A Writer's Moment: 'Someone to tell it too'

A Writer's Moment: 'Someone to tell it too':   “Someone to tell it too is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” – Miles Franklin   Born in New South Wales, Australia in Oct...

'Someone to tell it too'

 

“Someone to tell it too is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” – Miles Franklin

 

Born in New South Wales, Australia in October of 1879, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin was best known for her worldwide bestselling novel My Brilliant Career – now also a popular Netflix series.

 

Franklin grew up writing, first encouraged by her elementary school teacher Mary Gillespie and then by a local newspaper editor who published a number of her articles during her teenage years.   My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, is a semi-autobiographical retelling of those early writing years, following the life of an irrepressible teenage girl growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales.  

 

Her writing took her first to Britain and then the United States during the first part of the 1900s before she served as a nurse during World War I.  Returning to Australia she continued to find success with her books, including the popular novels All That Swagger and Who Was Joseph Furphy? (in collaboration with Kate Baker).  Both books won Australia’s coveted S.H. Prior Memorial Prize for fiction.

 

Traumatized by her war experiences, she became a staunch anti-war advocate, both cheered and vilified for her views.  Undaunted by those in the latter camp, she noted, “It’s a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the great advantage of being a writer'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the great advantage of being a writer':   “The great advantage of being a writer is that you're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is usef...

'It's the great advantage of being a writer'

 

“The great advantage of being a writer is that you're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.” – Graham Greene

 

Born in England in October of 1904, Greene is listed among the greatest English language writers of the 20th century.  Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he produced 25 bestselling novels and wrote dozens of short stories, essays, plays and movie scripts while continuing to work as a journalist throughout his 67-year career. 

 

Born into a wealthy family, Greene studied history at Oxford but turned to journalism shortly after completing his education there.  He was working as an editor at The Times of London when his first novel, The Man Within, was published in 1929, earning him universal acclaim.  He went on to win Britain’s two oldest and prestigious literary prizes –  the Hawthornden Prize for his masterpiece The Power and the Glory and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Heart of the Matter. 

 

Also considered one of the most “cinematic” of 20^th century writers (nearly all of his novels and many of his short stories were made into movies or television shows), his characters are both interesting and controversial, for which Greene had a logical explanation.  

 

“(You know) the moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about.  At that moment he's alive and you just have to leave it to him to do whatever he prefers.”

A Writer's Moment: Just omit those 'dull bits'

A Writer's Moment: Just omit those 'dull bits':   “Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.” – Clive James   Born in Australia on this date in 1939, James was an author, critic, br...

Just omit those 'dull bits'

 

“Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.” – Clive James

 

Born in Australia on this date in 1939, James was an author, critic, broadcaster, poet and humorist who lived and worked in Great Britain most of his adult life. James broke into the writing world in the 1970s as a television critic for The Observer and gained a wide reading audience with his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs.  First published in 1980, the acclaimed series, also published as a book, provided terrific biographical sketches of many of the 20th century’s most famous figures.

 

James wrote 5 memoirs, 4 novels and 10 poetry collections – including The Book of My Enemy, a volume that takes its title from his earlier humorous poem "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered” (a term used in bookselling to put books in a bargain basement bin).

 

He also wrote a well-received translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and penned 7 “Epic” poems, the last “The River in the Sky” released just months before his death in 2019.

 

Humor, James said, is an essential part of every writer’s arsenal.  “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense . . . dancing.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the great general drama of human spirit'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the great general drama of human spirit':   “It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a stor...