By Drew Robertson
In her latest book, Sifting Artifacts, Kathy Bradley explores the meaning of life and relationships through an anthology of essays. During her life, Bradley has been a lawyer and newspaper columnist, and she uses her deep familiarity with the Coastal Georgia countryside to communicate her insights into everyday life. In this interview, Bradley discusses why she became a writer, how writing works in her life, and her hopes for readers of Sifting Artifacts.
What is your writing process like for the essays in your books?
Being out in nature is a huge overarching, metaphorical thing for me. That is a significant part of how I process life—how I maintain my sanity, for lack of a better word. When writing my newspaper columns, I have a deadline and know about how long it takes me to write one. Sometimes I labor and labor and labor, and just can’t get anywhere, so I’m always open to ideas when I am out and about; to seeing something familiar and then suddenly seeing it as a metaphor for something else. I hold on to that idea, and then when I get back to my computer I’ll sit down and start describing what I saw. From there, I process those thoughts and usually by the time I get to the end, I’m staring at the computer thinking… ‘huh, I didn’t know I knew that.’ Maybe I didn’t know it until that moment. The process generally starts far away from the computer or paper or pen.
Was the process for writing Sifting Artifacts any different from your previous books?
In compiling essays for each of my books, I had no idea the experiences I was going through and writing about were moving me in a slightly different direction than I had been in my understanding of myself and the world. As I went back and read, I would start seeing these threads and realized, ‘Okay that’s interesting.’ Then the metaphor would come to me. This last book was a totally unexpected thing. I had been thinking about doing another collection, but when I went to the doctor’s appointment described in opening essay of Sifting Artifacts, I walked out of the office with this epiphany. Everything that we do, experience, and share leaves an artifact on our hearts. That’s what hit me; nothing’s ever over.
What led you to start writing? And have you seen your life change because of it?
I’ve always been a writer. When I was in second grade, I remember learning three new vocabulary words: college, scholarship, and author. No one in my family had been to college. Somehow, I knew in my little six- or seven-year-old body that those words were my words. I just knew it, and so I set my eyes on that. Now, it only took me until age 17 to do the college and scholarship thing, but I had always been a writer. It didn’t occur to be to pursue writing in any significant way because I was so intent on obtaining a career. Nevertheless, I continued to write. I was the editor of the literary magazine in college, and I took creative writing courses at the suggestion of my advisor. I continued to write, but my sights were set on going to law school.
I did go to law school, and I practiced law for thirty years. Yet, when I was about 40—which is an interesting metaphorical moment anyway—I told a story to one of my good friends about a piece of legislation that had been in the state legislature. It was very funny to me how they were going about doing it. I told her this story, and a few days later, we were having lunch at a civic club meeting (like you do in small towns) and she said to me, ‘Would you tell Larry that story?’ Larry was the editor of the Statesboro Herald, the local paper, so I told him the story, and he said, ‘Would you write that down for me and let me publish it?’ So, I did, and he published the story. People liked it. After that, I sent him another story. I told him, ‘If you can publish this, do it. If not, whatever.’ After that story, he called me up and said, ‘What would it take to get you to do this on a regular basis?’
From there, I started writing for the paper and have done it since. That’s how I realized that not only do I enjoy writing, but it was my identity. It’s who I am. So, I continued writing columns, and I thought a few times about maybe writing a book. To be honest with you, I had absolutely no confidence in myself, and the little inquiries that I would make in that direction never ended up in anything positive. I had given up on it until Mercer University Press instituted their book awards in 2010. I decided to pull some of my columns together into a manuscript and was very surprised to get a call from Marc Jolley telling me that I had won the inaugural Will Campbell Award for Creative Nonfiction. So, that’s how the first book, Breathing and Walking Around, came about and was published in 2012. Then, Mercer published my second collection of essays, Wondering Toward Center, in 2016.
Could you talk me through how it feels when you are doing this type of essay writing? Does it ever take an emotional toll?
Always, when you write personal stuff, the fear comes up as ‘What if nobody likes it?’ ‘What if this makes them think differently of me?’ What I always go back to is a little mantra I developed: when the worst thing that can happen to you happens and you survive, there’s nothing left to be afraid of. I tell myself that when things start getting a little sticky in my writing or just in my life, when fear begins, I always go back to ‘Wait a minute, the worst thing that could happen to me happened and I survived.’ There’s no reason for me to be afraid. Now I can’t tell you that that immediately calms my shaking hands, but it is always the anchor I can go back to. Also, I am a person of very deep faith. When I go to that place, it is always there for me.
What sort of advice do you have for anybody who wants to be a writer?
Over the years, I have talked to students at various levels and ages, and everybody wants to know: What advice would you offer?
The first thing I say is that you must use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling particularly as a beginning writer because you want people to understand what you’re saying. A misspelled word or improper verb tense turns the mind off, and the reader leaves and moves back into their own world. It breaks their concentration. Now that’s not to say that as you develop your skills, it’s not okay to use an incomplete sentence. I do that often for emphasis.
My second piece of advice is that to be a writer, then you must be a reader. There is simply no way to truly write experientially in this world without having the experience of seeing and feeling how other people do that.
The last thing I tell folks is what I have learned over time; writers are notoriously insecure. I mean, all of them. I share this with people to show them it took me years and years and years before I could say ‘I’m a writer.’ I would say, ‘I write’ or ‘I write a little’ or ‘I had written.’ So, I tell people, if it’s hard for you, that’s natural. That’s understandable. Give yourself a chance to work on it—that’s my best advice.
What are you hoping readers will take away from Sifting Artifacts?
I want people to understand that everything that has happened or is happening to them is significant. And I want them to be able to acknowledge that the wonderful, affirming things that have happened in their lives are as important as the negative things. Even more than that, to acknowledge the simple everyday things in life.
When I received my Medicare card last summer, I stared at it for the longest time and thought, ‘How in the world did this happen?’ It’s not just a cliché that time goes more quickly as you get older. So, I would ask anybody who reads Sifting Artifacts, whether they are 25 or 45 or 65 or 85 to say ‘You know what? It mattered.’ It being a pronoun for life. A relationship, an opportunity, a moment in time—it mattered. It all does. I believe as a person, as a friend, as a daughter, as a writer, that we as humans would all be best served as individuals, and as a community of humans, if we could internalize that everything in life matters. Your words, your attitudes—it all matters and makes a difference.
—Drew Robertson is a junior at Mercer University studying Journalism and Creative Writing. She is an editorial intern at Mercer University Press and wants to funnel her great love of literature into working in the book publishing industry.
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I loved this interview. Some great questions and some super answers!
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