A Writer's Moment: Building 'Books' Into 'Classics'

A Writer's Moment: Building 'Books' Into 'Classics': “It's a wonderful thing to write for children.    I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's bo...

Building 'Books' Into 'Classics'

“It's a wonderful thing to write for children.   I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time.” – John Boyne

  

Born in Ireland on this date in 1971, Boyne has authored 11 novels for adults and 6 for younger readers, publishing in over 50 languages. His multi-award winning 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas also was adapted into a popular movie by the same name.

A graduate of renowned Trinity College in Dublin – where he still makes his home – Boyne started writing in college and had his first short story published at age 22.  His first adult novel (and still one of his most popular) was 2000’s A Thief Of Time.  His 2017 book The Hearts Invisible Furies was named Book of the Year by the Book of the Month Club. 
             “I hope for so much from every book I read,” Boyne said about what he looks for in books.  “And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles, which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'A Vast Curiosity' About The Universe

A Writer's Moment: 'A Vast Curiosity' About The Universe: “I have a vast curiosity about our universe, our origins, and its probable future.” – Jack Williamson Born in the...

'A Vast Curiosity' About The Universe

“I have a vast curiosity about our universe, our origins, and its probable future.” – Jack Williamson

Born in the Arizona Territory on this date in 1906, Williamson grew up on isolated ranches in West Texas and New Mexico where he said he developed a great sense of how to use his imagination to entertain both himself and his 3 siblings.

That early “self-training” led to a stellar career as a writer of fantasy and science fiction and ultimately the title of "Dean of Science Fiction,” (especially after the death of his contemporary Sci-Fi writer Robert Heinlein.   Williamson also is credited with one of the first uses of the term "Genetic Engineering" in his descriptions and storytelling. 

      A huge fan of the magazine Amazing Stories, published by Miles Breuer, Williamson submitted his first story to the magazine at age 20 and by age 24 was collaborating with Breuer on what would become a massive best-selling novel, Girl From Mars.  It was the first of what would be more than 30 novels, 25 story collections, many dozens of stand-alone short stories, and several Sci-Fi series, capped by the award-winning Legion of Space Series. 

Williamson also had a long teaching career at Eastern New Mexico State University where today the Jack Williamson Liberal Arts Building is named in his honor and to recognize his many contributions to both the liberal arts and the literary world.   Williamson said he always credited his ability to utilize his imagination as the catalyst for his career.

“Life,” he said, “would have been absolutely empty without imagination.”

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A Writer's Moment: Narrowing The Communication Gap

A Writer's Moment: Narrowing The Communication Gap: “It seems to me that it's every man's obligation to make what contribution he can. You live each day as best y...

Narrowing The Communication Gap

“It seems to me that it's every man's obligation to make what contribution he can. You live each day as best you can. That, to me, is what makes life interesting.” – Rod McKuen

Born in a California homeless shelter on this date in 1933, McKuen was one of the best-selling singer-songwriter poets in the United States during the late 1960s, and continued to produce a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music.  He died in 2015. 

      Never taken seriously by critics or many of his fellow writers, he nonetheless wrote poems and songs about love and nature that connected with everyday people, selling over 100 million songs and 60 million books of poetry worldwide.   He won critical acclaim for his 1968 Lonesome Cities, which won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word album.    One of his most popular and enduring song poems was “If You Go Away,” and if you ever get the chance to see a clip of his performance of “What a Wonderful World,” done at age 78, you’re in for a great treat. 

 “I tried not to put messages in my songs,” McKuen said.  “My only message was man's communication with his fellow man. I just wanted to narrow the gap of strangeness and alienation.” 

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A Writer's Moment: 'We Must Be Truthful'

A Writer's Moment: 'We Must Be Truthful': “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; and to be credible we must be truthful.” – Edward R. Murrow ...

'We Must Be Truthful'

“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; and to be credible we must be truthful.” – Edward R. Murrow

Born on April 25, 1908, Murrow died on April 27, 1965.  He was a beacon of truth in the news business for 35 years before his life was cut short by lung cancer.  Murrow received numerous honors for his journalistic excellence and integrity, including the Medal of Freedom in 1964 and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II just weeks before his death.

 A World War II radio correspondent, he founded the CBS television news program See It Now.  After the war, his work behind the CBS news desk and as an interviewer influenced two generations of news anchors, beginning with the great Walter Cronkite and followed by Dan Rather and Peter Jennings. 

Today, his name graces the Excellence in Reporting awards given annually in both the print and broadcast worlds.

The film Good Night, and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney, focused on Murrow's efforts to end Senator Joseph McCarthy's reign of intimidation in the early 1950s and inspired  generations seeking to “do journalism right.” 

The world of journalism and ultimately our whole world was made better and brighter by the life of this great reporter.

