Some time ago I delivered a speech at the Gulf Coast Writing Teachers Conference in Fairhope, Alabama. Since that time I’ve had several requests for a copy of the speech and so I decided to post it here as a journal entry. 

Profile of a Writer

 Many years ago when I imagined becoming an author, I envisioned myself in my editor’s office reclining on a brown leather couch sipping a dry martini. My head was wreathed in spirals of smoke drifting from my long ivory cigarette holder. Across the room my editor sat at his huge teakwood desk reading my brilliant manuscript. He was a man of some mature years wearing a tweed jacket. An elegant pipe rested in the crystal ash tray on his desk, and after he read the last page of my work, he offered sincere, effusive praise and suggested that we celebrate my dazzling novel by sharing a late night dinner in an expensive restaurant.
Now fast forward to 2002, the year I published my first novel. I discovered that my fantasy was just that. Fantasy. I may as well have imagined that I was sitting in a rowboat in the Atlantic with a fisherman named Ahab. I have shoes older than my editor. There’s no couch in her small New York office. She doesn’t drink martinis; she drinks Crystal Light. She wears floral prints, grabs lunch at McDonald’s and she’d definitely never ever carry a pack of Winstons in her backpack. 
Many changes in this profession of writing have been effected in the last ten years or so. And the publishing industry and the role of authors continues to transform as rapidly as the stock market quotes do from day to day.
 Today an author is expected to wear many hats and acquire skills that have little or nothing to do with art. So what does an author need to succeed in 2008?
Well, here are a few of my observations. First, in the 2008 publishing world an author needs to be savvy about technology. Nearly every author I know has a web site or at the very least a blog, my space, or live journal. They are expected to have podcasts and trailers for their books and be able to surf the web to instantly find a review or chat room that relates to their work.
Today an author needs to be a salesperson. She is required to assist her publicist in marketing her work via mail-outs, newsletters, imaginative gimmicks and come on’s as if she were a traveling salesperson hawking snake medicine.
Another device an author needs is a “look” for book jackets, for television appearances, and book-related events. Many authors spend hundreds of dollars on professional photos, make-up artists, and hair dressers in an effort to make themselves as well as their books more saleable. Authors have become products.
An author needs energy. Book tours today are physically challenging. Authors may be expected to do as many as 20 events in a single week. I should know I once did 14 in 5 days.
An author needs to acquire mathematical skills in order to understand her royalty statement, which oftentimes involves something agents have dubbed as creative accounting.
And finally she needs legal assistance because she’ll never understand her contract.
An author does indeed need to acquire a great many skills in order to become successful, but what is far more important I believe is what traits an author needs to write a good book, play, or poem because, for while publishing has become about the bottom line, writing is first and foremost about the heart.
Some weeks ago during an interview I was asked what traits a writer needs to write a successful work. I was a bit taken aback as I had never considered this question, and in thinking about it, I wondered if there are universal traits we writers all share. I came to believe that there are commonalities among us. So now I’d like to share some of my thoughts about these qualities with you. 
The first trait I believe a writer must have is curiosity. A writer must ask Why, what, when, how? If he is not curious about his fellow man, I doubt he is going to write anything of substance. I write to learn about the world, its people, and I write to learn about myself. The writer is forever student, never teacher. We seek answers, we pose questions, and we seek truth.
The second trait I believe a good writer needs is empathy. This applies especially to literary fiction. If a writer is incapable of empathizing with her characters, she’s not going to be able to tell their stories honestly. She may have the most original amazing plot on the planet, but if she doesn’t have empathy for her characters her readers won’t care about them. We must love our characters and they must become a part of us. I am my characters. They are all a part of me. They are both the best and the worst of me. In every moment that I’m writing I must own the emotion, the acts, the words that come to me. Some of my characters possess traits of mine that I abhor, that I want to smother deeply inside me, hiding them from the people I want to love me. Some of my characters exhibit qualities I am sometimes capable of like kindness and unselfishness, and even nobility on some fine days. I’m often asked about the African American characters I write about. How can these characters be me? I answer how can they not? They are as much a part of me as my aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents. If I were raised in a Jewish, a Muslim, a Hispanic, or Asian community, I’m certain I would write about them. They would comprise a part of me and my work. 
What else do writers need? Writers need perseverance. I learned about perseverance early in life through observing my mother’s example. When my mother was thirty-five years old, she was told she would live only five years. She died not at forty, but at 65 through sheer determination to live to see her grandchildren. Born in an era and a community where there were few opportunities for women, she taught herself bookkeeping and became such an expert CPA’s consulted her for help. She traveled to Hawaii, to Tahiti, to every party she was invited to. She taught me to ignore naysayers, to persist when everyone else has given up, to dream large and then to make that dream come true. It took me eight years to publish Right As Rain, and that meant six revisions from beginning to end. How did I manage to keep working on it in the face of rejections and missteps? Well, I believe rejection is only an opportunity to try again. Hope cures disappointment. And after all, we writers aren’t brain surgeons. If they make a mistake, someone could die. If we make one, we only hurt our pride if we allow it. I believed in my novel and I believed in myself, in my ability to eventually get it right. Writers need faith in themselves.
Writers need to make creative work a priority in their lives. This sounds simple, but actually this is one of the hardest goals one can set for one’s self. It’s easy to say yes to other people to other things. It’s far more difficult to say no. But if we accept all invitations, if we allow others to lead us rather than leading ourselves, we will never find time to write. Our writing time must be scared. We must give up hours, days, and holiday weekends to nourish our talent. We cannot wait for inspiration to write. Talking about it, dreaming about it, researching, planning, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
We writers must write though the roadblocks others set up in our paths. I’m talking about critics and those who would sit on our shoulders and monitor and or direct our work. As far as critics go, I always return to two of the famous and most often cited quotes about critics. Kurt Vonnegut’s “A reviewer is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.” And John Osbourne’s “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.” 
Besides critics, however, and much more problematic are our friends, family, and other writers, those people we want to please the most. The person who sat most heavily on my shoulder when I was writing was my father. I imagined him reading my book and he’s reading along and then my character says something profane or maybe the F word, anything that would make me uncomfortable. But what was I to do if that’s what my character would say? I solved the problem fairly easily. Well, actually I didn’t solve it, my dad did. Early on in my writing life, I wrote a story for my Masters thesis in which I used the word masturbate and my dad got a copy of this story. After he read it, he praised it, saying he liked it so much he gave it to Miss Wilda. Now Miss Wilda is in her 80ies and is the cookie lady at Pisgah Methodist Church. “Dad,” I said. Did you read the story? I just told you I did, he said. But don’t you think it might be inappropriate for Miss Wilda to read? What’re you talking about? he asked. Then he said oh, I know what you mean. Don’t worry about it. I explained that to her. Explained what I thought. Explained how you do it? What’d you tell her I asked him. I told her that if you’re a really good writer you can write about things you know nothing about. So folks, don’t worry. The people who support you and your work are going to find a way to accept whatever you write. And if they don’t, well, just like those editors who rejected you, you don’t want them as readers anyway. 
Finally, the last trait I believe we writers must have is courage. We must face our fears. Sometimes in listening to the voices of our characters what they tell us frightens us and we lose our nerve. Those voices are the ones that matter the most, and yet many writers are terrified of going so deeply inside themselves to feel the emotions those voices demand. Those characters might be in pain, they might be suffering from the same maladies that the writer suffers from. Their disappointments, failures, losses are synonymous with ours. And if we allow ourselves to feel the anguish they evoke, open those wounds of the spirit and reach inside ourselves to caress the muscles of our very human hearts, we might not be able to withstand it. And that’s a valid fear. I can’t tell you that at the end of the day, we’ll bounce back and be the same persons we were before giving ourselves completely to our art. You may find it difficult to reenter the ordinary life you were living. Robert Olen Butler believes that this why so many of our greatest writers turned to alcohol to escape the pain. But I believe it’s worth the risk. For if we do not write honestly, if we do not have the courage to explore the important questions, to feel both pain and joy with the intensity we are capable of, then I say we should find another profession that’s safe and comfortable. We must write through our fears, we must feel the voice before we record it, and if we can do that, then we know we’ve done something valuable, not just for ourselves, but for our readers as well.
    I experience this fear whenever I write. I know what it feels like to murder someone, to face execution, to be raped, to lose a child, to bury a son. But I also know the joys of friendships, the ecstasy of love, of what it feels like when your dreams come true. I’ve lived numerous lives, and all of them are mine and they belong to my readers as well. My truth may not be your truth, but my task as a writer is not to tell you what to think or how to feel. My goal rather is simply to provide an honest story for you to read. When a person buys a book, it no longer belongs to the author, but to the reader, and when that person reads it he or she brings to it their own truth, their life experiences, and to me that is the wonder of the writers’ art.
One of the ways we bring light to each other is through the sharing of our stories. Through them, through those stories we tell we all become connected in some way. Books are a bridge between the banks of our differences and when we walk through the pages we are given the opportunity to understand each other, to better understand ourselves. Writers and readers alike, we are all the characters. As sentient beings we possess the glorious capacity to feel joy and pain, to walk across the bridges of our world and explore and abide in another’s universe.

