An Indianola native managed to find enough time in her busy college schedule to write a book.
The three-year time commitment for the recent graduate of Coe College's history program paid off because her book has been published by Adelaide books.
Nina Wilson's coming-of-age story about a Vietnam veteran-turned professor who's suffering from Parkinson's disease and the student he mentors was inspired by an idea pulled out of a hat during a creative writing class at Coe.
"The idea was something along the lines of a history professor who hates everyone," Wilson, a 2013 Indianola graduate, said. "So, I wrote a monologue and I kept writing and writing. It got to about 178 pages within the next two months."
Wilson's professor told her to keep writing and in another month she had all 200 pages finished.
Meanwhile, Wilson had submitted a short story to Adelaide Magazine about a woman with Alzheimer's who could only think through '80s rock ballad lyrics. The magazine liked her submission so much the editor called Wilson and asked if she had any other content because they had a book imprint.
Wilson sent them her book, "Surrender Language" and they published it.
The literary book, Wilson said, will probably appeal more to older audiences, but added "I think it's important for anyone to read a story about human suffering and mortality and understand what other people feel in order to understand empathy."
Her book outlines what it's like for the main character to be forced to retire from his job while dealing with the side effects of Parkinson's disease. During his last year of teaching, the professor befriends one of his students and helps him come of age while learning about his own mortality in the process.
The book is being sold on Amazon.com and on Adelaide books' website.
While "Surrender Language" is the first book Wilson wrote, it isn't her last. Her second book, called "Malady" will be published in May.
Wilson said she wasn't planning on writing to be her full-time job, but said it's probably going to end up that way because it takes a lot of time to submit work to literary magazines, agents and publishers.
Wilson said she's currently working on a fantasy series and a historical fiction piece.
Wilson's mother, Sharon Wilson, is supportive of her daughter's published works.
"The weirdest thing is that I can Google my kid," Sharon said. "You usually Google somebody who sings a song or who's a serial killer or something. But my kid is on there because she's been doing right since she was little."
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