The Stories I love...

There are so many love stories that have made me want to write.  Stories that showed me the beauty of the written word.  Stories that left me in awe...heartbroken...in love...and everything in between.  Books that I love and cherished so much I can remember everything about them down to when and where I purchased them.

 

I can still vividly recall strolling on a Saturday afternoon through Hell's Kitchen in New York as a teenager with my boyfriend.  We came upon a flea market.  It was stocked with a million and one random things, some treasures, some junk, and among them I found a stand of used books.  There I purchased for $2, a 1931 a hardcover translation of the play Cyrano De Bergerac By Edmond Rostand.  It was illustrated and had a periwinkle blue cover with a brown leather spine  It was old, fragile and perfect.

I can still remember reading it for the first time.  How my heart broke so completely for Cyrano as Roxane stood before him and professed her love for another.  My innocent heart, still believed that love was magical and enough to conquer all things. How could she not see how much he loved her?  How I wished I could change it and make Cyrano profess his love and win her heart from Christian.      

 "She goes out.  Cyrano remains motionless, his eyes on the ground. Silence."

-Cyrano De Bergerac, Edmond Rostand

But like all great tragic romances it was not to be.  I tell you that I rewrote that story a thousand times in my mind even though I knew deep down I would never change a word.  It is within his heartrending unrequited love that the beauty and sorrow of the human experience revealed itself. 

 

As I've said before my dear Constant Reader, at a certain point in my life I couldn't get enough of tragic romances.  But as young love faded into the haze of memories, my tastes changed and I searched for a new type of romance to reveal in.  And eventually to want to create stories of my own.  

 

But through it all, Cyrano stayed with me.  Made me want to give the all the underdogs of the world their Roxane's to love and to be loved by them in return.  It made me want to create stories that moved people in the same way, and make them believe in the magic of love all over again.

 

-Vita

 

Why I Write.

Before I was ever a writer, I was first and foremost, a reader.

At an early age my parents instilled in me a love of books.   Good behavior was rewarded by a trips to the bookstore.  

Even as I write this, I can still recall the feeling of walking through the racks at the Walden Books on Montague Street in Brooklyn.  So many to choose...no Internet or no Google search... just digging through the rows of shelves and finding the one that looked good.

With each book read,  my imagination built new stories of its own.  For me it was a easy extension of all characters I read about and loved.

Now in my late thirties,  I can say with all confidence, I write because of my love of the written word in all its forms.  I write because of after all these years my own characters and stories fill my head day and night.

I write because I always have been and always will be a Constant Reader.   I write because it is an intrinsic part of me. 

I write because I must.