Dear Flannery,
I am writing. Stories. It's tortuous and discouraging and fun. I started them years ago and they have sat and waited most of that time. I have revised them periodically, hoping to improve them, and am now determined to finish them off, as far as I can do it.
I have also been reading a great deal, 75 books this past year and 80-something the year before. My reading and rereading of excellent writing (including yours) I hope will help improve mine. I don't think I have a gift in that way; I have to work very hard, but then maybe that dogged willingness is a gift itself, my gift. I do have a lot I want to say that is of the greatest interest to me and, from what I've read, to you, and to many thoughtful people.
My stories are not at all what I would have thought they'd be in my younger days when I dreamed of writing. The "sugary slice of inspirational pie," as you put it, was burned out of me some years back, thank goodness. No, they are not sweet. They are not Do Unto Others stories. They are not massage therapy. They are, or are meant to be, heart surgery. They are dark stories. Darkness through which I hope Light will become intelligible. Bad things happen in them. Badness against which real goodness can be seen in contrast. At least I hope they are those things. Your stories, written with such skill that people think they are great even if they don't get them, are my teachers, my ideals. While I can't seem to think up such "large and startling figures" as you did, and I don't know if I am "shouting" as loud as you did, literarily speaking, I do know your audience hasn't changed, except to get blinder and deafer.
I wish you were here to read my stories and tell me what you think of them, like you did with your friends while you were here. But alas, you are gone. How can I know if they work? I did get some interest in one of them a while back. But after two or three back-and-forths, the editor quite suddenly backed out. I suppose it just wasn't good enough.
What I want to do is get out of my box. The only way to do that is to write better, in a bigger way. I don't want to write stories for or about members of my particular church. I want to write stories for and about human beings.
I am in the process of doing just that. I have 12 stories to work with. They need tweaking. I've tweaked two so far and I think it's working, although it's like wrenching my brain out of my head. I am getting to like these new versions a little. May I send you a story? Or pretend to?
Wishing you were here,
J.
