WEBVTT

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 [echoing piano
leads placid arrangement]

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§

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 (man)
To me, the writer's block

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 is more writer's evasion

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 [chuckling]
or writer's procrastination.

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 If I get myself in a chair,

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 I can always think of a story.

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 It just comes.

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§

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 This is the opening
of, uh, &nbspDarkWinter,

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 which is one
of the Cuddy Mangum novels,

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so I know the voice.

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I--I've heard
Cuddy before,

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but to capture
exactly

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what that voice says is--

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is crucial to me.

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Here's the first sentence:

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"This is about the summer
when everything changed."

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Now, I thought a lot

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and then have removed
the word when.

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"This is the summer
everything changed."

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That's--doesn't seem
like much of a difference,

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 but it's &nbspevery difference.

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 Like Mark Twain said,

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 the difference
between one word

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and another word
is the difference

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between lightning
and a lightning bug.

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So you're looking
for the lightning

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 when you write.

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§

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 After so many years,
decades away,

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I was writing television.

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I was in New York.

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Maureen was teaching at, uh,
University of Pennsylvania.

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 I had met Eudora Welty,

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 whose work I &nbsphugely admired.

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 I told her,
"I'm havin' trouble,

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 "and I've written
three novels.

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 "Novel one's California.

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 "Novel two's Colorado.

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 Novel three's Connecticut."

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 And she said, "Honey, you're
just sneakin' up on Carolina.

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"You go home
and let your fiction

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grow out of that land
beneath your feet."

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 [chuckling]
It was an astonishing moment
in my life.

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 I started &nbspUncivilSeasons.

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 The moment I wrote
that first sentence:

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 "Two things don't happen
very often...

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 That voice that &nbspwe
was different--

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 I was always puttin'
these outsiders

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 in the first novels--

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 the person from the South
who was living in Connecticut,

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 but then I was
in that red clay,

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 that landscape
of my imagination.

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 I think those experiences
are set fairly early.

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 Willa Cather--

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 she lived
in Red Cloud, Nebraska,

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 from age 9 to age 15,

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 but that's the landscape
of her imagination.

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 That's what she sees.

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 Joyce had long since
gotten outta Dublin,

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 but you read &nbspUlysses,

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 and you are on the streets
and in the pubs.

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 And for me,

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 the red clay
of North Carolina,

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 the towns, the sound--

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 that is key,
and when we came back here

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 and were looking
for a place to live,

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 we came to Hillsborough.

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 First of all,
Maureen's wandering around,

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 saying, "Oh my God!

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 It's like being
inside your fiction."

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 I'm livin' in a house
in which there were slaves

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 who moved away
with Emancipation.

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 I am living in the presence

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of the history

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 that is so important

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 to any writer
from the South.

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 When I came here,
I just sat down in a chair

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 and started to write
as fast as I could.

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 I am just passionate
about silence

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 because the way I write
is to sit there

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 and essentially say,
"Talk to me."

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 I'm listening so hard,

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 and I think that's
really coming out

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 of my personal experience.

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 My mother was deaf,

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and I was...
her ears in a way--

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"Listen for me"--

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 and I really think
there's a relation

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 between that
and my being a writer.

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 Who is
the voice?

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 Who's gonna tell
this story?

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 I always say,

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you don't have to be a whale
to write Moby Dick.

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You know, that person may be
very different from you,

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but you--
you have to hear.

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 "Through a meadow where
in summer wildflowers grew.

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"Toward the bottom,
the slope plunged steeply

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"through the knolls
and gullies

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"left by century-old
earthen terraces

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"falling to the edge
of the dark woods

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 that guarded Heaven's Hill."

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 [delicate piano
leads droning strings]

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 The physical landscape

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 defined this place
that we live in--

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 became a fictional place
to me.

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 The courthouse in Hillsborough
showed up in "Red Clay,"

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 a short story of mine.

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 [guitar leads strings]

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 "Up on its short slope,

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 "the columned front
of our courthouse

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 "was waxy in the August sun,

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 "like a courthouse
in lake water.

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 "The leaves hung from maples,
and the flag of North Carolina

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 "wilted flat
against its metal pole.

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 "Heat sat sodden
over the county

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"week by relentless week;

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"they called the weather
'dog days'

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"after the star, Sirius,

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 but none of us knew that."

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 [strings ebb and flow]

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 The mill's so much
a part of the change

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 from the old South
to the new South that is, uh,

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 a part of the story,

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 particularly
of &nbspTime's Witness.

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 "The factory whistles
kept crying over Hillston,

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 "grieving
for the old industrialist

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 "who'd built them.

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 "Decade after decade
they'd summoned the town

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 "each morning
to come weave for him,

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"told it at noon
to eat lunch,

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"sent it home
each evening to rest;

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"now they wailed
that Briggs Cadmean was dead,

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 "wailed loudest
here in East Hillston

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 where the factories loomed."

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 [piano leads]

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 Writing
is a lonely business...

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 takes isolation...

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 and so it's wonderful to--

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 to have other people
that are doing that.

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These are all my neighbors
in Hillsborough

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and all my wonderful friends:

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Allan Gurganus,
Jill McCorkle,

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Lee Smith,
Craig Nova.

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All these people live and
write here in Hillsborough.

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 [peaceful guitar
and piano theme]

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 I do find that this group
of world-class writers

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 are wonderfully harmonious.

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The beauty
of having a porch
like this is,

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I can work
on the porch,

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and I
can either speak
to people or not.

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They don't
really see you

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'cause you're
slightly recessed,

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but it's like command
performance, you know.

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You have to actually
formally invite people

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to come and sit
on the porch.

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They know not--
"Hi!" is not,

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"Will you come and
join me for an hour."

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It's a buffer;
it's something pleasant--
slows 'em down.

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Then you choose the ones
you want to invite.

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What are we doin'

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in this little town
in Hillsborough?

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 But here we are.

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 (woman)
"So, at the beginning
of this particular summer,

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 "the summer
everything changed,

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"I started packing
to head west on Highway 64

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in search of a new job,
new town, new Cuddy Mangum."

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 (Malone)
I have been graced
by my marriage to Maureen.

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 Editors come and go,

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 and publishing houses
come and go,

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and she has been
my constant reader.

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 (Quilligan)
"Created herself young,

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"mostly out of movies,
in the belief

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"that your script
can come true

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if you keep on
believing in it."

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And she loves to--

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sometimes,
a little hard on me--

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hah, you know, yeah--
but I've learned,

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 just watch her face.

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 If she winces,
you wanna change that word.

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This, everyone's
gonna recognize--

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oh, Cuddy's back!

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 (Malone)
And she's been very much
a part of my work.

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§

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 A novel, when you write it,
you send it out,

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 and only
when it reaches a reader,

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 when they respond

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 out of the world
they come from,

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out of the feelings
they have,

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 out of the desires
and the hopes

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 and the renunciations
of their lives,

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does that novel
fulfill itself.

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That's the great hope
for a creator of a story...

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 "Wind was cold
off the bright water

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of Albemarle Sound."

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...that it won't be silenced
by time...

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 "As I met the ocean,

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the sun blew up
over the horizon line."

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...that the characters
will be there

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for a new generation
of readers

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 and will speak to them.

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 "Shafts of sea oats
bowed shaking

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"to a sandy highway

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 "that warned
of the dangers

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 of leaving it."

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§