“To note an artist’s limitations is but to define her talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to her view, but a creative writer can do her best only with what lies within the range and character of her deepest sympathies.” – Willa Cather
Born in Virginia but raised on the prairies of Nebraska, Willa Cather always
said her writing was greatly affected by her “growing up years” and the
vastness of the prairieland that surrounded her – experiences she used
extensively in her novels and short stories.
And, when she compares reporting to creative writing, she also knows of what she speaks. She started writing as a reporter for the Nebraska State Journal and then did a stint on the magazine Home Monthly before serving as drama critic and telegraph editor for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Leader. After moving on to McClure’s in New York City, she got serious about her creative writing and in the 19-teens did her famous “Prairie Trilogy” of O Pioneers!, Song of the Lark, and My Antonia, some of the best realism written about the life and blend of people on the Great Plains.
In the 1920s she won the Pulitzer
Prize for One of Ours, and then wrote
what I’ve always thought was one of her best, Death Comes for the Archbishop.
"Writing,” Cather said, “ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand – a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods – or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values."
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