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Gentry's Journey
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Gentry's Journey
Literary Legacies and Truths: Laura Hunter's Journey from Teaching to Storytelling
Discover the inspirational journey of Ms. Laura Hunter, an accomplished literary artist who transitioned from teaching to writing, driven by her passion and supported by her family. Laura shares her experiences teaching gifted children and university freshmen, as well as her dedication to preserving her family's history through storytelling. Her personal journey not only highlights the importance of motivation and support but also emphasizes the role of literature in capturing the essence of our ancestors.
Through powerful narratives, Laura sheds light on the emotional and social impact of displacement, using stories of Hurricane Katrina as a starting point. Her novel "Beloved Mother" and her exploration of the sterilization of young Black girls in Alabama serve as vivid reminders of historical injustices. These stories stress the importance of remembering history and the need for awareness, while also confronting modern censorship challenges faced by authors tackling racial issues.
For aspiring writers, Laura offers invaluable insights into the craft of writing, emphasizing the importance of research and patience. She shares her experiences with the publishing world, drawing parallels between writing and other crafts that require care and attention. Listeners will gain from her reflections on feedback, the resilience needed in the literary field, and the joy of storytelling, underscoring the universal desire for connection and understanding through literature.
Good evening everyone. Welcome to Gentry's Journey. We have Ms Laura Hunter. She has definitely established herself in the literary world and we're thankful to have her today. As usual, we're going to just start off with an inspirational scripture and everything give thanks. 1 Thessalonians, 5 and 18. Now we're going to just dive into it. All right, Miss Laura, as we were saying before we got started, you love working as a literary artist. Yes, ma'am, by virtue of your resume, Can you tell us a little bit about you?
Speaker 2:Well, I have been a composition literature teacher for about 30 years, and then I shifted over to manager for the senior citizen program here in Tuscaloosa and at that point I was retired. I had to retire, and so my husband said what would you like to do most of all? And I said I would like to be able to write. And he has given me that freedom for about 10, 11 years, and I have spent my time, just as I told you, playing with words.
Speaker 1:And when you use that phrase, playing with words, my mind immediately went to education, and so you have answered that question. You have been an instructor, instructor and that is beautiful. So the two definitely go together, especially when it comes to literature. Yes, ma'am, so I'm just. I saw, that was, that was great, that was great to hear.
Speaker 2:Now I was fortunate enough in my teaching to be allowed to teach the, enough in my teaching to be allowed to teach the children who were gifted, and then I moved on to teaching at the university level. I had a great deal of learning to do when I encountered the freshmen in freshman composition, because they don't always, they don't always come to class. No they don't, you know, they don't, they think they can learn it, just soak it in and that's what I was getting ready to say.
Speaker 1:They just think they can absorb it all. Yes, ma'am, they do. They don't realize this is a whole new ball game from high school.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you a brief story about one of my students. He was more frequently not in class than he was in class Okay, frequently not in class than he was in class. And at the university at that time, if you missed three sessions with no justification you automatically fail. It was in freshman composition and he automatically failed because he had missed most of the semester and he had no justification for it no doctor's appointments or anything. So after the semester was over I got called into the office for a telephone call and it was this young man's mother and she said to me why did my son fail? And I explained to her about the rule and you have to be in class, turn in assignments. And he didn't come to class. And she said to me why didn't you call me? And I thought I understand why he didn't come to class because mama had backed him up for years.
Speaker 1:Yes, she had no one told him. You're responsible for your work.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Oh man, bless his heart, but he learned, I'm sure. Yes, you know, it is a shame when the students come in as freshmen and leave out as freshmen.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is yeah, it happens more than we would like to think. But that's students for you. I don't know if it's the newness of the environment, because everybody does not go off to college, they sort of stay local, but it's still new. No one's going to hold your hand when you enter the door, no one's going to guide you, they're going to give you the syllabus, they're going to tell you what their expectations are and they're going to get started lecturing Right. So it is truly up to you to understand the assignment well.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the the students, regardless of what level they are high school or college or uh they don't know how to handle the freedom that they're given, and so they take advantage of that freedom, and sometimes it backfires on them.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's true, and I have seen that more times than I can count, and not that I'm, I saw it as a student, I'll just put it like that. So I didn't see where it was going to change. Only you have. You have got to want that change. You have got to want to make the most of it, the best of it, because it is decision making time and you're making decisions for your life. Yes, ma'am, ok, now you are an accomplished writer. Well, thank you. You do poetry as well.
