When I write something – when I really write it – I inscribe it on my skin. On my self.

I start somewhere – anywhere – I hardly know. Couldn’t tell you. I feel my way in, slowly, as if through a tunnel. No. A cave. A labyrinth of caves. Some brightly lit, others black as winter: more often they are candlelight, welcoming paths, and it takes a while to make out the shape of it, of all of them, and how they fit and turn together.

It’s a feeling as much as a thought process as much as craft. I teach writing but I often can’t explain it, because how can I? I say: Here – take this headlamp and swim through the depths.

That’s partly why I do so much historical research – I bathe in the story, in the people, in the place, in the tiny details and the world-smashing questions.

And everything I write is then part of me. I feel it become part of me, as I fit the words together. I write myself into it and write it out of me and it never leaves, not even years later, when I’ve forgotten character names or plot points (although I’m sure I’ll never forget, I do). The story and the memory of writing of it are in me.

Always.

*This is an old note to self I just found: at least, I think that’s what it it. I don’t think I ever published it.