judi
I started writing one bored and cranky afternoon when everyone else in my house was happily doing something.
Dee
...yes, I was graded on what I wrote. Being good 'on paper', but physically unnoticed, made it safer to be alive.
Ingrid
I can't remember a time when I didn't write and I can't even imagine not writing. For me writing is like an old and trusted friend. I can say anything I want when I write and I do and because of that much of what I have written is locked away in a trunk.
Dixie
Writing for me is how I process and make sense of my life, the world and what other possibilities may exist. It is my hope that I am able to connect with the reader in such a way as to share a commonality or an insight.
judi
I started keeping journals in earnest... and it was during that time I wrote as if I were going to be read and acted as if I didn't want to be understood. And I wrote poetry that no one could understand.
Ingrid
I will often choose poetry as a form because it can have layers of meaning or be downright ambiguous. Sometimes I don't want the reader to easily know what I mean.
Dixie
A percentage of what I write is spun from fragments of real people and events. Some comes from the dream world.
Dee
My non-fiction articles come from real life. Fiction and poetry arise from the questions: 'What would happen if? And then what?
Ingrid
Every once in a while I get a word, an idea, an image which starts rattling around in my head and when the noise gets unbearable, I write it down.Usually, this is the stuff I end up writing for others to read.
judi
. . . the real question for me is, do I or when did I start taking myself seriously as a writer? And I realize that it's tied into being read and I realize that I started taking myself seriously as a writer when I showed people my work and allowed them, hell, invited them to have opinions and feelings about my work that were separate from their feelings about me.
Dee
I started taking myself seriously as a writer in high school, when I completed an assignment, and the nun wrote in the margin, "Did YOU write this?"
Ingrid
I am a good writer. I have natural talent. I don't struggle to write. I struggle to take myself seriously as a writer.
Dixie
I begin by composing words in my mind, often drawing from the natural world. I do not necessarily use a particular voice, it's more a style that is derived from rhythms. Again it is based in nature and I suppose it's those natural rhythms that I listen for when I write.
Dee
My challenge hovers in the billions of options, and choosing which to write about. From macrocosm to micro, I'm always hunting patterns and the secrets they hold. I examine a galaxy, but its pattern repeats in a simple atom.
judi
When it comes to what's real for me about my work, I've got to say it's the feelings. Always the feelings. All courageous writing is real, is true. Not all true writing is courageous. For me courage is the real issue. Courage to tell the story as I see it, as I know it. My story.
