Author writes for personal growth, enjoyment
by Ashley Clark, entertainment editor

    Being of free spirit, an essayist, poet, performer told a NE Campus audience she did not start to write with the idea of a career in mind.

    “I was thinking about what I wanted to do today to make me feel better and found that reading and writing were what I wanted to do,” Naomi Shibab Nye said.

    Nye shared her opinions on the importance of reading and writing and read excerpts from her latest book, Never in a Hurry, when she addressed students, faculty and the public in three lecture-performances prior to spring break.

    “You won’t find any person who reads and writes all their life who does not feel benefited from it,” she said.

    Nye said she never writes for nor expects an audience, but is always appreciative when they appear.

    She also told students to appreciate their teachers.
    “Educators are my heroes because they held the center of the world in their hands,” she said.

    Nye began to write soon after her third birthday.

    “I went to my parents and exclaimed, ‘I’m not done with two, yet. I’m not ready to be three!’”

    She saw writing as a way of preserving time.
    “I found that I could put words on paper, go away, come back and still be in that moment. It was amazing to me,” she said.

Nye started sending her works out to be read when she was 7 years old.

    “I discovered that a wonderment of connection can be made by sending words out into the world,” she said.

    Much of Nye’s writing reflects the lives of others around her. She said she finds other people’s lives fascinating and is shocked to hear that the same people she observes in her works think that their lives are boring.

    Because Nye believes that creative writing is extremely important, her hometown newspaper in San Antonio now features a weekly poem sent in by a reader. Nye had suggested the idea to the newspaper editor.

    “I was amazed at the response we received from a small ad that read, ‘If you have a poem you’d like to be printed, please send it to this address.’”

    After four weeks, Nye received 790 responses. She only recognized five of the authors. Most of the entries were from amateur poets.

    “The best

part was selecting the poems and calling the poets,” she said.
    Nye shared some of her favorite memories of meeting the selected poets.

    One applicant said he always carried around a small notebook in the back of his pocket. The poem he sent in was written in pencil and torn out of the same notebook.

    Nye believes there is a strong need for more reality in writing.

    “Writing is not only for those who dream of publishing a book, but for everyone in everything we do,” she said.

    Nye believes writing helps one think better and also helps to preserve time.

    Many people who read her works have questioned whether she has had an extraordinary life.

    “Writers all have normal lives, but we have a different way of looking at life. We look at life through words,” she said.

    Nye said words can help people in whatever they do. She advised those who would like to improve their writing skills to write at least two or three sentences every day.

    Equally passionate about reading, Nye said people should always keep a book nearby and tell everyone else about books that they liked.

    Some favorites Nye shared were The Way It Is by William Stafford, Come and Go, Molly Snow by Mary Anne Taylor and My Old Sweetheart by Susanna Moore.

    Nye enjoys poems because they have lessons and are filled with ideas to think about after the story has ended.

    Revision is also something Nye is excited about.

    “It is not a drudgery. It is a chance to work with words more often,” she said. “Think of it as a new vision of an old picture. Take that material and see where it leads you.”

    When asked what advice she had for those who wanted to improve their poetry skills, Nye said, “Give up the rhyming.”

    Nye explained that several times she has read poems with wonderful beginnings but poor endings because the writer was searching for a word that rhymed.

    Nye shared several fascinating and humorous moments from her life with students and staff. She talked of her grandmother, who was determined to outlive everyone she hated and who successfully lived to be 106.

    Nye also talked about spending her honeymoon hiking with her husband and about a canoe ride she took with her son where the river was fraught with alligators.

    Some of these stories are reflected in the essays and poems in Never in a Hurry, which includes essays on different subjects with different perspectives and emotions.

    “I’m a human being. I don’t want to write about something that only appeals to one group of people,” she said.

    Some of her essays are about trying times in other countries.
    “If I never wrote about the aggressive parts, my readers would never want to hear the other side,” she said.

    Nye also discussed the selection of heroes in one’s life.

    “Real heroes are those who can do their daily grind and talk about the glory of things when the world is crumbling around them,” she said. Because her book is titled Never in a Hurry, she is often asked if that is how she sees herself.

    “I wish I could be like that,” she said. “That essay was actually about a moose up in Maine.”

    She closed the lecture by playing her guitar and singing a lullaby that she wrote called Lullaby Moon. She also published the lullaby in an illustrated children’s book.

    Other books by Nye include Fuel, The Red Suitcase and Hugging the Jukebox.