What I thought I once wanted had become something much different, much more intricate, much more difficult to perform.

This understanding of personal and writer identity stayed its course until my early forties when, after a lengthy break from wordsmithing I returned to find that I had changed since being away. It seemed only natural that I would rise to my adulthood with plans to stake my claim in the macabre. I started the adult portion of my love affair with words in this genre for several reasons, none which I’ll state here. So this will explain to you, if you’re still reading by this point, why in my earliest years I wrote hundreds of thousands of words in what is known these days as genre fiction, more specifically, the horror/suspense/thriller genre. With that, how can I ever deem to know who I am as a writer? It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize the answer is simple–I can’t.įair enough, I suppose. There are so many quotients, so many alternating emotions and ideals and dare I say, even identities involved in this life-long affair that at times I cease to understand even who I am.

The passionate affair I’ve had with the English language, or more specifically, the creation of sentences to form an idea, long or short, has and still remains such a relationship. I’ve long since tempered this type of relationship romantically, though it was no small challenge. Passionate is often a euphemism for, as Norman Mailer once put it, that old standby of the headshrinkers, the love/hate relationship. Those fortunate (or unfortunate depending on your philosophy or mood) people to be born under the sign of Gemini are known for their passionate relationships.

My Name is Joe by Stefan Bourque