As part of the Literary Arts’ Oregon Literary Fellowship application, I had to answer the question: “Describe the main concerns of your work, or something about your process or intent”.
I doubt any writer (or artist for that matter) likes these kinds of questions, because no one wants to be pigeon-holed (and it diverts you’re attention away from “The Work”). While it’s (I suppose) important for the readers of these fellowship applications to understand “the core” of the applicants, I often think that these questions are either too direct or two obscure to get any type of read on the writer’s work (no pun intended) or their purpose for writing. And besides, as a writer, the most honest answer would be as trite as “I write because it’s the only way I know to breathe” and that won’t get me anywhere.
Anyway, this year, I’m not exactly pleased with my answer, but at least think it’s more interesting than the aforementioned breathing anecdote, so I present it for your ridicule amusement:
I am consumed by the human condition. The condition(s) of being human. My writing strives to trace the trajectory of what a person will and won’t do under extreme conditions – joy, sorrow, excitement, fear, etc. My literature constructs a crucible for characters with situations they are wholly unprepared for. Generally, I’m not as concerned with outcomes, but how the journey forges character. I like to explore the lengths (good, bad, indifferent) that they will go through, and then document the transformative nature of the unexpected.
Beyond this, I’m concerned with mirrors, loops, delightful twists and fractals; I like to think of stories as a collection of individual moments – scene, paragraph, sentence, word – all infused with the same DNA, but with each unit as a musical variation on the overall theme that is story. I love to construct boxes from these units and then think my way out of them. In this way, I’m a genre-bender, but only as a lens for the point of the story – tracing the condition of being human. While I can easily slide from one genre into another as suited by the tale to be told, I strive to tell my stories in the simplest way.