A Writer’s Christmas Story 2007

On December 18, 2007 for the first time in my life I was ahead of the shopping game. I’d bought nearly all of the presents, wrapped them in beautiful foil with imaginative bows, and placed them artfully beneath the Christmas tree. I’d even managed to compile a detailed menu for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners. For the holiday, we would have our extended family to include my nearly 88 year old father and my nearly 12 year old grandson. It would be one of our loveliest Christmas holidays ever.

That Tuesday was my day for me. I drove over to Mandeville for hair color, manicure, and pampering from my hairdresser Lois who’d been generously trying to help me look my best for over twenty years. Lois has a display of my books in her hair salon and sells quite a few for me, too. She also took my last author photo which is much better than the professional one that I paid for. So I was in blissful euphoria, looking my best, as I stopped at the mall to buy the last few gifts I needed to purchase. Even though I think people shouldn’t talk on phones while driving, on the interstate on my way home I called Butch. Maybe I needed to stop for chocolate candy or wine or chips, the staples in our house. “We’ve been robbed,” he said. “You’re joking,” I said. “That’s not funny.” But before I finished that sentence I knew this was nothing he’d joke about. 

When I somehow safely arrived home after driving ninety plus miles an hour, I parked alongside two police cars with flashing lights. You never expect flashing lights in your own driveway; those lights are on the highway, at stores you pass by wondering what happened there. Always there, not here. But here is where they were and they were in my house where glass was scattered across my living room floor. Where there was no longer a back door to my house. There was also no longer an armoire in my bedroom. I stared at the corner where the oak chest had stood for nearly ten years. There was only a small cardboard box on the floor that had sat on the lid of the armoire. There was one of my summer nightgowns on the floor, another hanging out of the open drawer of my chest. My grandson pulled on my arm, “Nanny,” he said. “They took my Christmas presents, too.” I retraced my steps to the living room. Yes, the artfully arranged gifts were gone and gone was my first wedding ring set, my mother’s watch, my grandmother’s broach and also gone was every piece of jewelry I had ever owned except what was on my shivering body. How would I ever feel safe again?

Amazingly, I slept in my bedroom that night knowing that strangers had been there in my private space. I slept late into the morning not wanting to confront the day, not wanting to remember our losses, the violation of being burglarized. But I rose and after coffee began to sweep up the glass, write the five page list of lost jewelry and gifts that the detective had asked for. It was futile to write that list; I knew nothing would be recovered, but writing the list brought back beautiful memories, too. The Majorcan pearls were bought on our vacation to Majorca. I smiled remembering that Butch had broken his collar bone in a baseball game and he wore a sling so I had to carry all the luggage. On the list I wrote the inscription on the white gold pendent, “Remember When” and the dates “1965-2007.” Butch had given it to me on our last anniversary. And I wrote the titles of my books that had been engraved on the charms that dangled from the bracelet he’d given me. My mother had worn the pearl earrings with gold filigree on my wedding day. The silver diaper pins engraved with my daughter’s name were a gift from my friend and her godmother Bonnie. The ruby broach my grandmother had worn to Pisgah Church nearly every Sunday. And the turquoise birthstone ring I hadn’t worn in years had nestled on my finger every day back in high school after Butch had given it to me for Christmas. All those memories. The thieves could take away the objects but they could never take away their meaning. On Christmas Day Butch gave me a charm bracelet exactly like the one that had been stolen and he gave me an armoire, too. “We’ll make more memories to fill it full again,” he said. I cried and then smiled. On this day he’d already given me a new memory to store and I knew there’d be many more to come.

 I am not afraid. I will not live looking over my shoulder with worry and doubt. This journal entry isn’t about losing; it’s about winning. Overcoming fear. Every writer knows fear. There’s fear when we begin a new work, there’s fear when we’re half way through a book and get stuck. Will we ever finish it and if we do will it get published? And that’s only the beginning. Will the book sell? What will the reviews say? Will anyone come to the book signing? Will I do this again?

