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35ff537
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Humans need each other for equilibrium and support. But writers must pull aside to take a quiet walk alone, not just for the sake of serenity but to hear the Voice inside. That is how the storyteller connects with with others--listen, write, share.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
southern-writers
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Patricia Hickman |
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c10477b
|
Because of sorrow, my awareness of life's pulse is strongly detectable. It is syncopation while I journey, a lap of ocean in the eyes of every person I meet. This awareness informs the flesh of my stories. Grief has been an odd companion, at first a terror, but now I am all the better having accepted it for its intrinsic worth.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
southern-writers
|
Patricia Hickman |
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1123d66
|
I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting.
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nature
south-carolina
southern-fiction
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Pat Conroy |
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613e5a5
|
Wild steep mountains floating in a haze of cloud...a sea of green trees swallowing the hills and valleys, and curling around the trails and rivers, with the wind in the leaves as its tide.
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ballad-novels
southern-fiction
|
Sharyn McCrumb |
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98f1810
|
The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them.
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southern-literature
writers
southern-fiction
southern-writers
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Flannery O'Connor |
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64621b1
|
Hiding had been effortless in New York City. Getting lost in a sea of people was as easy as stepping onto a crowded Subway car. Sweet Laurel Cove would be very different. Generations of families filled its church pews, ran its farms, and schooled its children. Anonymity was as rare as lightning bugs in wintertime--as her grandmother would say.
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romance
inspirational-romance
christian-fiction
southern-romance
contemporary-romance
southern-fiction
|
Teresa Tysinger |
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b6041a2
|
Facing the sagging middle when writing a novel, while inevitable, may be overcome by pre-planning. I divide my collection of proposed scenes into three acts, each scene inciting tension that builds toward the final crisis in Act Three. If by Act Two the emotional river isn't spilling over the banks, I reassess the plot so that once the writing is flowing I don't slide into a dry creek. The central character should be struggling to navigate life well into the end of Act One, even if her fiercest antagonist is only from within.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
southern-writers
|
Patricia Hickman |
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77ba0e0
|
While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
southern-writers
|
Patricia Hickman |
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c9377c7
|
Seasons didn't come behind the nicotine-stained walls of Mountain City's prison, so Harm always imagined it spring--the locust trees clustered with shaggy white blooms, the wet woods flecked with bloodroot, and wild roses and honeysuckle flashing white among the chestnuts on the mountainsides...
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|
ballad-novel
southern-fiction
|
Sharyn McCrumb |
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fa2091d
|
The confessional writer will treat her story like a wailing wall. She kneels, and her story spills out, messy, improper. It isn't a protest or even graffiti, but her story is an offering of things that she overlooked or notices that others have overlooked. She is in danger of exposure but she remembers when she lived in hiding and that was worse. She cannot turn back now because this is how life has spun out of her, part vexing passage and part prayer.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
|
Patricia Hickman |
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9363b6f
|
The conflict each day is whether to immerse in books or writing. I can't do one without the other, but I can't do both at the same time. It is the writer's paradox.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
|
Patricia Hickman |
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60dc8e1
|
The central character is an incomplete package of yearning that takes the length of the novel to complete. Completion, though, is not to be confused with perfection.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
southern-writers
|
Patricia Hickman |
|
030bd91
|
I started out hoping to remind people at some point in the novel that we should be loving and kind. But then the theme usurped my life, spilling over into my novels until love was no longer a small voice, but now my purpose as a writer.
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outer-banks
southern-fiction
southern-writers
|
Patricia Hickman |