Terry Kay, an award-winning novelist and screenwriter, was raised in Royston, GA (home of Ty Cobb) as the eleventh of twelve children.  A graduate of West Georgia Junior College and LaGrange College, Kay began his writing career at a weekly newspaper in Decatur, GA before moving on to write for the Atlanta Journal as a sportswriter and film/theater critic.  From there, he was tricked by his friend and novelist Pat Conroy into writing a novel B from a few short stories came his first novel, The Year the Lights Came On (1976).

His other novels include, After Eli (1981), Dark Thirty (1984), and in 1990 he published his signature novel, To Dance With the White Dog, which has taken it's place among Southern literary classics as well as being a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie staring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn (Cronyn won an Emmy for Best Actor in the role of Same Peek).  A bestseller, this novel has gone on to bridge the Pacific Ocean by selling over two million copies in Japan.

Kay's novel, The Runaway (1997), was also a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie staring Dean Cain and Maya Angelou.  In addition, his most recent novel, The Valley of Light (2003, Simon & Schuster), is in the production stages for another Hallmark movie.  His other books include The Kidnapping of Aaron Greene (1999, a novel), Taking Lottie Home (2000, a novel), Special Kay: The Wisdom of Terry Kay (2000, a collection of essays), and To Whom the Angel Spoke: A Story of the Christmas (a children's book).

In the past he has hosted The Southern Voice, a PBS affiliate series on Southern literature, and has been named Georgia Author of the Year.  He recently won the Townsend Award for his recent novel, The Valley of Light.  His books have been printed in numerous countries and translated in over ten languages.

As I drove down the long dirt driveway to Kay's Athens, GA home, deeply secluded by a forest of trees, I wondered if he ever has any trick or treaters at Halloween.  When I asked him, he said that the first few years they bought some candy for the kids, but not one person has ever walked all the way up his driveway, so they've stopped buying any.  This interview was conducted on February 23, 2004 at his home.  During the interview, he was interrupted to answer the telephone from newspaper and magazine writers needing a quote, but he asked them to call back later.  A gentleman in the truest sense, he had devoted his time to the interview in a relaxing and informal way that one felt at ease as if two friend were watching a baseball game on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Walsh:  It's been almost twenty years since we first met each other and went to the Blue Ribbon Grill for the initial interview. You talked about being an executive for Oglethorpe Power and wanting to get to the point where you could leave that job and write full-time. I assume you have done that.

Kay:  I left it in 1989.

Walsh:  I also assume that is one of the reason you stayed in Atlanta because you wanted to write but you obviously had to earn a living.

Kay:  Yes, that's true. I did have to work. I probably could have found employment in my thirties or forties over here [Athens] and it probably would have been satisfying, too. Most people don't believe me when I say this, but the truth of the matter is, the only great ambition I have ever had is too make a living for my family, to provide for them. That's it.  Whether it's in writing or working on the newspaper or public relations.  Whatever it was, my ambition was to provide a decent living for my family.

Honestly, when I look at it from the perspective of being a parent, I made a huge mistake. I should have gotten those kids out of Atlanta. They are all right, but just all right. They haven't had the things and experiences I was fortunate to have. A whole lot of it has to do with this strange social phenomenon that I think is a great topic to write about. When I grew up we had a unit system. There was our family within our very defined community and we went to our junior high school then we went to our high school which, my God, I think there were forty-three students in my senior class. We all had an identity. We had some sense of self-value. I watched my kids go though these high schools systems where they have hundreds graduating. It was almost impossible for them to have any kind of identity. I had one daughter who was very much in the clique - she had lots of identity. And, she's done incredibly well and I'm very proud of her. But I wish I had had them in an environment similar to the one I enjoyed. I really do. I just think it's getting worse.

I think the reason Atlanta was good for me in terms of what has happened, and the fact that I have made a living writing fiction for almost fifteen years now, is a remarkable thing. I heard the statistic not long ago, and it is probably true, if you discount those people who have income from another source -- their spouse, inheritance or work another job like a lot of teachers do -- there are fewer than three hundred people in America who make a living writing fiction. Now that is a stunning statistic.

Walsh:  Writing as their sole source of income?

