I had the same experience twice this week. I’m chatting with a friend or an acquaintance at a social gathering, community event, or business function when the person leans close, assumes a sheepish grin, and in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear, confesses, “I’m writing a book.”

Such confessions make my heart sing. Don’t whisper, I think. Give yourself a pat on the back. Treat yourself to champagne. I wish you every success. And don’t give up.

Lately, with the future of “book” (as we understand the word) in question, the attempt to write one strikes me as heroic. Will the very concept of “book” become outmoded?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “book” comes from the Proto-Germanic bokiz or “beech,” a reference either to the beechwood tablets on which runes were inscribed or to the tree itself. As the publishing industry pushes us toward the virtual, will the roots of the word in the physical world seem inappropriate? Does an e-version deserve to carry a name based on the organic materials from which a book is made?

The picture that accompanies this post features a shelf in my home library. It just happens to be the shelf where my own as yet unpublished book will live (in alphabetical order by author’s last name, should it be destined to take print form), living out eternity somewhere between the books of John Irving and Kazuo Ishiguro. Given the current state of publishing, I sometimes despair of ever seeing my book assume this place.

So to all of you closet writers out there, keep telling me your secret whenever you can.  And keep writing your books.

And let’s agree that when we envision “book,” we’ll see our words pressed into paper that has tint and heft. We’ll imagine our pages as leaves that ruffle in a breeze. When we say the word “book,” we’ll think about where it will sit on a shelf or how it will rest on a table.

We’ll remember that “book” refers to something three-dimensional. In that form, books occupy physical space and cannot fail to demand our attention.

It’s a hot Friday afternoon in summer, after five o’clock, and already cars and people have moved away from downtown Lexington. I’m walking uphill toward the Carnegie Center with one of the many writers I’ve worked with during my time at the center.

We blink as our eyeballs adjust to the light, bright after the hour we’ve spent in the StoryCorps recording booth, an Airstream trailer parked next to the old courthouse.

This interview, as much as any other event of the past months, seems a clear dividing moment, marking my Carnegie Center life from the new one I’m going to live, the one I don’t yet know much about.

I have a long history with this particular writer, a Vietnam veteran who first walked into the Carnegie Center in 1993. He wrote his manuscripts on legal pads and never used punctuation; I was a former copyediting instructor who had recently learned how to lay out books using desktop-publishing software. I read literary novels; he preferred westerns. He had done time in reform schools and finished fifth grade; I had a wide-eyed optimism for life, a belief in the opportunities provided by education.

We are twelve days apart in age.

Over the years he’s learned to use a computer, tried voice-activated software, started more books, devised a plan to employ the unemployable, written dozens of letters to celebrities and politicians, found a home.

I’ve learned to set aside the assumptions I make about people I pass on the street and to be delighted by the surprises in what they have to teach.

We celebrate all these moments in the StoryCorps trailer. In the panel-lined quiet, seated across from one another at a café table, speaking softly into the microphone, we start with our prepared questions, but soon find ourselves moving from interview to conversation, agreeing on the power of the written word to bring human beings together, to show us how similar we are, even in the midst of our differences.

Sealed away in the dim quiet, with late afternoon traffic moving past us just a few feet away, we affirm the value of sharing stories.

For twenty-three years I answered this question the same way: I worked with the Bluegrass Writing Project Summer Institute for public school teachers. I spent four weeks, all day, every day, with twenty other teachers.  I coached teaching demonstrations. I prepared teaching demonstrations. I argued pedagogy. I read books and scholarly articles. I gave feedback on ideas for research projects.

Over doughnuts and coffee, at break time, during lunch periods, I talked about the art of teaching writing.  Beginning with the first thirty minutes of each day, I wrote every chance I had. I kept a writer’s notebook. I met with a writing group. I revised my work. I practiced reading it aloud. On Friday afternoons I sat in a circle and listened to everyone read pieces aloud. I laughed, I groaned, I passed the Kleenex box. I created a portfolio of my own writing. I selected my best piece for the annual anthology.

When the month was over, I felt both drained and replenished. And I could not wait to see the teachers at our first Saturday renewal meeting that fall.

Just as I experienced the same rhythm for twenty-three summers, so did teachers all over the country who participated in a writing project at their own local universities. I knew that all over the country public school teachers were living at the same high level. I knew we were experiencing the most powerful professional development model available to teachers. I knew we were becoming writers.

