September 28, 2025

What I Learned from Listening in Community Halls

Some of the best material for these books came from quiet evenings in community halls, not grand conferences.

Folding chairs and weak tea can produce more truth than a polished panel. People speak differently when they are not being performed to.

They hesitate, revise themselves, and test language carefully.

Those tonal shifts taught me how to write more truthfully.

It also taught me humility.

A novelist who stops listening becomes a stylist of their own assumptions.

Clive