They both sang. My grandmother had a very haunted mountain voice and would sing hymns. My grandpa would sing but in a very, very subdued way.

Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns - I used to refer to them - because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals.

However you arrive at the ability to ignore self-doubt - if you can acquire it or possess it or find it or discover it - move beyond self-doubt.

I hope that books don't go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself. And so I make reference to and acknowledge things that I feel have been dismissed, trying to restate those musical and cultural elements clearly and vehemently

As a writer, I always tend to take the liberty and the great artistic luxury of a composite form of writing.

I listen to hundreds of those hymns sung repeatedly over the years of my life. And I know that they probably influenced a rhyme scheme maybe to certain extent. They influenced the pentameter of placement of words, etc. And it's not something that's a conscious thing that occurred.