Dear Young Writers,

You know who you are. You are a true writer. You’re reading this on your phone, computer, tablet, or maybe a soggy newspaper you found in a gutter.

Maybe you’re in college or in high school. Maybe you’re a middle-schooler with an exceptionally grandiose vocabulary. Maybe you’ve written to me for advice. God help you.

Either way, you’re a writer. You know you’re a writer, deep inside. So I’m writing back. Because you’re confused. You don’t know what you’re doing with your life. You’re embarrassed to talk about it. You’re lost.

Writers are viewed as oddballs in our American culture. And it’s a shame because it’s not this way everywhere.

In Europe, for example, if you tell someone you’re a writer, the Europeans get dreamy eyed and converse about “War and Peace” and “The Brothers Karamazov.”

But in America, when you tell someone you want to be a novelist, they look at you as though you have just broken wind in church.

To many people, saying you want to be a writer is like saying you want to

be an astronaut. “Don’t quit your job!”

Thus, I am going to share with you a few thoughts about the field of professional writing. Things many writers don’t want you to know. Such as, how to find a complete three-course dinner by rummaging through the municipal garbage.

Because, you see, professional writers are sort of like stage magicians. It’s all an act. These “magicians” continually try to pull literary rabbits out of their hats. Only, instead of calling them “rabbits,” they obsess over whether they should use the word “bunnies,” “hares,” “cottontails,” “lagomorphs,” or in extreme cases, “chinchillas.”

So the first thing I can tell you about writers is that none of us know what the heck we’re doing. This is true for every single writer alive. Don’t trust any author who says they know what they’re doing. They…

Seara Burton is not dead. Not even close. I don’t care what you heard.

It all started in Richmond, Indiana. It was a day like any other. An average Wednesday. A routine traffic stop. Around 6:30 p.m.

Officer Seara Burton was helping fellow officers with a motorist that had been pulled over. Her K-9 partner, Brev, leapt out of the cruiser to inspect the situation. To sniff for narcotics.

A day like any other. Just an officer doing her job.

Burton talked to the motorist. The driver pulled out a pistol. No hesitation. He aimed for her facial area. He shot her in the head.

Seara Burton. A dog lover. Nice looking. Funny. Amiable. Kind. She was about to get married. She had a familiar face with a matinee smile. She was 28.

As I write this, they are taking Seara off life support. But make no mistake, Seara Burton is still very much alive.

What might happen next if she doesn’t make it is simple. Her organs will be harvested by surgeons

because Seara is an organ donor. Medical staffers will wheel her into an operating room. A surgical team will remove her vitals, one by one.

Likely her liver, kidney, pancreas, lungs, heart, intestines, corneas, middle ear, sections of skin, pieces of bone, bone marrow, uterus, heart valves, connective tissue, or parts of her vascular system. Medical teams will ship her donations to parts unknown. Maybe even across the nation.

Meaning, Seara’s heart might continue beating. Her liver might continue functioning. Her kidneys. Her pancreas. Her eyes. Her bones. Seara’s body will not perish. Instead, she will save those who are about to.

Just like Officer Wilbert Mora’s did. He was 27. He recently died in a shootout in Harlem, New York. He was responding to a domestic call.

He was shot in the head. The bullet lodged in his brain, he was taken off life support. For…

A breakfast joint, filled with smells of bacon and coffee. I was visiting my hometown in Florida. I heard the sound of people conversing. People laughing. Forks clinking. I was eating my eggs when I got the text.

I glanced at my phone and lost my appetite. An old friend died.

He was seventy-six. He used to be a singer. And I’ll never forget the story I heard about him.

Once, a nine-year-old girl from church asked him to sing for her dog’s funeral. He wore a necktie and the whole nine yards. He sang “Beulah Land.” That’s the kind of guy he was.

I was interrupted from my thoughts. It was another old friend who came through the doors. Lisa, a girl I grew up with.