I think about Paul, who was attacked and blinded in one eye. He was robbed on the street in front of his house that same year. I think about my friend, Tana, who lost everything she owned when Katrina blew into the Gulf Coast. I think about my dad who has lived with the loss of his wife for twenty years. I think about my friend Noble who conquered ovarian cancer. I think about so many people I’ve known who’ve faced far worse tragedies than a burglary. And they’re not afraid to go on with their lives. They live and love and laugh and share their gifts with me. And they inspire me to keep on writing, to share my thoughts and beliefs through my stories and books. If the next book doesn’t get published, if it doesn’t sell, if the reviewers attack it, if no one comes to the book signing, I’m not going to stop trying. I’m not going to stop believing. I’m going to write the next book and the next until my eyes are too old to see the words on the computer screen or until there are no stories left to tell. 

Hot Fudge Sundae Blues Tour
A Hurricane Survivor’s Journal

Life in Louisiana was fine indeed that last week of August. After receiving the tour schedule from my publicist at Ballantine/Random House, I was all set to go. I’d bought hot pink sandals, a replacement eye liner pencil, a journal with lined pages, and I’d just gotten a copy of my third novel. Hot Fudge Sundae Blues would be coming out on August 30, and I was excited and eager to set out on that tour. But on August 28 I was frantically throwing photograph albums into the trunk of my car after learning that my home was in a mandatory evacuation zone. With my family, I fled from Katrina unaware that our lives were about to be turned upside down. I did go on the book tour, however, and what follows is the journal I kept during the tour that I’ll never forget.  
Week One
Sept. 19
Butch and I leave our home in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, and head northeast toward Birmingham. It’s just a few weeks since Hurricane Katrina hit and the devastation along I-12 is unbelievable. We ride past damaged house after damaged house, past uprooted pine trees, and hardwood branches snapped off, lying in crazy piles reminding me of playing pick-up-sticks, but this is not a game. I read the morning’s New Orleans Times Picayune aloud to Butch. We are still hungry for news, news of recovery, we hope. There aren’t so many pages to read anymore, but the Living Section is back and Hot Fudge Sundae Blues was the first review Susan Larson wrote from Huston after Katrina. I had great reservations about going on this tour. To worry about selling books with all the heartache surrounding us, seemed almost obscene. But Susan’s review changed my attitude. She said that books were an antidote to despair and recommended my novel as a cure for the blues. I cried, of course, and wrote to her that of all of the reviews I’ll ever read for my work, none will ever compare to this one. 

The traffic slows and stops at the Pearl River/Slidell exit, and I remember that the twin spans are gone, no way into New Orleans East from here. We turn north toward Hattiesburg onto I-59. In early August Butch and I drove this route to the mountains for our wedding anniversary trip. We’d commented on how beautiful the drive was, the lush greenery, the stately trees; it was a retreat for wildlife, giving us a feeling of serenity as we drove mile after mile. But now the leaves are brown, the highway signs are twisted pretzels or they lay as corpses on the ground. “Tornados,” Butch says. “You can trace the path,” and I fall silent, more depressed to know the breadth of the monster who trammeled our land.

In Meridian we stop for lunch at a country buffet. The roof is damaged, the sign crumpled metal. It’s lovebug season and never have we seen so many. We clean the windshield before going on. The highway is crowded with trailers, trucks, campers, mobile homes. I close my eyes, hoping to shut out thoughts of Katrina, but she’s a bitch that won’t go away.

The hotel in Birmingham is lovely; Cindy (my publicist at Ballantine/Random House) always finds the best for her authors. What luxury to be taken care of! Memories of worrying about our safety, our home, the heat, lack of food, water, and gas are all fading and for the first time I’m feeling like an author on tour. I kick off my shoes and settle onto the loveseat to wait for Silas House, author of Clay’s Quilt, Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo. Silas is my touring partner—two authors for the price of one. Butch turns on the TV and there’s Mayor Nagin. He says there’s a hurricane coming, Rita is expected to enter the gulf, and the levees won’t hold. I start to cry. All I can say is, “No. No, not another one.” Butch insists we go downstairs to the bar, have a drink, have some fun, and there the TV set is tuned to the same station. The bartender and a woman who is a reporter for a local radio station tell us that Mayor Nagin shouldn’t allow people back into the city. They agree with a lot of news reporters that Nagin has handled everything wrong. I want to tell them that they don’t know our city, our people, our hearts and minds and that Nagin does, but I’m polite and change the subject to Silas’s and my novels. The reporter doesn’t ask the titles of our books.

Silas phones and we meet him in the lobby. The reunion is warm, poignant, filled with emotion. I swallow a lump in my throat and say, “Let’s go sell some books together.”

Books & Co. is now Books-A-Million and it looks like there may be a million books in the huge store. The crowds aren’t huge though. Friends of Silas have come and while he chats with them I notice a woman who’s picking up my novel from the display. There’s something arresting about her and I have a presentiment that this is about more than selling a book. And I am right. She is Becky, the mother of Jonas Friedman, our financial planner. She lives in New Orleans, and she’s broken and lost and sad. I hold out my arms and we cry together in this bookstore with blinking lights and a table holding cupcakes from the cookbook author’s signing the day before.

Silas and I sign stock, have dinner, and tell the story of our evacuation in the bizarre contra-flow. Butch tells Silas that his mother in Gulfport was missing for four days, his cousin in Slidell is still missing, his sister-in-law and daughter have lost everything. And I tell him about Tana and her family, ten of them all wiped out, homeless, broke, her father-in-law gravely ill. And I recount the stories of all of my friends in New Orleans, authors and teachers and members of the Board of Directors for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. So many of them homeless, so many of them scattered all over the country. Will we ever find them all? 

Day 2
I awake in Birmingham, rested, feeling much better. We’re going to Montgomery and we’ll have a wonderful day with Silas and our friends there. Benny, Butch’s cousin who lives in Slidell calls, the last family member is found! He’s lost the bottom half of his house, and I offer our guest house for them to live in until they can repair their downstairs. I call Pat Brady, my friend, an author and president of the Tennessee Williams Literary Institute, to make sure Greg Herren, another author friend, is going to teach my class at SLU while I’m away. Tim Gautreaux, Dayne Sherman, and Andree Cosby are taking the other creative writing classes I’ll miss while on tour, and now Pat says Greg has arrived and all is well at home. As well as it can be at least.