I knew the ripples from our summer gatherings were spreading deep and wide as each of us shared what we had learned with colleagues. I knew we made an impact on the teaching of writing in our classroom, our districts, our states. I knew our students were changed as they discovered their writing voices as modeled by that rarest of creatures: the teacher who writes.

This summer I’ll be writing and reading because the habit is firmly established. However, I’ll miss the opportunity to flesh out my ideas through debate with other eager professionals. My growth will be slowed without the opportunity to behave as both believer and doubter, to practice the habits of mind that make a thoughtful teacher.

And I’ll be writing letters to my elected representatives, asking them to reconsider this grave error they have made.

If you are interested in reading other blog posts supporting the National Writing Project, click on http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/the-blog4nwp-archive/.

The barkeep exemplifies the motto in action. He blends pina coladas and gets them to the table in seconds. His rush is a controlled one, an economy of movement appropriate for a tight space. His eyes, however, stay fastened on the Caribbean and the distant cloud-covered vista of Nevis.

“Rush slowly” tantalizes like any other oxymoron, with its easy wit and mild tension. What might it mean? Is it good advice to take home, to pack in my suitcase next to the sack of nutmeg, the batiks, and the new recipes for Caribbean stir-fry?  Or is it a vacation platitude that resonates most strongly read on the back of a t-shirt through a beery gaze?

What does it mean to rush slowly? There’s the possibility of rushing to accomplish, to load a life with people, places, sensory observations, books, art, movies and other artifacts of culture, to engage in thoughtful conversations, to do meaningful work. To pack it in, to open it up, to be busy not for the sake of busy-ness, but for the sake of a full life.

Then there is the reminder to do it slowly, not with a hesitant or lazy step, but with a thoughtful one, with a mind that savors and reflects, considers and adjusts, takes in new information, processes and assimilates, seeks not just experience but also improvement and change.

From my terrace overlooking Turtle Beach, I hear one man call to another, “No problem.” I knew this island motto already and saw great wisdom in it. But as a general directive for living, there’s probably more to be gained with “rush slowly.”

The blogosphere can feel like a vast and impersonal pond, filled with lily pads that often disappoint.

That’s why I’ve elected to share some blog shout-outs with you. The blogs mentioned in this post were generated right here in Kentucky by writers well within the 100-mile radius that marks the boundary of local. These pads are worth checking out!

Our old friend Crystal Wilkinson is blogging at http://crystal-wilkinson.blogspot.com/ Titled “Writing with Your Spine,” Crystal’s posts concern writing, reading and publishing. Her posts are full of Crystal’s own brand of spunky wit, and she has even thrown in a writing exercise or two. It’s almost as good as spending a couple of hours with her at a writing workshop.

The organization Kentucky Young Writers Connection is posting weekly pieces by Kentucky writers at http://www.youngwritersconnection.org/ Click on “KYWC Blog.” Thirty Kentucky writers have agreed to talk about their early experiences with writing, and so far about ten of the posts are available on-line. This is a great resource to use with students as the posts are vetted so they are appropriate for middle- and high-school students.

Two women who do the splendid work of bringing us the annual Kentucky Women Writers Conference—Julie Wrinn and Vaughan Fielder—each have new blogs. Find Julie at http://jkwrinn.blogspot.com/ where her latest post is titled “In the Bosom of a Book Group.” Find Vaughan at http://kwwcnotes.blogspot.com/ where her post talks about the organization “Girls Write Now!” Julie and Vaughan pledge that literary advocacy and feminism, the dual mission of the conference, will be their guiding themes.

And don’t forget to click on those two links hanging out on the sidebar: Sherry Chandler’s Blog and Mildly Mystical. These two are always worth a hop!

Now that child stands taller than I do, those early days sometimes seem like a place from long ago, a home I left behind.  But one friend kept every missive I sent her about my new baby, and recently gifted me back a box full of my letters to her.

I sift through those physical artifacts, and their tactile presence places me back in those early moments as a new mother, when to keep back the tide threatening to overwhelm I scrawled a line or two and stuffed it in an envelope.  The need to post the letter gave me a reason to get out of the house, to pack up the baby I was still learning, so I could send out my latest struggles, and even my celebrations—send them to someone far outside the daily cycle of tending, feeding, caring.

