We are hungry for new stories that can offer us a way to live more fully in place like a tight, strong rope that will hold our weight while we figure out our next move. We are searching for new terrain… within our own souls that will allow us to find a generosity of spirit, a wildness of the heart that is brave and bold. —Terry Tempest Williams
Not only is the quote a good description of what I am looking for in myself — generosity of spirit and a wildness of the heart that is brave and bold — it is a lovely description of why we love/need stories. Or at least it should be. I do not fully trust authors who say they write only to entertain. There needs to be something else in a story besides merely entertainment or a way of passing the time, something that feeds the soul, something that helps us find the wildness of our hearts. We live in a civilized world, leading civilized lives, eating civilized foods, and all that civilized-ness starves us. We need lives, food, places that nourish us. We need stories that feed our wildness and offer hope of something more.
Maybe someday I will be able to write such a story. It’s certainly a goal worth striving for.
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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Bertram's Blog 
October 6, 2014 at 6:50 pm
I think that’s what a lot of authors are striving for, including me. I have a feeling though that we won’t be the ones who decide whether or not something we’ve written does that. It’ll be our readers.