I was very low-key and quiet, but I was developing a strength inside. At parties, I wasn’t one of those people who could work a room. I’d be over in the corner by the bookshelf, but I was tuning my ears, my literary ears. I would spend a lot of time working on my writing, and that gave me a quiet confidence. I wasn’t distracted. I am not easily distracted. Eyes on the prize.

INTERVIEWER

What was the prize?

PARKS

Ha! Oh, that’s a good question. I remember one day I was sitting at my desk in my college dorm doing an assignment. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and my desk faced a window and the light was coming in just so, and I was typing, writing a story, trying to figure out what it was about, and all of a sudden it was as if the room was populated by people and all I had to do was listen up and write down what they were saying. I felt like I was in the river, that big river, and I’m in the flow of the stream. After that, the act of writing, the prize, became the chasing of that experience.

So the prize is just the joy of writing, hearing the sounds, hearing those voices. Just being in that river, with the Spirit, having your veins hit the Vein. When these veins in my arm intersect with the Great River and the divining rod goes bzzz. You can feel that thrum. And to come back to it again and again and know that it’s always there and if you work for it, it’s there. The work is the prize.