On the way to Montgomery, Silas, Butch and I are all in high spirits. We avoid talking about the hurricane and tell publishing stories instead. We compare and contrast indie publishers with the big houses. I tell Silas that Random House may be a big house, but that they also have a big heart. They donated a half million dollars to the Red Cross Katrina relief fund and sent my check early when we couldn’t get funds from our bank. We don’t get lost, and find our hotel easily. Silas is intrigued by the navigator in our car – Bitchin Betty – Butch calls her from his days in the cockpit of a Delta MD-88. Butch’s friends call our car the bookmobile because he’s always driving me to some book event somewhere. In three years of touring we’ve logged thousands of miles on the road At the hotel I secret myself in the bedroom to figure out what I’ll read tonight. It will be my first reading from HFSB and I decide to read something humorous, the scene with Wallace and Layla Jay when he tells about his conversion. I’m hungry, but we’ve having a late dinner so I retrieve my Cheez-Its and candy corn from the car. I offer some to Silas, but he’s got a moon pie to snack on.

I love Capitol Books in Montgomery. Tom and Cheryl Upchurch are delightful, and the renovated house where the store resides is a treasure trove of outstanding choices. Butch finds Clyde Edgerton’s latest book and realizes that they were both in pilot school in Laredo, Texas, at the same time and in Vietnam together, too. Silas and I choose our seats at a table with the pink floral cloth. There’s a nice crowd and at first we stammer a bit trying to decide how to proceed. Soon our routine is established though as Silas reads first, then me, and then we take questions from the audience. Silas reads a beautiful passage from The Coal Tattoo about redbirds, magic realism and Anneth. I’m entranced and he stops too soon. I read next, editing and omitting as I read to shorten my time as Silas has only read for maybe five or six minutes. The Q & A goes well. The readers are smart and they ask good questions. We sign stock and I buy two books (one Silas recommends) before we leave. Silas and I learn we share identical opinions on nearly every book we discuss, and I resolve to read every book he recommends.

There’s a fine and elegant dinner party at our friend Jeannie Thompson’s house after the reading: salmon and tofu and chocolate ice cream and we are happy to be with our friends catching up on the last months. I try to avoid talking about Katrina, but inevitably I must, and a pall falls over us until Bart Barton tells a funny story about his friend and we all break up laughing.

Back at the hotel we have a nightcap with Silas and say good night, but I don’t sleep. When Butch holds me to kiss good night, I start to cry. I tell myself I’m having a great time. I’m happy, aren’t I? But when I close my eyes, I think about working at the shelter back home, how the children were so frightened they wouldn’t tell me their names until I stroked their arms and told them mine. I think about how the woman pulled me to her baby’s cot to beg for a sheet I had been told to put on the Do Not Touch Shelf. I gave her two sheets.

Day 3
As we leave the hotel, several stretch limos pull up and we find out we’ve been staying in the hotel with Debbie Reynolds and Lionel Ritchie, but we don’t wait to get their autographs. We’re headed for Fairhope, Alabama. In the car we pass the ashtray back and forth from front to back seat and we’re riding in a cloud of gray smoke. Silas regales us with stories about his daughters. They were so proud that Dolly Parton had written their daddy a fan letter and thought that they shouldn’t have to wait in line at Dollywood anymore. I talk about Chess at his school art show, wearing a tie to stand by his drawing of a pelican. He refused to leave and see the other children’s work because he thought people might have questions for him like they do for me when I do a reading. We’re laughing and all of a sudden we begin to slow down, slower and slower until we stop on the shoulder of the interstate. The car is dead, no lights, no alarms, no clues. We get out and stand beside the highway, smoking against the ferocious hot wind blowing in our faces. The lovebugs are prolific here, too, and they light in large communities on Silas’s head. “Do they bite?” he wants to know. “No,” I say. “They just fly around mating all day.” “What a life,” we say in unison. The car won’t start again and we decide we need help. Our new cell phone is giving us trouble, but eventually Butch manages to get a call through and before too long we have more roadside assistance than there’s room for - - a DOT van, a state trooper, tunnel security, and the Nissan dealership manager, who takes Silas and me to his showroom while Butch waits for the wrecker. Butch tells all of them that we’re authors on our way to a reading/book signing, and Silas leans over and whispers, “I think he’s proud of us.” I look over at Butch standing beside the highway patrolman and feel my heart expand. “I think you’re right,” I say.

Sherry Paulsen (a friend I met at the Tennessee Williams Festival who lives in Pensacola and lost everything in Ivan) shows up at the dealership a few hours later to take Silas and me into Fairhope. Butch will stay to wait for the last rental car in South Alabama to arrive and we agree to meet him at The Pub, our favorite hangout in Fairhope. We think our troubles are over, but we’re wrong. Silas is supposed to be staying with friend and fellow author Sonny Brewer. But Sonny hasn’t shared this with his wife Diana, and when I call to let her know we’re on our way, she tells me he can’t come out to her house just yet. Not to worry, I say, he can come with us to Wolf Cottage, where we’re staying and where Rick Bragg lived for some time.

The cottage is rustic, charming but it’s no four star hotel room. There’s a living room with paint peelings everywhere, a few chairs scattered around, a shelf with only a few books, and a wall clock. The bedroom is tiny; Rick Bragg’s famous leather jacket is hanging on the closet door, and there’s a small dining room, kitchen, laundry room, and a back room where Silas goes to change clothes. We’ve only thirty minutes before we’re supposed to be at Page & Palette and Silas needs to iron his shirt. There’s no iron, so I heat up my curling iron and it does a passable job on the shirt’s wrinkles. [There are no towels either, but we make do and manage to arrive at Page & Palette on time. Jay, the manager, greets us and seems happy to have us. There’s a nice repast with wine and our reading and Q & A goes well. Silas and I read longer this time and everyone seems to like that. There’s quite a line for book signings and we sign a ton of stock, so we’re feeling quite marvelous. Dinner with the Jones follows, and my spirits plummet when Nancy tells me their gorgeous home on the bay was flooded by Katrina. 

This is the last night of the first leg of the tour and we have to say good-bye to Silas. I’m weepy and dead tired, ready to fall into bed, but there are no sheets. I don’t care enough to find them until the next morning when I see them in the dryer along with a pair of Rick Bragg’s underwear. I think about signing them “Bev was here,” but think better of it since I haven’t yet met his wife and she may misinterpret.

Day 4
While we wait for our car to be repaired, I call Cindy. I try not to cry and so tell her about Silas and the lovebugs and embellish the fun. She’s reassuring about the expense of the rental car, which we hadn’t budgeted for. We discuss whether or not I’ll be able to make the second week with Rita bearing down on us. I tell her I’ll just have to call her post-storm to let her know if I can fly out from Baton Rouge as we had planned. New Orleans isn’t an option, of course. In the waiting room of the dealership I check the itinerary Cindy has emailed me. It says that Silas and I are scheduled to read and sign at the Jefferson Parish Library and Octavia Books in New Orleans together, and I’m supposed to go to Pass Christian Books later on. But all of this is cancelled now. Pass Christian Books is nothing but a square of concrete, and I don’t know what’s happened to Octavia or the library. After the car is repaired we head home, and I see a couch, a table, a large piece of sheet metal, all lying along I-10, and I close my eyes. I won’t look anymore. I can’t afford to allow grief to overtake me. I have to get home, do laundry, prepare for Rita, and pack for week two of this tour.