Speaker 1:Yes ma'am, you do fiction, yes, ma'am, and you've published articles. Can you tell us a little bit about each one of those?
Speaker 2:They're all related to. One thing that I wanted to do was give my. I don't have a large family, but I wanted my grandchildren and my children to celebrate or at least to know about what my life and how I had lived it was my life and how I had lived it was and so I started out writing short stories. I thought that would be easier than anything else. I tried, and I went from there to writing poetry about family members, so that each family member that they're for my children, their great-grandchildren, their great-grandmother they never knew her and she was a very special person to me as my grandmother, and so I wrote about her and the obstacles she encountered, and my maternal grandparents as well, and they have cousins that they've never known, and I wrote poems about them. I started in a program it no longer exists, but this is a program that was in Sweetwater, tennessee, on writing memoir, and when I got into that I found that it was easier to write fiction than it was to write memoir, and some people in the group encouraged me to try for a novel, and I was really hesitant because a novel seemed so huge a challenge. But I eventually tried and succeeded with that, and now I have had.
Speaker 2:I wrote, I've written a number of freelance articles just to explain to people about people that they might might have known, for example, jack Marshall, who owned the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise for three states. He was a pianist and he played piano for Elvis Presley. He was here in Tuscaloosa, he played at Elvis Presley's mother's funeral and I thought that was. The average person doesn't know that it would be so fascinating to identify people that have little, that have big histories but little not. The general public knows very little about them. I think one of my most successful pieces came from Katrina.
Speaker 2:I have a cousin and her family who live in New Orleans, and after Katrina, after the water receded, I went to New Orleans and interviewed her and the experiences that she had as a single person, a mother, a wife, a dog owner how did she cope with living through Katrina, with living through Katrina? And that just made for me and for others who read it, a more personal response to something that was just something you saw on the news. You know you might see on a sign Jack Marshall, kfc. Well, that doesn't mean anything to you unless you know who Jack Marshall was, and so that's the sort of articles that I have written about individuals and I've really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:I have an article out to Buzz Year right now about poverty in the South. I haven't heard from them and I don't know if I will hear from them, but I was fortunate enough to know different levels of poverty and people who lived in different levels of poverty throughout the South, and the person who is not poverty ridden today has no idea how they live and they should have. There are certain stories that belong to the public, because if a person does not know that story then he cannot know compassion. I'm sorry, he cannot know compassion for the person who has to live through it and we are not human beings if we don't have compassion.
Speaker 1:I agree with you totally and when you were speaking regarding Katrina, one of my author friends lived in New Orleans at that time and she has written a piece regarding her experience with basically escaping Katrina and how she felt. She was a college student at the time. They made it out okay, but her story was so gripping because, like you say, it's personal. You get basically an inside view of what happened and I can't erase that Now. I saw what was on television and it broke my heart. I was hurt because I guess because I couldn't help but to hear her personal story it puts you there and, for lack of a better term, I grieved for her. Now she just told this story about six months ago and it really made you think a little bit harder and a little bit different, because you know, we see things on TV.
Speaker 2:For example, my husband and I were out in California when Katrina hit and so when we came back we saw commentators say there is nothing alive in the Ninth Ward. Well, okay, we went to New Orleans and went to the Ninth Ward and I thought I will see rats, I will see grass, I will see weeds, I will maybe see snakes or lizards. We went to the Ninth Ward ward and there was nothing. It was as if something had wiped life off the face of the earth because the ocean water had come in and poisoned the soul. Nothing could live there. And that made a tremendous impact on me. I would never have thought that from a commentator saying there's nothing living in the Ninth Ward, mm-hmm. And I understand that they cannot say all there is to say about it Because they're limited with time, but I can Because I'm not limited by time, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I don't. I'm not trying to say that they Want to cast Cast. It's negative anyway when we see that the water has risen and where it is on the buildings, just from television. But when you go through New Orleans and you see the water lines where it was on a building, it brings it, you know, it makes it more of a visual for you. That's correct and, like I said, it's heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking then. Her story was such a beautiful story and so well written. It put you there.
