A Writer's Moment: Experiencing the story

A Writer's Moment: Experiencing the story: “Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understa...

Experiencing the story

“Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.” – Philip Reeve

Born in England on this date in 1966, Reeve is the author/illustrator of some 40 children's books, and perhaps best known for his Mortal Engines Sci-Fi/Fantasy series.

A one-time bookshop worker and aspiring playwright, he also provided cartoons for many books including those in the kid-favorite series’ Horrible Histories and Murderous Math.  But success blossomed with his move into writing/illustrating his own books, beginning with the clever Buster Bayliss’ series that included such titles as Night of the Living Veg, Day of the Hamster, and Custardfinger. 

Since writing the 4-book Mortal Engines novels, he has collaborated on several other books and also authored the bestselling Young Adult sci-fi novel Railhead. 

He is a strong advocate for libraries and programs for young readers.   “I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.”

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A Writer's Moment: Writers 'Have to Write'

A Writer's Moment: Writers 'Have to Write': “Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradit...

Writers 'Have to Write'

“Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.” – N. Scott Momaday

Born on this date in 1934, Momaday is a Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize (for his novel House Made of Dawn) and National Medal of Arts for his writing.  While “House” has been called “A Classic,” he is perhaps best known for the novel/memoir/folklore work The Way to Rainy Mountain.

Born in Oklahoma, Momaday grew up on Reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. After earaning a Writing/English degree from the University of New Mexico, he went on to a Ph.D. in English Literature at Stanford, where he also began his writing career, focusing first on poetry.  

Also a renowned teacher and speaker, he was one of the nation’s first Native American academics and created a curriculum based on American Indian literature and mythology.   In addition to many national honors, he has been awarded some two dozen honorary degrees and been named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.    Selected for the Native American Hall of Fame (in 2018), Momaday has been named for the “Ken Burns American Heritage Prize,” to be presented later this year.  

                                       “I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain,” Momaday said.   “None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.”

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A Writer's Moment: Casting for a Part in Life

A Writer's Moment: Casting for a Part in Life: “Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely admit it) extremely exhausting.” – Elizabeth ...

Casting for a Part in Life

“Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely admit it) extremely exhausting.” – Elizabeth Bibesco

The daughter of WWI-era British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Elizabeth was born in England on this date in 1897 and died in Romania during WWII after having married into royalty in the country of Romania.  From 1921-40, Elizabeth wrote three collections of short stories, four novels, two plays and a book of poetry.  A second poetry book was published posthumously after the war.

Both friends and rivals with writers Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, she also was one of the few people who called reclusive writer Marcel Proust a close friend.  At the time of his death (in 1922) she wrote a moving obituary for Proust in the New Statesman and her words there were a great example of her writing style. "Gently, deliberately, he drew me into that magic circle of his personality with the ultimate sureness of a look that needs no touch to seal it. Insensibly you were drawn into that intricate cobweb of iridescent steel, his mind, which, interlacing with yours, spread patterns of light and shade over your most intimate thoughts."

 Her insights into life and human nature come through loud and clear in the words that permeated her writings.  “Talk about the joys of the unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected,” Bibesco wrote.  “Of finding everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?”       “To others, we are not ourselves, but a performer in their lives, cast for a part (in life) we do not even know that we are playing.”

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A Writer's Moment: Advocating for Social Needs

A Writer's Moment: Advocating for Social Needs: “That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgott...

Advocating for Social Needs

“That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.” – Michael Harrington

Born in St. Louis, MO, on this date in 1924, Harrington became one of America’s best-known political and social justice activists during his lifetime.  The author of 16 books and countless essays, his most famous work is The Other America, a condemnation of our treatment of the poor and advocacy for social justice.    Credited with coining the term “neo-conservatism,” he not only was a well-known writer but also a well-known commentator and speaker, contributing commentaries to National Public Radio and speaking at colleges and universities across the country.

From 1972 until his death he also taught political science at Queens College in New York, an institution that named him to a “Distinguished Professorship” in 1988 and established "The Michael Harrington Center for Democratic Values and Social Change" following his death from cancer in 1989.     In addition to contributing pieces to political and religious magazines and journals, Harrington was a frequent writer for The New York Review of Books.

 

Always eager to speak and write on behalf of those in poverty, he noted, “If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.”

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A Writer's Moment: Those 'Single Lovely Actions'

A Writer's Moment: Those 'Single Lovely Actions': “All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.” – James Russell Lowell Born i...

