Writing & uncertainty: “I’ve got a high tolerance for not knowing…I can sit and not know the heck out of a thing…” Heather Sellers

The Gift Of Face Blindness

Sellers says that, in a strange way, her inability to remember faces served her well as a child, because it taught her to cope with uncertainty. That ability is still useful to her as an adult and a writer.

"I think a lot of brilliant, talented writers have a hard time staying in that chair long enough to get through the inevitable chaos that comes when you sit down to make a piece of art, and I've got a high tolerance for not knowing," she says.

"I can sit and not know the heck out of a thing; I've been doing it my whole life," she says. "And I've trained myself, when I don't know, to not freak out, to just keep looking closer."

For years, Sellers looked for a cure, an end to her face blindness. But now, she says, she would never give it up. "It's allowed me to engage with the world in a meaningful way, and to talk to people with depth and authenticity. I don't know that I would have come to that without this disorder."

Face blindness "forces me to say right away the most vulnerable thing I could say to someone: I may not know you, but I want to."

via "Living With Face Blindness: Who Are You, Again?" : NPR.org

Posted via email from Carissa Thorp's Posterous