Week Two
September 26
I’m sitting at the gate, gate 2, in the Baton Rouge airport, waiting to board the flight to Dallas for leg two of the HFSB tour. Arose at six, far earlier than normal, but we’re anticipating traffic now that south Louisiana and the Texas coast evacuees have jammed the interstate. Rita came through, and though it wasn’t as bad as we had feared, the storm still packed a wallop.

The airport is filled with national guardsmen and women, Red Cross workers, and evacuees swapping stories of where they’ve spent the last few nights. Some in shelters, others with friends, the lucky ones in hotel rooms. I’ve been lucky myself to get power back after losing it during Rita. I’m already tired having spent the weekend waiting in gas lines, grocery lines, buying ice, and losing sleep when Rita began pounding our house. We lost power just before sunset and were able to make up beds for everyone before we had to rely on our flashlights. Howling, screaming, whooshing winds assaulted us for hours, something hit the house, and that night I thought about moving away but I know I won’t. I peered out the window wishing I could see how far up the water has come, but it was too dark to tell. I keep saying hang on, the worst will be over in a couple of hours. And it was, and our phones came back on, and now here I am gearing up again to be an author on tour instead of a frightened housewife. 

Five people in my line of sight on the plane are reading books. A good omen, I think, and I could use one. I crane my head around to see the titles, Trump’s book, and two Clive Clussers, Dean Koontz, and Freakonomics is the choice of my seatmate. He’s reading the chapter How to be a Perfect Parent. I peek over and read, “Fear is a major component in the art of parenting.” I nearly laugh out loud. The authors are men. This is no revelation to women for whom the fear begins with pregnancy. The soldiers sitting in front of me say they’re going home for two weeks R & R. They’ve both been in Iraq and they’re glad to be home. They tell me that a buddy of theirs from New Orleans just found out he has no home to return to and they wonder where’ll he go when he gets R & R. 

In Dallas I call Cindy to let her know I’m on schedule, and then catch my connecting flight to Louisville, KY. The hotel is fairly far away from town and not up to Cindy’s usual standards, but there’s a paranormal convention in the city and hotel rooms are scarce. I’ve got clean towels and the room has a homey feel to it, so I’ll be fine. I walk over to Burger King, buy a burger and fries, and next door at the convenience store a beer and a Snickers bar. Silas won’t be here until later, so I’m dining alone. 

Day 2
Silas showed up last night with wine and over drinks we agreed to leave at 7:30am for the 8:15 TV show. I’m up and dressed early, but when I pass by the mirror, I see that I’ve got lipstick smeared on my aqua top. I’m scrubbing it when Silas calls to leave, no time to change. It’s rush hour and time ticks away as we sit in what’s now a parking lot filled with commuters who knew to allow more time to get where they’re going. 7:40, 7:50, I keep calling the television station, but no one answers. We finally arrive just after the show goes off the air, and while the girl is nice about our missing the spot, I have a feeling we’re in hot water. We get back into our rental car and head over to one of Silas’s favorite breakfast cafes. He shows me around beautiful Louisville with its historic buildings and I’m oohing and ahhing over every block. It’s so wonderful to see buildings intact, roofs without blue tarps, and hills, big hills that I think are mountains which causes Silas
 to laugh. 

We find the high school where Silas is to speak after a couple of wrong turns. We long for Bitchin Betty and say we need her to direct us and Butch to get us places on time. When Silas tells the people in the office who he is, the student worker says she has goose bumps all over. Everyone gushes over him like he’s a movie star, and I whisper on the way to the auditorium that I’m feeling like I’m touring with Brad Pitt. There are 1,000 students in this auditorium and every one of them has read A Parchment of Leaves. I’m agog at how popular Silas is with the teenagers. They mob him after his speech, and I grab a student to watch the door while I use the men’s bathroom since the women’s is locked and the six cups of coffee I’ve had this morning are about to leak out of my eyes.

After Silas signs a ton of books, we go to a neighborhood bookstore and sign books before heading over to the TV station for an interview. I make a mental note to return to this store next book tour because it’s so very charming and the salesperson couldn’t be nicer. We’re a whole ten minutes early for the noon show—no way were we going to be late again--and while we wait the anchor woman asks me about New Orleans. What do I think of the mayor and the governor and how do you pronounce her name anyway? And now the hurricane comes back to me and I push away my sadness just before we go on. “Hi, it’s lovely to be in Louisville. Thank you for having me.” And it is lovely and I am grateful, but I return to the hotel with a heavy heart. Michael Ledet calls and tells me that Pat Brady has fallen down some stairs and broken her neck. Now she’s in intensive care awaiting the results of tests. I call Tana and speak to George who says just send us some memories, anything you have will be appreciated and cherished because we have nothing. I pace and smoke, smoke and pace. I don’t know who to help and I keep thinking of all the curves, the twists, turns, warps, and I’m so angry and frustrated I want to throw my suitcase across the room, but I run a hot bath instead. I’ve got a book signing to attend at Borders tonight.

We visit a friend of Silas’s on the way to Borders, and they don’t ask me about the hurricane, and I’m so grateful. We’re early again, and the district manager from Borders greets us. I like her immensely. There are flowers and posters and she’s concerned about our every comfort. People keep filing in and the store manager says there’s over a hundred people eager to hear us read. Silas and I have now developed a real routine. I’m the comic and he’s the straight man. He’s so generous to me, kind, and concerned that I get equal time to speak even though many of those high school girls are breathless with excitement over him. One girl asks him to sign by her tattoo, and when she tugs on her jeans to show its location, he refuses. I tell the story about my 86 year old dad telling me I’ve been to Louisville, and I said I had not. “Yes, you have,” he said. “When I was in training in Fort Knox before going to Japan in WWII, your mother came up and we spent a weekend in Louisville and that’s where you were conceived.” So I’ve come full circle, I tell the audience. “I’m back home.” 

After the reading we hook up with some of Silas’s students and have dinner. I’m exhausted beyond belief and go right to bed, and for the first time since Katrina, I fall asleep without thinking or dreaming about the storm.

