Elizabeth Gilbert in winston-salem.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the wildly popular Eat, Pray, Love, came to Winston-Salem to speak as a featured participant in the city's Bookmarks series.  Friday afternoon I saw the newspaper article announcing her coming and quickly picked up my cell phone to order a ticket.  There are some things whose urgency transcends even the narrowest of budgets.

All day I had that nervous excited feeling in the bottom of my stomach.  When I thought about what I would actually say if I got the chance to ask a question or, gasp, talk to her face-to-face it felt like my insides were carbonated and someone picked me up, turned me over and shook me hard a few times. Sort of the sick, unnerved feeling I would get in sixth grade just before informing my father of a D on my math test.  I actually laughed aloud in the restroom of the conference center when I realized how ridiculously overwhelmed I was.  It's just a woman, Ginny. Just like you, only dazzlingly brilliant and utterly published.  

You know, I walk around the avenues of my life thinking my passion for writing and chapters and adjectives qualifies me as crazy until I go to a conference where heaps of writers are present in bulk.  It is then that I feel most normal... not that a room full of highly introspective, overly observant artistic individuals would necessarily be considered "normal."  

The older women are strikingly beautiful.  Many wear their lustrous grey hair long and their lips are always red, magazine shiny.  Most of them wear these gorgeous chunky sweaters and corduroys like they should all live in Maine somewhere.  They appear thoughtful with deep kind eyes and such colorful faces.  Writing must be some kind of youth fountain.  There were only a few men, mostly in their forties and fifties I'd guess, with tweed and gray blazers and penetrating focused gazes, devilishly handsome in their seasoned age.  

There are the young writers too.  One woman brought her little baby in yellow fleece pajamas with feet.  That made me wish they made those for adults.  She was tall with her long dark hair pulled back haphazardly in a bun.  The baby crawled around quietly at her feet.  It occurred to me how rare for a child to stay so quiet for two hours.  

My neighbor, reading a workbook on how to facilitate your creative growth in the workplace, had written at the top of her page, I want to be my mother--my mother wanted to be me.  I smiled, understanding her anxiety to secure the fleeting notions, sensing our unspoken camaraderie.

Elizabeth sat on the stage in the front in a large red leather chair.  I scooted to the edge of my seat to listen. I wouldn't move until it was over.  She spoke like on a Sunday afternoon, like she was sitting on the porch discussing memories with an old friend.  She said that writing depends on three factors: talent, luck and hard work.  You can only control one of them, she said.

She cited an old Brazilian adage that her husband, Jose, says: Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams.  She said that some people are unsung as heroes though heroes they be.  She said that it is easier to tell the truth than to make up fiction, so write about the truth.

"I get so excited by people," she said.  "There is so much weird variation."  I wanted to jump up and down and say, Me too! Me too! Fortunately I still had a foot on the ground so I held my tongue.  It dawned on me during the interview that I resonated with this woman who I esteem so highly--I could really relate to the things she said.  This infused me with a great deal of confidence about my own journey as a writer and made me want to go immediately home to log some pages on my own book.

Absorbing her aura, her humor, her wisdom, her kindness and her folksy storytelling, I teetered between merry tears and laughter for the short hour and a half.   At the end we all lined up like school children at lunch and waited for our books to be signed, a strange ritual we cling to.  I spoke briefly to her as she signed her name on the title page of her novel Stern Men and I wished for something worthwhile to say but came up with nothing.  Typical. But later I recalled something she said that will propel me and stay with me, I think, forever.  She had said this: 

There is no assurance with writing.  You just have to do it and then see where it goes.

If you're reading this, Elizabeth Gilbert, thank you.