I have known this pillar of the writing community for three years and have always found encouragement, support and inspiration in his company.
Thank you Ferrel, for featuring an interview with so many thriving authors on your website www.thejesusroad.com You bring out the best in us all!
Thank you for being here with us today and giving us a glimpse into your remarkable writing career.
Nicola: Question one: What first interested you in writing?
Ferrel: You know, I don’t remember. I endured a stroke, as you know and it wiped out whole sections of my memory. When I woke up, I was in the hospital and couldn’t speak and didn’t know where I was. Gradually, when they thought I could understand it, I was told I was diabetic, and had a stroke. I didn’t even know what they were talking about. Over the next few days, I became aware enough to comprehend that I’d had a stroke but I found that I couldn’t talk- I had aphasia. I didn’t even know what writing was. I couldn’t think clearly enough to remember.
But, eventually, I remembered writing, but I couldn’t remember how to write. I couldn’t type or even handwrite and, since I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t dictate either. I thought my writing days were behind me. But I still nurtured somewhere inside me the hope that I someday I would be able to write.
So, when I was let go from my week in the hospital, I was turned loose, and my wife had to drive me home, but I was still an invalid. My entire right side of my body was damaged. I was pretty well done for, except that I still felt a glimmer of hope.
I don’t know when I became aware of God’s hand in my life, trying to teach me something like I had been saved for… something. To do something that would glorify God, and gradually I came to the knowledge that a part of it was to write again, which seemed pretty well impossible considering the shape that I was in. I remember sitting down at my computer for the first time and trying to type. It was five words in the first hour, and they weren’t hardly comprehensible at all. But every day, I sat down at that computer and pecked out the obligatory five words, even though it took me sometimes all day to think of something to say. Then ten words, then fifteen words until I got up to 2,000 words in a day. I don’t know how I did it. God’s hand was in it, guiding me, keeping me going the whole time.
Now, I am fully recovered except every now and then I have bouts of aphasia when I can’t speak- but that’s okay, because I can still write.
To read more go to https://micandpen.com/2020/06/11/interview-with-ferrel-d-moore/
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