Don't Quit Your Day Job!

I love interviewing people on the radio. For me, it's just one of the great things I get to do in my fantasy work as a talk radio host in North Mississippi. I call it that -- fantasy work -- because it's not my day job, but something on the side that scratches a broadcasting/journalistic itch I've had since I was knee-high to my Dad's old Royal typewriter.

So when I got the chance to interview Sonny Brewer recently, I jumped at it.

Who's Sonny Brewer?

If you're not familiar with his name, don't be embarrassed. To be totally honest, I hadn't heard of him either until I found out he'd put together a new anthology called DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit -- and that he would be in Tupelo to sign copies of it for those fortunate enough to catch him for the four hours he was in town.

First let me tell you that I loved this book (or, rather, I'm still loving it. I just picked it up and I'm about half-way through it). Brewer has assembled an all-star line-up of southern writers, and no doubt through the same persistence he used to launch his own writing career, has given us a candid and realistic glimpse of what these famous writers did for a living before they were rich and famous (or at least famous).

I'm talking about writers like:

• John Grisham (sold underwear and drove a caterpillar before writing A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief )
• Larry Brown (firefighter, carpenter, carpet cleaner before writing Dirty Work, Joe, and Father & Son)
• Pat Conroy (counted people for the church before writing The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini)
• Winston Groom (construction worker, encyclopedia salesman before writing Forrest Gump)

 If you ever written, you know how it can totally mess with your mind, not to mention your livelihood. So it's no small feat that Brewer made friends with these writers, much less got them to contribute stories for Day Job.

Likewise, if you've ever worked at one job while dreaming of something on the other end of the Pay & Prestige Scale, you'll love Brewer's book. It's ripe with the fruits of all those worldly labors, fruits that no doubt at the time seemed more like fruitcakes than they did preparation for The Top Banana.

In the interview, he spoke candidly about the genesis of his work ethic and persistence (he was one of eleven kids left behind when his stepfather was killed in a car wreck in 1963). And in the introduction of the book itself, he writes:

     The book will speak to you, no matter where in the country you live. For this reason: Work is universal. Somebody today might've punched a time clock in Tennessee to dip new-made boat paddles into vats of hot lacquer. Or in Maine. Maybe in Colorado, where people love to paddle kayaks and canoes on beautiful rivers and lakes. There are mail carriers in every state in the union. There are waitresses, and schoolteachers, and dump truck drivers, and lawyers, and pizza deliverers, and manure muckers from sea to shining sea.
     And right now some of them are thinking of picking up one last check.
     If there is a writer among them, just waiting to be discovered in the full bloom of genius, he will someday jump at the chance to write about all that hard work, and the day he quit his day job.

Whether or not you're a writer, a wannabe writer, or, like most of us, simply laboring in the Trench of Hope and Opportunity, I have a feeling you'll appreciate Don't Quit Your Day Job.

If nothing else, it might be just the encouragement you need to plant a few more seeds.

Note: Thanks to Sonny Brewer for appearing on DeltaTalk Radio on Wednesday, December 8, 2010 -- and for posing for pictures with Jack Reed, Sr. at Reeds Bookstore in Tupelo. Click here to go the DeltaTalk Facebook page for those.