AND SO I DID by Katherine Scott Crawford
Actress. Army Airborne Ranger. Rock star. Writer.
These were the career paths I debated as a 10 year-old tomboy growing up in the South Carolina Upcountry. And though it took me until age 16 to shake the acting bug, it was really at 10—after one summer gulping down the entire Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery, and then precociously plowing through Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides—that I knew, beyond all else: I wanted to write.
There was no clap of thunder, no voice from above. The realization was a warmth in the pit of my belly, spreading out through my appendages—scraped knees and gangly arms, even into the white-blonde ends of my pig-tails. I think I’d known it all along.
I completed my first novel in a spiral notebook beneath my desk in 9th grade Biology. As an undergraduate English major at Clemson University, I started, but never finished, several others, and God bless my roommates for reading them. Before graduating, I’d tacked on a double major (Speech & Communications Studies), and come close to a third in History. These very different academic pursuits satisfied the distinct aspects of my personality—the introverted writer, and the extroverted girl who knew how to have a really, really good time.
So many things have shaped who I am as a writer, but none quite so much as the place where I grew up. The South Carolina Upcountry is a land of rolling foothills and blue mountains, of giant man-made lakes and wildwater rivers. The further you venture west, toward the Blue Ridge, the easier it is to look out over forest and mountain and think on just how close you are to the wild.
This was my playground. My family owns a lake house in Oconee County, South Carolina, situated on a lake that bumps right up to the Sumter National Forest. Every nearby mountain top, stream and road has a Cherokee Indian name. I grew up camping, hiking and river paddling throughout the ancient boundaries of the Cherokee nation, completely entranced by its beauty and seemingly lost history. I knew, one day, I’d write about it.
After stints as a camp counselor, outdoor/ experiential educator, backpacking guide, and newspaper reporter, I headed to the coast to earn a Master’s degree in English from a joint program between the College of Charleston and The Citadel. I lived on a sea island, studied in Italy, and raised a black lab puppy who’s still one of the great loves of my life. But something in the mountains called me back.
I was a college English instructor on a newlywed budget when the spark of my novel, Keowee Valley, came to me. I’d just forked over money my husband and I didn’t really have to attend a writers’ conference, and was debating over which of my many unfinished novel excerpts I’d send in to be critiqued. Sitting at my desk with the conference packet in hand, I couldn’t shake from my mind the image of a young woman in 18th century dress, looking out over the land where my family’s lake house sits now. Only there was no lake, just an untouched river valley, with mountains ringing it like a great blue crown. Her story, the land’s story: That was what I really wanted to write about, had always wanted to write about.
And so I did.
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