A Writer's Moment: 'An expression of life'

A Writer's Moment: 'An expression of life':   “I arise full of eagerness and energy, knowing well what achievement lies ahead of me.” – Zane Grey   Best known ...

'An expression of life'

 

“I arise full of eagerness and energy, knowing well what achievement lies ahead of me.” – Zane Grey

 

Best known for his novels of the Old West, Grey idealized the American frontier and wrote some 9 million words in his lifetime.  His 1912 best-seller  Riders of the Purple Sage was the highlight of an amazing 90 books in the genre, many adapted into films and television productions. Overall, his novels and short stories have been made into 112 films, 2 television episodes and the series, The Zane Grey Theater.

 

Born on this date in 1872, Grey grew up in Zanesville, Ohio, a city founded by his maternal great-grandfather Ebenezer Zane, an American Revolutionary War patriot.  From an early age he was intrigued by history and even though he first chose dentistry as a career, he gravitated to writing. 

 

Grey struggled to get his work published and actually self-published his first novel.  Harper & Row, his publisher of choice, consistently rejected his work, including “Riders.”  But Grey wrangled an audience with a senior vice president, made an impassioned plea and got the book accepted.  The rest, as they say, is history – both literally and figuratively.

 

Besides his Westerns, he wrote 2 hunting books, 6 children’s books, 3 baseball books, and 8 fishing books.   His total book sales – which made him a millionaire many times over – have been over 40 million (and still counting).

  

 

A star baseball player in college and as a minor leaguer and a frequent brawler as a young man, his writing depicting both athleticism and fistfights were often cited by readers when talking about the "realism" in his books.  

 

 “Well, what is writing,” he responded,  “but an expression of my own life?”

A Writer's Moment: 'Knowledge: Child of your Efforts'

A Writer's Moment: 'Knowledge: Child of your Efforts':   “It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.   He who has a sun in himself won’t seek for it...

'Knowledge: Child of your Efforts'

 

“It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.  He who has a sun in himself won’t seek for it somewhere else.” – Romain Rolland

 

Born on this date in 1866, Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings.”

He advocated for making the theater accessible to all and often expressed frustration with those he was trying to convince that this was a good idea.  “Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth but already to possess it,” he once noted. 

 

His friend Sigmund Freud said he was profoundly influenced by Rolland’s views, especially on mysticism.  Freud also was a great admirer of Rolland’s 10-volume novel Jean-Christophe, written over an 8-year period. 

  

“The main thing is not to accumulate as much knowledge as possible, but to make sure that this knowledge is the child of your own efforts,” Rolland said.  “Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of tomorrow.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'The fate of poetry'

A Writer's Moment: 'The fate of poetry':   “The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world.” – Derek Walcott   Born in January, 1930, Walcott authored ...

'The fate of poetry'

 

“The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world.” – Derek Walcott

 

Born in January, 1930, Walcott authored two dozen books of poetry, 25 plays and several novels and earned the Nobel Prize in Literature for his efforts.  He also was a MacArthur genius grant recipient and winner of the coveted T.S. Elliot Prize in Poetry.  Here for Saturday’s Poem is Walcott’s,

 

 

Love After Love

 

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

 

 

A Writer's Moment: The stuff of fiction is . . . life

A Writer's Moment: The stuff of fiction is . . . life:   Settings for novels take place … well, literally everywhere.   And, as P.D. James (born in 1920) once noted, all fiction is largely autob...

The stuff of fiction is . . . life

 

Settings for novels take place … well, literally everywhere.  And, as P.D. James (born in 1920) once noted, all fiction is largely autobiographical for the writer, and much autobiography is, of course, the stuff of fiction. 

Someone, like you or me, sits down and starts thinking about where and how to “set” a book or a short story or even to tell the story of his or her own life – and pretty soon we have something new to read.  It usually doesn’t happen overnight and it often is a messy process, but regardless of who is doing the writing, it’s yet another completion of a creative process that has led to everything from our neighbor’s “memoirs” to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

 “(Writing) is undoubtedly a lonely career,” James said.   “But I suspect that people who find it lonely are not writers.  I think if you are a writer you realize how valuable the time is when you are absolutely alone with your characters in complete peace.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Actual writing is required'

A Writer's Moment: 'Actual writing is required':   “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must not be to write.” – Hugh Prather   An American se...

'Actual writing is required'

 

“If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must not be to write.” – Hugh Prather

 

An American self-help writer, lay minister, and counselor, Prather was most famous for his book, Notes to Myself, a work that underscored the importance of gentleness, forgiveness, and loyalty. 

Prather, born during this week in 1938 (he died in 2010), also wrote or co-wrote over a dozen other books that touched on thoughts about life, love and spirituality, one of the most well-known being I Touch The Earth; The Earth Touches Me. “It's this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything,” he wrote in that book.   “If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.”

While many readers loved his work, others scorned it as thoughts seen through rose-colored glasses.  

 

“Negative feedback is better that none,” Prather responded.  “I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I figure I must’ve made a difference.”

