A Writer's Moment: Under That Writing Spell

A Writer's Moment: Under That Writing Spell: “What is writing but an expression of myself.” – Zane Grey Born in Ohio on this date in 1872, Grey was a dentist who enjoyed tales o...

Under That Writing Spell

“What is writing but an expression of myself.” – Zane Grey

Born in Ohio on this date in 1872, Grey was a dentist who enjoyed tales of the Old West and ultimately became one of America’s most popular writers of the “Western” genre. His Riders of the Purple Sage, which has sold many millions of copies and been adapted into 5 different films and an opera, often is cited as “The most popular Western of all time.”

Still, when Grey wrote it he expressed doubts about whether it was good or would be accepted by the general public. 

                                                      If you are a writer, he said, you always have self doubts about what you are putting down.  Is it good?  Will people care?  Why should they care?  Ultimately, of course, you just need to be happy for and with yourself and the writing you produce. 

“Writing is like digging coal.  I sweat blood.  The spell is upon me,” Grey said.  “I hope I have found myself, my work, my happiness - under the light of the western skies.”

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A Writer's Moment: Tapping That 'Nervous Writing Condition'

A Writer's Moment: Tapping That 'Nervous Writing Condition': “Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to ...

Tapping That 'Nervous Writing Condition'

“Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.” – Shirley Hazzard

An Australian-American novelist, short story writer and essayist Hazzard was born in Australia on this date in 1931.  After first writing short stories, she became a major international novelist after her 1970 novel The Bay of Noon was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  In 2003, her novel The Great Fire won three major awards for fiction – the U.S. National Book Award, the Miles Franklin Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. 

Hazzard first moved to New York City when she was 20, starting a 10-year job with the United Nations Secretariat and ultimately leading to her authorship of two books that were highly critical of the organization.  In her book Countenance of Truth Hazzard alleged that senior international diplomats had been aware of the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim yet had allowed him to rise through the ranks to become U.N. Secretary-General.  

In 1963 she married U.S. writer Francis Steegmuller and they moved to Europe, living in Paris and then on the Isle of Capri while also maintaining a New York apartment.  She was back in New York at the time of her death in 2016.   

About being a writer, she once noted:  “It’s nervous work.  The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.”

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A Writer's Moment: Reconstructing 'Real Life'

A Writer's Moment: Reconstructing 'Real Life': “Writing is not a genteel profession; it's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.” – Rosemary Mahoney Born ...

Reconstructing 'Real Life'

“Writing is not a genteel profession; it's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.” – Rosemary Mahoney

Born in Boston on this date in 1961, Mahoney is the author of 6 books – including the multiple award-winning A Likely Story: One Summer With Lillian Hellman and the wonderful travelogue Down The Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff.  Also the author of dozens of magazine articles, she has earned numerous accolades for her prose style.  One critic called her “…a literary talent that amounts to brilliance.”     Among her numerous writing awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the prestigious Whiting Writer’s Award for emerging writers.

 

A graduate of Harvard and Johns Hopkins, she holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Ireland and makes her home in Greece.

“I think the most useful thing you can do as a writer is to reconstruct real life with all its color, hardship, joy, and intrigue,” she said of her writing style.   “If you're interested in people, you honor them best, I think, by making the fullest possible picture of them.”

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A Writer's Moment: Simply 'Begin at the Beginning'

A Writer's Moment: Simply 'Begin at the Beginning': “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson Best known...

Simply 'Begin at the Beginning'

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Best known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, Dodgson was born this date in 1832 in the small English village of Daresbury   The eldest in a family of 11 children, he grew adept at an early age of entertaining both himself and his siblings with his storytelling ability.

As a babysitting aide, he made up stories for his siblings and their friends, something he continued doing into his 20s and 30s, including for the children of good friend Henry George Liddell.   It was Alice Liddell who can be credited with his pinnacle inspiration. On a picnic with the Liddell family, he told Alice and her sisters an amazing tale of a dream world.  Alice was so enamored she insisted Carroll write the story down so she could both relive it and share it with her friends.

Through a series of coincidences, the story fell into the hands of novelist Henry Kingsley, who urged Carroll to publish it. And in 1865 the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was born.  It would become the most popular children’s book in England, then America, and then throughout the world before Carroll’s death in 1898. 

How did a professional mathematician and photographer spin such a yarn?  Perhaps two of his lasting quotes will suffice: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”  And, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”   And always write things down.

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A Writer's Moment: Those 'Spontaneous' Scribblings

A Writer's Moment: Those 'Spontaneous' Scribblings:   “I like the idea that you can jar a moment, capture it like a photograph.   Overworking poetry can have terrible res...

Those 'Spontaneous' Scribblings

 “I like the idea that you can jar a moment, capture it like a photograph.  Overworking poetry can have terrible results. If we all just scribbled down a poem whilst on the bus, the world would be a better place.” – Liam Wilkinson 

Yorkshire poet, songwriter and singer Wilkinson,      born in 1981, is a great example of how spontaneity can lead to interesting writing, especially poetry.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Wilkinson’s,

                 Sunday

I.

Sunday is made of crisp paper
and coffee
so I’m happy to be here
out in the world
carrying the news
home
and savoring
the Americano on my tongue.

II.

The shop assistant
had no idea
how much I loved her today.
Or how much
I loved the gorgeous line
of fresh orange juice
in the fridge
and the low low price
of economy cat litter.


III.

The stillness of the seventh day
is only beautiful in things
as it happens.
Sad
to think Monday
will soon be here
in the tears
of tomorrow’s frozen vegetables. 

A Writer's Moment: Solving the 'Mystery' of Writing

A Writer's Moment: Solving the 'Mystery' of Writing: “There’s a mystery to writing, and you don’t really know where most of it comes from.”— Neil Diamond Diamond, born...

