(Holly) A book in our reach is like a handshake to the connection we all need, because through them we gain friends, family and those characters we never even knew we needed in our lives until we start turning the pages.

Hi, I'm Holly Jackson, your host of Books by the River.

I want to say thanks to you for joining us on this journey, where we sit beside the writers who tell these stories that sometimes feel like our own, or they give us a glimpse of the experiences of someone we need to know.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Announcer) Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations.

The ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peters Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC, Beaufort.

(Holly) Here to talk to us today is M.O.

Walsh, author of The Big Door Prize.

M.O., thanks for coming.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

Glad to be here.

This is great.

(Holly) Yeah, me too.

We have a whole lot to talk about.

I've got this long list in my head.

(M.O.)

All right.

(Holly) So let's go.

(M.O.)

Let's go.

(Holly) All right, so tell me about The Big Door Prize.

And, what's kind of the elevator speech of what this is all about?

(M.O.)

Okay.

Yeah.

So this is a novel set in a small town called Deerfield, Louisiana, which is made up.

But anyway, the premise of the book is that one day in the local grocery store, this mysterious machine shows up.

No one really knows where it came from.

It looks kind of like a, photo booth, you know, that you'd see at, like, a, county fair or something.

(Holly) Okay.

(M.O.)

But you walk into it, it costs $2.

But what it asks you to do is to give it a sample of your DNA.

It gives you a little Q-Tip.

You put, you put your DNA in there, and what the machine says it can do is tell you what your ultimate potential in life is.

In other words, it can analyze your DNA and say, this is what you would be best at if only you thought to try it, right?

And so this is a small town.

So, Rumers, you know, get going about different people who have tried it.

They get you get, like, this little blue ticket from the machine that has, like, this one word on it.

Usually, you know, ballerina, whatever, saxophonist or whatever it might be.

And so people start trying this thing and a lot of them, it's something that they've kind of dreamed of doing.

And they don't, you know, they they can't understand how the machine could know that they had this secret dream.

So they start pursuing it.

But then other people start getting some that are sort of troubling or confusing or, you know, that not they don't match who they thought they could always be.

Right?

So the town kind of comes alive with all this stuff.

But the main characters are husband and wife, have been together a long time and, you know, consider themselves very happy, you know, if settled, and they each get a readout from this machine that sends them in very different trajectories, right?

So, a lot of the book, for me at least, is about about this couple and their love and what sort of what you do, navigating your own sort of private dreams.

Along with what you've already accomplished and what you already feel really good about.

So, so a lot of a lot of mayhem ensues.

(Holly) Yeah.

For this $2 game, it's really, like, really make it into a question.

Did I make the right choice in life?

(M.O.)

Right.

Yeah.

(Holly) Okay.

I got to ask about like, what was the era?

What is the time frame of when you were writing this?

Because DNA swab, I'm thinking, like, is this all start through, like Covid testing?

Oh, yeah.

(M.O.)

Oh, yeah.

No.

Actually, unfortunately like, with a lot of my stuff, it takes like, a really long time to go from the idea to any sort of finished product.

So the, I originally wrote a short story based on this idea, probably in like 2003 or something.

(Holly) Ok.

(M.O.)

And, and, when I was in graduate school and that it only took place in a very short period of time, it was just about the couple, just one day when they got their readouts.

And I ended up publishing that story in my first collection in like 2011 or so.

And then I wrote another novel called My Sunshine Away that was much darker than this book.

And I'd been in a sort of really dark headspace for about seven years, writing that, and I was like, when I was done, I was like, what do I want to do now?

And oftentimes I don't know about y'all or other artists, but like, usually if I publish something, I kind of like, it's done, you know what I'm saying?

It's I don't think about it that much anymore.

It's kind of like a, it's a, you know, it's an artifact or something.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

But this was an idea that I'd continue to think about, you know, over the years, because I knew I just hadn't done enough.

You know, I'd built this machine that was basically, at least in my mind, like a story generating machine.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

You know, when you think about how stories work, you have one character that's on a trajectory.

Something happens in their life, and that trajectory changes.

That's how whatever 90% of stories work.

And I built this machine that that's what you do.

You come in it, you know, thinking one thing, it gives you this printout that sends you out thinking another thing, and I was like, well, I know I haven't done enough with that.

And so, I went back, looked at the original story.

Still, I care a lot about this couple.