Speaker 2:Has. She had it published.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we did an anthology and it was titled Women of the Waiting Room, and that's where I read her story. Oh, it's one thing to you know, for people to tell you you know I lived through Katrina, or you know I got out in time for Katrina but she put it in words and, like I said, it was beautifully written but it makes your it's emotional. It was emotional for me. Yes, ma'am, I understand, yeah, it was emotional for me. But and then, you know, she was kind of like where do I go from here? I had to change colleges, I had to do this, I had to live with these people, you know. So it doesn't just. It upsets your lifestyle in so many ways.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so much of that happens in this country, and if we're not there and not a part of it and nobody tells us the personal personalizes it for us, then we don't know that we don't we don't know.
Speaker 2:you are about the people in new york, in the state of new york, at the beginning of covid 19, who were buried in mass graves. That sounds like something that belongs in a third world country and it's hard to comprehend that. Not that I want to be a part of that, but I'm saying so much happens, so much is happening in our country now that we can't literally, we literally can't relate to it.
Speaker 1:I agree with you and I understand and truly hear what you're saying. It's one thing to hear it, it's another thing to live it. Yes, ma'am, it's totally different and I think that's why sometimes we can be desensitized to some things, because we're not a part of it, even though we're living and we're seeing what's on television, we hear what's on the news, but we're not in the middle of the massive escape, of the massive getting protected. We're not in that. But you can always think, you know how horrible that must be, you know, but until you have been through it, it sheds a whole new light on it.
Speaker 1:Yes, ma'am, for sure, you know, because I work with people who were displaced and I think maybe all of us have who were displaced, and I think maybe all of us have who were displaced when Katrina came and they, you know, they didn't really talk about it, they just said you know we just got out and you know, now I'm here working and you know my children are in a new school. They just kind of normalized it. But I never heard anyone go into detail with their story the way that she did.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there were people who came from New Orleans and our church has several families and I tutored the children who were out of school and because of the difference now this sounds condescending, and I don't mean it to be, because our Alabama schools, which are not supposed to be very good, were educating these children better than they were being educated in inner city, new Orleans we ended up tutoring a lot of the children to try to get them up to grade level so that if they went back or if they went somewhere else, they'd be able to survive yes, you don't want them to miss out on too much more.
Speaker 1:It's basically what you're saying you know, you want to get them ready to advance, because that's truly. You know, life altering and there's so many processes that you have to process through it. Yes, adults will process it, but, you know, think about what the children can't process or can't express themselves in certain ways express themselves in certain ways Exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, that was my take on my freelance articles. I guess I've done about a dozen or more of them and I've spent most of my time lately working on novels, because I was fortunate enough to have my first novel be a real success. It was Beloved Mother and it told the story of three women in the Appalachians from about 1923 to 1964 and what their life was like during the war years. And well, they weren't impacted by the war because they were living in the mountains, so they were so far into the mountains. But that book won the international prize for the top prize, grand prize for the best novel of the year over 50 states and 30 countries, excuse me and it's gone on to win 10 more awards.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Yes, I wrote it almost as a poem. There's a great deal of poetic writing in there. And then I took 16 of the short stories that I had written, that had been prize winners, and put them together in a collection. And then the story, the one book, that touches my heart most. You know things are not like they were for the majority of people during the Depression. Well, maybe I can't say that. That may not be true, but I was at church in the Welcome Center one Wednesday night and there was a calendar lying on the counter and it was open to the month of July. It was an unusual calendar that our associate pastor had brought in and on each day of the month it has listed the specific events for the Black Society. And I looked at July 24th 1974. I was just drawn to that little box and July 24th 1974, there was a Supreme Court case that involved sterilizing young black girls in the state of Alabama and I thought I didn't know that. I'm an educated person and I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I thought sterilization went out when they shut down. Bryce, you know, damn Bryce, you know, when I started researching it I found there was. I went all the way back to Carrie Buck in 1924 and the issue of whether of sterilizing her and taking her child away from her because she couldn't speak clearly and she eventually got her child back. Long story. But hers went to the Supreme Court. But to have it happen here, when I was living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and there was a Supreme Court case going on involving the state of Alabama, A clinic outside Montgomery had taken the federal money that Johnson allocated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and they had used it to establish a clinic and they were sending girls to Mississippi because they needed an appendectomy. Well, they would come back and they would be sterilized, they would have had a hysterectomyomy or they would have had tubal ligation and they were the. What took them to the Supreme Court and was the fact that they were using experimental birth control medication on young girls beginning in puberty. They didn't know how much to give them. That was their goal to make that determination on how much to give them or how often to give it to them, what it would do to them and a number of females committed suicide because of the impact it had on them.
