如何才能做一个出色的作家?

我们当中的很多人都有过或曾经有过作家梦，那如何才能通向这成功的彼岸呢？本期节目中我们邀请了美国作家布鲁尔，桑尼来跟我们聊聊关于他的心路历程。

MARY LOUISE KELLY, host:

To an American writer now who, before he became a writer, held down the position of chief chicken fryer at Woodys Drive-In in Millport,Alabama. Sonny Brewer followed that job up with a stint in the U.S.Navy, singing six nights a week in a honky-tonk band, selling cars,building houses, managing a coffee house, and half a dozen other jobs. But in his spare time Brewer was writing, and finally one day he quit his day job - that was four novels ago. Sonny Brewer made it as a writer but he never forgot those early jobs and he figured other successful writers didnt either.Thus was born his latest project, an anthology, 23 Southern writers all talking about the day jobs they once held. Its called "Dont Quit Your Day Job." And we're joined now from Mobile, Alabama by Sonny Brewer and by Winston Groom, one of the writers who contributed. Welcome to be you both.

Mr. SONNY BREWER (Author): Thank you

Mr. WINSTON GROOM (Author): Thank you.

KELLY: Glad to have you here. Mr. Brewer, let me start with you. When you...

Mr. GROOM: Mr. Groom is my father.

KELLY: Mr. Brewer is your father. Sonny, may I call you?

Mr. BREWER: Please, call me.

Mr. GROOM: Mr. Groom is my father.

KELLY: When...

(Soundbite of laughter)

KELLY: When you started calling around to Winston and the other authors, who you were trying to recruit to write for this, tell me what your pitch was.

Mr. BREWER: Well, I got on the phone to Winston and I, and to William Gay, and I thought, you know, I said to William, would you write about hanging sheet rock in the hills of Tennessee, before you were what Stephen King referred to as an American treasure laboring in obscurity in the hills of Tennessee? Would you write about hanging sheet rock up there? And he said no, Ill write about working at the pinball factory though.And I called Winston and I said, you know, would you write about being a soldier under fire, an officer on the battlefield in Vietnam? And he said, well, yeah, I'll write about that. And then there was Silas House, who delivered the mail. There was George Singleton, who drove a garbage truck, and just on and on. And to a person, they immediately said sure, I want to do that.

KELLY: Well, Winston Groom, let me draw you in. I know a lot of our listeners will be familiar with the works that youve produced, "Forrest Gump," among other novels. What attracted you to write for this collection?

Mr. GROOM: Well, I think it was an opportunity to be able to write your memoirs and not have to take responsibility for it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. GROOM: Blame Sonny if it goes wrong. But, no, I like the idea. I never had thought about anything like that.But, you know, you are what you do. I think that your sum experience in life is formed by all the things that you do, and work is most of it. I mean as opposed to sleep or eat. And so I thought back, you know, I've had a number - I didnt think I'd really had many jobs until I started looking back, and the first job I had was I was a newsboy when I was 12 years old and from then I learned I didnt like to get up early in the morning.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KELLY: Valuable life lesson. Yes.

Mr. GROOM: Yeah. And then I get a job with a construction company, when I was in high school; we were athletes and trying to - and everybody said go get a job at a construction company because its, you know, good for you, to be in the outdoors and working hard and so forth. And I learned from that I didn't like to work hard.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. GROOM: (Unintelligible) manual labor. And then I was in the Army, and it was an experience. This was - it was combat. Sure, what infantry divisions do, and I actually - my first book was a book - a novel called "Better Times Than These" and it was loosely based on that experience, and that's what got me out of the newspaper racket, which I had been in, newspaper business in Washington, and that book sort of launched my career, and that was 30 years ago and I haven't worked a day since.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KELLY: Well, I wanted to ask you about that. I mean for a lot people, you ended up a big city reporter at the now defunct Washington Star here in Washington, D.C., and you write in your piece in this collection about how you knew for a fact a lot of the reporters in that newsroom had tucked away somewhere in some back drawer of their desk, you know, the half written manuscript of the great American novel they were going to write.

Mr. GROOM: Well...

KELLY: Was it in part wanting to not be the guy who had the half- finished one in his desk drawer that made you want to quit?

Mr. GROOM: Yeah. Well, I think I said in my tale in Sonny's book that I think that there were a lot of these reporters, because there were many hundreds of reporters at the Star - in their desk, if you looked, you would find a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a brown paper bag with a bottle of Seagram's VO and a half finished manuscript of a novel. And I didnt want to wind up like that. It's very difficult to write as a matter of fact, I tried it, to write fiction while youre working with a newspaper. It was great place to work, but you know, they started paying you pretty well after I had been there for about seven or eight years, and I got to thinking, you know, if I stay here much longer I'm going to wind up, you know, with a mortgage and a car payment and I'm going to be comfortable and I'm going to do this for the rest of my life, and do I want to do that or do I want to try something else? And so I did.

KELLY: The old advice every writer always gets is write what you know. How true do you think that is?

Mr. GROOM: At a very basic level, of course, you have to know what youre writing about, otherwise you turn out nonsense. But having said that, I wrote a book, a novel one time, called "Only," from the point of view of an Old English sheepdog. Now, how did I know what the Old

English sheepdog thought? I didnt. But I was able to make it up and (unintelligible)...

KELLY: And who is to say you were wrong?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. GROOM: Yeah. Well, that's right. The dog...

KELLY: That sheepdog is not going to come correct you. That's one advantage.

Mr. GROOM: No, no, the dog loved the book.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KELLY: Although your first book, you mentioned, is about Vietnam and you, I'm sure, drew on your experience there heavily. It would've been a very difficult book to write if you hadn't seen action there.

Mr. GROOM: Yeah, you need to - true.

KELLY: So I suppose I should confess to both of you at this point that I came to this book with a particular interest. I quit my day job - my full-time day job at NPR a few months back in order to write a novel. So I wanted to ask both of you, any advice?

Mr. GROOM: Dont quit your day job.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KELLY: Too late. That's what my dad said. Any other advice?

Mr. GROOM: Well, good luck. I'm sure it'll be a wonderful experience.Good luck with it.

KELLY: Thank you.

Mr. BREWER: Well, I think when you write a novel, you know, there's something, there's commitment. And I know writers who employ different tricks, as it were, Bill Butterworth said, you know, he advised, you know, maybe stop in a middle of a sentence so that tomorrow, when you finish that sentence, that you knew how to finish when you stopped. It gets you going.

Mr. GROOM: Yup.

Mr. BREWER: Truman Capote said just write something true. It doesnt matter whether it fits in the book or not, but if its true that the wind is blowing and the sky is blue, there's a dog walking down your street, if you write that, it's just something you see out the window,something youre feeling, it'll move you along. Whatever works, you know, write the truth for a minute and then some of...

Mr. GROOM: And start lying.

Mr. BREWER: And then start lying.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. GROOM: Very convincing lying.

KELLY: Advice from two masters of the craft. That's writers Sonny Brewer and Winston Groom talking about the new book "Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit." They have been speaking with us from SoundWorks in Mobile, Alabama.Thanks to you both, gentlemen.

Mr. BREWER: Thank you.

Mr. GROOM: Thank you.

KELLY: And you can read an excerpt from Winston Groom's essay at our

website, http://www.hxen.net