About Cynn Chadwick

Welcome to my new blog spot

cynn chadwick

I guess I should introduce myself by saying that I’ve been a storyteller my whole life, a writer since I could curve my letters, and a novelist when those two became forever inextricable. Over the years, friends and family have encouraged me to write my own stories rather than the fiction in which I tend to get lost. I’ve resisted, finding it so much more interesting to make up and control pretend lives rather than to rely on the “facts” of my own, which seem at times beyond my control.

In the past, chalking much up to the gods, muses, fairies, luck, fate, and the Magic Eight Ball, I have come to see how, in fact, I play a much greater role in turns of events than I’d once chosen to believe. I’ve also been uncomfortable examining my own life close enough to touch the fatal flaws, nevermind write about them–in first person, no less. To be frank, I’ve felt the genre of creative-non-fiction to be a rather self indulgent form of naval-gazing practiced by writers who spend a lot of time with their therapists. Not that I believe fiction writers are any less self indulgent (or nutty). No, writing fiction is mostly a hindsight way to rectifying wrongs, serving justice or vengeance, fulfilling dreams, explaining mysteries, revealing histories, and happily ever-aftering an otherwise sad or tragic ending. We change the names to protect the innocent or guilty and ourselves from showing our own envy, spite, bitterness, or lawsuits. I’ve been both awed and repulsed by those who can so bravely and squarely bring to the page the horrors of abuse, the smell of war, the triumphs of cancer, the haphazard way of demonstrating how and why bad things happen to good people, and only understand, as James Carroll once wrote, “We tell stories because they save us.” But now, I understand that I do not have to splay myself out naked for all the world to see my dermatological flaws (god help us all); instead, looking back as a

single mother of sons (straight and gay), a spouse, daughter, sister, lover, friend, teacher who happens also to be a lesbian and can’t help but being a writer–well, I might have something to contribute to the conversation now that I’ve turned fifty and am less sure of all I have come to believe and know. After having spent a lifetime racing to acquire knowledge, there’s a freedom in discovering that I never will, and so now I’m off the hook! And this is pretty much the thrust of this blog–One writer’s point of view about her small but ever-surprising and evolving life.

Enjoy – Cynn~
Published on June 10, 2009 at 9:53 am Comments (4)

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