A Writer's Moment: 'It's the greatest university of all'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the greatest university of all':   “In every phenomenon, the beginning remains always the most notable moment.  Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, bu...

'It's the greatest university of all'

 

“In every phenomenon, the beginning remains always the most notable moment.  Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.” – Thomas Carlyle  

 

Born in Scotland on this date in 1795, Carlyle was a philosopher, teacher and journalist whose writing influenced the development of Victorian-era writers like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Mesmerized by how “heroes” in our world shaped people’s hopes and aspirations, he not only was an award-winning essayist for several major newspapers, but also wrote a dozen books, the most famous being On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. 

 

Away from his work, Carlyle championed the establishment of great libraries and was instrumental in founding the London Library to make books available to a broader reading public.  

 

“In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream,” he said.  “The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”  

A Writer's Moment: It's 'a kind of magic'

A Writer's Moment: It's 'a kind of magic':   “Writing is literally transformative. When we read, we are changed. When we write, we are changed. It's neurological. To me, this is a...

It's 'a kind of magic'

 

“Writing is literally transformative. When we read, we are changed. When we write, we are changed. It's neurological. To me, this is a kind of magic.” – Francesca Lia Block

 

Born in Los Angeles on Dec. 3, 1962 Block is the author of 31 books (both fiction and non-fiction) and a dozen collections of short stories and poems, many of which have been translated into a wide range of languages around the globe.  

 

Among her many writing awards are the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, the Spectrum Award and the Phoenix Award as well as citations from the American Library Association, the School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly.    She is best known for her Weetzie Bat Young Adult series – for which she’s also written a screenplay – and the novel Blood Roses.  Her most recent book is House of Hearts.

          

A frequent writing workshop instructor, Block has taught creative writing at the University of Redlands and Antioch University, and for UCLA Extension.  She also has served as writer-in-residence at Pasadena City College.

 

 “Read what you love,” she advises.  “(Then) write what you love.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'Best endings . . . or new beginnings?'

A Writer's Moment: 'Best endings . . . or new beginnings?':   “I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have ...

'Best endings . . . or new beginnings?'

 

“I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don't always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning.” – T. C. Boyle

 

Born in New York City on this date in 1948, Thomas Coraghessan Boyle is an award-winning novelist and short story writer who focuses his writing on Baby Boomers – their joys, appetites and addictions – on the ruthlessness and unpredictability of nature and the toll human society sometimes unwittingly takes on the environment.  

 

The author of 19 novels and more than 150 short stories, he won the PEN/Faulkner award for World's End, a historical novel set in upstate New York.  Among his other bestsellers are The Terranauts, The Tortilla Curtain and his most recent, 2023’s Blue Skies.

 

Boyle’s short stories regularly appear in major American magazines like The New Yorker and Harper’s and he has published a dozen collections, his most recent – I Walk Between The Raindrops – in 2022.  A much sought-after speaker, he said,“I love performing in front of an audience. I like the questions; I like controversy.”

 

 “I read widely - for news, the arts, science, for entertainment, and the value of being informed,” Boyle said,  “and, as a fiction writer, I can't help transposing what I learn into the scenario for a novel or story.”

A Writer's Moment: It's a game 'for the reader to discover'

A Writer's Moment: It's a game 'for the reader to discover':   “I write in expectation that readers want to participate in a kind of two-sided game: They are trying to guess what I am up to - what the ...

It's a game 'for the reader to discover'

 

“I write in expectation that readers want to participate in a kind of two-sided game: They are trying to guess what I am up to - what the story's up to - and I'm giving them clues and matter to keep them interested without giving everything away at the start. Even the rules, if any, of the game are for the reader to discover.” – John Crowley

 

Born in Maine on this date in 1942, Crowley went to high school and college in Indiana before moving to New York City “to make movies,” starting his career in documentary films.   In 1975, his first novel The Deep established him in the science fiction and fantasy field and he still writes in those genres, although he also has done well in fiction, and with his frequent essays.  And, he's been a longtime creative writing professor at Yale University.