Kay:  Sole source of income. I didn't know that statistic until a couple of years ago, but I was doing that. I was making a living writing fiction. When I heard the statistic, it scared the hell out of me to be honest with you. Had I known that I wouldn't have taken the risk. But when I left it [working], I left it at [age] fifty, I thought I had a good enough reputation in Atlanta in public relations and the corporate world and journalism and everything else that it wouldn't be difficult to find a job with somebody. It was impossible. Nobody is going to hire you if you are fifty years old. They're just not going to do it. Even my closest friends who knew I was going to struggle when I first left -- and I did go through a period of time where I was struggling -- wouldn't call me back when I called to ask if they knew of a job somewhere. They knew what I wanted, but they also knew they couldn't hire me. So it (writing) was a gamble that paid off but it was a gamble out of ignorance and naiveté. It was not a gamble that was thoroughly thought out. And yet, still, when I look at Atlanta, I also know that if I had not been in the position I was in there working for the newspaper, if all those little things had not fallen into place, I would never have written a book at all. Never.  Never. I wouldn't have done it. But because of the circumstances and what I consider to be good fortune, it occurred because I was in Atlanta. I'm not sure that it would have happened anywhere else. It wouldn't have happened in Athens. There are a fine group of writers over here [Athens] but they have not enjoyed the profile that I have enjoyed. I'm basically older than the rest of them now, but when I started writing fiction in the mid-70s, my friend, there weren't but ten people in the state of Georgia writing fiction, being published. Ten. Maybe ten. There are more than that within a fifteen mile radius of where you are sitting right now. And I mean being published by some pretty respectable houses.

Walsh:  When you left the corporate world in 1989, your next book was To Dance with the White Dog, which was just a phenomenal success.

Kay:  And I was fortunate.

Walsh:  And, not just in the U.S., but internationally, specifically, the pacific rim.

Kay:  And that was a real surprise for me because everyone in New York turned it down.  My agent, Harvey Klinger in New York, when I sent him the manuscript, (I actually sent it to him reluctantly), I didn't think he would care too much for it. After he read it, he called me and he said this is a beautiful book. It's very touching and I will not be able to sell it in New York. I said, AWhy?@ He said because it's a beautiful book and it's very touching. (laughing) It just won't sell. It runs against what the flow (of what is being published). And, he sent it out and everyone turned it down. I said, let's try Algonquin Books. I knew Shannon  Ravenel there. I have great respect for Shannon. I just adore her. She also turned it down. It's the only time I've ever been wounded, emotionally, by this business at all. Because I've had a lot of stuff rejected. But when she rejected it, I really felt bad B oh my God.

Walsh:  Did she ever say why?

Kay:  No, she didn't. I ran into her maybe three or four years after the book was published, and she came up to me and hugged me and she said, AI made a huge mistake.@ I said, AYes, you did. Yes, you did. I have to tell you that it hurt me when you turned it down. The rest of them didn't bother me.@ It's because of my affection for Shannon. But, Margaret Quinlin over at Peachtree, when she read it, she called and said AI will send a contract out by taxi cab today.@ I said, ANo, we've got time to wait.@ I'm grateful they published the book. I wish they were able to do more with the promotion, but regional publishers just don't have the money.  I think had they invested more into the promotion of the book, they would have gained a lot more out of it.

Walsh:  But it still sold a ton.

Kay:  It sold a great many books, yet from what they keep telling me at Peachtree, it's not sold that many hardbacks. Still, it sold a great many [in paperback] with Washington Square Press, and it sold two million copies in Japan in a year.

Walsh:  What do you attribute that to?

Kay:  It's just one of those things that occasionally happens, something that catches on. From my understanding the Japanese have a great reverence for older people and they also have a great respect for mysticism, and they saw in this dog, a lot of mysticism. I didn't see it because the dog was real to me. I wasn't trying to make it mystic. I was just trying to write a story that I remembered, one inspired by the death of my parents. But I think those two things were important in its success in Japan, plus it was picked up by the national media -- radio, newspaper and print -- over there. I think that's what happened. You see that in America occasionally. Cold Mountain was written up in a very glowing piece by a major magazine -- Harper's, I think n and it immediately became a best seller. I'm not sure about this, but I've heard it had been turned down by several publishers. Yet, it got that national attention, and because it got that national attention, it sold. It's like the influence of the Oprah book club.

Walsh:  At that point in 1989 you stopped working to become a full-time fiction writer, then To Dance with the White Dog is published and sells two million copies -- that pretty much set you up for the long term that if writing doesn't work out, you are at least comfortable and can survive and write.

Kay:  No. Not at all.

Walsh:  Even with two million copies?

