"As it were" is a collection of seventeen non-verbal compositions that visually explore the story as a form. Considering literary forms, one sees that a poem resides in a shape that is particular to it and inviolable. A novel, however, exists in many pages that all look alike. A story occupies a limited enclosure with a consistent though malleable shape. Each story in this collection uses a different system of generators, each uses its own language. Like drawing, writing is visual and gestural, but with different constraints. Without the force of semantic content holding one's attention in a specific mode to the page, the differences between drawing and writing begin to soften and the act of looking and the act of reading begin to merge.