Stories as Lifelines

TadMack has posted some lovely ruminations on why she writes. A snippet:

People have always starved, it's endemic to poverty -- the poor we always have with us, after all -- but things have been drifting quietly downstream for some time now, and in the distance is the roaring sound of the rapids.

Common sense suggests that paddling this canoe now won't even slightly delay our rush toward white water, but that's not why I'm still writing -- I'm writing because I believe in the power of stories.

Go and read the whole thing. Really. She writes very eloquently about questions I've often asked myself, that I know many of my friends have asked themselves.

On my dinner break I was mulling over this whole business of trying to sell my book, wondering why it's so darn important to me. This book in question is a middle grade novel about two girls falling in like. I remembered last year, when I was beginning to send it out--how when I told some of my lesbian friends about it, they said, "Wow. I wish there'd been a book like that when I was twelve."

And just like that, I remembered: Oh, yeah. That's why this is important. That's why I want this book to make its way out into the world, instead of being forever trapped on my computer. Because of all the twelve-year-olds who wish there was a book like that, for all the people who look back on twelve and wish they'd had that book. That's why, as my agent starts sending it out, I've got all my fingers and toes crossed as much as fingers and toes ever were.