Kay:  It means absolutely nothing. Do you know how much I make a copy? About a dime. Ten cents a copy. You have to understand that we are not talking about hardback books over there. We're talking about a paperback which cost about five bucks. So for every dollar I get from the Japanese people, 25% of it goes to two agents, the American agent and the Japanese agent. 10% goes to the Japanese government. 25% goes to Peachtree Publishers. So I have given up 60% of it before I keep a penny. Then I've got the federal government and the state government to pay. So, when you look at it, I'm picking up just a tiny percentage with every copy that is sold. It would appear that it would make me very comfortable. There's no question that it has helped me over the last three or four years. No doubt about it. I've gotten some money out of it. Two million copies is still two million copies, but you would think that if somebody sold two million books that he would not have to write again. I'm not at that point by any stretch of imagination.

Walsh:  What about the film and everything that comes from that?

Kay:  Hallmark Hall of Fame did a film version, but there is very little money in television. You don't get any residuals when it plays over and over and over again. Absolutely nothing. It's just one of those things. You're supposed get a percentage of the producer's net. Well, I've never made a penny off of it. (laughing) They have this ability to do funny accounting. Very creative. The story is, and I suspect there is a lot of truth to it, that Gone with the Wind has never made a penny. As many times as it has been shown, the creative accounting shows nothing.

Walsh:  When we spoke on the telephone a few weeks ago, you mentioned that you had just been fired as a screenwriter for The Valley of Light.

Kay:  (Laughing) Yes. Hallmark. I don't know why. They never communicated with me the reason. They never communicated with me at all when they made the decision to go with somebody else. They went through my agent and the agent called me and talked to me about it. I'm sorry that I couldn't satisfy their particular take on the book. It's always stunned me that someone like Hallmark or a Hollywood entity would buy a book that pleases them then change it so incredibly much that it doesn't resemble the original story at all. I'm guessing that what they wanted was for it to become a love story, they wanted more of a Bridges of Madison County. I may be wrong, but I think that's what they're looking for. I wasn't going to do that because that's not what I wrote.

Walsh:  There's not a love story. It comes close. The main characters, Noah and Eleanor, are there, and there is the idea that something could occur between them, almost to the point where it could happen, and rightfully so, because they both know that Eleanor is not ready so soon after the death of her husband, she's not ready to move on yet, and Noah is certainly not ready for any type of commitment. He's moving on anyway.

Kay:  To me, I wrote a story about the power of having a gift. I've always believed there are two parts to the inexplicable nature of such gifts . One is physical, and you can be in awe over that, but the other, and the one that is even more stunning, is the innocence that seems to accompany such a gift and how that innocence always leaves it's impact. And that's what I wanted to write about. I wanted some tenderness there but I did not want a love story.

Walsh:  The closet the main characters get to a love affair is when they lie down on the cot together and Eleanor kisses Noah on the forehead. At that point, you see they are both capable of love, yet, during those times, the 1940s, right after the war, while she was still grieving over losing her husband, so it was not meant to happen and would have never happened.

Kay:  And, it was not in his personality to have a love affair in a week. He wouldn't have done it.

Walsh:  He might have, at best, been able to live in the small house in the back acreage for two, three, or four months, and worked his way into her mind and life, and once he felt comfortable they might have at that time stolen a kiss down by the river.

Kay:  But it wasn't going to happen in a week's time. And, that was the argument I had with them [Hallmark] all the time. Again, I don't know.  I'm grateful they bought it because it brings in some income and it's a great compliment. I guess I should be jumping up and down and saying, Lord, what a streak I'm on. This will be three books turned into movies by Hallmark Hall of Fame. So, I'm grateful for it. They did a good job with AWhite Dog@. Generally speaking I thought they did a fine job. Then they did The Runaway, and it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It was ungodly bad. I was just surprised that Hallmark would allow a film to be that bad because it could have been much better. There were some problems with timing and casting and a lot of other things.

Walsh:  When your agent called and said that you were fired and no longer on the project, essentially, and I guess this happens when you sign the contract, you are handing over control of the movie to them to do as they wish. Is it hard to give up control over your novel?

Kay:  Not particularly. There's a sense of pride that says I would like to see it done in the concept that I wrote the book. But you know it's not going to happen that way. It's another medium. I think if I were consumed by every word that I put on paper, it would probably be hard, but I'm not consumed by every word I put on paper. When a book is finished, it's finished. I'm writing something else. I don't even think about it very much. As I've learned over the years, my comfort zone in writing -- the fun I have in it -- is not telling the story at all, but in discovering one for myself. I like to discover. I don't particularly like to tell. When you discover a story and put it on paper and you are telling, of course, but it's almost a philosophical difference. I know a lot of people who write to tell a story and it just doesn't work.

Walsh:  When you sit down with an idea, do you start out thinking let's see what's going to happen and you often times have no idea?

