A Writer's Moment: 'It was the key to success'

A Writer's Moment: 'It was the key to success':   “Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of you...

'It was the key to success'

 

“Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.” – Neil Simon
 

Born in the Bronx, NY on July 4, 1927 Simon grew up during the Great Depression – a great shaper of both his life and his art.  Writing about “life” became the grist for his creative mill, beginning with work on comedy scripts for radio and then gravitating to the Broadway stage.

 

He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, earning more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.   After breaking onto the playwriting scene with Come Blow Your Horn in 1961, Simon won his first Tony for the long-running and one of the most widely performed plays in history, The Odd Couple. 

 

The first playwright to earn 15 “Best Play” awards, he was given a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.   Simon, who died in 2018, also won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Lost in Yonkers, was named for the Mark Twain Prize, America’s top humor award, and was the first living playwright to have a Broadway theater named in his honor.    

 

While humor is at the heart of most of Simon’s works, his rich variety of entertaining, memorable characters also portray the human experience with serious themes.   His said he thought his willingness to try new things was a key to his success.   

 

“If no one ever took risks,” he said, “Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”

A Writer's Moment: The foundation for 'the biggest stories'

A Writer's Moment: The foundation for 'the biggest stories':   “The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together.” –   Susan Glaspell   Born on July 1, 1876 ...

The foundation for 'the biggest stories'

 

“The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together.” –  Susan Glaspell

 

Born on July 1, 1876 Glaspell was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright as well as an actress, novelist and journalist who joined with her husband George Cram Cook to found the Provincetown Players, America’s first modern American theater company.    She also served in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project, created during the Great Depression as a relief measure for artists, writers, directors and theater workers to help keep regional theater alive.

 

A prolific writer, Glaspell wrote 9 novels, 15 plays, more than 50 short stories, and a biography, a leading writer on issues of gender, ethics, and dissent.  She has been recognized as a pioneering feminist writer and America’s first important modern female playwright.  Her one-act play Trifles, written in 1916, is frequently cited among the greatest works of American theater.  It also was adapted as a short story and 50 years later as a popular movie A Jury of Her Peers.

 

Inspired by the great investigative journalist Nellie Bly, she worked as a school newspaper reporter at  Drake University where she got her first taste of “being on-stage” as a leading member of the school's debate team.  She simultaneously worked at the Des Moines Daily News and became the paper's first full-time female reporter after graduation.

“I am glad I worked on a newspaper,” she said of that experience. “It made me know I had to write . . .  whether I felt like it or not.  And I loved it!”

A Writer's Moment: 'The difficult challenge of fiction'

A Writer's Moment: 'The difficult challenge of fiction':   “Truth is, every writer has to be a good editor, and you have to edit yourself. It's a skill every writer has to acquire.”  – Lisa Sco...

'The difficult challenge of fiction'

 

“Truth is, every writer has to be a good editor, and you have to edit yourself. It's a skill every writer has to acquire.” – Lisa Scottoline

 

Born in Philadelphia on this date in 1955, Scottoline grew up in Merion – site of many great pro golf tournaments – and earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.   On track toward a law firm partnership, she decided to try her hand at writing after the birth of her daughter and penned the award-winning crime mystery Final Appeal.  And, just like that, she switched careers.

 

Now the author of more than 30 books, her works have been translated into 30 languages and sold over 30 million copies.  Among her titles are Look Again and Don't Go, both reaching number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list.  Her most recent is 2024’s The Truth About The Devlins. 

 

An Edgar Award winner, Scottoline has served as President of the Mystery Writers of America and also has co-authored a number of bestselling non-fiction memoirs with her daughter (Francesca Serritella). 

 

“I love writing both fiction and memoir,” she said.  “Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.”

A Writer's Moment: Chronicling his times in words and images

A Writer's Moment: Chronicling his times in words and images:   “With a photograph, you are left with the same modes of interpretation as you are with a book. You ask: 'What do we know about the aut...