Day 3
On the drive to Lexington, I ask Silas if he thinks maybe I’m a schizoid, laughing and crying both at almost every book signing. He says maybe I am, but he likes me anyway. I look out the window and am enchanted. We pass by gorgeous countryside, white rail fences sloping over green mounds, magnificent thoroughbreds grazing against blue sky. This is what I had thought the whole of Kentucky was, but it’s only a small part of the state. There’s so much I’m learning about like strip mining and the differences in the language of the people who live in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky. We check in at the Campbell House, an elegant, stately hotel with paintings of horses on nearly every wall. The veranda out front has wicker rockers and the beautiful people are rocking when we drag in with our tattered bags. I freshen up and we’re off to the WKYT –TV station. The news show goes well. Silas knows the man/woman team, who are both nice and savvy and the set is beautifully decorated. 

Back at the hotel I get to meet Teresa, Silas’s girls, and Mom and Dad before we leave for the book signing, and I’m crazy about all of them. Silas’s daughters look like little Scottish lassies, and Teresa is tall and magnificent with curly jet hair that frames her face. She’s outspoken, down to earth, easy to be with. She eats a big steak, while Silas and I smoke outside the restaurant. 

At Joseph-Beth Booksellers I meet Angie who’s just had a baby and looks terrific. The store is huge and located in an upscale mall. We’re going to read looking out over a pond with fountains complete with ducks paddling in clear blue water. We’re sitting on high stools and I’m quite uncomfortable and worry about keeping my skirt against my thighs. I read a new scene about Layla Jay’s birthday party because Silas’s parents are Pentecostals and I don’t want to offend by reading about the charlatan revival preacher. The Lexington crowd are the most polite readers I’ve ever met. The few who don’t buy my book apologize and tell me they’ll buy it next visit to the store. A big name Scottish author is reading upstairs accompanied by bagpipes that are horribly annoying as we try to hear what our readers are saying. But otherwise, I’m having a great time. 

Again we hook up with friends Silas has known for years and they join us for drinks. I’m intruding on their reunion so I excuse myself and have dinner in my lovely room. Two pork chops so thick I can only eat one.

Day 3
I oversleep. I’d set the alarm for p.m. instead of a.m. so I rush to get dressed to leave for Dayton. Actually, we go to Florence, Kentucky, first to ICN-6, a cable TV company. We adore Sandy, the contact person and this set is gorgeous, elegant. There are fringed pillows and I catch my bracelet on one of them and can’t get it loose. “Five, four, three,” the camera man is calling out, and just when he says, “one,” I break free from the pillow. The interviewer says we’re doing two segments, but we’re pros at ad-libbing and manage just fine. I marvel that Silas is so careful never to upstage me and thank him again and again. Not all authors would be so solicitous of their partner. 

We’ve got time to kill before the next TV show, so we go to Kohl’s. It’s bitterly cold and all I have are lightweight dresses and sandals. I buy a sweater, skirt and shoes with toes in and Silas buys two pair of shoes for his girls. We get fast food and head toward Kettering where I fall in love with Sharon Rab who emcees Writer to Writer for the Miami Valley Cable council. She’s warm and funny and smart and literally glows when she speaks. We tape thirty minutes with an audience of four lovely ladies, one who’s a renowned history teacher, still beautiful as she approaches her eighth decade. Gives me hope! Sharon asks me about the hurricane on tape and I control my emotions and speak without losing it this time. Silas is proud of me.

We have drinks with Sharon before we drive over to the Dayton store, Books & Co. 
After we order, I say I have to go to the ladies room and Silas jumps up, too. I laugh and Silas says, “I know why you’re laughing. We’re so tuned in to each other, smoking, going and coming on cue, and now we’re peeing in sync.” That was exactly what I was thinking.

 We meet another lovely Sharon at Books & Co. and I’m beginning to think all Sharons are special. Sharon has relatives in New Orleans and we hug and tear up before she introduces me to the cute assistant. The audience is fairly small, but as we read, a few more wander over. During the Q & A, the assistant comes out with a tray of chocolate sundaes and serves everyone at the reading. I couldn’t be happier and I’m licking my plastic spoon when a lovely girl comes over and tells me she’s Arin Black’s roommate. Arin’s a student at UNO and works for the TWF, and I adore her. They’d just moved into a new apartment in New Orleans and now they’ve lost everything. She sobs and then tears just stream down her face and I’m choking back mine. I ask about Arin, thinking to change the subject, but she cries more and says she’s in Virginia and they don’t know if they’ll ever go back to the city. After she leaves, I rally and sign books. There’s a huge poster of Silas and me that Sharon has colorized and it will be auctioned for a literary fund raiser. I’m so impressed with the artistic talents and cool ideas this bookseller has.

Silas has a cold and he’s getting sicker and sicker to the point that he’s having chills as we drive to Cincinnati. I offer to drive, but he soldiers on. He knows where he’s going and I’m lost as ever. We’re staying at the Cincinnatian, a gorgeous hotel. There’s a Jacuzzi in the big marble bathroom, a skylight and I have a nifty marble desk. We’re too late to eat in the fancy dining room so we get something at the bar. Another friend of Silas’s arrives and I excuse myself to go upstairs and call home. I’m homesick after talking to Butch. It’s been a very long day, and although I eye the Jacuzzi, I set my clock carefully and crawl into the huge bed. I open Mary Ward Brown’s book, Tongues of Flame, but I fall asleep before I read more than a few pages.

Day 4
It’s three o’clock and I’m supposed to meet Silas at 5:30 for our last two events of this leg of the tour. We’re going to Joseph Beth’s and Silas promises me it will be a good event. I think about Butch mostly. I can’t call him because he’s playing in a golf tournament. Instead I call Cindy to find out about getting a car to bring me home from the Baton Rouge airport. She’s on the case, of course. I both long to and dread going back. Last night when Silas’s friend asked me about Katrina, Silas jumps in with the exact words I’ve been saying over and over. “They’re blessed, have found all of their relatives now . . . .” I laugh and Silas says he just thought he’d save me one telling. I thank him for that. 

I’ve had a luxury morning. Finally got in that Jacuzzi, coffee in bed, and USA Today. Then we were off to do Cover to Cover, a radio show with Mark DeWitt. I’m impressed with him more than I can say. It’s a great interview except I hear myself make a grammatical error. Silas is worried about coughing and blowing his nose on the air, but he makes it through without a slip. We have lunch with Jen Reynolds, who’s funny and smart and I like her immensely. She tells a great story about her grandfather and doesn’t ask me about the hurricane. I’m grateful for the fun.

When we arrive at Jo-Beth’s, first thing we see is a huge red banner hanging from the ceiling with our book covers on it advertising the reading. Jen comes over and gives me an ARC of Ron Rash’s new novel, The World Made Straight, which I had said I was dying to read. Silas gets one, too. I meet a man who’s read all of my books and is so very very nice. He asks me about Right As Rain, about my writing in black voices and I explain my background, how I grew up with a Tee Wee and Icey. I love him. There’s a nice crowd and we sell a lot of books. One woman tells me she’s reviewed HFSB for Library Journal, and I thank her and then wonder if she liked it, then decide that she did or she wouldn’t want to identify herself. Before we leave we’re given goody bags, and I peek in and see that Jen has also given me Twilight which I’d admired when I saw it on the display. As we’re about to walk out, Silas and I are presented with the great banners to take home. I hadn’t realized there were two, so we can both have one.