Kay:  No idea at all. The Kidnapping of Aaron Greene, was written as a plot-driven novel. I wanted to see if I could write in another genre. But it's the only one. Otherwise, when I start to write, I pay no attention to the story. The characters matter to me. If I understand my characters, I'm going to find a story. That's all I'm interested in. I'm far more intrigued with characters than I am with story.

Walsh:   You write the first draft and discover [the story] and go back and make revisions. . . .

Kay:  Sure. You do that all along. I'm working on a story now, and I just finished four chapters, and I have no idea where it's going. I just know that I'm intrigued enough by it that when I'm driving or taking a walk or rolling over to go to sleep and I can't sleep, I think about it. That's a pretty good sign. I'm trying to find out who these people are and what they can produce. I know that sounds odd and mystic, but I think the only mystic thing about writing is that the characters have to dictate it all.  Again, so many young writers have this incredible passion to say something of value, it's just boiling inside them and they've just got to get it out and they all feel it will do the world good to read it. I think they are having heartburn. If they took a couple of Alka-Seltzers they would feel better and the world of literature would be immeasurably better off. A young man told me not long ago that AI know I have a book in me. I know I have.@ I said, AMy advice to you is to forget it. Quit looking at the book that is in you and start looking at the books that are around you. You will be a lot better off. You're chances of being published are considerably better.@ Of course, that's just my take on it.

Walsh:  You and I talked about this in the past B there have been times when your wife has kicked you out of the house and told you not to come home until you finished the book.

Kay:  She kicked me out of the house one time and told me not to come home until I started writing again. That was After Eli. It really did work. But it also taught me something valuable that I just had to face B I just have to be by myself when I am writing. I have to have the time to be alone. She knew it. She knew it pretty well. I've always said that of all the things I owe my wife, here's one that I'm passionate about owing her: she has never bothered me once about being alone. She's never once said AWhat are you writing@ She's never once said let me read it while I was working on it. She says nothing until I hand her the manuscript or some chapters. If I want her to read it, she'll do it. She doesn't ask me a thing about it.  The arrangement we have now, she is over there [in Atlanta] with the children and grandchildren for three or four days a week, and she has a business. If I say to her that I want the whole week here, she says okay and she comes home on Saturday or late Friday. Or, if I say to her, I want her to come home Wednesday night and I'm going out there to write for the weekend and I'm going to spend my time locked up writing B in essence, saying to her, I need to be by myself, she never argues or questions it. She's wise enough to understand this is how we make our living.

Walsh:  You have been married for forty-four years. There must be something magical. What's the secret?

Kay:  (Laughing) This year will be my forty-fifth year. I think we have learned that married is work. Good Lord is it work. We have learned that the joy is overwhelming, especially when you have the children and grandchildren, and they bring heartache and fear and everything else, but it is a tremendous experience to say this is what we have produced. We don't crowd one another. We just don't. We haggle over things like every couple. We have our bitterness and our arguments and all of that. Every couple I know has that. But she gives me tremendous freedom. I couldn't do this if I didn't have that freedom. I'm grateful that I found somebody to give me that kind of freedom. We are very different people. She has never gotten caught up in all of this.  When people come up to me in the grocery store and say something about something I've written or they've heard me speak somewhere, she'll just stroll on off by herself and go shopping and never ask who I was talking to or what were they talking about. She knows. She's been around it too long.

Walsh:  You mentioned your agent. What makes your agent better than others you've had in the past?

Kay:  Well, actually, I've only had, essentially, three agents. One for a very short time who got out of the business then later killed herself. Then I had one for less than a year and it just didn't work out. We didn't communicate well. But I have been with Harvey Klinger for years -- twenty-five years probably. I would say he is considered to be among the top ten agents in New York. He's a very good editor as well as an agent. He can read something and tell you, AI don't like this and this is why I don't like it and this is what I need you to do with it.@ Sometimes it can be a little abusive even. He has a good law background so he understands a lot about contracts. And, he's gutsy as hell. I mean, he's turned down lots of money for me that if  I'd known he turned it down I would have killed him. But, it's a gamble. We have an understanding B I write and he does the business. And, whatever business decisions he makes, I live with them. It's cost me money and it's made me money, but I think he's made more than he's lost for me n probably a lot more. I just think that if you are going to be a writer today you need to have an agent. A lot of people try to do it without one. They are going to send their manuscript out over the transom to one of the publishers in New York, but they have no idea how slim their chances are of getting published. A lot of people will go with an agent in Atlanta or Chattanooga or Philadelphia, but usually they are not nearly as effective as a guy in New York. That's where the industry is. It's like the guys in New York are not really effective with the dramatic stuff. You need an agent in Los Angeles.

Walsh:  As I mentioned, it's been about 20 years since we first sat down and talked, and in that time we've spoken many times. I've always felt from talking with you and reading your books that here is an incredibly tender and thoughtful man, and yet, somehow I think there is a deep emotion that churns within you, a very opinionated person who does not tolerate nonsense. Am I correct?

Kay:  I create a lot of it [nonsense]. But I'm not sure if I tolerate it well. That's pretty accurate, I suppose. I get irritated by small things. The thing that irritates me the most are people who don't use what they've got -- either their intellect or their talent.  I get real intolerant with an assumed superiority, whether it's literature or chemistry or anything else, and one certainly encounters that in the community of a large university. One on one I haven't met anyone here at the university that I didn't enjoy being with, one on one. Sometimes, you put three of them in a room and it's just ungodly. The arrogance is like an over-ripe perfume. And, I don't like that. I really don't. I've always been a person who, I suppose, at heart wanted to get involved in causes and I'm probably too impatient to do it. I've been in some things that just stunned me. I remember being on a sub-committee for the Georgia Humanities Council, and we were considering some applications. There was an application where somebody wanted some money to open a glass blowing operation, a business. They were granting it. I asked why? This is a business. Why don't we give it to the guy opening a framing shop or a candy store. What's the difference? I find this just ridiculous. I get a little passionate over such issues. They had enough sense not to invite me back. My advice to anybody who is serious about writing is to drop every affiliation you have with writing groups. Don't join anything. Get out of critique groups. Hell, don't even study it other than taking a courtesy class just to say, yeah, I took a class in creative writing. To write, you learn by writing. There are two kinds of writers generally speaking -- those who write because they want to be thought of as a writer and those who write because they want to write, to put something on paper.

Walsh:  A friend of mine went to a writing group one evening to learn how to get his military novel published, to see if there were any contacts. What he found was a group of about twenty people discussing getting health insurance for these other writers. He's in the business world, a banker, and he said to them, how many of your spouses work and have health insurance or how many of you have jobs and insurance? All but one raised their hand. He asked them why on earth they were wasting their time trying to get health insurance for a writer's group? Who cares? They looked at him like he was just viscous. But he was so absolutely right. Concentrate on writing. Get away from those groups and leave yourself time to write because these groups are not going to accomplish anything with their writing, not when they are interested in obtaining health insurance. If they want health insurance, start a health insurance critique group. These people were never serious about writing.

Kay:  I would never have learned anything about writing from a group. I think it actually hurts a lot of people because what they try to do is write for their peer group to please them. I have a problem with teachers in high school or college with creative writing where they get peer criticism. I will write something and read it aloud and the group gets to critique it. That's bullshit. If I'm the teacher of that class, I'd better know more about it than they do. I'm going to do the critiquing, not some student who has no idea what they are talking about. They may have a really good knowledge of grammar and that stuff, but as far as knowing what makes a story, they don't.

Walsh:  You published The Year the Lights Came On in 1976, After Eli in 1981, and Dark Thirty in 1984. Since that time, have you gone back to read them and how do you feel about them years later?

Kay:  The only book I've ever re-read was Dark Thirty. I did that because I had been invited to offer a movie treatment and I didn't remember the names of the characters. After you write several books and create all these names, you don't remember who they were. Especially the minor characters. So I thought that I better scan it again. I started reading it from the first page and I read every word of it. An odd experience. It was as though I was reading another book by somebody else. Really strange. And you know what was special, it's a much better book than I thought it was when I wrote it.

Walsh:  I had the same experience with Speak So I Shall Know Thee. I had not read the book in about ten years except to look up bits of information from time to time. But one day I opened the book to the first interview, which was with Betty Adcock, and then I read the book over the course of a few days, read all the interviews. It did not seem as though I had written the book. That's when I realized the interviews were actually very good, and I did a much better job than I had ever realized. It felt as though it was a book I was reading for the first time by someone else.

Kay:  When I do look back on them [the novels], I think it's not so much the books as I think back on my maturity as a writer. I know so much more now than I did ten years ago. There are so many things I can define now that I did purely by instinct ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. But, now, I know it. All those kinds of things that make sense to me, it's taken me a long time to be able to put them into any kind of understandable language so that I could sit down with somebody and say, if you read Taking Lottie Home you would have the impression that she is in a lot of that book. But she is not in a lot of that book. The sense of her is in the book. That really is a trick, a smoke and mirrors trick. You don't write it from her perspective. You write it from the perspective of other people who are looking at her instead of having her look at herself.  I strive not to describe main characters in detail because I don't want them to be seen. I want them to be sensed. I think sensing something is far more powerful than seeing it. Those are things that I did automatically years and years ago, but know I can look at it and I can define it.