Those 'Single Lovely Actions'

“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.” – James Russell Lowell

Born in Cambridge, Mass., on Feb. 22, 1819, Lowell was associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets to rival the popularity of British poets like Byron, Shelley and Keats.  The American writers used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.     
                            Lowell believed the poet played an important role as prophet and critic of society, using poetry for reform, particularly in abolitionism.  Also a professor at Harvard and one of the first editors of The Atlantic Monthly, he finished his long, distinguished career as a diplomat, serving as Ambassador to Spain and Great Britain.  “The greatest homage we can pay to truth,” Lowell wrote, “is to use it.”   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Lowell’s whimsical,

                                                   Aladdin

When I was a beggarly boy
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

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A Writer's Moment: Carrying forward a writing legacy

A Writer's Moment: Carrying forward a writing legacy: “I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely....

Carrying forward a writing legacy

“I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely.” – Owen King

Born in Maine on this date in 1977, King is the son of author Stephen King and also a successful writer in his own right.  Growing up in Bangor, Maine in what he calls “a surprisingly normal childhood,” Owen King said his first writing efforts were in a game he and his father and siblings played where they would take turn writing sentences on the same story “until we got bored.”

He wrote more in high school and got into it full bore while in college at Vassar and then Columbia, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.  His first book, We’re All in This Together – a collection of three short stories and a novella – came out in 2005 to critical acclaim and has led to a successful career as a short story writer.       Lately, he’s also gotten into writing novels and screenplays, including a novel collaboration with his famous father titled Sleeping Beauties, about a West Virginia women’s prison. He’s currently working with filmmaker Josh Boone on a television movie from Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show, a novel for which he wrote the introduction.

Also a creative writing teacher and contributor to 7 anthologies, Owen is married to writer Kelly Braffet, and values her advice.  “I give my work to my wife first to read,” he said.  “Then, I try to find new people who haven't read my work before, to get a new perspective.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'Real Life' character development

A Writer's Moment: 'Real Life' character development:   “I never thought it was unusual to write, and I've been writing or pretending to write since...

'Real Life' character development

  “I never thought it was unusual to write, and I've been writing or pretending to write since before I even started school.” – Ellen Gilchrist

Born in Mississippi on this date in 1935, Gilchrist “formally” got into writing in the 1970s and has been a successful novelist, short story writer and poet since, winning the National Book Award for her collection of short stories, Victory Over Japan.  Gilchrist also has won awards for her poetry, although it is her short fiction for which she is most well-known.

After studying creative writing under renowned writer Eudora Welty at Millsaps College (where she earned her bachelor’s degree), Gilchrist also studied for a time in the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas.      Her distinctive, wit-fueled tales have focused on women of the South and the small communities in which she has lived (she currently resides in Arkansas).  “I have lived most of my life in small towns,” she said, “and I'm in the habit of knowing and talking to everyone.”   Critics often praise her character development, and many of her characters reappear throughout her short story collections (13 to date).   

While she advocates keeping journals or “records” of things to aid in writing, she said her own technique is more unorthodox.  “Ever since I was a child, I've kept boxes and drawers and pages of things that I liked. I suppose that constitutes a journal of sorts, but it's not in a ledger or a notebook.”

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A Writer's Moment: Entertaining writing on a road to success

A Writer's Moment: Entertaining writing on a road to success: “The sky is always beautiful. Even when it’s dark or rainy or cloudy, it’s still beautiful to look at. It’s my favorit...

Entertaining writing on a road to success

“The sky is always beautiful. Even when it’s dark or rainy or cloudy, it’s still beautiful to look at. It’s my favorite thing because I know if I ever get lost or lonely or scared, I just have to look up and it’ll be there no matter what...and I know it’ll always be beautiful.” – Colleen Hoover

Born in 1979, Hoover said she wrote her first novel Slammed with no intention of being published; just getting the words on paper while they were in her head.  The Sulphur Springs, Tex., native added that she was inspired by a line from an Avett Brothers song that said, “Decide to be and go with it.”  Throughout her first book, she refers to other lyrics from that same song “Head full of doubt/Road full of promise.”  

                                   And so she went with her writing and Slammed became the first of 11 bestselling novels and 5 novellas in the YA/New Adult categories.  All of her books – many self-published and then later picked up by major publishers – have made it to the New York Times bestseller list, led by her 5^th book, Hopeless, which reached the top spot and stayed there for several weeks.

Often called “Highly entertaining” by critics and especially by readers, Hoover said, “I'm not the type of writer who writes to educate or inform my readers. I simply write to entertain them.”

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A Writer's Moment: Finding the figure inside

A Writer's Moment: Finding the figure inside: “I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then ...

Finding the figure inside

“I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in It.” – Chaim Potok

Born in the Bronx on Feb. 17, 1929, Potok was an American Jewish author and rabbi (he died of cancer in 2003).  His first book, The Chosen, published in 1967, was listed on The New York Times’ bestseller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3.4 million copies.