When is the last time you wrote or received a letter—a physical memento of emotions, desires, connections?

This year the National Day on Writing takes place on Wednesday, October 20.  The day is a national celebration of writing sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and officially recognized through a congressional resolution.  Locally, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning is sponsoring “Letters From Home: A Glimpse of the Bluegrass Through Handwritten Words,”  an event designed to encourage the public to write and send longhand letters to friends, family, and U.S. soldiers.

So tomorrow, I’ll be writing new letters from my home in the Bluegrass, at Good Foods Cafe from 11 to 1.  The Cafe is one of 14 locations around Lexington where you can celebrate National Day on Writing by composing a handwritten letter with other writers.  (You can find the full list by clicking the link to the Carnegie Center’s web site, above.)  The day’s events will culminate at the Carnegie Center for a community reading and celebration at 5:30 PM.  Participation in National Day on Writing activities is free and open to everyone.

Come write with other writers.  Make a new artifact or two.  Post your letter and send out your words, from the home you’re in at the moment, into the world.

Your problem, as you often confess to your writing friends, is that your life seems to be full of starts but skimpy on finishes. And truth be told, once that breathtaking opening scene is written, you don’t have any idea where you’re going next.

I just finished a novel. While I didn’t finish it in a month, I did reach the end of a draft in just under three years. Considering this is the first novel I’ve finished, I’ve set a world’s record for me. Now I want to figure out what I’ve learned, with the hope of next time beating my personal best.

Narrative arc. If that phrase makes you nervous, take heart. It was important for me to realize that narrative arc was something I could pay attention to after I had a narrative. Instead of predetermining plot, I relied on those aforementioned great characters to lead the way. I put them in contact with one another and watched the scenes unfold one by one, or “bird by bird” if you will.

Write by hand. It sounds practically pathological to suggest greeting something as intense as NaNoWriMo armed with nothing more than your writer’s notebook and favorite pen. However, I found this process useful. I needed to slow my brain so I could envision the scene, hear characters speak, and set it down on paper. Writing by hand let me overhear the undertones of conversations and envision actions. The eventual typing of scenes got tedious at times, but never so tedious that I switched to composing on the computer. The slow paying of attention yielded too large a payoff.

Attend writing classes, writing group meetings, and writing workshops. All  offered ideas that kept me going. The trick is to manipulate any assignment you receive so it meets your needs. For example, if the workshop leader brings a plastic bag filled with paint chips with exotic names (Fire on the Mountain?), imagine the conversation your character might have about that chip and where and how such a scene might fit into your narrative. Does it reveal character? Advance the action? Provide a much-needed concrete detail? Once you’ve got a project going, make writing workshops work for you. I can’t imagine any workshop leader not applauding such a practical and necessary ownership. Check out the opportunities at the Carnegie Center. Writing Practice is a flexible way to push ahead.

Recently one of my students, a retired police officer who is finishing his own book, reminded me of this E.L. Doctorow quotation: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

And pulling into your final destination is every bit as sweet.

Homegrown Authors! KaBooM at the Lexington Farmer's Market: photo by Susan C. Brown

This past Saturday members of KaBooM were at Lexington’s Downtown Farmer’s Market at a booth cosponsored by the Morris Book Shop and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning called “Homegrown Authors.” The event turned out to be one of the most successful sales days ever for our group; you might want to check out the Morris Book Shop site for details on more selected Saturdays this summer when you can meet area authors and buy signed copies of their books.

But as Jan said in her immediate previous post, these days are not only about selling the book. Continuing her theme, I’d like to reflect on what I learned from our time at the book table on Saturday: many of the folks we met at the Farmer’s Market are hungry not only for fresh, locally grown produce.

They are hungry for good writing.

We set up the sewing frame to let people know that the object we were selling was hand-sewn, and a number stopped to have conversations about book binding and the beauty of hand crafts.

Sewing Frame entices passersby to see hand sewn signatures: photo by Susan C. Brown

But an even larger number of passersby were fascinated by the content of When the Bough Breaks.  One person who read through the table of contents was completely stopped by the title of Lynn’s short story.   “Heartichoke!” she called out: “Oh, isn’t that just perfect, that’s exactly what it’s like!”  She bought three copies.