Walsh:  That's interesting that you mention the main characters because in your new book, The Valley of Light, the description of the town and the people B as I know it B employs the term Aassociational logic@. Meaning, when someone says Afire truck@ in your mind you will see a red fire truck. When you described the town and the people, you are actually pulling back and not describing it, and associational logic takes over so the reader visually sees a town they may have lived in or visited. You see the main characters looking a certain way B perhaps substituted with someone you know. What happens is that you provide the reader with a few small details about a person B this person is tall and lanky B and for the most part we all know someone like that, so we start visualizing the character out of our own experiences.

Kay:  Well, I appreciate those remarks. Of all the things I've learned over the years here's maybe the most important one that relates to that: a good book is one that the reader has to help the writer finish. And by that, I mean you better have enough sense to leave enough gaps in it so the reader is going to subconsciously fill in those gaps doing exactly what you are saying. When I wrote AValley of Light@ and let a couple of people read it, they said that I didn't write very much about the fishing, and that was true.  I didn't even do very much research about fishing -- the kinds of reels and all that kind of stuff. I didn't want to do that.  Because you don't want to intrude on a story that is very fragile to begin with. If you put too much intrusion on it, it's just weighted and it just breaks down. The first version of that book, oh my God, I had the German girl being there.

Walsh:  Coming to the town?

Kay:  Yes. She was in the town. I had the character, Whitlow Mayfield B one I really liked n as a maniacal, evangelistic kind of preacher. Anyway, I had about three elements in it I felt uncomfortable about, and I gave it to my wife to read. God love her, she came back about three days later and she dropped the manuscript in front of me and said, AIt's no good.@  I asked, AWhat do you mean it's no good?@ She said, AIt's not any good, honey. It doesn't work.@ I asked why it didn't work and she named the three things that had bothered me. That afternoon I threw away 60,000 words and in three weeks added 65,000 words. And, that was the book that was published.

Walsh:  In the end of the novel, all you see is the photograph of the German woman.

Kay:  That's right. Now what I would like to do is to take not her, but I would like to take a character like her, and do an entirely different book. If I took her it would be a sequel and I'm not a big enough writer to do a sequel. I've got enough business sense to understand that. But I would love to bring a character like that to America and write about all the things that went on during and after the war and how she was used in the Holocaust. That's a story that's up here [pointing to his head]. In fact, I started a few words on it last week just playing around. The reason it didn't work in AValley@, though it intrigued me to go into those things, they were intrusions. God Almighty, the worst thing in the world to do in a story is to put an intrusion in.

Walsh:  You had her in the main action I assume. What was her role?

Kay:  In the first draft, Eleanor's husband had brought her to America and she was his lover before he killed himself. Then the question was, did he kill himself or did she kill him. I had her running away. I had a lot of action going on in there, but it didn't work. It worked for what it was, but it didn't work in the story that I had. You have to be willing to throw it away, my friend.

Walsh:  60,000 words?

Kay:  Yeah. That's really not a lot of words when you think about it. We will speak twenty-five thousand words this afternoon. Do you know that? You average speaking 18,000 words per day.

Walsh:  Where did the idea come from to write this story?

Kay:  It came from a gesture that my son, who's a fisherman, had when he was ten years old. The touching of the water. . . I have a real fascination with rituals. One of my disenchantments with the church today -- I'm Methodist and always have been -- is the break of ritual where they stop to have everyone stand up and speak to one another, the little fellowship moment. I hate it. I absolutely hate it because it breaks ritual. A lot of churches don't have the affirmation of faith. I hate it. That's what I grew up on, the ritual. I believe there is something lovely, something meaningful to ritual.

Walsh:  Do you like to go fishing?

Kay:  Yeah, I like to go fishing. I have a six-acre lake down here behind me. It's not mine but I go down there and fish once in a while. My God, when I was little, it was the thing for me to do. See that's me holding my fish. [He showed me a black and white photograph of a ten-year-old boy holding up a little fish.]

Walsh:  He's about five inches long (laughing).

Kay:  Oh, it's not that long. Maybe three inches. I caught a little minnow or something on a branch down below the house.

Walsh:  Has your focus changed with your writing over the years, the way you approach it, the process?