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: Writing From Those Things In Life

A Writer's Moment: Writing From Those Things In Life: “How do poems grow?   They grow out of your life.” – Robert Penn Warren Founder of the influential literary journ...

Writing From Those Things In Life

“How do poems grow?  They grow out of your life.” – Robert Penn Warren

Founder of the influential literary journal, The Southern Review, Penn Warren is the only person to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, and he won that latter award twice.  His first Pulitzer came for All The King’s Men, the 1947 novel about a ruthless Louisiana politician.  It’s one of the few books to also be made into both a movie and an opera, although the movie had much more success, earning the Best Picture Academy Award and Best Actor for Broderick Crawford as lead character Willie Stark. 

      Penn Warren’s second Pulitzer came for his 1958 book of poems Promises: Poems 1954-1956, which also won the National Book Award.  And, in 1979 he earned his third Pulitzer for his poems Now and Then.

Born in Kentucky on April 24, 1905, he was known as a segregationist as a young man but greatly shifted his views as he grew older, adopting a high profile as a supporter of integration – a view reflected in his writings.  He became close friends with both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The nation’s first Poet Laureate, Penn Warren also was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom; a MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called “genius grant”); and the National Medal in the Arts.  He said whenever he felt the urge to write a poem, he just sat down and did it.   “The urge to write poetry,” he said, “is like having an itch.  When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.”

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A Writer's Moment: Being 'Home' With Language

A Writer's Moment: Being 'Home' With Language: “Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try ...

Caught Up In Language

“Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find a home in language.” – Natasha Trethewey

Born in Mississippi on April 26, 1966, Trethewey grew up in a family of poets and started writing poetry as a child.  She was U.S. Poet Laureate from 2012-14 and won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection Native Guard.

A professor of English and creative writing at Emory University, she’s won numerous awards, especially for works that examine memory and the racial legacy of America.     “I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think that they do,” she said.  “I think we forget the places that we encounter it, say, in songs or in other little bits and pieces of things that we may have remembered from childhood.”   For Saturday’s Poem from her wonderful Pulitzer Prize-winning book is Trethewey’s,

                          Theories Of Time and Space

You can get there from here, though
there's no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you've never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion - dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp - buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry - tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph - who you were -
will be waiting when you return.

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A Writer's Moment: Making 'The Dream' Come True

A Writer's Moment: Making 'The Dream' Come True: We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.” – Edwin Markham   Markham, born on this date in 1852, lived o...

Making 'The Dream' Come True

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.” – Edwin Markham

 Markham, born on this date in 1852, lived one of those remarkable “achieving the American Dream” lives.  Born the last of 10 kids and growing up in a broken home (his parents divorced shortly after his birth), he worked the family farm as a child, was mostly self-educated and against the wishes of his family decided to go to college and study literature.

After teaching for several years (he had a two-year degree from a “Normal” school), he earned his bachelor’s and master’s in the Classics, fell in love with poetry and began writing in his late 40s.  His two most famous poems are "The Man with the Hoe," inspired by a painting by the French artist Millet, and "Lincoln, the Man of the People," read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial.  The president of Princeton University called it “The greatest poem ever written on the immortal martyr, and the greatest that ever will be written."

 

 

 Edwin Markham                             Millet’s ‘The Man With The Hoe’

An amazing letter writer and book collector, Markham amassed 15,000+ books.  He bequeathed them and his personal papers and letters, including years of correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce, and fellow poets Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell, to tiny Wagner College in New York City at the time of his death in 1940.  Poet Laureate of Oregon in the 1930s, he was the first recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award in 1937. 

“Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream," he wrote,  "but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!”

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Sharing A Writer's Voice

“I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.” – Paula Fox

Born on this date in 1923, Fox authored novels for both adults and children and wrote two award-winning memoirs.   Winner of the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books, she also won the Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer, and a National Book Award for A Place Apart.

The daughter of a Cuban immigrant, she was born and spent most of her life in New York City where she attended Columbia University and had a relationship with Marlon Brando, alleged to be the father of her daughter Linda Carroll.     Carroll went on to become a famous psychotherapist and author in her own right as well as the mother of singer Courtney Love.

While Fox’s adult books were well received (she wrote 6 novels and a book of essays), she remains best known for her nearly two dozen children’s books, many lauded for their attention to their detailed voice and setting.  “I have a painter's memory,” she once said.   “I can remember things from my childhood which were so powerfully imprinted on me, the whole scene comes back to become a part of my writing.”

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Love Your Characters

As I work on my next novel, just a thought of my own to share today:

“If you strive to become a creative writer, whether it be writing novels or short stories or plays, you must become deeply involved in the lives of your characters.  You have to laugh and cry and agonize with them.  And this involvement doesn’t end in ‘off hours.’  Like it or not, they are with you 24 hours a day.  They become part of your life as long as the story is being written.”