Author - Catherine Hervey
Layering Place: In Ourselves, in Our Writing
When we write about people of our own creation, when we write fiction, there’s different work to do. We aren’t just noticing and deciding how to tell what we’ve noticed or experienced...We’re painting in those faint images and sensations ourselves, layering them onto more concrete descriptions of place and reality.
The Writing Impulse
I find I write a lot of stuff like this. Moments of humiliation, large and small. Attacks against which we are incapable of defending ourselves, for whatever reason. And here’s why: once they’re written down, they’re different. I’ve gotten addicted to the alchemy of writing, where those moments of pain and humiliation become beautiful and useful.
Chronic Illness: The Power of Silence
For the next several months I watched my own silence as though I had no power over it. I didn’t tell my boyfriend, though it might have been relevant to our conversations about getting married. I didn’t tell my mother back home, or anyone I worked with. I cut my foot fetching water, bled on the front steps, and said nothing to my sisters as they helped me clean it up.
On Failure
I’m pretty sure there are some of us whose lives don’t work that way ─ people for whom failure seems less a painful moment on a journey and more the destination itself, or sometimes, for me, like the place I’ve been living all my life, wandering in loose circles with my eyes squeezed shut so I can imagine I’m somewhere, anywhere else.
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Finding a Vocabulary of the Heart
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