 

His best-known book is Little, Big, winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.  The book melds the story of a New York family with a “fairy world” community over a hundred-year period and is a terrific study in family dynamics and compassion.  It’s been called “The closest achievement we have to the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll” by one critic.  In 2006 – both in recognition of books like Little, Big and for his many other novels and short stories – Crowley was presented with the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

 

“I've always had a compassion for characters in novels,” Crowley noted.  “ - The sense that they are, whatever they might think, living in a world that has a shape they don't know and can't finally alter.”

A Writer's Moment: It's a 'discovered' form

A Writer's Moment: It's a 'discovered' form:   “I believe any poem can go in a number of valuable and productive directions (What did you do today? What could you have done?).   So a po...

It's a 'discovered' form

 

“I believe any poem can go in a number of valuable and productive directions (What did you do today? What could you have done?).  So a poem is never fixed, per se, only rendered memorable in a discovered form” – Jack Elliott Myers

 

Born in Lynn, MA on this date in 1941, Myers had a distinguished career as a writer and teacher.  From 1993 until his death in 2009, Myers published 9 books of and about poetry, taught at 6 universities, directed the creative writing program at SMU, and served as Poet Laureate for the state of Texas.   For Saturday’s Poem (from Poetry) here is Myers’,

 

                                   It’s Not My Cup Of Tea

                                             My wife wants to know

                                             what difference does it make

                                             what cup I drink from

                                             and I complain,

                                             I like what I like

                                             and that’s the story.

 

                                             We have many kinds of cups.

                                             But this morning my favorite is dirty

                                             and I’m hunting for something

                                             that won’t make me think.

 

                                             One’s a fertility goddess,

                                             huge fructuous belly, little head.

 

                                             Another’s pleasant enough for guests

                                             but has to have its finicky little saucer,

                                             underneath so it won’t feel embarrassed.

 

                                             And another, which is a smaller version

                                             of what I like, would require me

                                             to get up and down too many times.

 

                                             You think I am spoiled

                                             or too set in my ways

                                             or that I’m difficult

                                             to live with,

                                             and you’re right.

 

                                             But there are so few things

                                             that fit me in this life

                                             I can count them in one hand,

                                             things the spirit can sleep in

                                                because whoever made them

                                             put the things of this world –

                                             vanity, greed, a sentimental wish

                                             to be small again – aside. 

A Writer's Moment: 'The virtues of a writer'

A Writer's Moment: 'The virtues of a writer':   “Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.”  –...

'The virtues of a writer'

 

“Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.” – Dawn Powell

 

A prolific satirical novelist and short story writer, Powell also was a popular playwright who frequently set her stories in Midwestern towns or created plots involving the transplantation of Midwesterners to New York City.

 

Born in Mt. Gilead, OH on this date in 1896, Powell is best known for her novels She Walks in Beauty and A Time to be Born.  Over her nearly 50-year writing career, she produced a dozen novels, 10 plays, hundreds of short stories, and an extended diary starting in 1931 until her death from cancer in 1965.  

 

Powell learned to read at age 4 and started writing her diaries and journals at age 6.  It was those journals that fostered her further creativity after an abusive stepmother destroyed all of her writings out of spite.  The then 13-year-old Powell ran away from home and was taken in by a sympathetic aunt who encouraged her to resume writing.  Powell later fictionalized that tale in the novel My Home Is Far Away.

 

While she grew up in Ohio, she spent most of her adult life in New York City where she began her writing in 1918, first as a freelance essayist and then as a short story writer.  Her first novel Whither was published in 1925, but it was her 1936 novel Turn Magic Wheel that marked her turn to writing social satire.

 

“A writer’s business is minding other people’s business,” she said of her writing choice.  “All the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.”

A Writer's Moment: Find your inspiration in 'Everyday Life'

A Writer's Moment: Find your inspiration in 'Everyday Life':   “You don't need to have kids to write a good book for kids. I don't want my kids to see themselves in my books. Their lives should...

