I am watching the Atlanta trees. The wind pulling at spring, colors standing alongside each other vying for attention. Gently yellowing the room in mint is a misting humidifier. My headache trying to decide if it will stay for the evening or if it will dissipate with the hanging smoke. The day has been full of inspiration. It has been full of thoughts and wondering and it reminds me of writing. The choices that unfold in feet, hands and mouths seem to create story. Movements pass destinations change and plans evolve for the better. It is editing, it is what you choose to bring up in the silence it is the feelings that you didn’t think still existed, but just one line can change the whole narrative. Is it real life foreshadowing the future or am I thinking too much on what makes life less fictional, or am I fictionalizing life? Are the things that make narrative work, the things that breaks life? Conflict. Conflict is? Conflict works like? Is conflict argument in life and dialogue in story? The dialogue that exists in the silence that you don’t bring up yet, so you write it on the page. Do ideas spring? Do they flower? Is this bad metaphor, overdone? Like marches, like wanting rights. Like anger.

Can anger be overdone, can it be reworded? In the museum we walk through years of oppression we listen to the speeches of great social justice leaders that made it possible for me to love my girlfriend. For us to walk down the streets of Atlanta holding brown and white hands. The walls of Freedom Riders to the faces of children voicing what they see, as many children are doing today. I am thinking about writing. Where it comes from, how we pull it. Pull it from the moments. Pull it from the traumas. The words that we can no longer keep for ourselves are put on display. Fiction echoes the world around us. We draw from everything. Being in Atlanta, a place so rich with story and narrative I cannot help, but love what I do. When I create characters they can say and be so many things. It is a great task to write. To find new ways to explore storytelling and to sit in moments that inspire you.

Vacations are the places that you can relax in, but the mind is always working. Thinking about beautiful moments of surprise, meeting people that become characters in new stories, remember over and over again how much love you have in your life. Graduate school is work, but it teaches you to use every moment you have for your craft. It becomes less about work and more about lifestyle. We are creators and life is the tool that we use. Slowing down to appreciate that takes the stress off the act of writing, because writing is all around us. I am a firm believer in living to help with story and it has helped me every time. I was told that even Junot Diaz says that if you feel like you don’t have a story to write go out and live, you’ll find one.