Speaker 2:And I said I asked everybody in my circle and outside my circle, did you know about this? They said no, I never heard such a thing. And my facilitator in Tennessee said you don't need to write this book. And I kept saying yes, I do, yes, I do. Everybody needs to know what we have done to each other and I wrote the book.
Speaker 2:It has been a summer of no rain. It has been blocked, as they say in Florida. They aren't banning books in Florida, they're blocking them. A person if a person wants to buy a book or teach a book or put a book in their library, they have to get permission from a higher up, the powers that be. And my book doesn't suit the powers that be.
Speaker 2:It is a story of a young girl that I created and the impact this experimentation had on her and her mother. She leaves the story an empty vessel, but she survives. It's a sad story, but the average person doesn't know the story. I agree. The average person needs to know the story, needs to know what our government has done to our people, especially people of color, and when I start to talk about it. A number of people say, oh, that's what happened in Tuskegee with the syphilis. No, it's not. This in Tuskegee were men, these were just puberty. Young girls, yes, young girls, yes, and it's well. I found in all my research that hitler sent his some of his cohorts over to the united states prior to the 1930s, when he was beginning to take power, to see how the United States was succeeding in sterilizing people. That's a terrible indictment on our society.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't sound very nice, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:For him to say well, I'm gonna go find out who's doing this best and take my patterns after them, so he comes over to the united states, and or he sends his people over to the united states and I, I don't know. We just can't seem to learn from making mistakes somehow.
Speaker 1:And that is the purpose of some mistakes is to learn from them. Yes, definitely, so we can do better, yes, and live better, have more quality of life.
Speaker 2:Definitely so.
Speaker 1:The book sounds very interesting. Now you released that in 2019?.
Speaker 2:No, ma'am, I released Beloved Mother in 2019. Okay, okay, I released Summer of no Rain in 2022. Okay, okay, and I'm waiting to hear from Texas to see what they're going to do with it. I don't know why Florida blocked it. It's because it's about sort of the heroine, so to speak, is a mixed race child, or if it's because a child of color survives, or if it's because they don't want to know what the white people did to the Black society, and I don't know. They haven't told me why they've blocked it.
Speaker 1:That was going to be my next question. Do they give you a reason as to why they would block a book?
Speaker 2:None whatsoever, Just as if what's the reason for blocking To Kill a Mockingbird?
Speaker 1:I get it, but I don't get it Exactly. It's literary. It's literature, it's reading. Some people read for knowledge, some people read for fun, but either way, you're going to pick some knowledge out of whatever you read Just a sentence or two. So it's like you're hindering people who enjoy doing something that brings them relaxation and pleasure and knowledge. If that be the case, be the case.
Speaker 2:Well, I've wondered if the people who make these decisions don't want books out there that the reader will remember. You know, I can read all kinds of romance books or beach reads or these sort of things, and I'll have no idea what I read after it's over. But then there are some books, like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that you never get over. To Kill a Mockingbird you just don't get over it.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And I have requested for my sister. What I want for Christmas is the book James. It's the novel that has been written by about the adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the slave Jim's perspective, and I think that's going to be, I think that's just going to be fascinating.
