[MUSIC PLAYING]
WALLY LAMB: I began when I was about 30 years old. I started writing something that I didn't even know was a short story. And finally, a couple years later and several drafts later, it was not only a short story, but it got published. So how thrilled was I? Then I wrote a second story. And then after I finished a third, I entered a program at Vermont College, a low residency master of fine arts degree. Because I had slammed into the wall of all I still didn't know about how to write. I worked there with a wonderful teacher and writer named Gladys Swan, and I remember bringing my latest short story to her. It was about maybe 25, 30 pages, and she had read it in advance to our meeting. She said to me, well, my dear-- she said, this is interesting, but I think you got a few too many pots on the stove. And I said, well, what do you mean? She said, well, there's a lot of stuff going on in this thing in, and I don't think, really, it can survive as a short story. So I said, well, what do you want me to cut? She said, well, maybe you don't want to cut anything. Maybe you're trying to tell yourself that you want to write a novel. Well, if I had known that it was going to take me nine years and turn into the many challenges that I faced along the way to writing She's Come Undone, I probably would have run out of the room screaming. But I didn't. You know, sometimes ignorance can serve you well. And so I just kept going. And indeed, that story did become She's Come Undone, which was my first published novel.