I meet more of Silas’s friends, one with his son, who’s adorable, and I ask him to figure up my check at dinner since he claims to be a math whiz. Good thing, too. I’ve made a 40 cent error. When we get back to the hotel, I decide to have a kaluha before going to bed and Silas, his friend Paul and the son all join me. I’m weepy saying good-bye. It’s been a long week, but a good one, too. Silas is worried about my going home and I’m worried about his cold. We hug and I rush into the elevator so they won’t see me cry. 

Day 4
Going home and I drag my suitcase down early early to meet the car to take me to the airport and there’s Silas smoking outside. He helps me settle in with the driver and we say good-bye again. The driver tells me about all of his health problems and he’s upset about Delta going bankrupt. I don’t tell him Butch is retired from Delta and we have more reason to be upset than he. I fly back to Houston on a regional jet that has strange seating. Only one seat on one side of the plane. I sit with a Red Cross worker who tells me horrific stories about his trip into the city. He says a dog tied up in this woman’s yard had everything sucked out of it and there was only skin left on the rope. I gag and try to change the subject, but he’s not a reader, so he goes on with more horrific stories I can barely stand to hear.

On the last flight from Houston to Baton Rouge I’m seated by a crazy woman. She’s tried to get out while we’re flying at 30,000 feet and then she tries again before we touch down. I don’t know if she’s on drugs or just plane/plain crazy. She lives in New Orleans and she’s going home to find out what’s left in her house, so I feel sorry for her even if she did spill grape drink all over my purse. My driver meets me at baggage claim and he has his problems, too. He regales me with details about the family dynamics, their losses, his struggle to get over the death of his mother. I tip him more than I should, happy to be getting out of his car and into my own house.

Butch isn’t home yet, so I go over to the office to check email. There are 90 and I sigh and begin sorting through them. There’s one from Susan Daigle, who owned Bookends in Bay St. Louis. She’s lost everything and is asking that her authors send her signed books to restock her library. I cry, thinking of having dinner at her house on the canal and remember her energy and spark. She doesn’t know if she’ll rebuild or not. And there’s an email from Josh Clark, my friend and the publisher of Light of New Orleans Publishing, who has stayed in the French Quarter all this time, bathing in a swimming pool, cataloging what’s happening in the city from the first day Katrina blew in. He wants me to post on the lost authors’ site that he’s constructed. I type in the address, NewOrleansLiteraryInstitute.com, and see that he’s already listed me as found.

 I check my email on my web site, only 14 to read, and one of them is from Gerry Landry, whom I’ve not met. She’s writing to tell me that her book club, The Cultured Pearls, have read my first two novels, and now the eleven grandmothers, who have been reading together for nine years, are about to read their 100th book. They’ve chosen Hot Fudge Sundae Blues!!!! And they want to drive the 100 miles over to where I live and celebrate their accomplishment by taking me to lunch. I sit back and read the email again. What an honor, what joy I feel. I’m so blessed to be an author. I think about all of my blessings now, reflecting on the tour with Silas, and I think of all of the wonderful people I met, readers and booksellers and television and radio interviewers, Silas’s family and friends, so many new faces and I know I’m lucky to be where I am in the world.

When I hear Butch’s truck in the drive, I rush out to tell him how happy I am to be back in his arms, to be back home in Louisiana. I tell him that I don’t need a hot fudge sundae to cure the blues; home and husband are all I need right now.

Last weekend I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Gulf Coast Creative Writing Teachers Conference held this year in lovely Fairhope, Alabama. The conference was delightful. I enjoyed and admired many talented authors’ readings, met many warm and lovely new friends, and generally left the conference in that euphoric state that being with other writers evokes.
Before leaving home I learned that my audience would be published authors, grad students, and Ph.D candidates, and I worried about writing a suitable speech that would interest the varied ages and levels of experience. I finally came up with a speech that everyone seemed to like, and so I decided to share it with those of you who read this journal. Here it is:

Fairhope, Alabama
April 2008

 Many years ago when I imagined becoming an author, I envisioned myself in my editor’s office reclining on a brown leather couch sipping a dry martini. My head was wreathed in spirals of smoke drifting from my long ivory cigarette holder. Across the room my editor sat at his huge teakwood desk reading my brilliant manuscript. He was a man of some mature years wearing a tweed jacket. An elegant pipe rested in the crystal ash tray on his desk, and after he read the last page of my work, he offered sincere, effusive praise and suggested that we celebrate my dazzling novel by sharing a late night dinner in an expensive restaurant.
Now fast forward to 2002, the year I published my first novel. I discovered that my fantasy was just that. Fantasy. I may as well have imagined that I was sitting in a rowboat in the Atlantic with a fisherman named Ahab. I have shoes older than my editor. There’s no couch in her small New York office. She doesn’t drink martinis; she drinks Crystal Light. She wears floral prints, grabs lunch at McDonald’s and she’d definitely never ever carry a pack of Winstons in her backpack. 
Many changes in this profession of writing have been effected in the last ten years or so. And the publishing industry and the role of authors continues to transform as rapidly as the stock market quotes do from day to day.
 Today an author is expected to wear many hats and acquire skills that have little or nothing to do with art. So what does an author need to succeed in 2008?
Well, here are a few of my observations. First, in the 2008 publishing world an author needs to be savvy about technology. Nearly every author I know has a web site or at the very least a blog, my space, or live journal. They are expected to have podcasts and trailers for their books and be able to surf the web to instantly find a review or chat room that relates to their work.
Today an author needs to be a salesperson. She is required to assist her publicist in marketing her work via mail-outs, newsletters, imaginative gimmicks and come on’s as if she were a traveling salesperson hawking snake medicine.
Another device an author needs is a “look” for book jackets, for television appearances, and book-related events. Many authors spend hundreds of dollars on professional photos, make-up artists, and hair dressers in an effort to make themselves as well as their books more saleable. Authors have become products.
An author needs energy. Book tours today are physically challenging. Authors may be expected to do as many as 20 events in a single week. I should know I once did 14 in 5 days.
An author needs to acquire mathematical skills in order to understand her royalty statement, which oftentimes involves something agents have dubbed as creative accounting.
And finally she needs legal assistance because she’ll never understand her contract.
An author does indeed need to acquire a great many skills in order to become successful, but what is far more important I believe is what traits an author needs to write a good book, play, or poem because, for while publishing has become about the bottom line, writing is first and foremost about the heart.
Some weeks ago during an interview I was asked what traits a writer needs to write a successful work. I was a bit taken aback as I had never considered this question, and in thinking about it, I wondered if there are universal traits we writers all share. I came to believe that there are commonalities among us. So now I’d like to share some of my thoughts about these qualities with you. 
The first trait I believe a writer must have is curiosity. A writer must ask Why, what, when, how? If he is not curious about his fellow man, I doubt he is going to write anything of substance. I write to learn about the world, its people, and I write to learn about myself. The writer is forever student, never teacher. We seek answers, we pose questions, and we seek truth.

