The Enduring Imaginative Life

By FARHA GUERRERO In correspondence with a fellow writer, I shared an idea for an epistolary novel that has been dwelling inside my mind for some time. But in thinking about this, I also remembered watching Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges's very good friend, speak about something I might call the enduring imaginative life. In a 1983 interview with Martín Caparrós, Bioy Casares said: “Yo vivo con seis, siete, ocho cuentos por escribir y dos o tres novelas...” I live with six, seven, eight stories waiting to be written, and two or three novels. For many years now, I've felt that I share something quite similar. At any time, I may have multiple stories in my head, and certainly I may be reinventing them and imagining new ones constantly. Stories come to me in several ways, often through one image that life gives me, an interaction with someone, one sentence, one word, places, things. A story will often compose itself during the early morning hours, or especially during my sojourns…