A Writer's Moment: 'Driven to communicate'

A Writer's Moment: 'Driven to communicate': A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate . . . to share . . . to be understood." ...

'Driven to communicate'

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate . . . to share . . . to be understood." -  Leo Rosten

Born on April 10, 1908, Rosten was a novelist, scriptwriter and humorist who also had a deep interest in the relationship of politics and the media and the intricacies of their connections.  

 

An immigrant from Russia who grew up in New York City, he worked his way through school, earning a doctorate degree from the University of Chicago.   After starting his career as an economist while  simultaneously writing stories for The New Yorker and Look magazines, he took on a series of government information jobs during WWII and wrote the first of his screenplays, The Conspirators.  From 1944 to 1987, the year of his death, he wrote more than three dozen books, numerous feature stories and essays, and was a much sought-after speaker.

 

His quotes often were shared, including this one (a version of which is often mis-attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson):  

 

"The purpose of life . . . is to be useful; to be honorable . . . to be compassionate . . . to matter; to have it make some difference that you have lived."

A Writer's Moment: Showing 'ordinary people in extraordinary moments'

A Writer's Moment: Showing 'ordinary people in extraordinary moments':   “I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talkin...

Showing 'ordinary people in extraordinary moments'

 

“I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talking to each other. I try to do both at once.” – Miller Williams

 

Born in Hoxie, Arkansas on April 8, 1930, Williams planned to become a natural scientist – especially working with animals – and earned a master’s degree in zoology.  But, ultimately, his love of writing got in the way of his planned career.  By the time of his death in 2015 he had produced nearly 40 books, created and read a poem at the Presidential Inauguration of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, and helped found The University of Arkansas Press.

 

He had his first collection of poems Et Cetera published while he was still an undergraduate student in biology at Arkansas State University.  His treatise on writing poetry, Making a Poem: Some Thoughts About Poetry and the People Who Write It, is regularly studied in colleges and universities around the world.   A critic once wrote that Miller had "a terrible honesty" and "(wrote) about ordinary people in the extraordinary moments of their lives."   

 

Among his many awards were the Porter Prize Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement in Writing, the National Poets’ Prize – for his collection Living on the Surface – and the National Arts Award for his lifelong contribution to the arts. 

 

“I respond to mood. I hear some phrase, or pick up a rhythm,” he once said of his writing style.  “I always have pen and paper with me.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Look through the eyes of another person'

A Writer's Moment: 'Look through the eyes of another person':   “Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.”...

'Look through the eyes of another person'

 

“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” – Barbara Kingsolver

 

Born in Annapolis, MD on April 8, 1955, Kingsolver intended to be a classical musician and, in fact, had a college scholarship to become one.  But, she said she realized that “only about 6 people a year get hired in that world.”  So she switched her focus to the study of science before trying her hand at writing.   Since 1988, the year her first novel The Bean Trees was published, she has written 18 books, including 2022’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead and this year’s Partita.

 

A graduate of DePauw University in Indiana, Kingsolver makes her home in southeast Kentucky after living many years in Arizona. There, she wrote some of her most memorable works like The Poisonwood Bible and Pigs in Heaven, earning her a reputation as a writer who focused on topics of social justice and biodiversity, and the interaction between humans, communities and the environment.

 

Kingsolver said her readers seem to like that she puts herself inside her stories.  “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation':   “I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.”  – Marguerit...