"When I was a child, my main preoccupations were writing stories and making paper airplanes. Both activities were lessons in rudimentary magic: my eight-year-old mind could perceive that there was something extraordinary, miraculous even, in the fact that one could manipulate simple everyday sheets of paper - by making marks on them with a pen, or by folding and tearing - and imbue them with the power of narrative, or flight."

I stare at the paragraph on my screen. It took me something like an hour to cobble those two sentences together. I close the word-processing program, and lean back in my swivel chair, and reminisce. Much easier to recall events and feelings in a hazy, lazy non-order than to try to jot them down in words.

The airplanes, of course, were easier: it didn't take much effort to get one to soar, and once one had the basics down, one could experiment with wing flaps, and paper clips, and insignias. The stories, though - they took a bit more effort. At first I just copied them, line by line, from my Childcraft books, from my Pop Stories for Groovy Kids collection, from fairy tale anthologies and picture books. I had this idea that I could unravel their secrets in that fashion: like taking a paper plane, unfolding it, and observing carefully each crease and noting how it contributed to the overall design. I didn't know then that learning how to ravel and unravel tales was an activity that could take a lifetime. next>>