I Write Because I’m Fascinated by the Questions
I don’t write because I have all the answers.
In fact, the older I get, the less interested I am in pretending that I do.
I write because I’m fascinated by the questions.
What happens when one ordinary act of kindness reaches farther than anyone realizes? What do we carry inside ourselves that the people around us never see? Why do certain people enter our lives at precisely the moment we need them? What would happen if something we thought impossible suddenly appeared at our door? And sometimes, because life doesn’t always need to be terribly serious; what if ancient astronaut theorists were finally forced to explain themselves?
Those questions may lead me almost anywhere.
They can lead to a crossing guard who notices a quiet boy standing at an intersection. They can lead to a group of people confronting something they cannot explain. They can lead to a kitchen table filled with recipes, memories, and the people who once sat around it. They can lead toward mystery, humor, loss, healing, or the possibility that the world is considerably stranger than we think.
On the surface, those may seem like very different kinds of stories.
To me, they aren’t.
They all begin in the same place: curiosity about people.
I’m interested in what happens beneath the obvious. The things we don’t say. The connections we don’t recognize until much later. The seemingly insignificant moments that quietly change the direction of a life.
Perhaps that is why writing continues to surprise me. I may begin with an idea of where a story is going, but somewhere along the way the characters start revealing things I hadn’t planned. A small detail becomes important. A relationship changes. The story asks a different question.
And I follow it.
That, more than anything, is what I love about being a writer.
I don’t need every question to have an answer.
Sometimes the question is where the story begins.
Samuel Rice
Author • Storyteller