But I didn’t do<\/em> me. I didn’t do ‘write what you know’. I did that other thing. And here’s what I discovered. It’s fine to write what you don’t know<\/em>. But you better make it believable. And I wasn’t doing that.<\/p>\n Cosmo Buffy didn’t fit Toler Mountain<\/a>. West Virginia Buffy did. So I went back to my roots. To the mountains. To that person I never really was, but maybe would have been, if I had come along 50 years earlier. ‘Course I did it in a library in the middle of England. But I did it. I dove into the classics. I re-read Faulkner and Twain. Lee and Williams. Wondered if Hemingway knew what he was on about when he said “…you cannot do something someone else has done…”<\/em> and decided to ask my Pa. <\/p>\n That’s when I stopped reading (southern stuff) and started listening. I found that life I might have had in my grandfather. And I found my voice<\/a>. <\/p>\n I used it in ‘potholes full of shine’, ‘the death watch’ and just about every other piece of fiction I’ve written for this blog. Oh, and for that little matter of 78,000 words. <\/p>\n![\"Cemetery\"\/](\"http:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/pa2.jpg\")
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