Editor's Note

During my last year of undergraduate studies, I was suckered into taking an accounting course. I had the best of intentions; in this case I was after the elusive concept of being "well-rounded," and with graduation looming before me, "marketable." Having already successfully tackled undefined limits and the baffling nature of infinity in calculus, I did not think a class that never went beyond basic multiplication and division would cause me such angst. In introductory accounting, you memorize formulas and then you apply them. Sure you have to know when to use which formula, but you aren't responsible for writing the equations, and you certainly aren't responsible for explaining the source of the original data. Having spent the last two years almost entirely in writing workshops, I felt helplessly like someone had stripped me of my creative license. Worse yet, there was a very limited place for my curiosity. I was repeatedly reminded that I didn't need to know the data's origin, I just had to know where to plug it in.

I have since decided that stories are like reading an accountant's footnotes versus reviewing the numbers recorded in a ledger. For example, if Harold's Pâtisserie was audited, the number 37 in the inventory column "truffles" is far less interesting than its corresponding note, which I imagine could read, "Number including those laced with arsenic and intended for the Bower soirée; these truffles are unmarketable, but could potentially eliminate local competition, therefore are included to reflect their priceless value." While my imagined footnote would seem ridiculous for business purposes, it tells a much more engaging story than a list of quantities in the assets column on a statement of financial position.

Language, like mathematics, is a human system devised to quantify, organize, and— ideally—communicate information so that it can be universally understood. In stories, writers use words to explain their chosen line-items, essentially assigning them a more complex value through elaboration. It provides a human element that allows for more than the face value of "what," giving writers the tools to tell us how, why, and any other details they deem crucial to our interpretation and understanding of the story as a total unit.

Luckily, what might be considered fraudulent for accounting purposes is considered literary license in the realm of storytelling. It gives writers permission to edit reality, so long as it is not claiming to be factual history, and in granting this, opens the door for universal meaning; the kind of truths that apply to humanity, retaining relevance beyond the situation-specific context of their setting in a particular story. It enables a writer to take a personal experience and use it as a springboard. Whether or not something actually happened becomes unimportant, and a piece is able to transcend the boundaries of fact to be depicted in whichever way it will be most effectively conveyed.

Volume 42 of Red Cedar Review is a wonderful reminder that writers, unlike accountants, aren't obligated to "universal principles" for the success of a story, and there is no "basic equation" on which to construct literature. Whether it is Corrine De Winter's poem, "Holy Water," a beautiful declaration of humanity's interconnectedness, or Richard Mills's short story, "The Lake," which uses the perspective of an 11-year-old boy to examine both the presence and absence of family and the types of loneliness associated with both; all of the pieces in Vol. 42 operate under their own distinctly different, and equally effective, set of principles. Each piece in this issue writes its own equation to determine its own standards and norms, its own truths.

As you transition from a piece such as J. C. Dickey-Chasins's "Blue Jesus," which is set in the stark reality of an elderly woman's decision to end her stifling marriage, to Lawrence F. Farrar's "A Souvenir for Mama," which details one woman's daunting struggle with her mind's perception of reality, you will see that the writers featured here address very different topics, in a wide variety of forms...