Many people dream of writing a book. But where do you start? On today’s WTMJ Conversations, Libby Collins sits down with founder of Waukesha’s International Creative Writing Studio, Kathie Giorgio, to discuss how she began writing, the events in her life that inspire her work, how she helps aspiring authors get published, and much more! It’s all ahead on this exciting edition of WTMJ Conversations. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: The thought that you chose a subject like
suicide, how did that come about?
KATHIE GIORGIO: I was just at a book club last night that
read the book and talking about this.
I was at a coffee shop in Waukesha and having a cup of
coffee, reading a book, and there were two women behind me in the
booth, and apparently a friend of theirs had just chosen to end her life, and
they were shredding her. They were saying things like, “How selfish was
that? How irresponsible is that? How could she leave her children and her
husband behind? What a mean thing to do. What a monster.”
And, I mean, I’m listening to this and going I — because of
what I do, I mean, I work with creatives all the time. There’s a high level of
suicide among the creative population so, I’ve known many people who
have chosen to end their lives. And I know these people were not selfish
and they were not monsters. They were in a phenomenal amount of pain.
And so, I stood up and I turned to them, and I said, “You’re
asking the right questions, ‘how could she do this,’ but what you need to
be asking, too, is, how could she have been — how much pain must have
she been in to find this to be a reasonable solution to what she was going
through?” And then I walked out.
LIBBY COLLINS: You didn’t wait for their reaction?
KATHIE GIORGIO: I think they were in such a state of
shock I don’t even know that they would have answered me. I mean, their
jaws were down on the table.
But then I just left, it was — and I came home, and I started
writing the book.