A Writer's Moment: A champion of 'telling your own story'

A Writer's Moment: A champion of 'telling your own story':   “Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.” – Gloria Naylor ...

A champion of 'telling your own story'

 

“Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.” – Gloria Naylor

The daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers who migrated to New York City’s Harlem area to escape southern segregation, Naylor was born on this date in 1950.  She grew up keenly aware of life in “the mean streets” and kept track of those stories in a daily journal that became a wonderful resource for her writing. 

While her parents had little education, they encouraged their daughter’s writing and further study.  She earned her bachelor’s degree in English at the City University of New York in 1981, and master’s in African American Studies from Yale University in 1983 sandwiched around her first novel, the award-winning The Women of Brewster Place.  That 1982 work also was made into a movie.

She had a long and award-filled career in university teaching while also writing 6 more novels, drawing frequently on both her own life and the lives of African American women from the communities in which she lived.  She died in the Virgin Islands in 2016. 

“I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either,” she said.  “Life is just supposed to make you feel.  Life is accepting what is and working from that.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Be the candle in life'

A Writer's Moment: 'Be the candle in life':   “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. ” – Edith Wharton Wharton is widely recogni...

'Be the candle in life'

 

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton

Wharton is widely recognized as one of the greatest writers in history.  Born on this day in 1862, she grew up in New York City and began writing as a young girl, attempting a novel at age 11.  Her first published work came at age 15.

Despite that, her Upper Crust Society family discouraged her from writing and publishing because they didn’t think it was either “ladylike” or worthwhile.   But after marrying, she pursued it anyway and went on to publish 16 novels, dozens of novellas, 85 short stories, 3 books of poetry, and 9 nonfiction books.  In 1921 she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence, and in 1927, 1928 and 1930 she was a finalist for the Nobel Prize.

Her novella Ethan Frome and her novel House of Mirth are widely studied in American literature classes in both high schools and universities around the world, lauded for their realism and portrayal of the times and places in which she lived.

Wharton loved life and writing about it and said it kept her young and vibrant.  “Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed,” she said.   “Give me the tightrope.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Nobody's special property'

A Writer's Moment: 'Nobody's special property':   “The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of th...

'Nobody's special property'

 

“The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.” – Derek Walcott

 

Born in Saint Lucia on this date in 1930, Walcott was the 1992 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Also the recipient of the Obie Award for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain (he wrote 20 plays) and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, Walcott died in 2017. 

 

 Walcott taught for many years in England and earned the T. S. Eliot Prize for his remarkable book of poetry White Egrets.   He once noted about his poetic writing, “If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's just going to be average.” 

 

His poems are not.  For powerful and poignant reads, check out  “A City’s Death by Fire” or “A Far Cry From Africa.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Poetry - a degree in consciousness'

A Writer's Moment: 'Poetry - a degree in consciousness':     “Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the conscious...

'Poetry - a degree in consciousness'

 

 

“Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.” – Laura Riding

A champion of free verse and feted as one of the world’s leading poets in the 1920s and 1930s, Riding was born in January 1901.   Also a critic, essayist, novelist and short story writer, she was well known for speaking out against Fascism and Nazism.   Her poems remain among those most studied and reviewed around the world, published in a dozen languages.

 

For Saturday’s Poem, here is Riding’s,

 

Yes and No

 

Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet—
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas—

Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.

Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?

Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.

A Writer's Moment: 'Character is Caricature for writing success'

A Writer's Moment: 'Character is Caricature for writing success': "When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature." -- Ernest Heming...

'Character is Caricature for writing success'

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature." -- Ernest Hemingway

Writers’ characters come from many different  places.  For myself, many have been and continue to be based on real people I have met or written about or discovered as a journalist.  So, when I’m writing creatively, I take the “real” things and “real” people I’ve known or learned about and do fictional things with them, too.

One thing I’ve learned, though, once you have characters to write about, you MUST become deeply involved in their lives.  You have to laugh and cry and agonize with them.  And this involvement doesn’t end in “off hours.”  

 

 Like it or not, your creations are with you 24 hours a day.  They become an integral part of your life.  It is involvement that begins well before your book’s first words are written and well after the story is complete.

           

Your characters grow as your story does and you have to react to and with them. As the award-winning writer Nancy Kress noted in her instructional book Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint:   “You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.”   You have a story to share; you have someone to feature; and you have someone to share it with.   

 

Nancy Kress – born Jan. 20, 1948

A Writer's Moment: 'Dreaming both day and night'

A Writer's Moment: 'Dreaming both day and night':   “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” – Edgar Allan Poe Today is the birt...

'Dreaming both day and night'

 

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” – Edgar Allan Poe

Today is the birthdate (in 1809) of writer, editor, and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe, best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.  Widely regarded as a key figure of both Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, he also was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story.

The first well-known American writer to try to make a living by writing alone, Poe's lack of income may have been a contributing factor to his early death at age 40.   But the actual cause has never been determined, and has been the subject of several movies and “whodunit?” books.

