bring up Perlman’s violin. His music is certainly played on a violin, but the music comes from inside him, from decades of living the music. He is the one who puts the agony and the longing in the notes. He’s the one who makes them sweet, who reaches into my own wordless place. It’s no accident that he can do this. You can be sure he’s playing his music on all of the days he doesn’t have a concert. Why wouldn’t he? The music is clearly his life, as well as his life’s work.

And so, today, my inspiration comes from Perlman. I want to write deeply. I want to explore the inner layers of this novel and bring myself closer to its core.

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