Find your inspiration in 'Everyday Life'

 

“You don't need to have kids to write a good book for kids. I don't want my kids to see themselves in my books. Their lives should be their lives. “ – Kevin Henkes 

Born in Racine, WI on this date in 1960, Henkes is both writer and illustrator of many award-winning children's books.  As illustrator, he won the Caldecott Medal for both Kitten's First Full Moon and Waiting, which also won the coveted Geisel Honor Book Award – only the second time in history that a book has won both prizes.  As a writer, his books Olive's Ocean and The Year of Billy Miller won the coveted Newbery Award.  All told, he has done some 50 books, the most recent being 2023’s The World and Everything in It.

 

Growing up as an avid reader, he said library trips were a family ritual and one he highly recommends.  He started writing as a teenager and his first picture book was accepted for publication when he was just 19 and an art major at the University of Wisconsin. 

 

“I think writers are observers and watchers," Henkes said.  "We always have our ears open and eyes open, so I might see something in everyday life that inspires me. And I think that's probably more than anything else. Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Like the moon on the tides'

A Writer's Moment: 'Like the moon on the tides':   “Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.”  – Rita Mae Brown   Born in Hanover, PA in November of 1944, Brown has exc...

'Like the moon on the tides'

 

“Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.” – Rita Mae Brown

 

Born in Hanover, PA in November of 1944, Brown has excelled in every type of writing she’s attempted, ranging from screenplays to television scripting to novels and poetry.  The author of the multiple award-winning Rubyfruit Jungle, she has written a remarkable 72 books and 9 screenplays.  Most of her titles are in the “Mrs. Murphy Mysteries” and “Sister Mysteries" series.   Her most recent best-selling additions to the two series (both out this year) are Sealed With A Hiss and Fox and Furious, respectively.

 

Raised first in an orphanage and then by her aunt and uncle, Brown’s first attempt at writing – a screenplay – was made into a television special, I Love Liberty, earning her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Musical or Variety.  She followed that with a screenplay parody of “slasher” movies called The Slumber Party Massacre, a film that not only appeared on TV but also in limited release and spawned two sequels and a cult following that continues to this day.

 

Inspired by those writing successes, she then wrote Rubyfruit Jungle in 1973, the first of her 66 (and counting) novels.

 

Every time she thinks about easing up, a deadline from her publisher seems to loom. "A deadline is just negative inspiration," she said.  "Still, it's better than no inspiration at all."

A Writer's Moment: 'When a book comes and says: Write Me'

A Writer's Moment: 'When a book comes and says: Write Me':   “A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I ...

'When a book comes and says: Write Me'

 

“A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.” – Madeleine L'Engle

 

Born in New York City on Nov. 28, 1918 L’Engle is best known for her Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door and the National Book Award-winning A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science 

 

L'Engle wrote her first story at age 5 and began keeping a journal at age 8, but despite writing frequently, she had little financial success and decided to give up writing as a career at age 40.  But her family encouraged her to keep going and she penned A Wrinkle in Time while on a family camping excursion.  The book was rejected 30 times before publisher John Farrar decided to give it a chance, and the rest is history . . . as old the saying goes. 

 

Once she made her breakthrough, L’Engle wrote dozens of successful books, earning multiple writing awards capped by  the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her lifetime body of work.  She died in 2007.

 

“We can't take any credit for our talents,” L’Engle said.  “It's how we use them that counts.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Light on stone in a forest'

A Writer's Moment: 'Light on stone in a forest':   “Fiction's essential activity is to imagine how others feel, what a Saturday afternoon in an Italian town in the 2nd Century looked li...

'Light on stone in a forest'

 

“Fiction's essential activity is to imagine how others feel, what a Saturday afternoon in an Italian town in the 2nd Century looked like. My ambition is solely to get some effect, as of light on stone in a forest on a September day.” – Guy Davenport 

 

Writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher, Davenport was both a Rhodes Scholar and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, one of the few people in the world to achieve both major honors.  Born in the Appalachian region of South Carolina on Nov. 23, 1927 he was a self-taught reader and writer who graduated from high school by age 16, then went on to earn degrees at both Duke and Harvard.

