So instead I told her that I couldn’t write. Suet howled with laughter. “You think everybody that takes that class can write? Don’t be stupid. Take the class. You’ll have fun.”
She was right. Of all the classes I took at Agnes Scott, I worked harder in that one, and enjoyed it more, than anything else I ever did, except perhaps afternoons drinking beer with Leland Staven, my art professor, and Carolyn Connelly.Bo Ball, I discovered, did not eat freshmen for breakfast. Rather, he was a gentle yet no-nonsense mentor who only asked that you gave your stories all you had to give. Later, when I found myself in such dire financial straits that I could not afford the only book for another creative writing class, he gave me his copy. He is an enormously talented writer. Appalachian Patterns, a collection of beautiful short stories, is one of my most cherished books. I make no claim to being even a fraction of the writer that Bo is. But if someone like Bo could read my stories and not tell me I was wasting my time — well, I thought, maybe I can write in some form or fashion.
My first short story was titled “The Brick Story,” and appeared in ASC’s literary magazine. The thrill of having my words in print, even on a limited scale, was intoxicating. That is when I learned that writing alone is not the point; completing the circuit between the writer, the work and the reader is. “The Brick Story” is not a great story, probably not even a very good story. Yet in writing it, I had said something that mattered to me. Even more miraculously, other people read it and not only told me they liked it, but that it moved them. Somehow, I had worked a small miracle of magic.
After graduation from Agnes Scott in 1985, I had no clue what I really wanted to do with my life. Writing as anything but a "hobby" never occurred to me. I took comfort from Jane Pepperdene’s (chairman of ASC’s English department) advice not to sweat it until I hit thirty, that I would figure it out eventually if I just kept my options open.
The first novel took almost five years - an embarrassingly autobiographical story about four girls at a small women’s college. (Pretty original, huh?) Mainly, I wrote it out of sheer homesickness for Agnes Scott. That novel earned my first, second and third rejection letters before I realized that perhaps every writer has to get that one hideously bad novel out of their systems before they can go forward.
It wasn’t until I asked myself the simplest of questions that the answer appeared, as unmistakable as a cartoon light bulb over my head. What could I be happy doing for the rest of my life? Forget what you think you should do, I told myself. Forget what you think is possible, what you think you could make a living at, what other people think you should do. Forget even what you think you have a talent for. What do you want to do?