Speaker 1:So do I. So, yes, from that perspective and that's another thing about reading it opens up your mind to so many things yes, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that we have to have the ability to discern what's right and what's wrong.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you cannot know what is right unless you know what is wrong. Some poet said that I think it was maybe Robert Frost, but I may be way off base. You cannot know. I know that Emerson said it in much more flowery language, but we cannot. I cannot know what is wrong unless I have something that is right to compare it with.
Speaker 1:Very true. Very true, because if your habit or your lifestyle is to do something a particular way, you don't know if it's wrong until someone tells you Right, that's what you're accustomed to having.
Speaker 2:That's especially true for children. They don't know it's wrong until they reach, unless somebody gives them advice on it or until they reach a point in maturity where they can discern between right and wrong. I've written. My last book is called the Importance of being Ip. Ip is a beaver is a beaver and his name is Ip because he says Ip, ip, ip, ip. And the story is about a child who is 11 years old and her family is falling apart. How many families in this country are falling apart right as we speak? But her mother runs the father off and then mom goes off and leaves the children under the responsibility of a useless neighbor and she steals a beaver out of the swamp and she takes him home because she's going to generate love for this beaver and the beaver will love her back. But things don't always work out that way. She has a hard time making a wild animal into a beaver. Okay, especially because this beaver eats the legs off her mother's new kitchen chairs Some really beaver-like behavior. I can tell you all about beavers.
Speaker 1:Oh man, and how did you come about the beaver? I mean because studying for Ip.
Speaker 2:A number of years ago we had a special science teacher where I was teaching high school and he would take his kids, his students, down in the Sipsi Swamp every spring. It was a standard spring field trip and one time the kids found a kit, a little beaver that would fit in both your hands, and there was nothing to indicate that he was lost or his parents were lost. Anyway, he was in destitute straits. So the science teacher brought him back to school. He raised him in the science room. The beaver was so comfortable with the kids that he, when the classes changed, he'd go out with him, walk the halls, come into somebody else's room, check it out. He'd go to the bathroom with the kids, taught this beaver to use the commode. Now they couldn't get him to flush, but one summer the science teacher and his family went on vacation and I had the honor, with my two children, of beaver sitting all summer. So we learned a great deal about the beaver and I researched beavers as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, and when you're on off, especially, in my humble opinion, correct me when you're doing a really, I guess, any topic, you want to know a little bit about it, so you have to do a little bit of research.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely. Yeah, I spent three. The Cherokee Nation in North Carolina. What was? The Cherokees that stayed behind from the Trail of Tears and Andrew Jackson? From the Trail of Tears and Andrew Jackson, I spent three years studying the Cherokee, their beliefs, their names for the different months of the year. So much so that I have two characters in this book, beloved Mother, the sun and the moon, and how they the sun track like keep the uh tides running correctly, and sort of thing. So the sun and the moon are characters in the book that the human characters are never aware of. So, yes, I spent three years working on just the Cherokee Nation with that book, but that book took me eight years to write.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was going to be one of my next questions. Is there a time frame that you have or that you put upon yourself, or you just write freely until you feel as though you have it the way you?
Speaker 2:want it. I had hoped at one time that it teaches Sadie the importance of being herself, not worrying about being somebody else, and I had wanted that to be out by Christmas, but that was a foolish thought and so I just said, well, it'll be out when it's out, and that's been the case of all of them.
Speaker 1:That sounds great, because what is the rush?
Speaker 2:Yes, If you want to put out a quality product what is the rush?
Speaker 1:And it just to be honest. It just irks me for the publisher to try to put out something that's not top notch. Yes, you want it to be a like I say, a quality product, and I myself have experienced someone who just wanted to meet their deadline, but I cautioned them. This needs to be a quality product. It needs to be edited. You know, everything needs to be correct, or you know, send it back to me so I can make some correct. Oh yeah, we'll do that.