Poe probably would have liked that.  He enjoyed writing a good mystery and a good detective story.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in fact, said "Each [of Poe's stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed . . . Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"  The Mystery Writers of America have named their annual awards for excellence the "Edgars.”

His crafting of pieces using “just the right word or turn of phrase” might reflect back to his love  

   

                          

 of language and the poetic uses of words.   He once noted,  “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty."

A Writer's Moment: 'Secretly hoping for immortality'

A Writer's Moment: 'Secretly hoping for immortality':   “I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world...

'Secretly hoping for immortality'

 

“I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.” – A.A. Milne

Milne, born on Jan. 18, 1882 achieved that immortality by creating Winnie-the-Pooh and dozens of Pooh's sayings that will live on forever.  While Winnie-the-Pooh is his legacy, Milne was productive in many genres, writing two dozen plays, hundreds of essays, and novels, short stories and poems.

But, of course, Milne is most famous for his Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin (after his son, Christopher Robin Milne) and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals.  Christopher 's toy bear, originally named "Edward,” was renamed Winnie after a Canadian black bear that father and son enjoyed visiting at the London Zoo.

 Christopher’s other stuffed animals – Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger – were incorporated into Milne's stories, and two more characters - Rabbit and Owl - were created by his imagination. Those famous toys are now under glass in New York City where 750,000 people visit them every year.

   

 One of Winnie’s famous lines – and there are many – came from advice Milne first gave his young son: 

 

“You can't always stay in your own corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you.   Sometimes, you have to go to them.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Life interpreting my dreams'

A Writer's Moment: 'Life interpreting my dreams':   “The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth a...

'Life interpreting my dreams'

 

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.” – Susan Sontag

Sontag, who was born on this date in 1933, (she died in 2004) was a writer, filmmaker, teacher, and political activist, who was active in writing, speaking about, and traveling to key areas of conflict, including the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo.  She has been called "one of the most influential critics of her generation."

She also was lauded for her ongoing support of beleaguered Iranian dissident Salmon Rushdie, and as a leading writer on culture, health issues, and AIDS.  Her 1986 short story "The Way We Live Now,” published to great acclaim in The New Yorker, remains a significant text on the AIDS epidemic.

While she wrote mostly nonfiction, her literary career began and ended with fiction, and she especially liked working on historical fiction.  “The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - making it possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing,” she said.

She achieved popular success as a best-selling novelist in that genre with her late in life works The Volcano Lover and In America.    And she said she enjoyed linking her writing to things she’d discovered in her own life.

“I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life,”               

 she once remarked, “but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.”

'Surprised by inspiration'

 

“Inspiration is always a surprising visitor.” – John O’Donohue

 

Born on this date in 1956, O’Donohue was an Irish poet, author, priest, and philosopher, who died in 2008.  An much sought-after speaker and teacher, particularly in the United States, O'Donohue left the priesthood in 2000 and devoted much of his energies to environmental activism.  One of his most-quoted sayings was: “I would love to live like a river flows.  Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

 

A book of his essays, The Four Elements, published in 2011, provides an in-depth look at his beliefs and ideals.   “The way you look at things,” he said,  “is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”   For Saturday’s Poem, here is O’Donohue’s,

 

Your Soul Knows

 

Your soul knows

the geography of

your destiny.  Your

soul alone has the

map of your future,

therefore you can

trust this

indirect, oblique

side of yourself.  If

you do, it will

take you where you

need to go, but

more important

it will teach you a

kindness of rhythm

in your journey.

A Writer's Moment: 'A kind of biopsy of human life'

A Writer's Moment: 'A kind of biopsy of human life':   “A story is a kind of biopsy of human life. A story is both local, specific, small, and deep, in a kind of penetrating, layered, and reve...

'A kind of biopsy of human life'

 

“A story is a kind of biopsy of human life. A story is both local, specific, small, and deep, in a kind of penetrating, layered, and revealing way.” – Lorrie Moore

Marie Lorena Moore, born on this date in 1957, is best known for her humorous and poignant short stories including the New York Times bestseller "Birds of America."

The winner of numerous awards, Moore's story "You're Ugly, Too" was included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by novelist John Updike.   Moore also won an O. Henry Award for "People Like That Are the Only People Here" about a sick child and loosely based on events in her own life.

At one point she said she also thought about being a dancer.  But, writing interfered.  

 

 “To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you 

     wanted.  You didn't have to do little exercises and stay in shape. You could have great moments of inspiration that advanced the story.    In dance, unless you're going to choreograph things yourself, you're at the service of someone else."

 

She is also a nonfiction writer, essayist and novelist.  Her novel A Gate at the Stairs was a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize.

“Writing," Moore said,  "has to be an obsession - it's only for those who say, 'I'm not going to do anything else.'”

A Writer's Moment: He was 'a superb meteor'

A Writer's Moment: He was 'a superb meteor':   “I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.” – Jack London     A tireless writer, London was a...