A retired English teacher stopped to tell us of his frustration that high school students are not guaranteed opportunities to do their own writing in English classes.  We showed him the structure of our book: the brief essays after each entry that reflect on the creative process and the role the group plays in our continually developing craft; followed by individual writing prompts—“Try this”—to encourage written responses.  At that, he was sold, too.

And a number of folks were simply pleased as punch that this joint venture meant they could buy literature with their produce: “that’s fantastic,” they said.

We couldn’t agree more.

I thought about this conversation Saturday as fellow KaBooM members and I sat in the middle of Main Street in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 90-degree sunshine. Our umbrella tent provided some shade but was unable to keep us from noticing how heat shimmered above the asphalt or how good it felt to pour cold water over our heads and let it trickle down our necks.

Harrodsburg’s first Festival of Books and Arts coincided with an unseasonably warm June day in Kentucky, which meant that the crowds of book buyers were thinner than might have been expected, and, as a result, sales were lower. Had the newly-published novelist been present, he might have been disappointed by the results of his day and the undiminished stack of books in his trunk.

I concluded that you have to attend book fairs and local festivals for a multitude of reasons, not all of which include selling lots of books and making lots of money. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.

Those other reasons might include the following:

• Meeting other Kentucky authors. We were happy to chat with the famous and the soon-to-be-famous authors and publishing house representatives who happened by.
• Noting how other writers go about making a sale. Those authors who sell books are accessible and inviting when browsers happen along. They make eye contact. They chat. They answer questions.
• Checking booth arrangements for clues to success. Another writer also sold bracelets; Accents Publishing gave away pocket-size notepads. A basket of candy can help attract potential customers; if you are afraid the candy will melt, a vase of flowers is eye-catching.
• Figuring out what equipment to invest in: Umbrella tent? Portable chair? Cash box/credit card swiper? Tablecloth? Display signs? Cart on wheels? Long-suffering friend, spouse, or partner who will help you with all this stuff?

And most importantly, recognize that you won’t sell out every single Saturday. Marketing your book is a time-consuming and time-spanning endeavor. You may have to convince yourself that the best reason to attend was to get your name and the name of your book before the public eye one more time.

This Saturday, May 22, I’ve been invited to speak at a conference called “Meeting the Challenges and Opportunities of Aging,” sponsored by our local government. As I recall, the last time I spoke at this event, the title included only the word “challenges” and neglected to mention “opportunities.” Perhaps the event organizers know that I have since entered a new decade and hoped to soften the blow.

My topic will be “Leaving a Paper Trail,” and I plan to encourage attendees to set their life stories down on paper. I know what it’s like when a loved one leaves no written record, because when my mother passed away in 2004, she left no paper trail: few letters, no journals or diaries, not even any lists from which to tease secrets. She had assured me that family records would be available in the central section of a behemoth-sized family Bible, but when I opened its yellowed pages I found what I call “the family tree in winter”: all black outline with no leafy verdancy to give it bulk and color.

I plan to make the case that it is essential to tell our personal stories, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem. My rationale came to me as I read Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book, The Zookeeper’s Wife, in preparation for her upcoming September visit to the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Her book focuses on the director of the Warsaw Zoo and his wife, who worked with the Polish Underground Movement during World War II. They successfully helped approximately three hundred Jews, hiding them both in their villa and on zoo grounds, in outbuildings and animal cages.

The book is filled with details of their lives as zookeepers: the particular personalities of the animals they kept as pets, an inventory of a beetle collection developed by a Jewish friend, the layout of the Warsaw ghetto, the names of trees. I won’t remember all the details that Ackerman includes, but my sense of the reality of the Holocaust in Poland is heightened and enriched by this reading. As a friend commented, “It supplies a micro-story to accompany the macro-story.” The book describes acts of individual courage and sets them against the drama of the larger war effort.

I now understand why college history courses didn’t always work for me. The sweep of history was overpowering. It’s when I consider individual stories that I am able to do the slow work of understanding, one life at a time. In this way I have been encouraged to continue as a lifelong student of history. I’m willing to bet that Saturday’s conference includes people who have important micro-stories to set down on paper, which will add threads of understanding to large and complex historical events.