Part 46 (2/2)

myself. (I didn't get my full fifteen minutes because an old friend of Elaine's dropped by to say h.e.l.lo and my meeting was cut short . . . by two minutes.) A week later, Elaine called me in Oklahoma to say she had read the screenplay I'd given her and wanted to see the short fiction I'd mentioned, the stories my husband called ”Tales from Wal-Mart.” I sent her two, and at the back of the one I'd t.i.tled ”Where the Heart Is” I'd slipped in a note saying that the story wouldn't let me go. I was even dreaming about it. I'd left Novalee Nation, a pregnant, broke, and abandoned seventeen-year-old girl, locked in a Wal-Mart late at night and I couldn't stop thinking about how she was going to survive.

Elaine called as soon as she'd read it, suggesting that it might be the beginning of a novel. It was.

Two years later, Jamie Raab at Warner Books read the completed ma.n.u.script and bought it. It was published in 1995.

The first time I walked into a bookstore and saw my book my book with with my my name name on the cover, I was finally ready to deliver the line I'd been saying in my head since I was a kid: ”Now, at last, I'm a on the cover, I was finally ready to deliver the line I'd been saying in my head since I was a kid: ”Now, at last, I'm a real real writer.” writer.”

But I didn't say it because I suddenly knew that I'd been a real writer for almost fifty years.

I thought back to all of the people in my life . . . Teenaged parents.

Loving grandmothers. Cousins, one like a sister to me, who plugged the cavities in her teeth with gum because there was no money to pay a dentist. A mother-in-law who prepared meals for my family when an imaginary chicken was thawing in my kitchen. An amazing group of friends over the years who sustained us, helped us to raise our children, and loved us.

Then there were the writers. I didn't copy them as much as consider in amazement how they could strengthen the human heart. William 376 Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. Eudora Welty and Toni Morrison.

John Steinbeck and Sandra Cisneros. Randall Jarrell and Lucille Clifton. Maya Angelou.

Now, when people ask me how to write a book, the answer is easy.

I don't know. I only know how I I have written two books. I had stories to tell and I began typing. have written two books. I had stories to tell and I began typing.Doc.u.ment Outline

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