Kay:  To some degree because I am older, it has. I'm not as panicked about it as I was at one time, I suppose. I also realize that physically I cannot do it with the same amount of output that I did fifteen or twenty years ago.  And that's okay. If I don't want to write today, I don't write. I don't worry nearly as much about what might be accepted or not. You write it, some people like it, some don't. There's not anything you can do about it.  I have never once had any illusions about leaving a great legacy as a literary figure. I'm not going to do that. Good God, I don't know hardly anybody who will do it. Again, it's the way I make a living. I'm glad I make a living the way I do. I enjoy doing it. It's fun, joyful. And it makes me feel really good when somebody sends me an email or a letter and says this (story) mattered, this meant something. That makes me feel good.

Walsh:  If your publisher says that you need to have a book by the end of the year, do you feel pressure to get it done?

Kay:   A little bit of pressure. But at the same time I know if I don't do it, I just don't do it. Because of my journalism training I don't mind having a deadline imposed on me. I've used this many times as an example, and it just ticks people off, especially young writers, because they think it's an expression of great arrogance, and you know what, it is. But it is also the truth. I say here is where you have to make the distinction. If somebody walks in and takes $25,000 out of his or her pocket and puts it on the table and says you have twenty-four hours or forty-eight hours to give me two thousand words that will make me cry or two thousand words that will make me laugh or make me angry -- you name the emotion , you have twenty-four to forty-eight hours to do it. If you can do that, you can pick up the $25,000. My contention is I will do it every time because I know enough about writing to do it. I know enough about the skill of writing to do it. One of the most important things to know is that you have to be totally detached in order to do it.  It is a mental exercise.

Walsh:  When you say detached, detached from what?

Kay:  Detached from the story itself. This is funny B I have this friend and I really like him a lot --Scott Freeman, who works at the Atlanta Magazine -- and he called me and I was in the middle of a screen play, I was on tour, everything. He said he needed words out of me. I said I couldn't do it. We talked about it. He wanted me to write a dog story. I said, God Almighty, I've written my dog story. Why do people want me to do another dog story? He said he needed about 750 words. He's going to pay me, so I take an afternoon to do it because I can use that money for one of the kids or something. I asked him to tell me what he wanted out of such a story. He said, AI want to cry.@  I said, oh, I can do that. I got an email in yesterday from somebody who she said she wept openly when she read it.  It sounds arrogant, but I don't mean it that way. Still, it is what you do as a professional writer, what you've trained yourself to do. I don't care if it's writing books or painting the house. You have to somehow accept the fact that this is your profession, not your hobby, not your emotional catharsis, it's your profession. And you sit and do it professionally.

Walsh:  What is the biggest problem you have encountered from being a successful writer?

Kay:  Probably my largest reaction to it is it's real hard for me to think of being successful, and yet, when I look at it practically speaking, my God, I'm sitting in a very nice home and I've made a living for many years. That equates to some degree of success. But, now at my age, maybe the thing that bothers me the most is that there are a lot of things that have stuck to the velcro of my mind over the years that I would really like to somehow put on paper. I know I don't have enough years left to get them done. I'd like to. There are a lot of things I'd like to write. That's a frustration.

Walsh:  If you could change anything in the world what would you change?

Kay:  In the world? I'd change all the questions they ask the those dizzy blondes in the Miss America contests (laughing). No. No. If I could wave a magic wand and effectively get people to respond in a certain way, I would damn well go with tolerance. I would hope they would be a little more tolerant with one another than they are. What bothers me more than anything else is to see the ignorance and stupidity that comes out of intolerance. You see it all the time in the political arena. Now we have President Bush's service in the guard during the Viet Nam War, right?  Nobody said anything about it, but it suddenly becomes a political issue to talk about his service in the Viet Nam War. I am totally apolitical. It doesn't matter to me whether he wins, loses or draws. Because quite frankly, the people who run the country are the lobbyists who influence the aides that work for the senators and representatives. Those are the people who run the country in the long run, but, I hear the jabber on the radio and the absolutely close-mindedness, the intolerance, the anger, the need to lash out, and I think why? Why are people so incredible obsessed with things like that? And, it happens in every aspect of life. I see it in the judicial system. I have a grandson in prison and I see the intolerance and the way they are treated. It bothers me a lot. It makes me want to keep very selective company. That, my friend, is one of the great privileges in the country we live in. We can chose the company we prefer. Maybe that is Athe@ great privilege of our country.  There are times I know I give off vibes of being angry, but I am usually angry over something that no one should have to be anger over.

Walsh:  In the book of interviews I published, many of the writers have died over the years, and obviously death is something we all think about, our mortality, and you said you have things you want to write about, things in your mind that you may not get to, if it all ended today would it be enough?

