I drove to Carmel Sunday afternoon and attended the “Author to Author” lecture series hosted by the Carmel Public Library Foundation. The CPLF schedules these events throughout the year. This presentation involved three published authors and the topic was “Fiction: Writing the Novel and Getting It Published.”

The three authors presenting the program were Alex A .Vardamis, Cornelia Read, and Robert Irvine. They were seated near a huge fireplace in the Barnet Segal Reading Room, located just to the right of the entrance to the Harrison Memorial Library. Tom Parks moderated the discussion and asked questions. Somehow, about 75 people squeezed into the large room, with some of them sitting in chairs beyond the rail along an upper floor balcony. I was surprised to see that many come out on such a rainy day.

I didn't learn much. Unfortunately, Mr. Parks failed to take full advantage of the hour. It takes a special talent to interview a panel such as this. It's not as simple as just writing down a few questions. I realize Mr. Parks had a remarkable career as a writer and dialogue coach in Hollywood. Nonetheless, the panel's presentation was a little flat. Perhaps having one author, not three, would have been better. That way, we might have been able to dig deeper into the life of a professional published writer and gained some insight into how they deal with publishers, agents, and editors in a changing industry.

Mr. Parks touched on the Kindle 2 controversy from Amazon, but it was clear he didn't fully understand the issues involved. Mr. Vardamis probably summed up the whole discussion by saying that “the Kindle is probably the wave of the future...it's how things will be done since printing costs are so high.”

The one thing that really stuck out in my mind after hearing the discussion? Writing is an individual and lonely pursuit. Every writer is unique, and each has their own opinions on the process and practice of being a writer. Writing is as unique to the individual as fingerprints. When a writer puts words to paper he is fingerprinting an idea, saying a thing that no one else will say in exactly the same way.

Finding one's voice as a writer, then, should be easy. All we must do is write what we will. How we choose to write it is our business, and others be damned.