Carla Charter

I often say I've been writing for as long as I could hold a pen. I honestly can not remember when my stories were not a part of my life. Growing up with my family on a farm, as the next generation of a multi-generational Yankee family, the stories not only formed in me but were all around me.

There were family stories at the dinner table, stories of local history when at the historical society, and New England characters everywhere I looked. They came to dinner, they baled our hay and they lived down the road from us.    Living in the North Central part of Massachusetts, I still meet my characters daily.  They are there at town meetings, church fairs and a hundred other places I frequent. 

    My writer's mind, I now realize absorbs the nuances of those I met, their language, their mannerisms and all the wonderful colors and diversities of their personalities.  I store these varied pieces away only to have them resurface as the perfectly formed pieces of patchwork that constitute my characters. Esther, Claire, Elmer, Absalom and all the others that have sprung from my imagination. They all carry a piece of my beloved New England people with them.    

    And like the characters, the stories too have always been there for me.  Always tapping me on the shoulder.  Telling me there's more to the tale than I see in front of me, if I'd only take the time to look, and tell the story as it needs to be told, full of richness in language and characters.  Someone needs to tell it, I need to tell it, because I am compelled to.  For that is a storytellers lot.  To preserve what is and create what is not, to make people think and smile and appreciate the music of everyday life that is all around them.

   As for teachers, I have been blessed to be taught  by the best.  As a granddaughter of the town librarian, Alcott, Thoreau, Dickens, London, they were all at my fingertips and I devoured their every word.  The music and melody of the poetry of Frost and Dickinson called me to learn the beauty of words and the noticing of details.  Wharton herself, reminded to write what I know when I devoured Ethan Frome.  Page by page.  Like a box of chocolates you hope you never finish.  I have learned more from these masters than I could ever have learned in a classroom.

   And so I hope my writing does homage to all of my teachers, whether they be famous writers themselves  or the farmer who lived nearby, or the proper Bostonians who too were part of my life. They all exist somehow in every word I write.  A soliloquy to my people and the beautiful place we call home.