And I was like, well, let's see if I can start adding to it.

And so, yeah, you know, it's one of those weird things you start thinking, all right, I want to make this bigger.

I don't know how.

And then voices start coming to you.

And so, for me, there's this character named Jacob.

Just popped up in my head.

He wasn't in the original story.

But he suddenly is, in this book.

And so, that was sort of the genesis, you know?

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

Sort of a story idea idea that I went back to try to expand.

(Holly) Yeah.

Well, I really like how you said that the thing about the artifacts.

But this kind of machine kept coming back to you.

But then you said that the characters as well, that they were special to you.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

(Holly) Tell me how your characters stay with you as an author and how you kind of like, organize them in your brain and keep them in different compartments.

It must be quite an interesting process.

(M.O.)

I don't know, it's.

I guess it's hard to describe, but character to me is the only thing that will keep me going back to a book.

Right?

So that, I mean, I think lots of people have ideas and you have concepts for stories.

But I think lots of times when you just all you have is a concept, you find that that breaks down.

There's not much there you know?

You'll sit there, you'll work on it for a while.

There's this there's no life to it.

It's because all you're thinking of is, well, what's the idea for the story?

That's.

That's different than a story.

A story comes from characters and people that you care about.

And so typically, if I don't have that, I don't have anything.

Right.

So, I'm, I'm not one of these writers.

I know I have a lot of friends that are this way who can write just really bad people.

You know, like really bad dudes or, you know, whatever.

And I'm, like, way too soft for that.

Like, I just, I like characters who are like, you know, I think that are trying to do good in the world, you know, even if they don't always, you know, and so I usually I tend to gravitate towards characters who have, you know, made mistakes, but their hearts in the right place, and they want to try to they want to try to rectify that.

And so you start thinking about them as if they're people, you know, I don't know.

I don't think that makes us crazy, right?

I mean, it's just it's just an imaginative effort and the the longer you go about it, the more real they become.

And so one thing that's, that it might sound strange, but that, that brings me back to a book.

If I've like, if I've gotten stuck on something, a certain part, I can't figure out what I'm going to do with the plot.

Like I'll start feeling bad that I've left these fake people in that situation.

You know, I'll be like, oh my gosh, you know, this character is there at the lowest point of their life, and here I am avoiding (Holly) Got to give them some hope.

Avoiding going back to work on them when they're stuck there.

(Holly) Right.

(M.O.)

And I kind of think of them in that way, you know, which, I don't know.

And that might not be normal, but that's how I work.

And, and so I'll go back to them and to try to make sure they can move forward in their lives.

And, once they, I think once they sort of get clear in your head, it's easy to keep them apart.

You know, they're very distinct people.

(Holly) Well, how you work is working for you and work just so.

That's good.

Keep it going.

All right.

In terms of this machine itself, how often, how many times have you gone through yourself and wondered what your ticket would read?

(M.O.)

Yeah it's funny, I mean I've I've been asked that question and I never have a good answer for it.

It's like, I think part of me would not do it.

Like, simply I'd be too.

I don't know, I'd be too nervous, you know.

And, and one of the things that really that attracted me to this, to this book and the idea of it is that so many people, they get these readouts that, like I said, are aspirational.

It's like, oh, I'm just going to go trying to be a guitar player.

I'll try to be an entrepreneur or whatever you get.

But then I got really interested in the idea of, of what happens if you go in there and it prints out a ticket that says what you already are.

Well, I mean, I think like most people when you ask them that they'd say oh that'd be amazing.

Like I've already, you know, I did the exact thing I'm supposed to do.

Yeah.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

I think the reality of that is, it would be incredibly depressing.

You know, especially if you're, you know, midlife and you've, you know, because we all feel like, well, there's so much more ahead of us, you know?

And so I think that idea really kept me going.

Well let's flip this.

Like, with every idea in fiction, like, it comes to you one way and your job, I think as a writer, is to look at it from every different angle you can conceive of.

Right?

Because oftentimes the first, first thought is not necessarily the best thought.

Right.

And so, yeah, for a long time, I was just writing these aspirational things and like, well, what if someone gets one and it just nails them?

Exactly.

You know, what would that do to your psyche?

Would you think, are you are you confident enough to think you know what?

Yeah, I'm really I'm really, you know, I'm happy, you know, and I can just stay this way forever.

