Modern writing advice increasingly acknowledges this diversity of method. Rather than prescribing rigid rules, craft books and workshops now emphasize understanding one’s personal creative patterns and developing systems that enhance rather than inhibit natural strengths.
When I woke, it was still dim inside the cabin of the small sailboat I shared with my husband and sons, aged 4 and 6. Wiping condensation from the porthole above my head, I peered out to scan for wolves. The previous evening, we’d watched a lone adult and four pups wrestle in the tall grass nearby. Now, all that remained was mist swirling against the steep fjord walls.
We were anchored in Shag Cove, a narrow inlet in Glacier Bay National Park, centered between the Gulf of Alaska on one side and the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest on the other. As a biologist, I’ve made many forays to watch wildlife in the rain. But this time, I wasn’t here on scientific assignment. I’d sailed with my family from Haines, Alaska, to explore our watery backyard.
But to question whether we are all distinct persons occurs to far fewer of us. If it does, the possibility may strike us altogether incoherent. After all, our thoughts and experiences are clearly distinct—we cannot directly access the contents of each other’s minds in the same way we access our own. There is no telepathy or mind-reading. What could it even mean to say we are all one person when we undeniably have separate minds?
When I tell my granddad that I’m going to Rome to stay in the gut-renovated Hotel D’Inghilterra for work, he says, “Give me a minute,” and goes into his bedroom. We are in the foyer of the carriage house he shared with my grandmother until her passing two years ago—the bedroom is just to the left of the front door. I stand there for a minute not thinking of anything much at all, expecting nothing and enjoying, as I often do, the black-and-white tile on the floor and the robin’s egg blue runner (my grandmother’s signature color) that crawls up the stairs. He returns holding a pair of slippers. Once white but now a dusty gray, the terrycloth set is not quite tattered but definitely peeling in places, and there are stains. Emblazoned on the top lining, the cursive text a faded gray, is the logo of Hotel D’Inghilterra.
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is a pleasure, and one that wears its Big Important Themes – friendship, motherhood, parent-child dynamics – lightly enough that you don’t feel as if you’re mired in the emotional muck of a dreary Scottish day. And when the octopus finally makes an appearance, you have the delight of seeing – to borrow from Kierkegaard, and risk sounding like a pretentious first year myself – how life, and sometimes novels, can only really be understood backward.
In True Failure, Alex Higley examines the relationship between who we want to be and who we end up becoming. The path is not always a straight line, and the destination may not be where we expected. The journey is the point.