A Writer's Moment: 'The transportation to anywhere'

A Writer's Moment: 'The transportation to anywhere':   “I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language.  … A novelist can get by on story, but the poe...

'The transportation to anywhere'

 

“I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language.  … A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words.”—Janet Fitch

 

Born in Los Angeles on this date in 1955, Fitch is both an author and creative writing teacher and wrote the bestselling novel White Oleander, also made into a hit movie.   Fitch says that even though she planned on a career as a historian, she found herself pulled toward writing after growing up surrounded by a family of voracious readers.  

 

“When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.  It takes you anywhere.”  That, she said, is what she strives for her own writing to do.

In addition to her writing, she was a longtime teacher in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.  Among her other popular novels are Paint It Black, named after the Rolling Stones’ song of the same name, and her most recent, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, a historical novel set in Russia during its civil war.  

 

“I write all the time,” she said, “whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Story of my life'

A Writer's Moment: 'Story of my life':   “Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollecti...

'Story of my life'

 

“Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested.” – James Laughlin

 

Born in Pittsburgh, PA, in November of 1914, Laughlin founded New Directions Publishing and authored 16 bestselling books of poetry (more than 1,200 poems).  Recipient of the National Book Award Program’s “Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award,” he also was honored by The Academy of American Poets with creation of the “James Laughlin Award,” presented annually to honor a poet’s second book.    For Saturday’s Poem, from The Collected Poems of James Laughlin, here is,

 

                                             What The Pencil Writes

                                                        Often when I go out I
                                                        put in my coat pocket

 

                                                        some paper and a pencil
                                                        in case I want to

 

                                                       write something down
                                                       well there they are

 

                                                       wherever I go and as
                                                       my coat moves the pencil

 

                                                       writes by itself
                                                       a kind of gibberish

 

                                                       hieroglyphic which I
                                                       often think as I undress

 

                                                      at night & take
                                                      out those papers with

 

                                                      nothing written on
                                                      them but strange and

 

                                                      meaningless marks is
                                                      the story of my life.

A Writer's Moment: Creating that 'perfect balance'

A Writer's Moment: Creating that 'perfect balance':   “I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.” – Kate Seredy   ...

Creating that 'perfect balance'

 

“I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.” – Kate Seredy

 

Born in Budapest, Hungary in November of 1899, Seredy won the prestigious Newbery Medal for Best Children’s Book twice, the Caldecott Medal for children’s book illustration, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.  

 

After growing up in Hungary, then living in Paris, Seredy emigrated to the U.S. in 1922 where she ran a children’s bookshop and started her career as a children’s book illustrator.  Encouraged by her editor May Massee to write down bits and pieces of her “growing up” years, she wrote the Newbery Award runner-up The Good Master in 1936.  Her next books, The White Stag and The Singing Tree, each won Best Book Newbery Awards.

 

In 1945 she illustrated The Christmas Anna Angel by Ruth Sawyer.  And in 1971, she was retroactively named for the Caldecott Medal for those illustrations.  She died in 1975.

 

Seredy wrote 12 children's books and illustrated dozens more, considering herself an illustrator first and all her books "an excuse for making pictures."  Most of her papers and illustrations can now be seen in the May Massee Collection at Emporia State University. 

 

 “For yesterday and for all tomorrows,” Seredy said, “we dance the best we know.”

A Writer's Moment: Another route to 'connecting with the characters'

A Writer's Moment: Another route to 'connecting with the characters':     “I've never been very attached to genre labels and never set out intentionally to write historic fiction. Besides, what you consider...