Writing for the Senate

My parents let me play hooky for two reasons: to write or to go to the racetrack.

One of those pastimes makes you a bit more employable than the other although it’s a toss-up as to which one will make you more money.

I’ve written over the years for school, for promotion and for hire. I’m happiest when I’m just writing for the fun of it.

I participated in a career development seminar in medical school. The verdict after six weeks was that I should be a writer. Oh well, I thought, I will write in patients’ charts.

There are two places that I currently write--the Chapel Hill Public Library and my home office.

I have to write near a window with birds in plain sight. I have a wall of framed Audubon prints in my office. My novel manuscript is about looking for a songbird, the rufous-sided towhee. Course I don’t have to look for them today; there’s almost always one singing somewhere around the house or the library. People sometimes look for what they already have, anyway.

Many of my writer friends keep a talisman near them while they write. My friend Garrison Somers kept a plane on his desk while he wrote his novel manuscript about a WWII pilot.

I have an office angel with butterfly wings; a friend sent it one holiday. A James Michener quote adorns the skirt: “I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotion.”

Turns out Michener is buried in Austin, Texas, my home away from home, and there is a Michener Center for Writers at UT.

When it comes to writing, I remember the advice of one voice. Surprisingly, it was not an English professor. It was the typing teacher at Sacred Heart Academy. She wore a beehive and way too much Tabu. Her name was Mrs. Pike, and she taught us how to type on our Pica typewriters. This is what she said in a deep southern accent about pounding the keyboard: “Girl if you don’t get it right, you’ve got to do it again.”

Now that plays right into my Catholic, repressed psychodrama. No wonder I worked on the novel manuscript for seven years.

I was fortunate to have many teachers and professors who gave me directive advice about writing on the days that I wasn’t at the track or in my basement typing poetry. They are the ones that I want to thank today in celebration of the National Day on Writing.