Writing Community
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Derek Mueller was the first writer I ever met. He had a handmade wooden bookshelf eight feet tall thick with fiction and philosophy books, literary canons and text books, which made it seem that even his craftsmanship revolved around the written word. He’d taken care to build a home for the thoughts of writers from a diverse range of styles and periods. He was versed in the works of Joyce, had a slim, dusty copy of Gibran’s The Prophet, and he could discuss characters such as Beowulf and Garp with rivaling intensity.
I’d had friends before who wrote in notebooks or were voracious readers, who could quote lines of poetry, but none of them possessed Derek’s level of belief in each of those activities. I saw him as a great elder (only a year older than me) – a borderline messenger – who could show me all that could be found or accomplished in words. (more…)
