I just completed a Creative Writing course this Spring of 2020 at the College of Southern Nevada.

Now, I only know the intimate details of my own trials and tribulations, not those of others. However, I noted that many of us seem to want to write about what happened with our families growing up in order to come to grips with the lies and mistreatment we feel we suffered. This leads me to my philosophical question of the day:

Are we writers because our families forced us to escape them by using our imaginations? Are all writers “damaged” in some way or (in my case) in many ways?

I’ve often thought that without the need to marry in order to get out of the house as soon as I could, I might never have had the opportunity to live in Europe. I might never have learned to speak French and German or have been exposed to haute cuisine. I might never have sung in the opera houses of Europe, or felt the need to go to Culinary Arts school. If I had never been to The Louvre in Paris or the Pergamon in East Berlin, would I have fallen in love with sculpture?

Who would Glenda be today if she hadn’t been brought up in a strictly religious household, not allowed to date and been beaten regularly? If she hadn’t needed to escape, would she have led as mundane a life as some of her classmates? Hmmm. I wonder.

Oh. And yesterday I got another rather impersonal rejection notice for a short, short story I considered one of my best pieces of work. Now you understand why I keep taking classes.