Doris Betts, writer and teacher of writing

Doris Betts arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a year before I did. She came as a lecturer, a fill-in who did not have the academic credentials usually required of faculty members. But she had a couple of well-received novels under her belt, and she impressed her academic colleagues enough to not only win a spot on the faculty but also to become faculty chair and one of the most beloved professors at the university. I arrived with a very limited preparation from a small high school and unrealistic ambitions, thinking I might someday make a living as a writer, and was gone four years later.

I never knew Doris Betts during my time in Chapel Hill, despite taking every creative writing course I could, and never read her books until years later. I was privileged to hear her speak on several occasions and had the opportunity to talk with her on a couple of occasions. I've said many times that she gave the best speech on writing I have ever heard. She was the featured writer at a Barton College Friends of Hackney Library event several years ago. The twice-yearly library dinners attract a variety of authors. Some are more gifted as writers than others. Some are more gifted as speakers. I knew Betts was an exceptional writer, but her speech about why writing is important and how one goes about writing was as good as anyone will ever hear. She said she didn't outline her novels with incidents and turning points. Instead, she said she liked to bring her characters together on a page and see what happens. Her character-driven novels seldom attracted the attention of the suspenseful, who-done-it books, but her novels achieved the ultimate goal of great fiction — an examination of the human condition through characters who are as real as your neighbors and relatives.

With her death Saturday, North Carolina has lost a great writer. More important, it has lost a great teacher of writing, a great friend of writers and a great advocate of good writing. Her novel "Souls Raised from the Dead" is one of the most beguiling books you'll ever read. Betts brings together her distinct characters in trying situations and lets them work through their problems. In doing so, she gives a little explanation of what life is all about.

Students remind me of life's calling

This week, I participated in a panel discussion before a crowd of middle-school students about jobs and careers. We panel members were supposed to impress upon the impressionable students what our jobs were like and how we came to do what we do. The discussion led to something more for me — a reflection on just how I ended up at this time and place.

When I was their age, I told the students, I wanted to be an astronomer. Enthralled by the excitement of what was called The Space Age with its frequent breathless rocket launches, I read every astronomy book the county library had to offer, and I memorized minutiae about the planets, stars and galaxies. It was only when I discovered that astronomy had more to do with math than with peering through a telescope's eyepiece that I became disenchanted with that vocation. Soon after, I discovered, as I told the students, the magic of assembling words together, and I set my sights on being a writer.

Then came the admission: "I still think of myself as a writer." I had the good fortune of being paid to write every day for more than 30 years, but newspapers are going through a wrenching transformation with no certainty what the final outcome will be. The career path of writing for a newspaper or other news medium holds no promise these days. This blog and some unpublished fiction are my only outlets for exercising my writing muscles, with the exception of a few routine letters and speeches.

But if I do, indeed, still think of myself as a writer, I should take that appellation more seriously. When you work for a newspaper, I've told aspiring writers over the years, you have to write every day, or else you'll soon be out of a job. Writers need to write daily, just as athletes need to exercise and practice daily. That's not an easy thing when your time is being absorbed by so many other appointments, interests or obligations. "Life is what happens when you're busy doing other things," another writer (John Lennon) said. If I still do think of myself as a writer, I must set aside priority time to do the work that calling demands.

Poetry and more at Barton College

Monday night's audience at Barton College's Ragan Writing Center was not large — less than 50 (but I didn't take a head count). But it was a rainy night, and the topic was poetry, a spectacle not likely to fill a stadium.

The Emerging Writers Series, sponsored by Wilson residents Dr. and Mrs. William Batchelor, brought in Catherine Carter and Dan Albergotti, two "emerging" poets with North Carolina ties. Carter teaches at Western Carolina, and Albergotti earned one of his degrees at UNC-Greensboro. The two presented a contrast in poetic styles, Carter more whimsical and humorous, Albergotti more serious and provocative. My wife and I were there primarily to see Albergotti, who was in UNC-G's MFA program with my son and daughter-in-law. They had given me an autographed copy of Albergotti's book "The Boatloads" as a Father's Day gift (or was it birthday?) last year. As a college freshman, I marveled at the concept I had discovered in the college catalog, that writing poetry could be taught. I had assumed that poetry had to be inspired purely by a muse. I ended up taking that course on poetry writing, as well as a couple on fiction writing, but never managed to produce marketable works of poetry or fiction. I did manage to make a living as a writer for 35 years. When Fred Chappell, former state poet laureate and director of the creative writing program at UNC-G, spoke at Barton a few years ago, he joked about the poverty and humility that attends to being a poet.

I've retained an interest in poetry all these years, even as I edited thousands of clearly un-poetic newspaper articles. When my son was learning creative writing, he introduced me to a fine volume of poetry by Ron Rash, "Eureka Mill," with painfully evocative poems set in an old textile mill much like the mill village where my parents grew up, and to writers such as Michael McFee, who also spoke at Barton a few years ago.

Poetry won't fill a stadium, but it clearly has its fans, as Barton's Emerging Writers Series has shown. Poets regularly fill the room in the college's Writing Center. Monday's event emphasizes the inherent value of a liberal arts college. A college raises the threshold of art and culture in the community. Wilson would be a lesser city without Barton's highly educated faculty; its attraction of artists and writers who speak, exhibit and inspire; its lecture series such as the Sprinkle Lectures on religion or the Emerging Writers Series; its symphony orchestra and its theatrical performances, such as last week's "Violet," a musical based on the Doris Betts short story, "The Ugliest Pilgrim"; and even its athletic teams. Barton deserves the support of all Wilsonians who care about the quality of life in this community.