A Writer's Moment: Answering the question: 'Why not me?'

A Writer's Moment: Answering the question: 'Why not me?': “I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of th...

Answering the question: 'Why not me?'

“I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of themes but taking different angles on them.” – Nancy Werlin

 

Born in Salem, Massachusetts on this date in 1961, Werlin was nominated for a National Book Award for The Rules of Survival and won an Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel for The Killer's Cousin.  She also was an Edgar finalist for Locked Inside. A graduate of Yale, she has written a dozen Young Adult novels, including New York Times-bestselling fantasy Impossible.  Her newest book is Healer and Witch.

 

Werlin started reading at age 3, reading up to 10 books a week by 3^rd grade.  She said she decided to be a writer in 4^th grade and while creative writing is a central part of her life, she also works as a technical writer for a software company and says being employed gives her the financial freedom to take the time she needs on each creative writing project. 

 

“By the time I was ten, I knew I wanted to be a writer to create what I loved so much,” Werlin said.  "I just read all the time, and it occurred to me that somebody had to write these things – and why shouldn't it be me?"

A Writer's Moment: 'Focus and follow through'

A Writer's Moment: 'Focus and follow through':   “If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.” – Andrea Seigel   Born in Ana...

'Focus and follow through'

 

“If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.” – Andrea Seigel

 

Born in Anaheim, CA on this date in 1979, Young Adult novelist Seigel grew up in California and then did her writing education on the East Coast (at Brown and Bennington).  She says she’s a great example of how an introvert can be successful in an extrovert’s world.  

 

The author of four novels, she also has become a successful screenwriter (her most recent being 2022’s “The Silent Twins”), and two of her books – The Kid Table and Everybody Knows Your Name – also have been turned into films.  She said that while she studied writing in college, her love of books began as a young girl. 

"I'd go to the library so I could sit in a big, quiet room and listen to pages being turned," she said.  "There was a boring librarian who everyone in fifth grade hated. But I loved her because when she would read us stories in her soft voice, she'd turn my head into a snow globe."

A Writer's Moment: They're the 'packhorses of literature'

A Writer's Moment: They're the 'packhorses of literature':   “Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a ...

They're the 'packhorses of literature'

 

“Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a reliable if not scenic route, we have delivered.  Technique is optional.” – Stacy Schiff

 

Born in Adams, MA on Oct. 26, 1961 Schiff was an editor before shifting into writing biography and non-fiction.  She’s the author of half-a-dozen acclaimed biographies sandwiched around numerous essays and articles in many magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review.

 

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Vera Nabokov, she also was a finalist for the Pulitzer for her biography of Antoine de Saint Expurey (author of The Little Prince).   Her work The Witches: Salem, 1692 was hailed by The New York Times as "an almost novelistic, thriller-like narrative.”

 

 Schiff’s most recent book The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams also has won numerous awards, including the Colonial Dames of America Book Prize and the William Hickling Prescott Award for Excellence in Historical Writing.    

 

Schiff enjoys research but sometimes runs into walls trying to decipher her subjects’ writing.  “In an ideal world,” she said, “the perfect biographical subject would have been the star of his penmanship class at grade school - and would thereafter write an English that positively sings.” 

 

 “The biographer,” she said, “has two lives:  The one she leads, and the one she ultimately understands.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Like an abstract painting, open to interpretation'

A Writer's Moment: 'Like an abstract painting, open to interpretation':   “Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract...