What was originally intended to be a regularly-updated message to the world has suffered the fate of my many other blogs, which is to be discarded almost immediately after creation. Apologies all around, of course, and when I apologize I am only addressing myself, the lonely reader.

I will tell you about the story I have to write--not that I have to write it, you know. But perhaps I do have to. It is the story of myself, and not my real self, not the physical self, but the manifestation of an unrealized humanity. If that isn't what fiction is, what is it? We create fictive versions of ourselves, or of those whom we know, stretching and embellishing them into almost unrecognizable beings. We amass the tiny pieces of ourselves; sometimes we recollect them, distort them, and give them second lives. These little pieces are housed in a tangle of language and imagery, metaphor and simile, dialogue and narrative. What's the use of collecting all these little pieces of life if we merely tuck them away into a drawer, viewed occasionally and with intent that never comes to fruition.