 

Over his lifetime he had more than 400 nationally published essays and reviews, wrote 17 novels, a dozen books of poetry, and contributed to several dozen other books or collections.  And, he did all that while teaching full time and drawing or painting nearly every day of his life from age 11 on.  A number of his art works are on display in galleries across the country.

 

Indefatigable was often a word used to describe him, but he said it was “just something I felt I had to do to keep my life in balance.”  He wrote right up until his death in 2005.  He said that of all his writings, he most enjoyed fictionalizing historical events and figures – a sort-of “What If?” scenario that make his works both fast-paced and intriguing.  Among his many award winners were The Bowmen of Shu, The Drummer of the Eleventh North and The Bicycle Rider.

                                                                                                               

“As long as you have ideas, you can keep going,” he said.  “That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.”

A Writer's Moment: Responding to the 'lightning' effect

A Writer's Moment: Responding to the 'lightning' effect:   “ A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” –         James Dickey   Born in Atlanta in 1923...

Responding to the 'lightning' effect

 

“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” –      James Dickey

 

Born in Atlanta in 1923, Dickey was a multiple award winner for his poetry and other writings, including the taut bestselling novel Deliverance – also made into an acclaimed movie.  His book Buckdancer's Choice earned him the National Book Award for Poetry and an appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in the mid-1960s.   All 331 of Dickey’s poems were collected into The Complete Poems of James Dickey following his death in 1997.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Dickey’s,

 

                                         At Darien Bridge

                                   The sea here used to look
                                   As if many convicts had built it,

                                   Standing deep in their ankle chains,
                                   Ankle-deep in the water, to smite

                                   The land and break it down to salt.
                                   I was in this bog as a child

                                   When they were all working all day
                                   To drive the pilings down.

                                   I thought I saw the still sun
                                   Strike the side of a hammer in flight

                                   And from it a sea bird be born
                                   To take off over the marshes.

                                   As the gray climbs the side of my head
                                   And cuts my brain off from the world,

                                   I walk and wish mainly for birds,
                                   For the one bird no one has looked for

 

                                   To spring again from a flash
                                   Of metal, perhaps from the scratched

                                   Wedding band on my ring finger.
                                   Recalling the chains of their feet,

                                    I stand and look out over grasses
                                   At the bridge they built, long abandoned,

                                   Breaking down into water at last,
                                   And long, like them, for freedom

                                   Or death, or to believe again
                                   That they worked on the ocean to give it

                                   The unchanging, hopeless look
                                   Out of which all miracles leap.

A Writer's Moment: 'The instruction . . . is like fire'

A Writer's Moment: 'The instruction . . . is like fire':   “The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becom...

'The instruction . . . is like fire'

 

“The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” – Voltaire

 

Born in France on this date in 1694, François-Marie Arouet (known as Voltaire) was one of history’s great thinkers, writers, historians and philosophers, famous for his wit and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.    Voltaire produced some 2,000 books and pamphlets, wrote plays, poems, essays and historical and scientific works, and more than 20,000 letters.  And he was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk it placed on him with the French monarchy. 

 

Often credited with a quote that serves as a foundation for our 1^st Amendment – “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” – he said that what he really said (or wrote) was:  "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write it."  Fluent in five languages, including English, he also was a voracious reader and often said it was the thoughts and ideas of others that were the basis for his own writings.  

“Originality,” said Voltaire, “is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers have always borrowed one from another.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's a brand on the imagination'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's a brand on the imagination':   “The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize ...

'It's a brand on the imagination'

 

“The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.” – Nadine Gordimer

 

Born in South Africa on this date in 1923, Gordimer became the first writer from her country to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Gordimer, who died in 2014, was a creative, political and humanitarian force in South Africa for nearly 60 years.

 

Gordimer’s first novel The Lying Days was published in 1953 and by the early 1960s she had gained both international acclaim and the ire of the government.  Active in Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress during the years when that organization was banned, many of her writings were inspiring for Mandela’s cause, but like Mandela’s political efforts banned in her own country.  All told she authored dozens of essays, 22 short story collections and 15 worldwide bestselling novels.  And she helped Mandela edit his famous trial speech “I Am Prepared To Die.”  

