Ask the Author: Rusty Williams
Answered Questions (6)
Rusty Williams
From John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, I've always been struck by the relationship between Tom Joad and his mother. Throughout that big sprawl of a story of the Okies traveling West and settling in California, Steinbeck keeps coming back to Tom and his mother. When Tom first returns home from prison he's like an eleven-year-old boy: shortsighted, angry, and crude. In virtually every scene the mother and son share, she's helping change him into a man who can look beyond his own needs. She does what a mother does: nurture, guide and civilize her offspring.
Rusty Williams
I write history. Nonfiction. True stuff. So my best times are spent in libraries or archives digging out those details that illuminate the story I’m telling and the nuggets that make it interesting. There’s nothing like arranging those facts into a story that’s well-told and captivates readers’ interest.
Rusty Williams
Simply: write! (If I only had a buck every time I’ve heard someone say, “I’ve got a great story and I’m thinking of writing a book.”) Just write it, dammit! By the way, you better have a good grounding in vocabulary, word usage, grammar, storytelling, and research before you start stringing words together.
Rusty Williams
I have a few projects under my hat that I’m researching. But, mainly, I’m working on several magazine and journal articles about aspects of the Red River Bridge War.
Rusty Williams
Inspired? Ha! I just sit my butt down in a chair and don’t get up until I’ve written at least a thousand words. You can believe the old aphorism that it’s 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
Rusty Williams
I have to thank the late novelist, Tony Hillerman. Before he began writing his hugely popular Navaho novels, Hillerman was a wire service reporter in Oklahoma. According to his autobiography, he was assigned to interview an old man living in a transient’s hotel in Tishomingo. It was a former governor, W. H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, the man who “won” the Texas-Oklahoma Red River Bridge War in the 1930s. I know a lot of regional history, but I’d never heard of the bridge war. I began researching it and found a delightful story of how Oklahoma and Texas armed up and went to war of a two-bit toll bridge.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more