A Portal To Good Writing

“I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.” – Sue Monk Kidd

Author of a dozen top-selling books, Monk Kidd’s perhaps best known for her novel The Secret Life of Bees, which tells the story the story of a white girl who runs away from home to live with her deceased mother's former black nanny, who now works as an independent bee-keeper and honey-maker with many of her sisters.  This terrific book – a wonderful study of relationships and understanding – has also been made into both a Broadway play and long-running movie.

Born on this date in 1948, Monk Kidd got her start in writing when a personal essay she wrote for a class was published in Guideposts, then reprinted in Readers’ Digest.  She went on to become a Contributing Editor at Guideposts and a regular writer for many other magazines and journals.

   A strong advocate for keeping daily journals, she not only journals about her life but also  about her writing process.  “Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase,” she said. “In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.”

Monk Kidd said she always is glad to hear that readers feel immersed in her stories, noting,  “I want my words to open a portal through which the reader may leave the self, migrate to some other human sky and return 'disposed' to otherness.”

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