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Do writers know the secret to living a better life?

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You probably don't clang words together for a living.

You're smarter than that.

But even if your idea of wordsmithing is watching Vanna White, you can learn lessons from writers well beyond "What Not To Do When You Grow Up."

Stacks of highly paid professionals will bare their souls this weekend at the South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia. Much of the advice will have a Lowcountry lilt.

Andrew Billingsley will talk about his book on one of Beaufort County's grandest heroes, Robert Smalls. Daufuskie Island native Sallie Ann Robinson will throw into the pot her second book, "Cooking the Gullah Way, Morning, Noon and Night."

Hilton Head Preparatory School graduate Nicole Bensch Seitz of Mount Pleasant will describe "Trouble the Water," her second novel set in the Lowcountry. St. Helena Island native Ronald Daise will paint a truth that's stranger than fiction in his "Gullah Branches, West African Roots."

Cassandra King, who lives on Fripp Island with her famous husband, Pat Conroy, will share her fourth novel, "Queen of Broken Hearts." Beth Webb Hart of Charleston will talk about "The Wedding Machine," which is set in a Lowcountry town called Jasper.

Charleston, which seems to have turned into a writers' sanitarium, will also send Josephine Humphreys, Mary Alice Monroe, state poet laureate Marjory Wentworth, poet Carol Ann Davis, Jack Bass and his wife, Nathalie Dupree, who will serve up her definitive book on a Lowcountry staple, "Nathalie Dupree's Shrimp & Grits Cookbook."

Real writers have a gift that can't be taught. But a trip to the first Savannah Book Festival earlier this month turned up tips on how to live, no matter what you do for a living.

Erik Calonius, whose "The Wanderer" is a spellbinding account of the last slave ship, said to think before you act.

Before he wrote a word, he touched every book in the library of the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. "Like a termite, I ate through them all," he said.

He was a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, where he learned to have three sources for every fact. One or two mistakes and you're fired, he said.

Think how much better the world would be -- not to mention what passes as journalism -- if we all did that.

James L. Swanson, who wrote a bestseller about the 12-day pursuit of Abraham Lincoln's killer, said to turn off the television.

Paul Hemphill of Atlanta captured excellent writing with one verse by Hank Williams. Hemphill's Camel-scarred voice delivered: "Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves begin to die? That means he's lost his will to live, I'm so lonesome I could cry."

"Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams" is Hemphill's latest book. He heard Hank on all-night radio when he was a teenager, riding the Blue Ridge in his daddy's big-rig called the Dixie Red Ball.

"The only way you do it is mile after mile," Hemphill said about his 15 books. "I learned from my father to head down, straight down, 300 miles a day."

There's the book on how to live: Quit thinking about it and get up and do it.

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