Or are you, like, 90% of people that would be like, that can't be true.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

I Mean, surely there's other things that I could be, you know, how come everyone else gets this amazing future?

I just have me.

Right?

(Holly) Right, right.

(M.O.)

So, yeah, that was one of the one of the storylines that that's in here at the heart of the book.

How do you deal with that?

Right?

So.

(Holly) Yeah.

This whole thing kind of reminds me we've all probably been through some sort of something kind of like this where someone, you know, a teacher maybe told us what they could imagine us being.

I remember taking like, an asvab thing in high school.

(M.O.)

Yeah there's test that tell you.

(Holly) Yeah.

And it told me I needed to be a funeral director and I was like, really offended by that.

Oh, that's so depressing.

And now in my adult life, I'm like, you know, I could I could maybe see that maybe, maybe that.

(M.O.)

I'm good at organizing parties, right?

Yeah.

(Holly) Yeah.

Right.

Right.

So, yeah, this is interesting to think about.

(M.O.)

Yeah it's I don't know I mean you know, people are like, I'm sure yours would say, writer I'm like, I don't know.

I kind of, I hope not like, you know.

(Holly) Right.

(M.O.)

I kind of hope there's other things.

(Holly) What else is out there?

(M.O.)

I mean, like in my, in my dream world, I'd love to be like a great musician.

Like those to me, great musicians are like wizards, you know, for me.

And so I would love that.

And I've tried it all my life and there's just this different.

There's this different thing between people who, try and people who are, you know what I'm saying with that.

So that's maybe what I would want to be, but I don't know.

Who knows you know?

(Holly) You still have time to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

(M.O.)

That's right.

I'll just keep playing four chords.

(Holly) All right, let's talk TV for a minute.

(M.O.)

Ok.

(Holly) Tell me about, you know, how this became on the screen and what, your involvement was with that?

What you kind of thought looking into it now?

(M.O.)

Yeah, so that was, that was great.

And that's, the experience was obviously very like eye opening, you know, but it was, oddly enough, it was a, is one of the few good things that Covid kind of caused for me.

It was that I think that because the book was coming out, came out in 2020.

Right.

And so before it, before a book comes out, different studios and things like this read early copies of things.

And, a lot of people had nothing to do and were really bored.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

So they got my book, it was, to read.

And one of these people was this guy named David West Reed, and, he was the head writer for Schitt's Creek.

And that show had just ended.

He also, wrote a Broadway musical called And Juliet.

And at that time, it was on West End and all the theaters had closed because of Covid.

So he had literally nothing to do.

And so he read my book.

Luckily, it sort of delighted him.

And so we ended up having conversations about, well, what could this look like?

You know, and there are other production companies that are interested in it.

They were mainly interested in the machine, like, yeah, we could do this.

It's going to be this dark sci fi, you know, whatever, show where people go in their lives are wrecked and, and then talking to David, he was like, I'm thinking, like 30 minute comedy, you know?

Because his favorite thing about the book was the characters.

And there's a weird thing that happens when, like, a writer talks to people about their own work.

Like, oftentimes you feel like they're mis-describing it to you You're like, well, that's not what I intended at all.

Like, I'm sorry you only looked at the horrible parts.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

But for the for him, it was it was I felt like he was describing the best version of my book that I could have imagined.

Right.

(Holly) Awesome.

(M.O.)

And so it felt really good.

And so it felt like a match.

And so, yeah, we almost immediately started sort of collaborating on that.

And then once they, once we sort of talked about how the show would, would go.

Right?

Then they hired writers to do the writing.

I don't, I don't I've never written TV before.

Yeah.

(Holly) Yeah.

Whole different animal.

(M.O.)

This guy had just won like every Emmy for Schitt's Creek.

So I'm like, I should probably let him, do the TV writing, you know?

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

It's like... (Holly) So what did you think?

(M.O.)

I loved it.

So I got, it was it's amazing.

So I got to go to the set and, you know, watch them, shooting, and I got to see the scripts and, so just that whole process, I mean, honestly, the most, I guess overwhelming thing to me was not even what I expected it to be, which would be like, oh my gosh, I get to meet this actor who's playing this person I invented.

You know?

It was honestly the, like all the, like the carpenters and all the people, like, working on the set.

I just the first time I went, it's just hammers and nails going, and there's trucks and all these people.

