The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells

Flannery taught me that matters of the spirit can be voiced through the most unlikely characters, and she taught me that a sense of humor was crucial. While I do not share her strict adherence to Catholicism, my life has been forever touched by the Catholicism of the first 18 years of my life, and I consider Catholicism to be not just a religion, but a culture. I call Miss O'Connor by her first name because I often invoke her spirit, and feel a close affinity with her. Afflicted by lupus, straying only rarely from her mother's farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, she kept on writing until her death at age 39.

When I struggled to write Ya-Yas in Bloom, I needed a wheelchair to get to my writing room. Once I got there, I stared at a photo of Flannery standing, held up by two crutches on the porch of her mother's house, surrounded by her beloved peacocks, and felt more courage. I also love Flannery because she said that nobody laughed or cried more at her own work than she did while she was writing it. I can't help it; I do the same thing.

Barry's understanding of the inner-workings of the city of New Orleans are nuanced and true, and stunned me with their insider knowledge. Rising Tide is so deeply related to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina that I remain heartbroken at the natural destruction, and furious at the manner in which these disasters were handled. The state of Louisiana will never be the same, and I mourn this.

What are some of your favorite films?
So many movies, such little time! Here is my short list, not necessarily in order of importance in my life:

What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
It depends on what mood I'm trying to evoke. While writing the 1930s scenes in Ya-Yas in Bloom, I listened to pre-World War II dance music.

When I write, I see the scenes in my head. Coming from a theater background, I work more like an actor-writer than a pure writer. I am always interested in what a character might have dreamed the night before the scene takes place. I see movements of characters like blocking on a stage. I have my own movies in my head. It is fine if other people make movies of my work, but I have my own movies in my own mind and heart. The music I play while writing is sort of a soundtrack.

Sometimes I can't play any music at all; I need total silence. Other times I crave music.

When I want some pure Louisiana music, I'll radio stream to the music played on KBON 101.1 FM Louisiana Proud Radio, (http://www.kbon.com), a locally owned Louisiana Music powerhouse situated in the heart of Cajun Country, in Eunice, Louisiana. Their programming is a unique blend of Cajun, Zydeco, Blues, Oldies, and Swamp Pop and can be heard all over. If my body is strong that day, I'll get up and boogey till I'm tired, then rest a bit, then go back to the computer. If they play a bittersweet Cajun waltz, I'm a sucker for the emotionality that fiddle can evoke. I once gave a Cajun waltz to a character in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood just before he left for World War II. I cried listening to the waltz and while writing that scene. I have also been known to listen to Yo-Yo Ma's Bach Solo Cello Suites at least 500 times.

If you had a book club, what would it be reading?
Artists in a Time of War by Howard Zinn. I believe we need to be reminded that reading can lead to action, that brave artists have spoken truth to power during other wars, and we can take inspiration from them. We can talk in our book clubs, and then we can walk our talk.

What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
Books of poetry. Depending on the person, I might give W. S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, or Roethke.

Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
I have a green stone with the word "Hope" on it, given to me by a friend when I needed it most. I think courage, then hope are the two sources of inspiration for a writer. When I'm writing a novel, I sometimes feel as though I'm in a leaky little boat trying to cross a huge ocean. Hope eludes me. I look at the stone and tell myself: hope is here; you just have to reach up and hold onto it. Like a ring on the subway.

I am surrounded by books which inspire me, pictures of the people I love, and stacks of papers appear which I have no idea what to do with. I have never been accused of being overly organized.

I also have the image of the book cover I am pondering pinned on the bulletin board near my computer. My husband and I have chosen all of the covers for my books, and early on, these images provide a visual touchstone for me.

If I'm strong, I start out the day with meditation and inspirational reading, which always includes a poem. When I sit down to write, my little dog, Mercy, a King Charles Cavalier spaniel, lies in her bed beside my feet. She is my "familiar." I'm convinced she helps me write. Just looking at her curled up, dreaming her dogly dreams, calms me, and lets me return to my writing with more relaxed shoulders.

In my writing studio is a treadmill and yoga mat. On strong days, I alternate writing with walking and stretching. I'm trained as an actor and sitting as long as a writer needs to hurts.

Because of chronic Lyme, I also have weak days. Heck, we all have weak days as writers and non-writers whether we have Lyme or not. On those days, I try to give in to the fact that my energy is low, and that the most I can do is jot down a few notes on a legal pad while lying in bed, or talk a scene into my tape recorder which is then magically transcribed for me. I have tried vocal recognition software, but it flat-out refused to recognize my Southern diphthongs. No matter how hard I tried, that software betrayed me, so I finally gave up. Basically I'm a writer who uses a computer to type. My sweet husband, without whom I couldn't write a thing, takes care of the other workings of the machine. He supports me in every way while I'm writing a book. I don't know how I got so lucky.

What are you working on now?
A new Ya-Ya novel.

Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
I had a zillion jobs as a cocktail waitress where men loved to accidentally touch me when I brought them packs of cigarettes on a tray that I had to get for them from the cigarette machine. I worked in one place where there was a knifing on the dance floor. Soon after I was fired, there was a murder in the parking lot. This was Louisiana, so I was not terribly surprised, but I was tired of trying to get tips by wiggling my butt.

I use to lust for a successful career as a stage actress. So I eventually moved to New York City, where, in between jobbing out to regional theatres, I held such illustrious jobs in Manhattan as modeling "Squeaky Shoes" at the International Toy Show. I worked as a waitress at an East Side hotel where we were referred to as "waitrons." They let me ride my bike across Central Park for my shift before firing me for refusing to put little "hats" on the legs of pork chops before I served them because they burned my fingers. They even made me pay for my brown and beige polyester uniform after firing me. Now I ask you.

I got lucky when I wrote a solo play for myself in 1982 because the only roles I was being cast in as an actor were those that called for me to be cute, perky, and mindless. Finally I realized that my career in the theater was going to be seriously limited by the fact that I am 5' 1 and 1/4. That is to say that I would never play "Portia" in "Merchant of Venice," even though I had memorized the role in case I ever had the chance.

Seattle has been wonderful to me as a writer. I came out to the Northwest to act in a play at The Empty Space Theatre, and ended up staying so I could write. It was so much cheaper to live out here than in Manhattan. Actors actually owned houses and had families. This was before Seattle was discovered and became a hip scene.

I broke a tiny bone in my foot dancing in a play of mine and it sidelined me for a good while. I was so depressed, but it was one of the many blessings in disguise I've been given. Not being able to strut my stuff as an actress made me sit down and write Little Altars Everywhere. The whole time that fat-ass critic that lives on my left shoulder kept saying: "You can't write. You're a theater person. You're not a writer." But I kept on writing. I was lucky again to be able to perform my book as I was writing it. The night I remember most vividly is reading the chapter "E-Z Boy War" from Little Altars Everywhere" just as the first Bush administration began bombing downtown Baghdad. I almost did not make it through the reading. I kept thinking about downtowns in general, and how they all have kindergartens.

Writing during war breaks my heart and makes me furious.

So. I finished Little Altars Everywhere, and trusting my then agent, allowed the manuscript to sit at one publishing house for nine months -- long enough to have a baby! I didn't know any better. I just thought they were taking a long time to make up their minds. The manuscript was returned to me on the day after Labor Day, 1988 with a terse rejection letter. I remember sitting on the steps of our rental house and sobbing. Our next-door neighbor came over, and when I told him, he started cussing like crazy. He acted out all my anger and I loved him for it -- and he and his sweetie and me and my sweetie ended up drinking beer in the back yard looking at Mt. Rainier. Looking at a mountain like Mt. Rainier can help you put things in perspective.

Next, I got this publishing grant from an arts council. It stipulated that I had to find a publisher within a year. The year passed and I had not found one publisher willing to take a chance on an unknown writer. I had a small panic attack on the way home from the island bakery after a woman at the arts council told me they would revoke the grant since I had not found a publisher in time. I felt like such a loser! I was a leper; no one would touch me, or my manuscript. Finally someone suggested a tiny press that had only done a few books of poetry. They accepted the manuscript of Little Altars Everywhere, giving me the biggest gift: a good editor. I finished the book and it became a bit of an underground hit, selling 20,000 copies quickly, and making it difficult for the little press (now defunct) to keep up.

My then-agent sold Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood on the strength of a detailed outline and three chapters. I started writing up a storm, really having fun with the first part of that book. Then my editor left for another house, leaving me in a huge publishing house where nobody had heard of my novel-in-progress. After much haggling, and tons of anxiety, I managed to move the manuscript to HarperCollins, the house to which my editor had moved.

HarperCollins published Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood in 1996 in hardback. By 1998-99, I was amazed at how many people were reading it, talking about it, showing up at readings. I had never expected such a response. I was just hoping the book would sell enough copies for me to get an advance to write another book. I was reading for thousands of people on the stage from that book, using my acting background like never before. I was having a ball. The hot white light of success hit me straight in the eyes. Then I started getting sick with weirder and weirder symptoms. It was not until the end 2004 that I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease.

If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be?
She is not new, and I could not say she is really "undiscovered," but I'd love the whole world to know the work of Naomi Shihab Nye, the American-Palestinian poet, children's book writer, and peacemaker who lives in San Antonio. Her poetry, like William Stafford's is so clean and true, it's like drinking a glass of pure water when you're painfully thirsty.

What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
Life is short. Enjoy yourself. Write what heals you and helps you make it through this veil of tears. Don't compare yourself to anyone. Stay safe within the sentence you are writing. Remember that in ancient times, books were written not to get on a bestseller list, but to be read in the dark hours of the soul when a person is hanging on by a thread and then she picks up your book and reads a sentence and her life is changed.