  

Led by multiple-award winning novels like The Conservationist and Burger's Daughter, Gordimer's works deal with the themes of love and politics.   Always questioning power relations and truth, her stories tell of ordinary people dealing with moral ambiguities and choices.   She won the Nobel in 1991 and said the censorship she endured for her writing was life-scarring.  

 

“Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it,” she said.  “It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.”

A Writer's Moment: Creating 'Something to think about'

A Writer's Moment: Creating 'Something to think about':   “When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and l...

Creating 'Something to think about'

 

“When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?” – Charlie Kaufman

Born in New York City on this date in 1958 Kaufman is a screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist who wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for which he won an Academy Award.   Those three scripts are all in the Writers Guild of America’s list of the 101 greatest movie screenplays ever written. 

 

A graduate of NYU – Kaufman currently lives in California where he said of his writing, “I want to create situations that give people something to think about.”   

                                                    

“When I write characters and situations and relationships,” he said, “I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It happens in layers'

A Writer's Moment: 'It happens in layers':   “Over the years, my students influenced me greatly, and I've learned many lessons from them. I have an immense amount of respect for t...

'It happens in layers'

 

“Over the years, my students influenced me greatly, and I've learned many lessons from them. I have an immense amount of respect for them, and I think that respect for your audience is the foremost requirement for anyone who wants to write.” – Susan Campbell Bartoletti

 

Born in Harrisburg, PA on this date in 1958, Bartoletti was a Junior High School teacher for 20 years before turning to writing.  "I felt immense satisfaction in watching my students grow as writers and I wanted to practice what I preached,” she said.   Her first short story sold in 1989, her first children’s book, Silver at Night, in 1992. 

 

The winner of numerous awards including the Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and the Newberry Honor Medal, she still teaches, but now her students are master’s degree candidates in various writing programs or students in writing workshops around the nation.  Among her 16 books are nonfiction bestsellers Growing Up in Coal Country and Kids on Strike and novels like Dancing With Dziadziu and No Man’s Land. 

 

Character development has been a crucial part of Bartoletti's writing process.  “When I create a character, it happens in layers,” she said.  “The more I write and revise, the better I understand my characters.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Changing everything for everybody'

A Writer's Moment: 'Changing everything for everybody':   “Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, a...

'Changing everything for everybody'

 

“Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world, you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.” – Ray Bradbury

 

Born in Waukegan, IL in 1920, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th- and 21st-century Science Fiction writers, winning numerous awards, including a 2007 Pulitizer Prize.  He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space.  Many of his works were adapted to comic book, television and film formats.

  

And, of course, he wrote the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and the series The Martian Chronicles. At the time of his death in 2012, The New York Times called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream."

     

 One of our country’s strongest advocates for the public library system, Bradbury said he spent three days a week for 10 years educating himself in the public library, “And it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Use your words . . . and communicate'

A Writer's Moment: 'Use your words . . . and communicate':   “The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communic...

'Use your words . . . and communicate'

 

“The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.” – James Schuyler

 

A Pulitzer Prize-winnng poet (for The Morning of the Poem), Schuyler was born in Chicago on Nov. 9, 1923.  A central member of the “New York School” in the 1960s and ’70s, he published his first major poetry work Freely Espousing in 1969.  For Saturday’s Poem here is Schuyler’s,

 

                                             The Day Gets Slowly Started

 

The day gets slowly started.
A rap at the bedroom door,
bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice
the color of sun which
isn’t out this morning. A
cool shower, a shave, soothing
Noxzema for razor burn. A bed
is made. The paper doesn’t come
until twelve or one. A gray shine
out the windows. “No one
leaves the building until
those scissors are returned.”
It’s that kind of a place.
Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse.
The worried gray is melting
into sunlight. I wish I’d
brought my book of enlightening
literary essays. I wish it
were lunch time. I wish I had
an appetite. The day agrees
with me better than it did, or,
better, I agree with it. I’ll
slide down a sunslip yet, this
crass September morning.