I hugged her neck and asked how her father was doing.

Lisa smiled. “He’s okay, Mom hired a personal trainer to kick his butt, he whines about it.”

I’ll never forget her father. He once took me to a father-son church retreat at Blue Lake Methodist Camp, along with his own son.

He did this because I had no father and he didn’t want me to be left out.

I stood to leave the restaurant. That’s when I saw another friend. James is his name. James and I used to have a summer job together, parking cars. He’s a mess.

Back then, James would try to procure the phone number of any female unfortunate enough to make eye-contact with him.

I exited the restaurant and saw two more friends in the parking lot. Samantha and her husband, Wade.

We hugged. It was nice seeing them. We were once in a Sunday school class together.

Long ago, our class took a trip to Nashville. Wade brought a Mason jar full of something his Episcopalian uncle had brewed in a bathtub.

Consequently, Wade doesn’t remember much about that trip.

After saying goodbye, I drove across…

To the kid with cancer of the bones. Who is up late tonight because his meds won’t let him sleep. To his mother, who is beside him, rubbing his tummy.

Mothers have been rubbing tummies since the dawn of the man.

To the man who raises palmettos in South Alabama, whose wife passed yesterday morning. The same man who is starting a pecan orchard because it’s what she always wanted.

To the woman who is the janitor for the Baptist church. Who clocks out of her other job to push her cart up and down the halls.

She cleans bathrooms, dusts offices. Who doesn’t get home until eight at night, and still has time to cook her kids a full supper meal before bedtime.

To the nine-year-old girl whose father abused her. Whose life will forever be painted with the badness he left. She is now thirty-three. She got married this morning. Someone emailed me photos of the ordeal.

Once, that same girl said, “I didn’t trust anyone for a long time, it was a big mistake.

I’ve wasted a lot of years being scared of good people.”

And to the young man who fell off the roof of a construction site. He broke two ribs. The woman across the street took him to the hospital.

She carried him twelve hours to Texas to be in his mother’s house while he recovered.

“Sometimes,” said that neighbor woman. “A man needs his mother.”

I’m writing this to the Walmart employee who was on a smoke break ten minutes ago. She sat on the sidewalk.

She cried while talking on the cellphone. If I didn’t know any better, it sounded like her boyfriend was breaking up with her.

And to Jason, who just discovered he’s good a basketball player. Who has felt like a failure until now. Who tells me he developed a love of Mel Tillis after a friend sent him…

She is scared. She is stranded. She is pregnant.

Her car broke down on the shoulder of the interstate. And she’s having contractions.

She left home in a hurry. That’s why her clothes are in the backseat. She didn’t have time to pack, so she stuffed things into paper grocery bags and lit out for God-knows-where.

She’s done letting her boyfriend smack her around. It wasn't just abuse, he ran around. He was bad to drink. She didn't want to raise her child that way.

It took six months to find the courage to leave him. She left in her old Subaru. After an eight-hour drive, she watched the sunset. She was free.

Things were going fine, until her car made grinding noises. It stalled. Then smoke. Then, a dead stop.

So, here she is.

She cries. She’s afraid. She’s angry. The contractions are getting worse. It feels like her lower back and stomach are going to snap. She wants to call someone, but there's nobody.

This is the loneliest she’s ever felt.

Vehicles pass by the dozen. None of them stop. They don't

even slow. People. Nobody stops to help anymore.

She says a prayer. But she’s not sure who or what she’s praying to.

After all, she doesn’t believe in God. The outdated idea is something that her late mother believed, and look where it landed her. A cancer ward. A casket. Worm food.

Even so, she is asking, the best she knows how. She repeats one word under her breath.

“Help.”

Then, headlights.

They shine through her window. A truck, towing a horse trailer.

An old man approaches the driver’s side. He is gray-haired, brown-skinned, bowlegged. He wears a gold belt buckle. He raps on her window.

“Help!” she says.

