mustard 🐔 + Cali 🎵 + miso 🐟 + a writer's senses

can i call u 🌹

I wrote the below slice of fiction about sisters.

A younger sister is visiting her older. I wrote it decades ago. I was trying to use color. And scent. And pain. In order to bring a reader to where the girls were.

These days I am writing about the 1990s, and also about current-day Manila and its surroundings. I am thinking about sentences, as always do, in terms of truth. When I’m struggling to get something down I will prompt myself with The exact truth is simple and straightforward and it’s… and then I keep going. It tends to work, especially when I’m feeling strong and cared for.

I don’t think in paragraphs. They’re boxy. And feel like arbitrary stacks of sentences, existing without even the benefit of being a stanza, or a verse. A paragraph is often more about design than anything writerly. That little indent (tab!) can feel like habit. Or like a li’l trophy for getting to the end of an idea, or to a shift in energy. I don’t really want a trophy until I type THE END, but I’m low-key …