Before The War It Was Always The

People Want To Know Why The South Is So Interested In The Civil War. I Had Maybe, It's A Rough Guess, About Fifty Fistfights In My Life. Out Of Those Fifty Fistfights, The Ones That I Had The Most Vivid Memory Of Were The Ones I Lost. I Think That's One Reason Why The South Remembers The War More Than The North Does.

I Think Making Mistakes And Discovering Them For Yourself Is Of Great Value, But To Have Someone Else To Point Out Your Mistakes Is A Shortcut Of The Process.

I Used To Write Sonnets And Various Things, And Moved From There Into Writing Prose, Which, Incidentally, Is A Lot More Interesting Than Poetry, Including The Rhythms Of Prose.

If You Want To Study Writing, Read Dickens. That's How To Study Writing, Or Faulkner, Or D.h. Lawrence, Or John Keats. They Can Teach You Everything You Need To Know About Writing.

And I'm A Slow Writer: Five, Six Hundred Words Is A Good Day. That's The Reason It Took Me 20 Years To Write Those Million And A Half Words Of The Civil War.