Costumes and, I mean, honestly, like, when I left that first day, I just broke down, like, weeping because I was just like, there's all these people.

This is their, they're feeding their families on.

I made this stuff up in, like, my pajamas.

Wow.

(Holly) Wow, yeah.

(M.O.)

You know, so it was just a bizarre, experience.

But, yeah, like I said, very, you know, eye opening.

It's you know, people say it's, you know, the writers dream, obviously, to, to be able to see it.

And it was, it was cool to me because they took the heart of the book and just sort of played jazz over it, you know, they changed a whole lot of different stuff.

And I that was great.

I mean, the book already exists.

I can't, you know, nothing's changing about that.

So this was just a new, a new version of it.

So it was delightful.

(Holly) Yeah.

That's it sounds like a really cool process.

Tell me about the balance of, like, writing humor and then incorporating, like, really strong themes.

How do you work through that as a writer?

(M.O.)

Yeah, well, this is I mean, this is the first time I ever tried to like, be intentionally funny.

I think sometimes, you know, you're funny on accident, you know, and, like I said, my previous book was just as dark, and I wanted just to wash my brain, you know, a little bit of that space.

And so to try to work in something that felt different and, I think, like many writers, I operated for a long time in the impression that, like, serious writing can't be funny, you know, like, serious writing has to be... (Holly) Serious.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

Yeah, very.

But then I found myself reading all these books that I would just be laughing, you know, whether, you know, there's a bunch I could I could mention, but I would just be reading a book and be like, I love this feeling.

Like, this book's hilarious.

And I'm like, I'm having so much fun.

Why can't I try to do that?

You know, like, why is that illegal or something?

(Holly) Yeah, so let's break the rule book.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

So let's break it down.

And so, it was the type of thing where once I got, like I said, I started expanding this book, I was like, well, let's have let me, let me try to write the type of book I love reading.

It seems like that should be pretty obvious to people.

But it's not to writers.

Writers are, you know.

(Holly) Complicated.

(M.O.)

Yeah, well, they're stubborn too, you know?

And so it took me a while to give myself permission to do that.

And, and I think that one thing that you learn is, as you're writing characters who you're giving the permission to laugh and to feel these things you suddenly recognize as a writer.

Well, there's so much power in the in the emotion that's right behind the laughter, which is which is sadness, you know?

And so you, you have characters and you give them a moment that's high.

You recognize there's a moment that's low, that's right beneath it.

Right?

So that's kind of what the book does.

I feel like at least I hope, you know, you have some chapters that feel like they're going up on a positive note, and the very next one will start low.

And I feel like that, at least to me, that that makes a book sort of propulsive.

At least you hope it does.

Like I said, I got a lot of characters, so.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

The good, the great, you know, the great fear is like, you know, maybe I'll have read a book like this where you have like four main characters and you just don't like one of them at all.

And so every time that character comes up, you're like, ugh.

(Holly) Here we go again.

(M.O.)

Yeah, I got to do 30 pages on this.

And so trying to avoid that, I think was, was that feeling okay.

Let's go high and low.

Let's like, let's make a joke and then make people realize a serious stuff going on in town to, and try to keep that that wheel turning.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

That's the goal at least.

(Holly) Well, I really appreciate the regard you have for the emotions and the awareness of it.

And, I'm curious, you brought up the the first book that was really dark that you were writing for so long and, kind of wanting to get that past you.

Do you feel different as a person whenever you're writing that?

Like, do you kind of like almost.

It might be a little too strong to say, not like yourself, but like I got to be a different person right now.

This is just too much.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

(Holly) And wanting to make that shift?

(M.O.)

I do I mean, I mean, I don't, I don't want to overstate it.

I mean, I think writers are able to compartmentalize, you know, when they're working, when they're not, but when they're actually, you know, typing and when they're not.

But you're you're thinking about it a lot, (Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

You know, and so it's even if you're sitting down for dinner or whatever part of you is like crunching, you know, some problem you've got in the back of your head about this plot or, or whatever.

And so whenever the plot is, you know, dark, you know, and you and it's sad things that are happening, there's always a part of you that's a little sad.

(Holly) Right.

(M.O.)

And so, yeah, this is, this book was the most fun I've ever had writing.

Because I, you know, I felt like I was in a good mood.

I'll have to ask my wife what she thought.

(Holly) Yeah, the people around your family did they see, like, you're a lot happier now.

(M.O.)

