Here’s the intro from novelist Peter Darbyshire’s writing lesson # 1, as featured at Canada’s so anti-gun-you-wonder-how-the-hell-this-got-past-the-editors National Post. Curiously, the name of the lesson is “write what you know.” Go figure.
When I was around four or five years old, my biological father tracked us down and dug in to a hill overlooking our home. He waited three days with a rifle for my mother to come outside while I played in the yard. He must have watched me through the scope of his rifle. I try to imagine what he thought about, but I don’t know. His marriage maybe. Or maybe the cancer. My mother never stepped outside in that time.