Speaker 1:Well, that didn't happen and I was a little niffed about it, to say the least. Like I said, it won't happen again with you know, um, and and we had a very, um, mature conversation, you know it wasn't any nail biting, hair pulling and things of that nature. I just kept reminding her of my preference prior to the project and I said now, this is what I said, this was my expectation and it didn't work out the way that I felt like it should. She said but look at the accolades that came. I said that doesn't mean much to me if it's not a quality product.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean anything to me. And I said and you went in with this, I think you were rushing to get the job done when it really shouldn't have been a rush on it. It shouldn't have, it just shouldn't have been. Sometimes we need to take our time and do it right. I learned how to sew in home ec and, uh, you know, in high school when they had it I don't know if they still have I had that, yes, yes, I had that. So so you learn the value of patience when you are sewing. It looks good, you know, when you see the pattern and the picture on the pattern, but it takes work to get it there to get my mother.
Speaker 2:My mother was a master seamstress. Okay, I'll I'll tell you a personal story. Okay, I was in in the 10th grade. The fella I married was in the 12th grade and I we, I was in this sewing business and I was my collar wouldn't lie flat and I was ironing the collar and I tried this way and that way and I ended up I was just standing there talking to the caller to tell the caller you got to do this. It turned out my caller was on upside down but I was talking to my caller and my future husband walked by and he said to his best friend don't let me ever have anything to do with that girl. She's crazy. Don't let me ever have anything to do with that girl, she's crazy. Unfortunately for me, he changed his mind and that's the beautiful story.
Speaker 1:It is a beautiful story, but I will tell you my experience with getting frustrated. I would just have to walk away from the machine, from my bedroom, from everything, take a breath, maybe an hour, come back and everything would come back together.
Speaker 2:Well, the extent my mother allowed me near her sewing projects and her machine was to iron the patterns flat so they could be folded and put back in the envelope. Okay, there's a certain age level that has no idea what we're talking about?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely no. They know nothing what we're saying, but we do. That's okay, that is okay, but yes, but it goes back to saying don't rush a project, take a deep breath, you may have to walk away from it and come back. You may have a fresher idea. When I came back to that machine it all worked out. So I don't know if I just got frustrated and things weren't working out, but we're just saying do not rush the process.
Speaker 2:I agree 100%.
Speaker 1:I know Now that's a tidbit of information for a future writer. Writer. What other um tips or tools would you give to someone who wants to aspire to be an author?
Speaker 2:you have to read. I mean that literally, you have to read, and you have to read quality writing. You can't spend all your time, as I said, and this is no derogatory comment toward the writers who are, you know, Harlequin romance writers. That's a different kind of writing, a formula writing. If you want to write quality work, you have to read quality work. And one of the things that I found helped me because those sentence patterns get stuck in your head and you will not realize it, but you will begin to write sentence patterns, not like William Faulkner or James Joyce, not like William Faulkner or James Joyce, but like other writers have done, like Rick Bragg his tone, his mood in writing, like Alex Haley who wrote Roots. Yes, and I have found now you might find it strange, but my all-time favorite novelist is Zora Neale Hurston.
Speaker 2:Mine too oh really yes, yes, yes. Book. Their Eyes Were Watching God and I'll open it up and I will type paragraph after paragraph directly from her book, because that puts the rhythm of the sentence, it puts the key words where she emphasizes words it brings to mind when she uses the mule. There are things in my life that have been as impressive as the mule was in her life, and usually it's dogs in my life. But they're to simply pick up one of your favorite books and begin on page one, paragraph one, and type it out, print it, throw it away or delete it.
Speaker 2:But it gives you a different perspective. It trains your ear as to how the sentence should be structured, ear as to how the sentence should be structured. And another suggestion I have if you have, if the writer has, excuse me a computer that will talk to you, you can. My computer talks to me and I can turn on the talk and it will read back to me what I have written. And that's extremely helpful because that tells me where I have bungled a sentence, because the computer had a problem reading that sentence or stumbled over a part of the sentence, that tells me that sentence has to be restructured. Now I know that doesn't? That probably doesn't make any sense. Yes, it does.
