Mack Edwards

      I don't write to give others a better understanding of me. I do it to give them a better understanding of themselves.   

        My stories contain insights gained over the years, sometimes clothed in drama, sometimes comedy. In one instance, a children's book.   In time, I'll find my audience, however small.   

      I learned a lesson back in 2014 that formed this thinking. I was putting together a synopsis for "Mirror" when a friend, who saw me agonizing over every word,  asked why I was wasting my time.

      "Your writing's your art", he said. "Hang it up on the wall, and let people get from it what they get". The novice playwright in me wasn't savvy enough to appreciate his advice. So, on I wrote.        

       While writing it , I sent copies of my play to  a   handful  of   people  whose 

opinions I valued. Their comments validated my friend's advice.

      All of them sympathized with Sam's plight, but none empathized with it.

     Not exactly.

     Unlike Sam, they never experienced the dedradation of age discrimination and the sanctioned belittlement by people twenty years his junior. The crime of breathing the rarified corner office air they claimed for themselves. Or, for that matter, his free fall from executive suites to a series of dead-end, low-paying jobs.

      It was just the "age" part of the equaition that eluded them. The "discrimination" part was another story. It exumed demons. For the two Jews, the ovens of Auschwitz. For the father of a child frail from birth, playground bullies. For the Afro-American, white-sheeted cross burners and back seats of busses. That soul searching I mentioned earlier. 

     These days I'm not quick to talk about my writing projects. Definitely writing fewer, shorter synopses.