Thinking About Writing > Writing

With that title, I’m (only sort of) joking. Today, I’ve been thinking about all of the things I like to write about.

There are all of these familiar elements in the fiction I write and post elsewhere. I like to write about young women who feel lost, fatigued, or out-of-place in this world as it exists now, with its constrictions and social mores. I think these feelings are universal, outside of gender or ethnicity or lifestyle or … anything else, really.

I think it was Brandon Taylor who wrote about Banana Yoshimoto — if I remember correctly, it was one of his pieces. It was a review of one of Yoshimoto’s story collections. I’d just finished reading Kitchen, so I wanted to read more about the writer and her work.

The reviewer pointed out that for all of the lonely women her books are about, she always seems to retain a genuine warmth in her stories. Plenty of people write about lonely people — but I want to write about lonely or uncertain people who have still managed to carve out some time for fun, or pleasure, or enjoyment. Or satisfaction.

That’s what I’m looking for — the satisfying thing, whatever it is.