Speaker 1:I mean for anyone who is writing and who uses that tool, because when you're writing or typing it out or keyboarding it, it's just thoughts coming from your head down to it. When you reread it, then you can restructure what you have written restructure what you have written.
Speaker 2:You know, I was fortunate enough to get a grant once, uh, when I was teaching. Uh, I got a grant. This was when computers were brand new things and you could daisy chain them to each other and, uh, we were being taught how to program computers. Well, well, we didn't. I didn't want to know how to program a computer, I wanted to see what a student would do with a computer. So I got a grant to buy a room full of computers and I took my least successful class and we met in the computer room and we, everything they wrote, they wrote on the computer. There seems to be a connection between the hand and the brain, whether you're using a pencil or whether you're using a typewriter or whether you're using a computer, and a computer makes it much easier. And I was astonished at how their writing skills improved.
Speaker 1:That's good, because, my humble opinion, we write how we speak, we write how we speak, but we can still get in a hurry because we're thinking and putting it down at the same time. Oh, that's not what I meant to say. It's nothing to do with me, things like that. It's systems of checks and balances, yes, so. So you know, it's systems of checks and balances, yes, so those are tips and tools that you have for them. Do?
Speaker 2:you have any more.
Speaker 1:Eavesdrop. Now that's my favorite one, because, yeah, I'm a fiction writer and uh, yeah, it's not that I'm eavesdropping you just said it loud enough for me to hear, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was working on a short story once that dealt with um with coal miners, and I came from coal mining company country and I stopped in a little service station that served sandwiches and I sat down because and sat there and pretended to be writing in a notebook, but actually I was listening to what these men said to each other so I could know what a coal miner would say to another coal miner if he wasn't concerned about giving a particular impression. And you get such valuable dialogue that way If you let the people talk and then you use what they have said. Not what the English teacher said in the ninth grade had to be on the page, but you have the people say what they actually mean and write it as they said it. So I think it's important for language, it's important for body language, it's important because you can listen to how they make their inflections, as to whether they're going to be upset or humored or whatever, and you pick up on the emotions as well as the words.
Speaker 1:True, very true. And one thing there's a genre for everyone. When you hear something from someone else and it sounds great and it may not be your thing, so you have to find your niche. But if it's a passion you have about a certain thing, you need to write about it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I had one instructor once tell me always write about what you're scared of or what terrifies you. That doesn't necessarily produce a terror story, or a terror, a horror story or a horror novel, but it allows you to say these things, uh, honestly, because they're things that bother you.
Speaker 1:Okay, and once it's like Just putting your feelings out on paper, and once you have done that, the emotions aren't as hard, they're not as heavy hitting as they have been before you put it on paper.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right. You are absolutely right and I've written some things sometimes and my husband is frequently my reader and he would say you don't want to say that that's too personal, but it has to be personal for somebody to relate to it.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's where our the Christian nonfiction anthologies that I have participated in. It needs to be personal, but you know how personal you need to go, but you still need to be able to resonate with the reader.
Speaker 2:Right, and you can't be personal enough for the reader to recognize someone they know Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, you know. So yeah, there are some wins with that as well. So, yeah, there are some wins with that as well. Now I know I met you at the Authors Expo. Yes, ma'am, what else do you do to get out, to get your work out?
Speaker 2:Well, I put it on Facebook. Okay, and here's an interesting aside On my Facebook post I say personal message me your address and I'll send you the book and then you can send me a check. Never has anybody failed to send me a check and you know, somebody might say oh, don't do that, You'll lose books. I've not lost one book by advertising on Facebook and I go to bookstores. I'm going to Barnes Noble Saturday and I'll spend some time there, and I have a radio interview here for the Tuscaloosa area Friday. So you know, just try to get the word out, but it's difficult, it's a challenge. If I were not retired and had my retirement to live on, then I couldn't be able to do this.
Speaker 1:Oh, I agree, I agree, I agree. People have asked me.
