Author's Bugaboo: "Can I Write Sober?

SOBRIETY was such a miracle in itself, after the years of alcohol and pills, that I did little else those first few months but explore it, delight in it, hang onto it--day after incredible day! I am a fiction writer, and once considered myself a mature and sophisticated woman; what rumors of AA reached me amused me. Now, deflated, helpless as an infant, I clung to AA for my life. In those early months I took the first steps towards sanity and health, towards faith. Sobriety, I found, was the joy of being alive, after a long obsession with death, as positive as my drinking was negative.