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A Creative Writing Life Pursued Despite Other Plans
And how a random event put me back on the road to the writing life I love
A friend recently mentioned how much she enjoys reading the work of author Louise Erdrich, and my mind returned immediately to a small bookstore in Nashville that no longer exists. In the early ’90s, Nashville was home for my husband and me and our newborn son. I’d taken a Saturday to wander through Centennial Park and the shops nearby, including the bookstore, which also sold music CDs and records. A poster promoting the band Wilson Phillips was hung outside the store on its sun-warmed corner facing east.
Inside, I meandered through shelves of poetry and fiction, not looking for anything in particular. When I came across a copy of Louise Erdrich’s novel The Beet Queen, though, the green cover with an image of a young girl in a yellow dress in a field, her hair wind blown as she looked up at a plane, stopped me short. And when I began reading Erdrich’s opening lines, I suddenly realized how much I missed creative writing, something I’d completely set aside for years.
A writer is born
One of my early memories of my 1970s childhood involves me showing a “book” I’d made to my best friend in her screened-in garage. By the time I was twelve, I subscribed…
