Almost autumn

 A rainy day never fails to stir my creative nature. It’s as if the absence of sunshine dazzling on the world actually lights a candle on my inner thoughts. (You, too?)

It’s a rainy day in Las Vegas—about as rare an occurrence as my writing in this blog (hehe)—so what better reason to reflect on a thought that kept flickering through my mind this summer, almost autumn. To be technical, it is more than one thought, but all these thoughts are tied together by the single thread of purpose.

I used to think I wrote my best when I was unhappy. (I often joked to my husband that he made me too happy to be the artist I wanted to be.) Not surprisingly, one of my earliest writer-heroes was Ernest Hemingway. A little later, I discovered Toni Morrison. Her nearly supernatural mastery over language stirred my deepest desire to create—and reinforced the feeling that good prose and poetry were informed by suffering.

When I rediscovered children’s literature as an adult, I found Sara Pennypacker and belly-laughed at Clementine’s candid “paying attention,” and was gripped by her fresh thoughtful prose in Pax. Through her works (varied and universally brilliant), as well as the classics I cherished as a child, and the (so) many others I’ve found since coming home to children’s literature, I have come to a new understanding about why I write.

Writing, for me, is about gazing within to articulate what I find there; looking around to cast light on the beautiful, the fascinating, the ironic, the stupefying, the joyous, and yes, the painful. And maybe, the softer glow of a rainy day blurs the line between my inner and outer worlds, encouraging me to behold more purposefully.

Nazanin Ford