Solving the 'Mystery' of Writing

“There’s a mystery to writing, and you don’t really know where most of it comes from.”—Neil Diamond

Diamond, born on this date in 1941 and raised in Brooklyn, NY, is arguably one of the world’s best-known singer-songwriters. He’s authored hundreds of songs, had 11 number one hits, and sold some $150 million records around the globe.   And, yet, this great musician almost took his talents in a different direction.

A terrific athlete, he attended New York University on a fencing scholarship and was a member of the 1960 NCAA championship team.  But he said his life ambition was to be a laboratory biologist “and find a cure for cancer  (his grandmother died of the disease); I sincerely thought I could discover the cure,” he said.  But during his senior year, a music publishing company made him a dream offer he couldn’t refuse – writing songs at $50 each, a huge amount in those days. 

  

A member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Kennedy Center honoree, his Number One hits include Cracklin’ Rosie, Heartlight, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers and Sweet Caroline, which has become a standard for almost every sporting venue.  The “bah, bah, bah” refrain may be the most sung phrase in the world, next to Happy Birthday, of course.  And, the song was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

“The main objective in any song I write has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touches me when I’m finished with it; that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what it’s saying.  Songs are life – in 80 words or less.”

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A Writer's Moment: The Desire To Write

A Writer's Moment: The Desire To Write: “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.” – Hugh Prather ...

The Desire To Write

“If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.” – Hugh Prather

Born in Texas on this date in 1938, Prather was an American self-help writer, lay minister, and counselor, most famous for his first book, Notes to Myself, which has sold over 5 million copies and been translated into 10 languages.

A descendant of one of Dallas, Texas’s leading developers – who also is credited with creating the nation’s first planned shopping center, Highland Park Village, in the 1930s – Prather studied at Southern Methodist University and Columbia University before beginning his writing career.

In addition to Notes, he wrote numerous essays and joined with his wife Gayle to write over a dozen other self-help and guidance books including the mega-bestseller I Touch The Earth, The Earth Touches Me. 

“We are always influenced because we do not live in a vacuum together with our intentions,” Prather wrote.  “We are in a relationship with everything that occurs.”

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A Writer's Moment: Take Heart ... And Write On

A Writer's Moment: Take Heart ... And Write On: “Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.” – Ralph Keyes Born in Ja...

Take Heart ... And Write On

“Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.” – Ralph Keyes

Born in January, 1945, Keyes is a lecturer and author of 16 books including Is There Life After High School?, adapted into a Broadway and nationally touring musical. And his 1995 book The Courage to Write has become a standard work among aspiring writers.

Keyes also is a frequent contributor to magazines ranging from GQ to Good Housekeeping to The Harvard Business Review, and he can often be heard on National Public Radio shows like “On The Media” and “All Things Considered.”    A graduate of Antioch College, he still makes his home near there in Yellow Springs, Ohio. 

In The Courage to Write, Keyes wrote, “I’m often asked why I write so often about ‘negative’ subjects: tensions between fathers and sons, adolescent angst, time pressure. My answer is that exploring such topics on paper helps me get rid of them. Writing can be wonderful therapy, and cheap at the price. At the very least, you eventually get bored by thinking about anxious topics and want to move on.”

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A Writer's Moment: Writing About Your Obsessions

A Writer's Moment: Writing About Your Obsessions: For each writer there’s a different answer to the question: Where do you get your characters?    I read this note in T...

Writing About Your Obsessions

For each writer there’s a different answer to the question: Where do you get your characters?   I read this note in Time magazine from the fine author Meg Wolitzer and thought it was an excellent take on how the process occurs.

“My best, though incredibly vague, answer is that ideas about characters come about through the long, slow process of living.  Even if a character’s experiences aren’t your own, you are citizens of the same world, and you’ve had your experiences and witnessed other people’s too.  While all that has been going on, empathy has quietly been forming; it’s a chemical process.”

It’s probably safe to say that Wolitzer’s life has been permeated by writing.  The author of a dozen novels, including The Wife and The Ten-Year Nap, she grew up the daughter of a novelist (Hilma Wolitzer) and married another novelist (Richard Panek).  And the legacy is continuing.  Both of her sons also have had their writing published.  

“People say, write what you know, but it's really, write about what obsesses you,” Wolitzer said.   “Write about what you're thinking about all the time.”

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A Writer's Moment: Words to Reflect in Our Lives

A Writer's Moment: Words to Reflect in Our Lives: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a...

Words to Reflect in Our Lives

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” –The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Taken from Dr. King’s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963  

  

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A Writer's Moment: 'What About Lunch?'

A Writer's Moment: 'What About Lunch?': "It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like 'What about lunch...

'What About Lunch?'

"It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like 'What about lunch?'” – A.A. Milne 

English author A.A. Milne, who gave us one of the most lovable and lasting figures in childrens’ literature –Winnie The Pooh – was born on Jan. 18, 1882.  His amazing success with “That Silly Old Bear” overshadowed his other writing, which was really quite amazing in its own right.    

During a 20-year period from about 1906 to 1925 he published 18 plays and 3 novels, and was a screenwriter for the early British cinema, including 4 films produced by up-and-coming actor Leslie Howard, who gained everlasting fame as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind.  Howard actually got his start acting in Milne’s play, Mr. Pim Passes By.

But Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books that include a boy named Christopher Robin, named after his own son Christopher Robin Milne his menagerie of stuffed animals.  They were, in real life, headed up by a teddy bear named Edward.  But both A.A. and Christopher loved a bear at the London Zoo named Winnie and a swan swimming there named Pooh. 

So, he combined the names, and the rest, as they say…

  

A.A. Milne & Christopher (around 1926)

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