Status Updates From The View from the Cheap Sea...

5:20  I pass a McDonald’s. Already the McPeople who work there are in, McScrubbing the McCounters and unloading McMillions of McBuns from the McTruck.

“To be eccentric,” says Miss Webster, dead for fifteen years, in the back of my head, her voice dry, her elocution perfect, “you must first know your circle.” Know the rules before you break them. Learn how to draw, then break the rules of drawing, learn to craft a story and show people things they’ve seen before in ways they’ve never seen.

Miss Webster leaned back in her chair (...) and said, “Neil, dear. I think there’s something you ought to know. Listen: to be eccentric, you must first know your circle.” And I—for once—heard, and listened, and understood. You can fuck around with the rules as much as you want to—after you know what the rules are. You can be Picasso after you know how to paint. Do it your way, but know how to do it their way first.

We have been telling each other tales of otherness, of life beyond the grave, for a long time; stories that prickle the flesh and make the shadows deeper and, most important, remind us that we live, and that there is something special, something unique and remarkable about the state of being alive.

We writers—and especially writers for children, but all writers—have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were—to understand that truth is not in what happens but in what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.