During the three years I spent at Duke, it was tough NOT writing. Oh, sure, I had the big research papers to write, the theses, the final exams in blue book . . . but none of these cranked my cogs. How I wrote all of that junk on my crappy little Smith-Corona correctable, I'll never know. But I always wanted to write what I wanted to write, not what was assigned to me.
After three years in the asylum, however, some good things did happen. First, I did get married in my last year. I did eek out a living to pay my Duke tuition in full (mostly by subsisting on 10 cent boxes of mac and cheese and selling my body and my bodily fluids for scientific experiments in the Duke hospital--no lie). And after three years, most of my seminary professors learned that I was not like the other students, and I was not going to write the cheesy-type of research papers most others handed in. Many of my papers were esoteric, bizarre, and borderline psychotic, and every now and then one of them would write, "This is actually good . . . but you need help", in the margins of the papers while sending along their hope that I would soon graduate and get-the-heck out of Durham.
I was happy to oblige.
And then it happened. On a May day in 1985, I skipped my graduation ceremony, stripped down to my skivvies, carried a beach blanket out onto the lawn of our apartment complex that was infested with cockroaches, and sat down in the sweet sunshine to begin a new novel and a new life. Becky, my bride of nine months, asked me, "What are you doing with that mound of paper?"
"Writing," I said.
And I did. And that was a sweet sunny day, and one of my fondest memories, and one of the brightest and best days of my life. And heck, I've never looked back.
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