Island Writer

Duke Kahanamoku & Babe Ruth ca 1930's (below)

If you want to be a writer, you should "go down" to London, move to New York, or "do" the workshops and postgraduate program at Iowa. . . the last thing you want to do is move to the outskirts of "civilization." Of course if you are FROM a culture far from the center, well then you are a multi-cultural treasure to be discovered, like the magical-realists of Latin America. But nice light-skinned middle aged ladies who report on "exotics," like Isabella Bird, are SOOO last century (or before!). I have never learned the knack of succeeding "conventionally" and so have all the advantages of absolute freedom. I write what I am moved to write. My "fish out of the East Coast" literary love affair with Hawaii has not been a matter of choice or calculation; it has been a compulsion. I write because I am. My little novel: "Aloha Where You Like Go?" demanded to be written. People NEEDED to see the REAL treasure of Hawaii and her people BEHIND the paradise illusions; I didn't know HOW, only that I MUST. I sure learned a lot! Now I have the pleasure of being a sort of literary duck-billed platypus: not a New York writer, not exactly a Pacific writer. But YOU don't care about labels, do you? I have discovered READERS and friends. There you are!

People who READ blogs are often writers themselves. So the friends my book has made, those of YOU who visit Comfort Spiral, who become "followers," and who comment, you have all given me a wonderful gift. I appreciate your attention, and the lessons I learn reading all of your words. Thanks for strolling along with me through my Waikiki and my life. Here are some quotes that I think express some "truth" about being a writer. Hope you enjoy them. Sales and ranking are not the measure of an author, I've learned. Hearts touched & friends made are a humbling gift indeed! Every reader is a living treasure. These days I feel very wealthy indeed. Mahalo!

"When I glance back at my prose, the quality I admire and fear to have lost is its exuberant air of slight excess." - John Updike

"A slender poetry volume selling less than a thousand copies and receiving a handful of admiring reviews can give its author a pride and sense of achievement denied more mercenary producers of the written word. As for bad reviews and poor sales, they can be dismissed on the irrefutable hypothesis that reviewers and book buyers are too obtuse to appreciate true excellence. Over time many books quickly bloom and then vanish; a precious few unfold, petal by petal, and become classics." - John Updike

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken