When I think of my earliest days as a writer, what I recall is a kind of longing—I felt everything I wished to say, even if I didn’t exactly know it. There was so much I did not understand, and what I did understand I could never say with all the layers and color that would truly convey that understanding to my reader. I would fall in love with some girl and find my emotions so dominated that the only vent I had was writing it down. But when I pulled out my black-and-white composition notebook and put pen to paper, what I saw instead were the words of a thousand other men who had gone before
...more