The old man is small. He has dark eyes. He speaks soft words in another language. He kneels beside her. He gets to business. He is going…

This is not my story. I am hearing it for the first time, just like you.

He is the one who tells it. He is old. He is in a wheelchair. He is carving a piece of basswood with a pocket knife. He speaks in a drawl so thick it’s poetry.

There are children around his feet. A few third graders, a fifth-grader, a fifteen-year-old, and one redhead writer who still watches Saturday morning cartoons. Occasionally.

The old man is telling stories. That’s what old men do. They are inherently good at this.

The man removes a five-dollar bill from his pocket.

“See this?” he says.

The kids nod.

The redhead writer nods.

Age has slowed his speech down. But not his mind.

“Why, I remember when five dollars was like a hundred bucks,” he goes on. “Back when times were hard.”

The Depression. A time when America was on the brink. He tells a story about the lean years. He was six. A rural towhead. He wore ragged clothes. His shoes had given up the ghost and went barefoot most of the

time—even to preaching.

“That’s what poor folks did,” he explains. “Our feet were always bare.”

He found a five-dollar bill on the ground. And during his era, he might as well have won the Florida Powerball. He ran home to give the money to his father.

“LOOK WHAT I FOUND, DADDY!” he shouted.

But his father didn’t want the money.

“Son,” his father told him. “It would be wrong for me to keep that money. Lotta folks need it worse than we do.”

But how could that be? They ate beans for supper. His brother worked labor jobs for chicken feed. His mother took in wash. The kid’s feet were blistered.

“What should I do with it?” the boy asked.

“You’re the one who found it,” said his father. “You gotta figure it out for your ownself.”

We just got home from a week on the road. It’s been a busy seven days. I told stories in four different states, I ate a lot of barbecue, I saw a ballgame in Atlanta.

When we arrived home, our dogs were psychotic. Otis (alleged Labrador) was barking. Thelma Lou (bloodhound) was howling in a low-pitched voice.

If you ever hear a bloodhound howl, it will bless your heart.

Which reminds me. I’m starting to sound like my parents. My father used to use that phrase a lot, long before it became a T-shirt cliché. Whenever he talked about anything that was particularly good, that phrase was used.

For example: “Try the cornbread, it will bless your heart.”

Or: “There’s nothing like hearing Bill Gaither hit them high notes, like he’s been castrated, it’ll bless your heart.”

Years later, people started sending cutesy chain emails about this phrase and ruined it for the rest of us.

Still, the phrase had real meaning in my household. I remember once, when our church was shorthanded on nursery workers. Someone asked my father

to help hold the newborns.

My father was in the nursery all Sunday. You couldn’t drag him away from that room. The blue-collar man rocked a hundred babies and kissed two hundred fat cheeks.

And when my mother asked him how it went, he said, “It blessed my heart.”

I’ll never forget that. And I’ll never forget him.

So anyway, after my dogs mauled me, I unloaded luggage from our vehicle. I heard a horn honking. It was the UPS truck. The deliveryman handed me a package and bid me good day.

When he drove away, I tore the manila paper and felt my breath catch. I wasn’t expecting it. It was a book. Written by me. My name was on the cover.

My name. There’s something about seeing your name in print. It does something to you.

My wife…

Dan Lovette became an usher at the Baptist church on Easter Sunday, March 26th, 1961. He stood at the door shaking hands, passing out bulletins. Nobody knew Dan.

Weeks earlier, Pastor Lovette had introduced Dan as his older brother.

Dan was a tall man with a soft voice and rough skin. He wore a brown suit that was too small. He hardly spoke. He sat on the front row during sermons. After service, he smoked cigarettes behind the church. People asked the pastor questions about Dan, but he was quiet when it came to his older brother.

Over the years, folks saw a lot of Dan Lovette. He could be seen pushing a mower, changing the church sign, painting clapboards, passing out bulletins on Sundays, or cleaning the sanctuary on Mondays.

