Creative writing is a walk along a fine line. That line divides the seen and the unseen, the knowable and the unknown, the past and the future, cause and effect.

Sanity and madness.

Creative writers tread by feel to bridge the one and the other.

For some the means is poetry. For others, memoir, essay, long-form journalism. For me it’s fiction.

Where fiction is concerned, the short story is ok. The novel—the literary novel—is sublime. This form represents the ultimate expression, a sustained voice giving shape and purpose to both sides of the thin red line.

Novels give full meaning and purpose to things we otherwise cannot state, or understand.

That is all you need to carry on. That is all.

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