My First River City Writer

I wasn't able to see his reading, but I did attend the interview. I am simply amazed by Floyd Skloot. It is most difficult to be a successful author in the first place, but to have to go back and have to relearn everything you've learned about writing, when your memory gets wiped out from a disease, and become a successful author and poet twice is truely remarkable.

Skloot has a writing room in his home that he suggests every writer should have. Because of the illness that took his memory and because of his having to relearn a great deal of his memory, Skloot carries a writing pad and pen with him everywhere he goes; he has one of each in every room in his home, including his bathroom. And for every jacket or coat he owns, there is a writing pad and pen in every one because he says he will forget to take it out of one and put it in another. Skloot admits that when he began writing about his illness, that every CRACKPOT imaginable came out of the woodwork. During his interview, he elaborated on a few examples. He spoke of the man who told him of a rum concoction that he created that would cure him, and another man who tried to sell him garlic clove suppositories. By far, however, the most interesting one was the man who wanted to sell Floyd a machine that would fix his memory loss. The price tag was $8000.00. There are people out there that will prey on innocent people and Skloot also realizes though that there are people out there that are extremely grateful to him for giving a voice to this disease.

When asked if he writes to a particular audience, Skloot said, "if you write the project correctly, it will find its readers." He also said, "It is easy to fall in love with your writing and think you got it right." Skloot has a couple of devoted proofreaders in his corner. His wife and his daughter, Rebecca, review all of his work before he sends it out.

When asked about the preference of one genre or another, Skloot admitted that there were certain subjects that he will write for one particular genre and other subjects that go into a different genre. He also told the crowd that in the past 10 or 15 years, whatever subject he investigated determined the genre he would write the work in.

Truely an amazing person is Floyd Skloot. I am very intrigued to read some of his work.