Welcome  …

I think of this website as an extension of the room in which I do my writing, the place in which I create the words that end up first here, and eventually in my books.

My writing room is located somewhere back  there – in the white space  behind the guy silhouetted in the doorway.

I chose this image because it symbolizes the way I experience so many of the writers that inspire me – as people about whom I know very little. They ‘silhouette’ themselves in the creative choices  they make to craft the text of their works.

One of the things I want to do on this website is go beyond that ‘silhouetting’. I am fascinated by the creative process.  In my blog, “Inspired by Words”, I will explore my own creative choices.

As well, I will write about some of the books that I am reading, and the movies that I am watching.  Finally, as a person who has worked with computer technology extensively for the last 5 decades, and been active on the Internet for the last 20 years, I will also comment of the software tools available to writers today.

What I write about:

Life is seldom black and white. We all struggle with grey, and with making the dark grey less dark in our lives. We seldom get to deal in the simplicity of absolutes- simple black and whites.

As a society, we create laws for ourselves which become pseudo black and whites. The laws create the order and the predictability we need to function as a society.

But laws simplify things which are often a lot more complex and mixed up. I explore this tension between the reality of human life and the simplifying nature of the laws which govern us.

In our lives, each of us has to come to a personal sense of what constitutes justice. My own sense of justice has changed a great deal as I have lived through the last 4 decades of my life.

In my fiction, I write to entertain  – to engage – to allow readers to enter a world of shared imagination which then resonates out back into their life – if only for a few minutes or hours.

My sources:

The events of my life, and the people in it,  are one source for me.  The reading I do – fiction and non-fiction, and the TV/movies I watch, are another.

I have been fascinated by human behavior ever since I was old enough to recognize that I self reflect, on my own acts and on those of others. 

Dirk