A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That's how awful the loss is.
It was difficult to enjoy the trees and flowers when I was so aware of all that I had not yet done - pruning, weeding, transplanting, mulching, composting, tagging. When I was doing the work myself, I was happy, free.
I remain curious about all the lives I can't have - and about the lives of others, real and imagined, past and present, and how people came to be who they are... and who they might yet be. I am enchanted by the landscape of possibility.
There is no particular source my stories come from. The stories always seem to be there waiting for me, though sometimes shrouded in mist and fog.
A novel, for me, relies on my imagination to inspire your (the reader's) imagination. It is not all there for you. My novels or my stories come to me visually. I use words to translate the novel I see inside my head into words that I hope will create a movie inside your head.
A movie can evoke feelings, thoughts, it is all there and happening, there is no control over the images when you are watching a movie. You are transported for three hours to a world where you see real people. In a novel it is private - there's only you, and words on pages. The landscape is in your mind and in your feelings.
As a writer I am proud that if you took my last four books, and they didn't have my name on them, I don't think readers would know they were by the same author.
Writing a novel, I am making is an object that has a life and identity of its own, apart from me.
There is nothing wrong with a writer who has a distinct style in book after book, but I am not interested in repeating myself.
I hope my novels will allow you to become lost in a world totally unlike the actual world we live in. I work hard to make the words evoke particular images, thoughts, feelings, the mystery of relationships.
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John Edgar Wideman Writer
