'The hardest thing I know'

 

“Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.” – Kent Haruf

 

Born in Pueblo, CO, on this date in 1943, Haruf finally broke through the barrier in 1984 with The Tie That Binds, not only establishing his writing credentials but also earning both a Whiting Award and a Hemingway Foundation/PEN citation for excellence.

 

His novel, Plainsong, a huge bestseller published in 1999, is considered one of the best ever written about Western U.S. small town life.  And his last novel, Our Souls at Night, completed just before his death in 2014, was adapted into a popular film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

 

The son of a Methodist minister, Haruf first started writing in high school and further studied writing at Nebraska Wesleyan University and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned his MFA.   All of his novels are set in the fictional town of Holt, CO, based on the small Western plains’ town of Yuma where he resided in the early 1980s.

 

“I write in a journal first, briefly,” he said of his writing process.  “Then (I) read something I've read many times before, for about half an hour, then rework what I wrote the day before.   You have to believe in yourself, despite the evidence.”