A Writer's Moment: 'Just grow up and write'

A Writer's Moment: 'Just grow up and write':   “I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way, for me, it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen ...

'Just grow up and write'

 

“I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way, for me, it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen in hand. I'd always been told that it was impossible to be published, so I was writing only for myself.” – Jane Hamilton

 

Born in Illinois in July of 1957, Hamilton was the youngest of five children and started writing early, accumulating prizes for poetry and short stories even before she was out of high school.    

 

 At Carleton College in Minnesota, she continued along her literary pathway, earning a degree in English and then heading off to an internship at Dell Publishing for Children.   But she got sidetracked enroute, meeting her husband-to-be in Wisconsin and deciding to forego book editing to join his apple growing business – something they still do.  But, since apple growing is “seasonal," she had time to pursue her writing during “off season.”

 

Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award for Best First Novel.   She followed it with A Map of the World, firmly establishing her credentials.  Both books also became critically acclaimed films.   Much of her work (she now has 8 best-selling novels) reflects her personal experiences, settings and characters.  Her latest is 2025’s The Phoebe Variations.

 

Hamilton said she always thought that even though she was not a particularly good speller, writing was just something she was meant to do. 

 

“I just assumed that if you were a girl-child, you were supposed to grow up and write.”

A Writer's Moment: Writing 'a clear vision of life'

A Writer's Moment: Writing 'a clear vision of life':   “My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is. “ – Jill McCorkle   Born in Lu...

Writing 'a clear vision of life'

 

“My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is. “ – Jill McCorkle

 

Born in Lumberton, North Carolina on this date in 1958, McCorkle is an award-winning short story writer and professor of creative writing at North Carolina State University.   Winner of the Dos Passos Prize – given annually to a writer in the middle of his or her career who is deemed to be “under-recognized for his/her life’s work” – she also is a frequent speaker at regional and national book and author events.  

 

McCorkle has published seven novels and five collections of short stories, led by Going Away Shoes; Final Vinyl Days & Other Stories; and Life After Life.  Her most recent work is the 2024 collection Old Crimes.

 

“For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow,” she said about her stories.  “It's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Just telling a good story'

A Writer's Moment: 'Just telling a good story':   “I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my workday is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an...

'Just telling a good story'

 

“I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my workday is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.” –  David Eddings

 

Born in Spokane, Washington on this date in 1931, Eddings made that statement shortly before his death in 2009.  And the writings about which he spoke were several fantasy series’ mostly created in partnership with his wife Leigh.  

 Eddings grew up in the Puget Sound area and that rugged region became the setting for some of his early (and moderately successful) stories, like High Hunt, but it was in the Fantasy genre’ that he made his mark.   His call to the world of fantasy came from a doodled map he drew one morning over coffee - a doodle that became the geographical basis for a world he called Aloria.

 

A terrific chess player, too, Eddings took Leigh’s suggestion that he incorporate elements of chess into his books.  Combining that with the new world he imagined led to he and Leigh writing 5 best-selling series, starting in 1982.  Their last, The Dreamers, ended in in 2006 after she died following a series of strokes.   The Dreamers featured characters who could use their dreams to foresee visions of the future.  His tales often seemed prophetic but David pooh-poohed those who held him up as a visionary.

 

“I'm a storyteller, not a prophet,” he said.  “I'm just interested in telling a good story.”

A Writer's Moment: It's finding that 'right word' combination

A Writer's Moment: It's finding that 'right word' combination:   “Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary - how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one...