Do you have an image in your mind of your mother or grandmother or some other loved one talking on the phone? Just how close is that image in your mind to the light that entered your eyes?
I’m just as interested in entertaining as I am in communicating, maybe more so. Entertain a lot, communicate something. As soon as you start writing, it becomes a fiction to some degree. Might as well make it entertaining.
Here’s a snippet from my novel, Your Silent Face, still in post production. When I wrote this passage, I had a certain photo of my mother in mind.
“I have two black and white snapshots of my mother that I keep in my backpack. Both are post-grandfather-passing-away. My mother isn’t aware that the photos were taken. I am looking at them now. In the photo in my left hand, she’s lying under an afghan on the second-hand vegetable-patterned couch in our living room. It’s probably about seven a.m. The drapes have been opened. The only part of her visible is her forehead and a shock of black hair. In the other photo, she’s sitting at the table, framed in winter light. This time, she’s wrapped in a bulky comforter she’s dragged downstairs from her bedroom. In this shot, which is slightly more in focus, she is talking on the phone.”