Pat Spears, Author
Pat’s writing is about discovering truth; a truth that lies beyond the words and deeds of her characters, a truth that exposes their human spirit. Her fiction gives clarity to the marginalized voices of these individuals whose lives often teeter on the brink of human disaster and exist outside the realm of social acceptability. Her care-corn characters navigate treacherous lives at the short end of the stick where ends don’t meet, failures pile up, and aspirations are often ground under the heel of circumstances beyond their grasp. Still, they find ways to beat the odds and triumph in their own way.
A Writer’s Persistence
My breath catches as I type onto the page the final words that shape the closing thoughts of a manuscript, one I hope is to find its way into print as my third novel – yet untitled. It is a moment that can swell up in me like a sudden spring rain, pushing an otherwise meandering stream beyond its banks, causing me to tear.
Over the last twenty years or more, I have endeavored to teach myself to write fiction with surprising success. Steady, though clearly not prolific, my short fiction and two previous novels found publishers. In my earlier profession my dear friend, Helen Deans, and I wrote a middle school Florida history that was state adopted. Still, for me, even the presumption of writing, although remaining an arduous task, can feel egotistical, filling me with trepidation and mountainous sized self-doubt. Admitting my worse failings, can result in bouts of self-oathing. Still, I persist.
Why torment yourself, you might ask? Fair question and I have always found my feeble efforts to answer pretty damn pathetic. The simple answer is I don’t know why I write. Only that I’m in full grouch mode when I don’t.
I lay cause at the feet of those rare writer moments when the words flow from the tips of my finger with the sweetness of a chocolate fountain. Characters step forth and in their unique voices share their hard-earned stories, deliver moments as cherished as the afterglow of good sex.
Bringing life to a set of characters (yes, there’s blood and pain) is deeply personal for me. I strive to know each in their complexity and intimacy in ways I fail to know my dearest friend. To know a character’s voice, their most closely held secrets, vulnerabilities, joys, fears, dreams, who he/she may love, or hate is to tell the worst and best of each with compassion and hard-eyed truth; which for me is the very heart of good storytelling.