Speaker 1:Basically, I mean just straight how much did you make off the book? I said is that a thing? Yeah, is that a thing? I said that's no sustainable income. I mean, unless you're writing a contract, or you, you know you, someone has signed you to a contract, uh, with simon and schuster. You know some of the big wigs out there, uh, no, uh, you're doing this because you love it. If you get something from it, if you get some monetary gain from it, then that's fine, but you can't count it you have to you have to your name has to be Stephen King John Gershwin yeah, stephen King, you know and John, what's his name?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love him, john Gresham, because I have read so many of his work. I mean, I haven't. I love it. But then I went back and started working on my master's so he kind of fell off my radar. But I love his work and you know he's an attorney. You know by profession. I don't know if he'll try cases or not, but you know when your books turn into movies. I think you're doing okay.
Speaker 2:Uh, or you've got. You've got some pretty, uh, significant clout with somebody who knows, absolutely, absolutely. You live next door to Matthew McConaughey, yeah yeah, you live up the street from Oprah Winfrey, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's what my publisher she's sweet as she can be Her philosophy is everyone, living and dead, has a story to tell. Tell your story. And her name is Laquita Parks. And so she said you know, oprah can say I'm Oprah, I'm Oprah, I'm Oprah, and everybody's going to purchase her book at whatever price she sets it. You know, but that's just in jest. But it means something, like you say, you have to have some clout or a good friend and a good neighbor in Matthew McConaughey or John Gresham or someone of that magnitude. But we write because we love it. We write and we want other people to enjoy what we have written. That's right. We write and we want other people to enjoy what we have written. That's right. So it's a win. It's not a loss. In my humble opinion, it's a win. You have an opinion that's not close to humble. It's a win.
Speaker 1:Everybody's opinion matters for some point absolutely, but um, when you're doing what you enjoy doing, it's a win. Yes, it has been great having you. Do you have any closing comments for the listening audience?
Speaker 2:I will say don't be discouraged because you get rejections. At least you have rejections. At least you have rejections, at least someone has read what you wrote and thought it important enough to let you know that it needs something else. Maybe even contact them and let them know that you are sincere about this business. And I had a story that was not accepted by Livingston Press and I went to one of the editors and I said what was wrong with my story? Why wasn't it accepted? And it had to do with the ending, excuse me. I changed the ending and it was accepted by another press. So don't be discouraged if you get rejections. Know that you have done something that can be bettered and know that you have something to tell the world. I mean, we say everybody has a story, but everybody can look at someone else's story and learn from that, and they won't know about it unless you share it with them.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. That was going to be my closing question regarding feedback. How did you really feel about feedback? So you answered that and that's definitely a great take on it.
Speaker 2:You will learn something from it, or you could better something, yeah, so you know, yeah, don't be upset it doesn't bother me for um someone to say uh, there used to be a time when people would send you a little uh, three by four card and it said, sorry, your work is not available at this time, and I got about three of those, and then they quit sending them, so you just don't hear back from them. Well, that doesn't mean that you didn't have something of quality to say in what you submitted, of quality to say in what you submitted, but you can submit it to others and you can also say that what you have to say is important, find out why they didn't accept it and then go from there, sure sure.
Speaker 1:Well, Ms Laura Hunter, I have truly enjoyed having this conversation with you today. It's been my pleasure. The pleasure is truly all mine. I have enjoyed every bit of it, still learning and growing in this literary world. I've taken some of your tips and your gems and just some of the tools in your toolkit to utilize those. I know now I'm not as far off as I thought I was.
Speaker 2:No, do you have access to this podcast that the general public could?
Speaker 1:Hopefully you will have it in about a week or less. Okay, it will go out on YouTube and it will be out on basically where you find your podcast international and national but you will definitely get a copy to utilize for yourself and post it for your friends. Thank you so much. Yes, absolutely. It is my pleasure. You have a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year.
Speaker 2:Yes, indeed, thank you again. Yes indeed.
Speaker 1:Thank you again, ms Laura Hunter. I do appreciate having you on Gentry's Journey speaking to our audience, giving us so much knowledge, so much insight. You have a wonderful holiday. Thank you again.