It Always Helps Me Connect With Characters,

While Writing Cold Mountain, I Held Maps Of Two Geographies, Two Worlds, In My Mind As I Wrote. One Was An Early Map Of North Carolina. Overlaying It, Though, Was An Imagined Map Of The Landscape Jack Travels In The Southern Appalachian Folktales. He's Much The Same Jack Who Climbs The Beanstalk, Vulnerable And Clever And Opportunistic.

That's Just Pain She Said. It Goes Eventually. And When It's Gone, There's No Lasting Memory. Not The Worst Of It Anyway. It Fades. Our Minds Aren't Made To Hold On To The Particulars Of Pain The Way We Do Bliss. It's A Gift God Gives Us, A Sign Of His Care For Us.

I Had Never Taken Creative Writing Classes. Hadn't Even Considered It.

It Always Helps Me Connect With Characters, To Think About What Music They Respond To

Or Maybe It Is Only That We Are So Habitually Inattentive That When Some Rare But Simple Geometry Grabs Us By The Shoulders And Shakes Us Into Consciousness, We Call Our Response Sacred.