Got back from "An Evening With Alice Sebold" a bit ago and wanted to jot this down before I forget it.

First of all, it was a great event. It was held in the ballroom of the student center, and they were able to fit in many more people than your usual reading over at the English building. Tickets were $15 (as a fundraiser for the new MFA program), but you could get in free if you were a student, which I am, so we only had to pay for Janet. Sebold read the first chapter from The Lovely Bones, which was more funny and brutal than I remembered, and I have to agree with Wilton Barnhardt that it's one of the strongest first chapters I've ever read. After she finished reading, Barnhardt did a bit of interview with her, asking questions that people had written down beforehand. It turns out that Sebold studied under Barnhardt at UC-Irvine, and that he was the reason she agreed to come to NCSU to talk to us. There were several novel-related questions, as well as ones about her memoir Lucky, but the advice questions were the best.

When asked what one piece of advice she got when she was starting out that she could relay to beginning writers, she quoted one of her professors (I forget which; he was a poet): inhabit your weirdness. And I whole-heartedly agree with this.

It basically boils down to staying true to yourself and writing in that style that only you can write. Don't try to change your style or content to fit others' expectations or market trends; write the story that only you can write, and the market will someday catch up to you. It took Sebold several years to write The Lovely Bones, taking a two-year hiatus in the middle of it to write Lucky, and she went through thirty or forty drafts of the novel before she felt it was ready. She listened to critique, but she never compromised the voice of the main character Susie, and it ended in a novel that spent 66 weeks on the NYT bestseller list.

Don't be afraid to be weird. Normal is boring. March to your own drummer. Take the road less traveled.

End of line.

Now Reading:
Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari

Stories Out to Publishers:
4

Books Read This Year:
9

Zines/Chapbooks/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
4