Evolution

"Literature was not born the day when a boy crying 'wolf, wolf' came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on a day when a boy came crying 'wolf, wolf' and there was no wolf behind him." – Vladimir Nabokov

My earliest creative writing experiences involved poetry in high school. They were absurd poems but fun to write and think about. At that time, I became obsessed with sound; I focused ridiculously on meter, alliteration, rhyme. I also really enjoyed close analysis of poetry texts; though dreaded by many, I found poems so much richer when analyzed than read. As a result, too many of my poems attempted to be deep. In college, I delved into fiction. I loved reading short stories; I loved the movement, the pace, the plot turns, the characters. I strayed away from language as I tried to harness those tools of fiction. I never was a great short story writer. My stories petered out at 10-15 pages, I obsessed too much over minutiae, my dialogue dragged. Then in medical school, I found that I no longer had time for stories, and again I returned to poetry. Although many of my most interesting experiences play out as stories, I find poetry the right medium to capture emotions and draw unusual relationships between circumstances. Now with a better understanding of fiction, I try to capture movement and character in my poems. No nature poetry for me.