Yeah, I don't know.

(Holly) Can they tell when you're writing?

(M.O.)

I'd have to ask her.

I try, like I said, I try to be, try to be good.

You know, when I'm at the dinner table, no matter what.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

But it was, it was just a lot of fun.

I enjoyed the characters.

I wanted to see what they were up to next.

You know, but everything.

I can't speak for all writers, but, like.

But to me, I definitely want a new challenge every time.

And so you know, so after that, I'm like, okay, well, I don't want to write just another book.

That's totally the same.

I want to try something different.

And so, like, what I've been working on recently is, is yeah, it's not it's not a joke every page, you know, it's it's as much more of a puzzle.

So maybe I wasn't.

Maybe I was grumpier at the dinner table, I don't know.

(Holly) I think it's real easy for us to say out loud that, like, you can compartmentalize and turn things on, turn things off, but it just can't be that easy to, you know, as a switch.

(M.O.)

I just think that that's one thing a lot of people don't understand is like, okay, well, when do you write?

And you think, okay, well, I try to write between 8 and 10.

That's not when the writing is happening.

I mean, most of.

(Holly) What is that for you?

It is interesting to hear those, those answers of people saying like, oh, I do it from just like I go to work.

eight o'clock.

(M.O.)

Yeah, it's changed.

I wish I had one one answer, like, you know.

You'll hear these people that like, they have their to two hours and 26 minutes every day, no matter what.

That's changed as life has changed for me.

So, you know, like when I was in graduate school, I go to the bar drinking with my friends and come home and write, you know, midnight to three.

I'm a genius, you know?

And all that stuff was terrible.

And then when I had kids, it's like, okay, well, I can't do that anymore.

So I would get up, you know, maybe 5:00 in the morning and try to write until my daughter, when she was really young, would get up and then get another hour in when she's on a little swing thing.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

Which was a great, great thing to have.

And now that my kids require, you know, soccer practice after all this type of stuff, I've gotten to where I actually have to, like, get away from the house.

You have to, go away for a couple days.

But my wife Sarah's amazing about this.

She understands it's important for me and and for us.

And so she'll be like, yeah, go take three days at a hotel or go take a week at, like, a writer's retreat or something.

And I get an enormous amount done there because there's no I'm not one of these coffee shop writers where like, people are talking around me.

No, I need silence.

Yeah.

And on those days, I work all day and all night.

And so I produce just tons of pages.

I've been thinking about it, you know, and making notes.

Yeah.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

You know, I like to keep.

I usually keep, like, a little thing of index cards with me.

And I'll have if I have an idea for a scene or lots of times it's just, I know this character is going to say this line at one point in the book, right.

I'll write it down.

Right.

And so keep that on the index cards.

And so if I'm, you know, picking my kids up from school or I'm sitting in traffic or whatever, I can take out those index cards and look at it and remind myself of the scene and sort of, you know, I, you know, visualize it in my head, right?

And just go over it.

I'm not typing anything.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

But just working on it.

(Holly) And then do you pull out your phone and, like, start talking to it.

(M.O.)

I need, I need to, I need to modernize don't I?

No, but index cards are my favorite.

(Holly) They're such a beauty the whole index card thing.

(M.O.)

Well, because I like how tactile it feels.

And like when I, whenever I get to a scene that I've actually finished, I get to (sound effect noise), you know, I get to make this mark on it.

(Holly) Yeah, love the satisfaction of that, right?

(M.O.)

And I put that on a card at the back.

Yeah, put it at the back.

And I've kept all those stacks.

I mean, I've got just stacks of these things, and, and so.

Yeah.

So I'll have all those.

So I'm thinking about it.

And when I get a chance to write, I, go out and I write longhand on legal pads.

(Holly) What?

Haven't heard that answer in years.

(M.O.)

The thing that's so crazy about it is my handwriting's so bad, that I even I can't read it sometimes, but, but the reason I started doing that is because whenever I'm.

I recognize when I'm writing, like, on Microsoft word I'm word processing more than I'm producing.

In other words, I'll write a short paragraph and I'll look at that paragraph again and be like, oh man, I can make that sentence better.

Oh that's.

And then next thing I know, (Holly) More copy editor.

(M.O.)

half an hour has gone by and I've done three lines.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

So when I write longhand, I don't do that, I don't sort of self regulate.

And so I just produce a lot.