A Writer's Moment: 'Delightful offerings of daily life'

A Writer's Moment: 'Delightful offerings of daily life':   Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.” – Norman MacCaig   Born in Scotland on this date in 1910, MacCaig was a high...

'Delightful offerings of daily life'

 

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.” – Norman MacCaig

 

Born in Scotland on this date in 1910, MacCaig was a highly regarded teacher and poet whose writing was known for its humor, simplicity of language and easy understandability.   Despite that, his first book, Far Cry, published in 1943, was considered difficult to read.  So he listened to his critics and adopted a free verse style that was clear-cut and filled with humor.

 

At the time of his death in 1996, fellow writer Ted Hughes wrote about MacCaig that, “Whenever I meet his poems, I'm always struck by their undated freshness; everything about them is alive, as new and essential, as ever.”  

 

For enjoyable poetic reads from his 5 decades of writing, check out A Common Grace, A Man in My Position, and Ordinary Day, each presenting delightful offerings of daily life, people and the world.

 

“All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know,” MacCaig wrote.  “The better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Judged by the seeds that you plant'

A Writer's Moment: 'Judged by the seeds that you plant':   “Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson   Born in Edinburgh, Scot...

'Judged by the seeds that you plant'

 

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on this date in 1850, Stevenson became one of the world’s most versatile and “translated” authors in his short life (he died of a brain hemorrhage at age 44).  The author of 13 novels, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he created a host of great characters like the pirate Long John Silver and Jekyll and Hyde (names that have become part of the world’s vernacular).   

 

Beyond his celebrated novels, the prolific Stevenson wrote 7 collections of short stories, 14 nonfiction books, and several books of poetry for both adults and children.  His A Child’s Garden of Verses remains a regular seller on the worldwide market with lasting poems like My Shadow: “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”   And, The Swing: “How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue?  Oh I do think it’s the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do.”

 

And an accomplished pianist, he wrote or arranged more than 120 musical pieces. 

 

Stevenson always seemed to be able to connect with readers from all walks of life and when asked why, he simply said, “The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”  

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the most astonishing thing'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the most astonishing thing':   “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dar...

'It's the most astonishing thing'

 

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you." - Carl Sagan

 

Born in New York City on Nov. 9, 1934 Sagan was an astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astrobiologist who also wrote more than 600 articles and was author, co-author or editor of 20 books.  His novel Contact was the basis for a popular movie, and he co-wrote and narrated Cosmos, one of the most widely watched series in the history of American public television.  He died of pneumonia at the young age of 61, but just before his death he spoke the wonderful words above about the power and mystery of books.

 

A graduate of the University of Chicago, where he earned three degrees, he was a longtime professor at Cornell University.  Among his many popular science books were The Dragons of Eden, Broca’s Brain and Pale Blue Dot.  

 

“Writing," Sagan said, "is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other; citizens of distant epochs.  Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." 

A Writer's Moment: An 'indispensable' writing factor

A Writer's Moment: An 'indispensable' writing factor:   “I could not write my books without the library’s help.   Even with the ease of Internet research, I find books to be indispensable when...

An 'indispensable' writing factor

 

“I could not write my books without the library’s help.  Even with the ease of Internet research, I find books to be indispensable when I am writing.  . . .  Books make me laugh, cry, and think.  . . . They help me make important decisions, and they provide endless entertainment.” – Peg Kehret

 

Born in La Crosse, WI on this date in 1936, Kehret said she always loved to write, and as a child wanted to be either a writer or a veterinarian.  So, she included animals in most of her books.   Now retired from writing, she still volunteers with animal rescue groups and is the recipient of the Henry Bergh Award from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA.)

  

A polio survivor – she beat three types of polio at age 12 – Kehret started writing while still in her teens, writing primarily for children and young adults.  She’s also written plays, radio commercials and magazine stories, winning more than 50 awards throughout her career.  Among her awards are the PEN Center Award in Children’s Literature, and the Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators.

 "I wasn't inspired so much by a person as by reading many good books," she said of her long and successful career.  "I loved to write and I wondered if I might be able to write material that others would enjoy."  Mission accomplished.