3 Q’s with Lance Mason

Fiction writer Lance Mason recently had stories published in literary journals Upstreet and City Works. He’s signing copies at Borders Books on State Street this Wednesday, September 12, at 7 p.m.

1) What spurred your career as a writer? Writing is an art form to me. Painters put their thoughts and feelings in paint and canvas, sculptors in stone and clay, architects in bricks and mortar, writers in letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. The driver for me is the desire to communicate ideas and feelings in a medium that is tangible and durable, that is revisable and open to repeated reflection, and to get satisfaction from doing that well.

2) What are you looking forward to? Getting my novels published when they are good enough, and letting the growth experiences I encounter in writing shape my skills and outcomes into a higher standard of-if this isn’t too pompous-literature.

3) Do you have a piece that you are particularly proud of? The novel that is currently with an agent brought me a lot of satisfaction because many of the scenes and themes in the book came to pass in real life after I wrote them. A poem I wrote recently for a good friend who died; many mutual friends spoke well of it.