And then I go and type it, you know, type it in and that's when I'll start revising, you know?

(Holly) So there's lots of rough drafts going on.

(M.O.)

There's lots, there's lots of drafts.

(Holly) There's the head, there's the index card, there's the legal pad.

(M.O.)

Yeah, and then and then once you actually have it on Word, then there's all, yeah, then there's all the revision at the, at the line.

At the line level.

Yeah.

(Holly) Wow all right.

Well I do want to talk real quick about the time frame because I think you said that the story was actually birthed in like '03.

(M.O.)

Something around then.

Yeah.

A long time ago.

I had hair back then.

(Holly) I mean, are you okay with, like, living something that long is the goal to shorten it or you're just like I'm gonna listen.

(M.O.)

Like I said, I mean, I wrote a different book in between those.

So I was like, that's only I only thing I was thinking about.

But yeah, I mean, it's funny that you mention that because I just had a story come out, last year, called Meet Me There in this magazine called Salvation South.

And just yesterday, I got an email from a former student of mine, and I was like, oh, I just came across the story.

It's very nice.

Like, you know, I really liked it.

All this type of stuff.

And it's a great thing to get an email like that every once in a while.

And I was like, well, the thing you need to recognize about the story is that, you know, he was like, it make you make it seem so simple to write these stories.

Like, I started that story.

I have a I have a draft of that story from 2016.

Right?

It's 2025 now.

It came out in 2024.

That's eight years.

(Holly) Right.

(M.O.)

Like that's not quick.

You know that's not simple.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

Lots of times you have an idea and you try to get it down, but you need to I think you need to be like, I don't know, self-aware or humble enough to know that sometimes you still don't have it right.

You know, even if it's your idea.

How odd is that?

(Holly) Just knowing it's not there yet.

(M.O.)

You're own idea cannot be right, and you're the one that invented it.

It makes no sense.

Anyway.

But you have to recognize this is not working.

Maybe I should just give it time.

And it's one thing I tell my students I teach you know, graduate fiction, at the University of New Orleans.

And I tell them, the one of the most frustrating things about being a writer is recognizing the fact that, like, ideas don't exist until they do.

That sounds really stupid, doesn't it?

(Holly) No.

(M.O.)

You're like, you're like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

But it's true.

And so many times you try to force it right?

And you just try and you end up just writing bad ideas, you know, you end up writing things that are.

And but if you give it space and you're open, well, an idea will come to you.

It's it's the oddest thing.

Sometimes it's two years later, sometimes two weeks, sometimes it's four years.

But it doesn't exist until it does.

(Holly) Yeah.

(M.O.)

Being okay with that is one of the things I see so many writers struggle with.

(Holly) Yeah.

Because you want it done now.

You try to force it.

And so you know, like I said.

(Holly) You gotta reach the art of being able to just be still and wait and just wait for it.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not I'm, yeah.

I'm not saying just, like, don't ever think.

I mean, you're kind of just working on it, but an idea doesn't exist until it does.

And it's just there's no getting around it.

Sometimes you just got to wait on them.

(Holly) That's right.

All right, that does it.

This is a great conversation.

I really enjoyed this conversation.

Yeah.

Okay.

(M.O.)

Yeah.

(Holly) And, M.O.

Walsh thanks so much for coming.

And thank you everyone for joining us for Books by the River.

I'm your host, Holly Jackson.

Until the next book, By the time the 3:00 bell rang, Douglas Hubbard felt like a much older person than he'd been that morning.

He was technically, of course, about eight hours older.

But he had the sensation that years had gone by.

Decades, maybe, and difficult ones.

It was as if he'd gone to work that morning as jailhouse Rock, Elvis and emerged Las Vegas Elvis.

He was not alone in this feeling.

All across America, at that very hour, teachers poked their heads from dank school buildings like ancient turtles from their shells.

They shaded their eyes with notebooks and binders, jingled heavy sets of keys in their pockets, and looked, as a group, generally confused as to how the sun was still out, how the day could possibly be so long.

This confusion made them drop their favorite travel mugs and neoprene water bottles in the parking lot, where they watched them roll beneath cars and realize they would have to get on their hands and knees in front of students to retrieve them.

Because these cups were some of the most expensive items they owned.

Would this be the day's final indignity, they wondered?

It was unlikely.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Announcer) Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, the ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peters Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC, Beaufort.

♪ ♪