What's it like to get up everyday and write?
Well, the first thing I do is fall in the shower, then I go to the Breakfast Club where I wake up. Then I go home and write. Sometimes I run after the Breakfast Club before writing. I just have coffee at the Club with my friends.
Your topics are all over the place. How do you decide what to write about?
I have no idea. Sometimes ideas come to me in the middle of the night and I have some notion of where I'm going. Like earlier this week I woke up in the middle of the night remembering a line that I wrote two years ago ... "Sometimes you give yourself away and sometimes they give you back to you" ... and I got to thinking about how the meaning of those words have changed for me. It was a curse when I first wrote them, but its all blessings now.
Other times there are just stories that I remember. Some are current like when I failed to go to Bar Church on Sunday and was introduced to preach. Others are from the past either at Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel or Union Mission. There are lots of stories and its fun to remember them and share them.
Then a lot of times its praying. I put my fingers on the keyboard, close my eyes and see what happens. I like these a lot because they are always so surprising. I never know where the creative process takes.
Sometimes I just bitch. I think its better to let it out than keep it in. My son Jeremy once described it as "you write it out of yourself and then it's gone." I'm not sure its ever gone but its processed.
Occasionally I write with others. Dedra feeds me titles. Dave and Sandy once challenged to to write using a certain mix of words. Mitch and I have a few together and we mostly laugh. Once Mark joined us too on the beloved back deck and we all wrote one together. That was a lot of fun!
So why do you do this every single day?
It's praying I guess ... at least my perverted way of praying. I take half an hour to remind myself of the things I love ... the things I have loved ... the good and bad that's happened in my life, the lessons learned, the celebrations that I've had or should have had but didn't ... so I try to go back and reclaim them.
It's interesting. When I first started it was all work related to help Union Mission. Then I was "suddenly single" and after years of having a Midas touch at work things went to hell. It was a lot to cope with at the same time so I started writing about what I was going through ... again it's better to let it out than keep it in. So there was a lot of pain that I let out. Then the funniest thing happened. All of these people started responded saying, "I know know feelings. They're my feelings too. Or your stories brought me laughter today. Thanks."
After a while the Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous (Jerry Rainey) got all over me about it after driving out to meet me at the Breakfast Club. He told me I was being unprofessional and inappropriate. My friends at the Breakfast Club threw toast and bacon at him. I knew I was on to something then.
Now it is part of this broader conversation with people around the world really. People post of Face Book, write messages, call and even write old fashion letters so it's kind of like being part of this community ... church if you will ... and we all chastise each other or cheer one another on.
So some people get offended by these things. Does that bother you?
I was in the press a lot throughout my career so I developed this attitude that I always said what I wanted and it was in the paper or on the news. So when others wanted to agree or disagree then it was their right. It was always interesting. I made a lot of friends and a lot of enemies through this so you develop a thicker skin.
Plus I was attacked a lot, especially at Union Mission when we did the AIDS work, and especially the mental health stuff (we tried to reform a program where nobody is in charge), so I'm used to being talked about.
Sure if I had my druthers I'd want everybody to love everything that I do. That's not reality though. I am impressed that people will tell me what they think and we continue to develop friendships. At the same time I certainly know that I've run some people off.
What's next?
That's the question right? There's over a thousand pages of this writing and a lot of people have asked for books. So Dedra is helping me to catalog them into subjects. We think there's three books there. One on "Life on Tybee" ... another on "Working through Loss" and a third that's more spiritual in nature, though there's a lot of overlap with the working through loss stuff. At some point we'll get books out.
At the same time my life's a lot busier than it has been since leaving Union Mission. I've traveled everywhere and I hope that continues though Goddess isn't happy about it. And my close friends here ... we're frustrated that we don't get to spend the time together than we used to. But ... there is work to be done and it contributes to the things that I write so its a circle really.
Seriously? You see books coming out of all of this crap?
Sure! Why not? It could be a reality television show or a major motion picture!
Uh-huh. I suppose you need to go work on that now.
Thanks. I do.
