How Tin House Makes You a Better Writer, Better Person
There are writers who believe they are in control of their output and others who know that the gloriously fertile periods are just as much auto-piloted as those withering fallow periods. We are old-fashioned fountain pens that go dry, then wander the desert, seeking the inkwell oasis, find it, and plump up the muse.
This has been my experience for a very long time. I have quit being a writer every time the dry winds blow. I might add, quit happily. My most recent fallow period I was sure would be the last one and that I would be free! Content to dance through life, indulge my love of outdoor sport, hang out with my big family. (See Homeless Writer with credit card.)
To be clear, I didn’t completely stop writing, I merely stopped being a writer. This small turn of life’s wheel of fortune might have been the pivot that tweaked my worldview from leaden to golden. Dropping hope, expectations, even the worn writerly identity seemed to open a floodgate. I’m not a writer, I’m just passing time writing, was my mantra.
But as the stories poured forth, self-propelled, channeling their well-formed narratives through my fingertips, what could I do, but surrender. Over a year’s time, from late 2017 through 2018, a steady chain of short stories — fifteen and counting — shaped into a collection. On a lark, I…