Dan lived in a back room of the church. His earthly belongings were: a cot, a hot plate, a coffee pot, a transistor radio, a shaving kit, and one brown suit.

Nobody can forget the Sunday that the pastor announced

he would be baptizing Dan after service. This surprised people. Most thought it was strange that the pastor’s own brother had never been baptized. But no explanation was given.

So, sixty-four church members stood near the creek, watching the tall quiet man wade into shallow water behind his younger brother.

It was a simple ordeal. Down Dan went. Up he came. Applause. Bring on the banana pudding.

But life was not all pudding and baptisms. In 1974, tragedy hit the church. The pastor was in a car accident on his way home from Montgomery, doctors thought he’d had a stroke while driving. Dan sat beside his brother’s hospital bed without sleep or food. He lived beside his brother’s bed, taking care of his brother’s every need.

The next Sunday, Dan Lovette took the pulpit with tired eyes. It was a hushed room. It was the first time any members…

Somewhere in Alabama. It’s an old cafe. The coffee cups are bottomless. The waitress wears jeans. On the walls are mounted bass and a few buck heads.

There are old men in the corner, seated around a table with mugs. These are rural men with old-world accents like your granddaddy probably had.

They are discussing crucial topics like:

“Hey, Charlie! Got a question for you. What the heck was the guy’s name who used to date Sharon? You know, he had the big ears and always looked like he’d just sucked a lemon?”

They say things like:

“Did you hear Marilyn’s son built his house with the kitchen window facing his mama’s kitchen window so in the mornings they can wave to each other when they make coffee?”

They say:

“Looks like Mike is running for mayor again, can you believe it? That streaking thing is gonna come back to bite him, just watch.”

These are the conversations you hear from old men with rural sensibilities.

Their reparte doesn’t follow one line of thought. One man says something. A man across from

him says something unrelated. Everyone gets a turn.

Round and round it goes, until you realize they aren’t actually talking to each other. They are simply reporting their random neural firings.

A young couple walks into the restaurant. The young man wears a work jacket and boots. He has a baby-carrier by the handle. The young woman is holding his arm.

They are both so young they still squeak when they walk. They sit in the booth behind mine.

“What time do you have to go back to work?” the girl asks her young man.

“As soon as we’re done eating,” he says. “I’m sorry, I wish I had longer today.”

She seems disappointed. Nobody wants Daddy to work so much.

They order burgers and fries. The waitress doesn’t need a notepad to take their order. She says…

Dear God,

I know you’re busy today. I know you have a lot going on. I know that right now, about 7.753 billion people are all grasping for your attention at the same time.

I also know that you do a really good job at what you do. You make the world spin. You make trees do photosynthesis. You made the Atlanta Braves world champions.

I can’t imagine how difficult your gig must be.

So I know the last thing you need right now is one more voice speaking to you. But I am asking you, as a friend, for a favor.

Namely, because when I was a child, my Sunday school class always sang a particular song about you. And for years I believed that this children’s song was true.

I believed this world was not just floating in space. I believed that we were held. I believed that this planet was supported by unseen hands. Two enormous hands.

I did not believe that our earth was on the shoulders of Atlas. I

did not believe that our globe was suspended on a Rand McNally stand.

I believed that magnificent hands held our planet. Two hands that were so powerful they could tear the Tetons in two. So mighty, they could uproot sequoias, decimate entire continents, and cause the SEC to win multiple national championships.

With your hands, God, you could reroute rivers, turn planets upside down, and splinter the Andes. With your hands, you could perform neurosurgery on a ladybug, or reorganize molecular biology.

With your hands, you could take the earth, tilt it sideways, like a giant lemonade pitcher. All the seas would be drained, spilled out, and this world would become a Mojave.

With your hands you could rearrange the solar system, like billiard balls on a table.

You could place our planet millions of lightyears from the sun. Life as we know it would cease.…