After sixty-plus years of writing a weekly
column, you must be running out of ideas. What keeps your writing so fresh and
energizing?
Life continues to be exciting.
I get up in the morning and follow the pattern of my father and say out the
door or window or out on the porch, “Good morning world, it is going to be a
good day.” Then I get my coffee and toast and head for the computer and
start writing.
I try and get ideas for columns ahead of time. I carry a notebook around with
me all the time to write down ideas. Sometimes a thought will come in the
middle of the night and I write in my notebook beside the bed so I won’t forget
it by morning. Ideas can come from anywhere. I also have three sons who are
vitally interested in my writing and give me ideas. I tell them I don’t want to
write old, so they help me stay fresh. Lately they tell me to write about what
it is like to get old. “Not many people write about how they feel and think and
act after 90. You can do that and you should,” they say.
I would like to have lived in a university town. I would have liked the energy
and opportunities to learn more. I had samples when I studied at the University
of Colorado and later the University of Chicago—so I had a little exposure to
this kind of town.
Writer,
journalist, KMA radio homemaker, Iowa master farm
homemaker: you’ve had a long and successful career. Is there any other
path you dreamed of taking? Park ranger, bookstore owner, Amazon explorer?
That
really takes some thought. My path has gone one step at a time, sometimes from
necessity, sometimes accidentally, certainly when love entered the picture and
then children. But what would I have chosen or dreamed of choosing any
different? When I was young I talked of being a nurse, until I realized I
did not have the natural qualities needed for such work. I took teachers’
training in college because I could get a certificate in two years and money
was desperately tight and my parents did well to send me for two years.
I would like to have lived in a university town. I would have liked the energy
and opportunities to learn more. I had samples when I studied at the University
of Colorado and later the University of Chicago—so I had a little exposure to
this kind of town.
So many exciting paths have opened up to me along the way: my time in Chicago,
my exciting romance and coming back to Iowa, then the doors that opened with my
writing and radio—television, public appearances, working with Fannie Flagg,
knowing Jane and Michael Stern, and, lately, the great experience of making a
documentary with Iowa Public Television and then writing my books. The fun
with the University of Iowa Press and their great staff and the Iowa Women’s Archives
wanting my memorabilia and all my writing. Mercy, I would never have imagined
so much. And the joy of having three wonderful sons and two perfect
grandchildren and a great daughter-in-law.
My cup runneth over. I don’t need any other dreams.
Evelyn Birkby is the author of Always Put in a Recipe and Other Tips for Living from Iowa's Best-Known Homemaker, as well as Up a Country Lane Cookbook and Neighboring on the Air.