The second trait I believe a good writer needs is empathy. This applies especially to literary fiction. If a writer is incapable of empathizing with her characters, she’s not going to be able to tell their stories honestly. She may have the most original amazing plot on the planet, but if she doesn’t have empathy for her characters her readers won’t care about them. We must love our characters and they must become a part of us. I am my characters. They are all a part of me. They are both the best and the worst of me. In every moment that I’m writing I must own the emotion, the acts, the words that come to me. Some of my characters possess traits of mine that I abhor, that I want to smother deeply inside me, hiding them from the people I want to love me. Some of my characters exhibit qualities I am sometimes capable of like kindness and unselfishness, and even nobility on some fine days. I’m often asked about the African American characters I write about. How can these characters be me? I answer how can they not? They are as much a part of me as my aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents. If I were raised in a Jewish, a Muslim, a Hispanic, or Asian community, I’m certain I would write about them. They would comprise a part of me and my work. 
What else do writers need? Writers need perseverance. I learned about perseverance early in life through observing my mother’s example. When my mother was thirty-five years old, she was told she would live only five years. She died not at forty, but at 65 through sheer determination to live to see her grandchildren. Born in an era and a community where there were few opportunities for women, she taught herself bookkeeping and became such an expert CPA’s consulted her for help. She traveled to Hawaii, to Tahiti, to every party she was invited to. She taught me to ignore naysayers, to persist when everyone else has given up, to dream large and then to make that dream come true. It took me eight years to publish Right As Rain, and that meant six revisions from beginning to end. How did I manage to keep working on it in the face of rejections and missteps? Well, I believe rejection is only an opportunity to try again. Hope cures disappointment. And after all, we writers aren’t brain surgeons. If they make a mistake, someone could die. If we make one, we only hurt our pride if we allow it. I believed in my novel and I believed in myself, in my ability to eventually get it right. Writers need faith in themselves.
Writers need to make creative work a priority in their lives. This sounds simple, but actually this is one of the hardest goals one can set for one’s self. It’s easy to say yes to other people to other things. It’s far more difficult to say no. But if we accept all invitations, if we allow others to lead us rather than leading ourselves, we will never find time to write. Our writing time must be scared. We must give up hours, days, and holiday weekends to nourish our talent. We cannot wait for inspiration to write. Talking about it, dreaming about it, researching, planning, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
We writers must write though the roadblocks others set up in our paths. I’m talking about critics and those who would sit on our shoulders and monitor and or direct our work. As far as critics go, I always return to two of the famous and most often cited quotes about critics. Kurt Vonnegut’s “A reviewer is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.” And John Osbourne’s “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.” 
Besides critics, however, and much more problematic are our friends, family, and other writers, those people we want to please the most. The person who sat most heavily on my shoulder when I was writing was my father. I imagined him reading my book and he’s reading along and then my character says something profane or maybe the F word, anything that would make me uncomfortable. But what was I to do if that’s what my character would say? I solved the problem fairly easily. Well, actually I didn’t solve it, my dad did. Early on in my writing life, I wrote a story for my Masters thesis in which I used the word masturbate and my dad got a copy of this story. After he read it, he praised it, saying he liked it so much he gave it to Miss Wilda. Now Miss Wilda is in her 80ies and is the cookie lady at Pisgah Methodist Church. “Dad,” I said. Did you read the story? I just told you I did, he said. But don’t you think it might be inappropriate for Miss Wilda to read? What’re you talking about? he asked. Then he said oh, I know what you mean. Don’t worry about it. I explained that to her. Explained what I thought. Explained how you do it? What’d you tell her I asked him. I told her that if you’re a really good writer you can write about things you know nothing about. So folks, don’t worry. The people who support you and your work are going to find a way to accept whatever you write. And if they don’t, well, just like those editors who rejected you, you don’t want them as readers anyway. 
Finally, the last trait I believe we writers must have is courage. We must face our fears. Sometimes in listening to the voices of our characters what they tell us frightens us and we lose our nerve. Those voices are the ones that matter the most, and yet many writers are terrified of going so deeply inside themselves to feel the emotions those voices demand. Those characters might be in pain, they might be suffering from the same maladies that the writer suffers from. Their disappointments, failures, losses are synonymous with ours. And if we allow ourselves to feel the anguish they evoke, open those wounds of the spirit and reach inside ourselves to caress the muscles of our very human hearts, we might not be able to withstand it. And that’s a valid fear. I can’t tell you that at the end of the day, we’ll bounce back and be the same persons we were before giving ourselves completely to our art. You may find it difficult to reenter the ordinary life you were living. Robert Olen Butler believes that this why so many of our greatest writers turned to alcohol to escape the pain. But I believe it’s worth the risk. For if we do not write honestly, if we do not have the courage to explore the important questions, to feel both pain and joy with the intensity we are capable of, then I say we should find another profession that’s safe and comfortable. We must write through our fears, we must feel the voice before we record it, and if we can do that, then we know we’ve done something valuable, not just for ourselves, but for our readers as well.
    I experience this fear whenever I write. I know what it feels like to murder someone, to face execution, to be raped, to lose a child, to bury a son. But I also know the joys of friendships, the ecstasy of love, of what it feels like when your dreams come true. I’ve lived numerous lives, and all of them are mine and they belong to my readers as well. My truth may not be your truth, but my task as a writer is not to tell you what to think or how to feel. My goal rather is simply to provide an honest story for you to read. When a person buys a book, it no longer belongs to the author, but to the reader, and when that person reads it he or she brings to it their own truth, their life experiences, and to me that is the wonder of the writers’ art.One of the ways we bring light to each other is through the sharing of our stories. Through them, through those stories we tell we all become connected in some way. Books are a bridge between the banks of our differences and when we walk through the pages we are given the opportunity to understand each other, to better understand ourselves. Writers and readers alike, we are all the characters. As sentient beings we possess the glorious capacity to feel joy and pain, to walk across the bridges of our world and explore and abide in another’s universe. 

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