Saturday, December 03, 2005
"thinkLet" about Jerry Engler's
Foray into fiction feels like home!
Engler's stories are often humorous and sometimes poignant. A few are what he calls "gushy-gushy" sentimental. But almost all have some kind of twist at the end."Sometimes I have a twist in mind when I (sit down to write)," he said. "But sometimes, like with Harlan Medlam, the characters surprise me, too, and all of sudden I'm saying, 'So that's what he's going to do in the end.'
"That's why I say, in the best moments I sometimes feel like (the story) comes from outside of me."
Occasionally, Engler enters his stories as one of the characters.
"I haven't really counted it out, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it's not like one in five stories," he said. "Some of my stories are based on people I've talked to, so they're autobiographical in that sense. But some of them are more so.
"I'd say there's a pretty strong element of me in Bird," he added, referring to one of his favorite characters. "Bird gets to do things I might like to do myself."
By all indications, Engler's well-spring of stories won't run dry anytime soon. At one point, he said, he once sat down to write down the ideas that were circulating in his head-and came up with a list of 100 in less than half an hour.
"I think I'm just natural that way," he said of his productivity. "On some days, the words are almost like dancers. They're there and they need to come out and need to flow.
Labels: agritourism, distributed learning, eco-challenge, geotourism, social geocoding, social responsibility, watershed
