A Writer's Moment: 'These Make Humanity'

A Writer's Moment: 'These Make Humanity':   “Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity. These are its sign and note and character.” – Robert Browning   Som...

'These Make Humanity'

 

“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity. These are its sign and note and character.” – Robert Browning

 

Some writers say love is a major influence on how and what they write, but in Browning’s case it was THE influence in his career.  Languishing as a middle-of-the-road poet at best, he fell in love with Elizabeth Barrett, one of England’s most prominent female writers in the 1840s.  Their love fired his writing and led her to write her famous love sonnets, highlighted by the well-known "How do I love thee?"  Disinherited by her father and rejected by Elizabeth's brothers, the couple moved to Italy where they lived until her death from tuberculosis.  Her work, particularly the love poems, placed her among the all-time leading poets.  For Saturday’s Poem here is Barrett Browning’s, 

 

           How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

A Writer's Moment: 'At Least Be A Nuisance'

A Writer's Moment: 'At Least Be A Nuisance':   “The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.” – Margery Allingham There’s a saying about crusty old journalists that they have ...

'At Least Be A Nuisance'

 

“The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.” – Margery Allingham

There’s a saying about crusty old journalists that they have “ink in their blood,” but it’s a phrase that also applies to the genteel and light-hearted Allingham, who was born into a writing family.

Writing steadily almost from the time she was first in school, Margery was the daughter of two well-established newspaper writers who probably thought nothing of the fact that their daughter was already considered accomplished in writing before she reached age 10, when her first plays were being performed in schools.

Ultimately this British born writer (on this date in 1904) focused on crime and mystery writing and created one of the most well-known crime detectives of the mid-20^th Century, the sleuth Albert Campion.  Ironically, Campion was put into her first novel almost as an afterthought, but he was such an optimistic and interesting character that her publishers demanded more stories that would focus on him. 

 

With that encouragement and her creative and imaginative mind, Margery went to work and wrote nearly 30 novels with Campion (who many thought to be her alter-ego) at the center of all the action.  (If you haven’t read any, I highly commend them to you – they are terrific!)

 

Allingham died at age 62 from breast cancer but ever the optimist, she laid out ideas for several more novels “just in case they’re wrong and I’m not really dying,” bugging everyone around her to keep the faith and help her keep writing.   

 

As she noted just a few days before her death, “If one cannot command attention by one’s admirable qualities, one can at least be a nuisance.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Everything Becomes Copy'

A Writer's Moment: 'Everything Becomes Copy':  “ My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the ...

'Everything Becomes Copy'

 “My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.” – Nora Ephron

 

Best known for her romantic comedies, Ephron was a journalist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, director, and blogger (I think that about covers every type of writing, but of course she didn’t Tweet, so maybe not).

If ever there was a “family of writers,” it would be the Ephron family.  Born this date in 1941, Ephron was the oldest of four girls who all became successful writers, and both of her parents also were writers – so it truly may have been in her genes.  Her sisters Delia and Amy are also screenwriters, and her sister Hallie is a journalist, book reviewer and novelist who writes crime fiction.

She also married a writer – and a quite famous one at that.  She and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post (and Watergate reporting fame) were married for a dozen years and had a son, Jacob, who also grew up to be a writer.  In fact, he wrote and directed the HBO production about his mother’s life,  called “Everything is Copy” -- pretty much how Nora looked at the world.

 

 Nora Ephron

Successful in almost everything, she was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Writing for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle.  She won numerous awards for When Harry Met Sally, and if there had been an award for best original scene it definitely would have been for the one where an older woman sitting in a restaurant watching Sally tells the waitress “I’ll have what she’s having.”  

 

Ephron, who died of cancer in 2012, said this about writing women’s scenes:

“I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'It's the Paperwork That Counts'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the Paperwork That Counts':   “If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third ...