About the Author

About the Author:

Hi, I'm Chris Chamberlain, and this is the place I post some of my writing if I remember to do so.


The briefest of histories ~

I grew up at a small private school in Tennessee and went to Earlham College in Indiana. I would have majored in English, but that would have meant that ten living members of my family had majored in English, and would have been an English teacher, but didn't for the same reason. I ended up majoring in Human Development and Social Relations, giving me a nice understanding of sociology and psychology, as well as a working knowledge of anthropology.

On Writing ~ 
By all accounts, I really ought to use this blog more than I do. I love to write — and yes, I would love to be published some day. It would be a nice affirmation of my craft. But I don't need that affirmation to love my work.

I write because I must write: I must write; I cannot not write. When I'm not writing consistently (or reading for that matter) I get antsy. If I'm stupid and ignore it, I end up depressed... Not sad, mind you. But without writing, I lack purpose and am directionless.

At my best, I am a wordsmith.

We trace the word "smith," and the name, back to smittan, an Old English word. It means to strike, as in "Smite down the heretics!" A goldsmith is one who strikes gold; a silversmith strikes silver; a blacksmith hammers the impurities (the black) from iron. A wordsmith, then, is one whose craft is to strike words until their shape is pleasing.

I liked this quite a lot.

A wordsmith is not one who uses big words for the sake of using big words. He does it for the craft, not to feel superior – words, like any other natural resource, can be crafted and shaped, to create art or to accomplish a task.

But the same word also gave us the word smitten... so maybe you could also say that I write because I am hopelessly, irrevocably in love with the words of my language.