Ultimately authoring 19 books and the 14-volume Jewish Ethics, still taught in numerous University religion courses, Potok also was a renowned scholar and teacher.  He taught a highly regarded graduate seminar on Postmodernism at the University of Pennsylvania from 1993 through 2001 until a diagnosis of brain cancer stopped his career and further writing.             Also an artist, he recreated the painting "The Brooklyn Crucifixion,” which his character Asher Lev painted in his novel My Name is Asher Lev.  Asher, he said, was somewhat based on his own life and family conflicts that arose over whether he should or should not pursue a writing career.  Many characters in that book were based on people in Potok’s own life.

“I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives 
of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'In Love With Language'

A Writer's Moment: 'In Love With Language': “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” – W.H. Auden Born in Engla...

'In Love With Language'

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” – W.H. Auden

Born in England in February 1907, Auden became a naturalized American citizen before his death in 1973.  A prolific writer, he penned about 400 poems, including seven long poems (two of them book-length), 400-plus essays and reviews, and a number of plays and screenplays, seveal with other leading writers of the time.  He also wrote many opera libretti and musical collaborations.       While so many of his poems are long and complex, this one – for Saturday’s Poem – is shorter and more whimsical.  Here is Auden’s,

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

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A Writer's Moment: Tackling the Hard Work of Writing

A Writer's Moment: Tackling the Hard Work of Writing: “I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap in...

Tackling the Hard Work of Writing

“I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work. ”– Adam Ross

Born on this date in 1967, Ross grew up in New York City and attended the Trin­ity School, where he was a state cham­pion wrestler, and a child actor, appearing in movies, com­mer­cials, and tele­vi­sion shows, as well as on radio dra­mas.  After studying English at Vassar College, he went on to earn a Master’s degree from Hollins University and Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington University, both in creative writing.   

                                   Author of the critically acclaimed novel Mister Peanut, he also has written stories for magazines, newspapers and journals and served as a fea­ture writer and spe­cial projects edi­tor for the Nashville (TN) Scene.  Ross’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, Tin House, and The Wall Street Jour­nal.   His fic­tion has been published in The Berlin Jour­nal, The Car­olina Quar­terly, and The Sun­day Times of Lon­don.   In addition to his writing, he serves as Editor of The Sewanee Review. 

Asked about story writing, he said, “Simply put, you can read a story in a single sitting and hold it all in your mind. You can experience all of its rhythms, beginning to end, during that span. Consequently it has, I think, greater emotional power than a novel because of this real-time effect.  Stories can stun you.”

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A Writer's Moment: Shaping Our 'Writing Destiny'

A Writer's Moment: Shaping Our 'Writing Destiny': “There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we will.” – Frank Harris Editor, novelist, short stor...

Shaping Our 'Writing Destiny'

“There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we will.” – Frank Harris

Editor, novelist, short story writer and journalist, Harris was born in Ireland on Valentine’s Day, 1856.  He emigrated to the U.S. at a young age, and then gravitated back to Ireland and Europe in the 1880s before ultimately becoming a U.S. citizen in 1921, living the final 10 years of his life between the two continents. 

A law school graduate from the University of Kansas, Harris tried a legal career for several years before deciding that it was too boring and what he really wanted to do was write.  He attracted much attention during his lifetime for his irascible, aggressive personality, editorship of famous periodicals, and friendship with the talented and famous.  In addition to authoring popular books like The Bomb and The Yellow Ticket and Other Stories. 

Despite many writing successes, Harris may be best known today for his 4-volume memoir My Life and Loves (he was married 3 times, including the author/playwright Enid Bagnold), loosely based on his life despite it’s “Memoir” title.

“Memoirs,” he said with tongue firmly in cheek, “are a well-known form of fiction.”       “I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: Hungry for their stories

A Writer's Moment: Hungry for their stories: “Readers are hungry to have their stories in the world, to see mirrors of themselves if the stories are about people l...

Hungry for their stories

“Readers are hungry to have their stories in the world, to see mirrors of themselves if the stories are about people like them, and to have windows if the stories are about people who have been historically absent in literature.” – Jacqueline Woodson 

Woodson has built her writing career around strong, emotional and optimistic stories, especially for young people where most of her works have been focused.  Woodson said she dislikes books that do not offer hope and often uses that philosophy in her writing.  "If you love the people you create,” she said,  “you can see the hope there." 

         Born in Ohio on this date in 1963, Woodson grew up in South Carolina and Brooklyn, NY, and started writing in Middle School, an age she now enjoys writing for and about.   Among her best-known Middle School and Young Adult books are Miracle’s Boys, After Tupac and D Foster, and the Newbery Honor-winning Brown Girl Dreaming.   The immediate past Young People's Poet Laureate (from 2015–17), she is the current National Ambassador for Young People's Literature – both named by the Library of Congress – and said she consciously writes for a younger audience.

“I love writing for young people. It's the literature that was most important to me, the stories that shaped me and informed my own journey as a writer.”

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