I write. I have for so long. Poorly, generally, with brief flashes of “promise.” I have not yet published widely in the best journals, or have a book out despite the amount of writing I do, yet I keep at it. So the question is: why do it?

It’s because of books, of reading, and especially because of Mona Simpson.

My earliest joyful memories are as a young child, three years old, lying in bed at night, with the Cat in the Hat. My parents let me stay awake at night, with the light on, as late as I wanted, as long as I was in bed with a book. I read each night until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Later, my headboard had a built in bookshelf, full of Hardy Boy Mysteries, Ivanhoe, Treasure Island, even Wuthering Heights. I was voracious with the Dictionary and spent so much time devouring my father’s Encyclopedias that he bought me my own a set.

I wrote some stories in sixth grade. I don’t know why really. But I suspect it was because that year was difficult, and I dealt with it by writing stories. They were mostly fantasies about feeding my brother, with whom I got into daily fistfights, to my fictional pet piranha.

That was that, a fun, escapist activity done in sixth grade for a while, and not done or thought of much for years.

Until college. That’s when my first English professor, sensing my keenness, went off the textbook and after class gave me photocopies of two short stories: Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” and Mona Simpson’s “Lawns.”

Everyone recognizes the mastery of Carver and not much needs to be said here, other than the fact I was so moved that I wanted to write something that would have the same effect on someone that Cathedral had on me. I wanted to wield that sort of intimate power. I wanted to write.

Then Simpson’s “Lawns” made me realize the true power of reading, and of writing: Books are the place where the things that no one talks about, are talked about. In “Lawns,” the narrator, whose first words to the reader are “I steal” (how delicious is that?), has a hard time breaking away from her father, and starting a relationship with a fellow college student she likes. Her father began a sexual relationship with her when she was a young girl. This has continued into her young adulthood and the emotions involved here are so convoluted and contradictory they’re overwhelming. The reader understands and feels every one of those emotions. There’s a moment when she’s given into to her father’s incredible neediness in an effort to be done with it all, and in that encounter she describes the feeling of the orgasm she has. It is the most astounding and heartbreaking moment I think I’ve read to this day.

I didn’t know you could to that: Talk about something so taboo, so complex, so gray in such a truthful way.

It’s what I’ve wanted to do since then. I’ve wanted to get to that place where complex truths are understood, where things people don’t talk about are talked about so well, and in such an artful, thorough way, that everyone forgets how shocking it is and they’re glad for having their heart broken.

I spoke with Alan Watt (the year's Mark instructor) today. He again asked questions of my main character and the meaning behind his major dilemmas. “What does doing this or not doing this mean for him?” It means X. “Yes, but what does X mean to him?”

I see how it would apply to “Lawns.” Without those meanings the story would be sordid and perhaps even gross. But it’s not, it’s beautiful and painful and matters.

And so I continue because I have to get to that place, that place that I love and admire so much, and that I only encounter in books.