A Writer's Moment: 'It's the real art of writing success'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the real art of writing success':   “The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the lang...

'It's the real art of writing success'

 

“The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.” –  Graham Swift

 

Born on this date in London in 1949, Swift is considered one of the most important contemporary British writers.  His first novel, The Sweet Shop Owner, was published in 1980, and his subsequent works have won much praise and many awards. Waterland, in particular, was one of the finalists for the prestigious Booker Prize.   He’s had three books – Waterland, Last Orders, and Mothering Sunday – made into well-received movies (both at the box office and by critics). 

 

He’s now authored 11 novels, 1 nonfiction book and 3 collections of short stories, the most recent 2025’s Twelve Postwar Tales.

 

A meticulous and deliberate writer, Swift decries those who say he writes too slow.

 

“It can be dismaying . . . for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the reading,” he said.  “Novels are read in a matter of days, even hours.  A writer may labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect on a reader for an instant - and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed.”

A Writer's Moment: 'expanding on the power of narrative'

A Writer's Moment: 'expanding on the power of narrative':   “As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own; ways to refle...

'expanding on the power of narrative'

 

“As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own; ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.” – Kim Edwards

 

Born on this date in 1959, Edwards is the author of the bestselling novels The Memory Keeper's Daughter, now translated into 38 languages, and The Lake of Dreams, and the short story collection The Secrets of a Fire King.   Her writing honors include the Whiting Award, the British Book Award, and USA Today's Book of the Year (for Memory Keeper’s Daughter).

 

A graduate of Colgate University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she has taught widely in the US and Asia and now makes her teaching home at the University of Kentucky.     

 

In her teaching, Edwards says she often reflects on people’s desire to share stories as one of the things “that make us human.”   “I don’t think we’ll ever lose the desire for people to tell stories or to hear stories or to be entrapped in a beautiful story,” she said.  "It’s simply a part of the human condition."

A Writer's Moment: 'Showing itself as a poem'

A Writer's Moment: 'Showing itself as a poem':   “I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry. There was no looki...

'Showing itself as a poem'

 

“I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry. There was no looking back.” – Edwin Morgan

 

Born in Scotland on April 27, 1920 Morgan was widely recognized as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, honored in 1999 as the first “Scottish National Poet.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Morgan’s,                    

                                    My shadow

I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark
and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold
in the early light in my room high over London.
What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire
so that I got up and looked out half-asleep
at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below?
Without fire
Only the wind blew.
But in the dream I woke from, you
came running through the traffic, tugging me, clinging
to my elbow, your eyes spoke
what I could not grasp --
Nothing, if you were here!

The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.

A Writer's Moment: It's what composes 'a stealth philosophy'

A Writer's Moment: It's what composes 'a stealth philosophy':   “Fantasy allows you to bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what's happening. In fantasy you...