I see better and feel more when I write it down. Jennifer Homans

I became a writer by being a shy person and a dancer.

I am very internal and have always liked to sit alone in dark theaters watching dance and scribbling thoughts. Or performing, which is also a very private experience, even (or because) it is for a public. 

Writing is always for me a way of thinking – I don't know what I am going to “say” before I write it. 

Dance mattered because, somehow, the direct connection between seeing or moving and the task of describing my own thoughts in the moment, as a thing, but also as an effect on my own being, is something private and natural to me. 

I see better and feel more when I write it down.

 I have ideas when I move to music, and often took a pen and paper with me to dance classes. The process was so private that I never imagined I would share my writing, and to this day, I feel oddly surprised when I see my work in print.

When I am writing, no one else is there, just me (barely) and the material. In this sense, it is very much like dancing.

Write about something you care about and want to know more about. 

Curiosity and delight in learning is for me a key; it takes me out of myself.  

Jennifer Homans (interview)