We All Learn Here By The Honorable

The Work Reveals The Creator - And As Our Universe In Its Vastness, Its Orderliness, Its Exquisite Detail, Tells Us Something Of The One Who Made It, So A Work Of Fiction, For Better Or Worse, Will Reveal The Writer.

The Wonderful Thing About Books Is That They Allow Us To Enter Imaginatively Into Someone Else’s Life. And When We Do That, We Learn To Sympathize With Other People. But The Real Surprise Is That We Also Learn Truths About Ourselves, About Our Own Lives, That Somehow We Hadn’t Been Able To See Before.

Still, I Kept Writing. I Had No Guarantee That I Would Someday Win Awards For Writing. Heavens, The Only Person During That Time Who Seemed To Think I Could Write Something Worth Publishing Was My Loyal Husband. But I Always Remembered The Professor From Graduate School Who Urged Me To Write And Who Recommended Me For That First Writing Assignment In 1964. When I Protested To Sara Little That I Didn't Want To Add Another Mediocre Writer To The World, She Gently Reminded Me That If I Didn't Dare Mediocrity, I Would Never Write Anything At All.

Since My First Novel Was Rescued From A Slush Pile, It Makes Me Sad That Most Publishing Houses No Longer Accept Unsolicited Manuscripts. Nor Are Many Willing To Take Chances On Novels That Are Not Deemed Immediately "marketable."

What We Need To Wake People Up To Now Is The Crisis In Imagination And Concern For The Greater Good. We Have No Idea What The Next Ten Years, Much Less The Next Fifty Years, Will Demand Of The Coming Generation. What We Do Know Is That Unless We Have A People Prepared And Eager To Meet Those Crises Creatively And Compassionately, There Is Not Much Hope For This Poor Old Planet Of Ours.