When My Writer Brain Was Born

That's my copy of The Sound and the Fury. However, inside the cover my brother Max's name is written. I must've swiped it from him. I have a collection of most of Faulkner's best novels in paperback. In college I studied them, loved his writing, loved his style -- his voice -- and his crazy, disturbing settings and plots. I tried to read The Sound and the Fury in 10th grade and failed; a few pages in, and I was utterly lost. The Benjy section is challenging. By my senior year in college, all his novels were easily accessible and a joy to read. Then I didn't touch them for about 35 years.

Recently I've been bored with my bedtime reading, as I mentioned before. How discouraging! I mentioned this to a friend who sympathized. She said she'd put away her electronics before bedtime and reverted to her tried-and-true method of going to sleep well: she reads Faulkner.

"Faulkner," I thought. "Sounds like an odd sleep prescription, but I have him on my shelves somewhere. I'll give him a try."

I found myself, once again, reading and reading, flipping one page after another, utterly UNbored. Faulkner is still a delight to me for some reason. And pondering my mental love for his writer's voice, I remembered his impact on me years ago -- after I grew accustomed to his voice, his eternally long sentences, his quirky turns of phrase and seeming non sequiturs, his brilliant understanding of the human heart and fearless delving into humanity's darkest moments -- after I could read him with ease, he had a peculiar effect on me.

He made me a writer. By that I mean that his voice awoke a writer's voice in my own head. Rather like a small child hesitantly singing a tune being taught him by a music teacher, gradually my inner voice grew, trying to keep pace with him. Faulkner's not exactly stream of consciousness, but there's a long, luscious flow to his text, like a river, that carries the reader along (after he learns to swim and not drown in it), and for me, this swimming became my own way of thinking stories. Stories are always running through my head. Plot points pop in, characters introduce themselves, stories grow and bloom, but my inner voice is always talking, always telling. I thank Mr. Faulkner for this. Somehow we have voices in tune with each other, and finding his books awakened my own. I had forgotten.

I'm still in West Virginia for a few more days. I finished a large order of cards and will be mailing them out on Monday. So, here are a few more cards I just painted this morning:

If you're interested in viewing the cards I presently have for sale, click here. It's a Google Photos album. If you want to purchase one, just click on the photo, and look for a text box that says, "Say Something." Type a note to me in that box and hit enter. Please note that the price of the cards at the top of the album is $8 each; the cards lower (below the text description) are still $5 each.