Kay:  Oh, yeah. Sure. Listen, I have one thing not a lot of writers get and I know it. I have a signature book. A lot of writers don't ever get a signature book. I have it, To Dance with the White Dog. No matter what I write for the rest of my life, they will always have on the front of it or on the back of it, Aauthor of To Dance with the White Dog.@ That's a pretty good thing to go away with. I don't think it will last as long as people say it will. But it sure as hell lasted a long time since it's first publication. It's still in the stores and it still gets around and still is taught. It's remarkable to me, Bill, that I am doing something I never wanted to do. I didn't want to be a writer. I really had no desire to do it. I am stumped that I do it and that I have achieved what I have. I think it really surprised a lot of people I grew up with that I wound up doing this. They would have thought that my brother who is eighteen months older than I would have been a very likely candidate to do what I do. But he chose something else. I don't think I would have made it had I tried to do it, if I had set my sights on it and gone for it. I think that I would have been so intimidated by it that I couldn't have done it.

Walsh:  How do you want to be remembered?

Kay:  Well, I would like to be remembered as somebody who wrote a few good words, but more than anything else as somebody who cared for his family. If I had to take those options, I'd take the family every time. And, God knows they drive me nuts at times.

What is the most important thing you've learned from interviewing all these writers?

Walsh:  The most important thing I have learned is persistence. Because I've never given up.  I learned that from David Bottoms years ago.  Essentially, I've been working on two novels for all these years knowing that one of these days I'm going to be satisfied with them and they are going to be published. That's the poet in me. Each word matters. But it doesn't get done without that persistence and knowing that you want to do it. I just keep at it and keep at it. You have things that side track you B good things like getting married and having children and working and dealing with the things of everyday life, and there is no greater joy in my entire life that I have known until I had children. And you don't know this until you have them.

Kay:  Wait until you have grandchildren, my friend. They make the children experience look pale.

Walsh:  Children are wonderful. And if I never got to write another word as long as I have my family, that'd be fine.

Kay:  I feel exactly the same way.

Walsh:  I told my wife that they can take everything we have B we work hard and we have nice things, a nice house, cars, like everyone else, but as long as I have my wife and children, I can start over. Material things don't matter. But in regards to writing, writing is not the most important thing. It took me years to realize this. There was a long time when I was very self-centered, incredibly solipsistic, in my desire to write and publish and accomplish things in writing, but I realized that none of that matters without the right things in place in my life. I don't want to be misunderstood because writing is extremely important to me, but it is by no means the most important thing. That may be different for some writers, and that's fine, but my life is better off having balance and a priority of family. I wrote a letter to the poet, Jack Myers, who is a friend and terrific teacher, as well as great writer, and I told him when my first son was born that I was not going to write for five years because I wanted to concentrate on being a father. Well, I ended up writing simply because I had blocks of time to fill while my son slept and grew up, but I didn't send anything off to any publishers. Immediately having that pressure lifted was like freedom and cleared my mind. Publishing, or the frustrations of trying to get published, just wasn't worth it. Too  me, at least.

To fully answer you question, the interviews have opened a lot of doors for me and I've done things I never thought I would have done. While working on my undergraduate degree in 1985 I first read Phil Williams' book, The Heart of a Distant Forest, and I then wanted to meet and interview him. I interviewed Phil Williams, then David Bottoms, Raymond Andrews, and Olive Ann Burns, and I can still remember after interviewing Ms Burns -- I was driving down the road with the top down on my car thinking, AWow, I can do this. I'm really good at interviewing people. I enjoy doing this.@ What I have since realized is that Ms. Burns was such a wonderful person, she made the interview process very easy. But I came away thinking, AI want to do this.@ After interviewing her, that's when the idea of the book started to form and came together. I think on the strength of the book I got into graduate school and received my master's degree. One way the book had a great influence on my life B Marion Montgomery and Larry Rubin wrote letters of recommendation for me for graduate school.  That's pretty nice to have with an application and 30 sample pages of your writing. Graduate school at Vermont College had a significant impact on my life, and continues to do so. I was writing my novel at the time and continue to do so. I've just never given up. Persistence.

Kay:  And you must always remember, art is not what you do, art is what you take into yourself. What you do is nothing more than an expression of art, a medium, whether you write or sculpt or paint, it's just an expression. You have to take it in. I have become so thoroughly convinced, for me, the only sensible way to look at writing is to understand, again, my characters are not a medium for me, I am a medium for my characters. When it goes the other way, it gets real hard. When a writer thinks that his or her characters serve as a medium for them, they won't listen to a thing. Writing is, in great part, merely a matter of listening and putting on paper what you've heard. But you have to do the listening. You can't do the talking. You can only do the listening. And I truly believe that. I am a medium for them. They are not a medium for me. And that sort of feels pretty good.