“You got to take care of your people, if you want them to take care of you.”
That’s Phillip Graham, poet and author, quoting who he categorized to be a “lifer,” a taxi driver he met when he was a college student struggling by as a taxi driver himself.
“You got to take care of your people, if you want them to take care of you.” Ethical questions of bribery aside, sometimes I think this is the best writing advice I’ve ever received. Isn’t it the web of our relationships that gives us a center of gravity, that gives our interior landscapes the context of others? And as writers, we employ what we’ve learned of ourselves, of our relationships in order to create the breathing space of difference for our characters, to help us imagine their own particular realities.
Two people come to mind: Anne Lamott and her vegetables and Vonnegut and his care for characters. Worth heading over to spend some time with him.
