A Writer's Moment: Exercising That 'Writing Muscle'

A Writer's Moment: Exercising That 'Writing Muscle':   “Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.” – Jane Green A cancer survivo...

Exercising That 'Writing Muscle'

 “Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.” – Jane Green

A cancer survivor who now lives in Connecticut, Green was born in London on this date in 1968 and has become one of the world's leading authors in commercial women's fiction, with millions of books in print and translations in over 31 languages.

A journalist by training, she worked as a feature writer for several London-based newspapers, including The Daily Mail, before writing the novel Straight Talking, which went right to bestseller lists in 1995.  Since then she’s had 22 more bestsellers.

Frequent themes in her books include cooking, class wars, children, infidelity, and female friendship. She says she does not necessarily write about her own life, but is inspired by the themes of her life.   She made the move from journalistic writing to creative writing with a writing regimen that sounds like a great plan to an old journalist like myself.  “I treated my books as a very long journalistic exercise.  I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished (on a deadline).”                       

Her journalism training also taught her that writing is a job, and that you must write, whether you are inspired or not.  “The only way to unlock creativity," she said,  "is to write through it.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: ‘Wow, Thanks for Writing That!’

A Writer's Moment: ‘Wow, Thanks for Writing That!’: “You're successful if you can get one person to pick it up and go, ‘Wow, thanks for writing that!’” – Dan Fogelberg...

‘Wow, Thanks for Writing That!’

“You're successful if you can get one person to pick it up and go, ‘Wow, thanks for writing that!’” – Dan Fogelberg

Fogelberg was born in 1951 in Peoria, IL, where his father was an established musician, teacher, and bandleader. His first instrument was the piano, but he gravitated to the guitar in high school and went on to become one of the nation’s pre-eminent songwriters and performers.  He died of cancer in 2007.   "Leader of the Band" is from his album The Innocent Age, and on this Memorial Day weekend seemed fitting for Saturday’s Poem.

 

 

     Leader of the Band

 

An only child alone and wild, a cabinet maker's son
His hands were meant for different work
And his heart was known to none
He left his home and went his lone and solitary way
And he gave to me a gift I know I never can repay

A quiet man of music denied a simpler fate
He tried to be a soldier once, but his music wouldn't wait
He earned his love through discipline, a thundering velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band

My brother's lives were different for they heard another call
One went to Chicago and the other to St Paul
And I'm in Colorado when I'm not in some hotel
Living out this life I've chose and come to know so well

I thank you for the music and your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough
And papa, I don't think I said I love you near enough

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band
I am a living legacy to the leader of the band

                                                                                         

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Exploring Where Words Come From'

A Writer's Moment: 'Exploring Where Words Come From': “I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure storie...

'Exploring Where Words Come From'

“I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.” –  Andrew Clements

Born May 29, 1949 Clements has written dozens of children's books, beginning with his novel Frindle, which won the award writers most care about – the award of favorable public opinion from those you hope will read your book.  In Clements’ case, of course, that was school kids, who voted overwhelmingly that his book was the one they all liked best. 

Not honored by the writing community at the time, it came back 20 years later to win the 2016 Phoenix Award as “the best book that did not win a major award when it was published in 1996.”  Frindle gives us a different way to look at dictionaries and how words are developed and used, and also one of the most interesting explanations I’ve read:

“The dictionary is like a time capsule of all of human thinking ever since words began to be written down,” Clements said.   “Exploring where words have come from can increase your understanding of the words themselves and expand your understanding of how to use the words.”

It’s Clements’ use of words that has set his writing at the forefront as far as kids – particularly“Tweens”

   – are concerned.  That, and his ability to “get into the personnas” that he is creating.  For a terrific read (and don’t be embarrassed about reading a kids’ book), read his compelling Things Not Seen.  It will open your eyes (no pun intended).

“Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling,” he said.  “I think I've always been good at that.”

 

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: Always Another Way of Seeing Things

A Writer's Moment: Always Another Way of Seeing Things:   “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.” – John Barth Born in Maryland on this date in 1930, Barth is best known for h...

Always Another Way of Seeing Things

 “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.” – John Barth

Born in Maryland on this date in 1930, Barth is best known for his postmodernist fiction, especially The Sot Weed Factor, his short story collection Lost in the Funhouse, and the novella collection Chimera, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

Called "Jack" by his family, Barth and his twin sister Jill graduated from Cambridge (MD) High School, where he played drums and began writing by working on the school newspaper.

 

Writing off-and-on throughout college (he earned two degrees at Johns Hopkins University) Barth began his full-time writing career with two short “Realist Novels,” The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, dealing wittily with the controversial topics of suicide and abortion, respectively.

 

Author of 21 books, he won both the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story in 1998. 

“When you look at this mirror,” Barth said,  “I hope you'll remember that there's always another way of seeing things: that's the beginning of wisdom.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'A Tool for Learning How to See'

A Writer's Moment: 'A Tool for Learning How to See':   “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.   The visual life is an enormous undertaking.” – Dorothea L...

'A Tool for Learning How to See'

 “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.  The visual life is an enormous undertaking.” – Dorothea Lange

Born on this day in 1895, Lange influenced generations of Americans with her poignant photographic images that remain icons of the Great Depression.  Her photographs and accompanying writing about what she saw humanized the Depression’s consequences and influenced the development of documentary photography.

Her own pathway in life was hindered by two traumatic events, the first being the victim of polio at age 7, a disease that left her partially crippled for life.  Then Lange and her family were abandoned by her father when she was 12, spiraling them into poverty and forcing her to start working as a young teen, including a part-time job as a photographer’s assistant.    Simultaneously continuing her studies, she earned her high school diploma and enrolled at Columbia University where she formally studied photography. In 1918, she found a job as a photo finisher in San Francisco and embarked on the pathway to her eminent career.

In 1933, she was signed by the Roosevelt administration to begin documenting the lives of ordinary Americans and what they were going through to survive the Depression.  Her photos are still keys to our understanding of what many Americans endured.

Often exposed to harsh and unforgiving environmental conditions, she contracted esophogeal cancer and died in 1965.  But her work continues to be studied by generations of young photographers.  “A camera,” she said,  “is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.”  

 

Lange (left) and her award-winning photo of a migrant mom and kids in California in 1935

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A Writer's Moment: 'Every Day is the Best Day'

A Writer's Moment: 'Every Day is the Best Day': “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson   Eminently quotable, Emerson was the first ...

'Every Day is the Best Day'

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Eminently quotable, Emerson was the first American to advocate for Americans to develop a writing style of their own; to create “American” writing and not just copy that of their forebears from other parts of the world.

 

I find it interesting that he was born this day in 1803, almost simultaneously with the commissioning of Lewis and Clark's great expedition into the Louisiana Purchase.  Thus, as the Corps of Discovery was created to open American frontiers, this great writer and thinker was born to a similar pathway – only toward discovery of the written word. 

 

Emerson was one of the first writers to keep journals, influencing his great friend Henry David Thoreau to do the same.  Emerson’s lifelong extensive journals and notes ultimately were published in 16 volumes by Harvard University Press and are considered to be his key literary works – even though that was not his intent.  “I just wanted to maintain a record of the things that were important to my life,” he wrote.   As it turned out, they are things that have influenced generations of writers both in their content and the practice of journaling itself. 

 

A teacher as well as writer and scholar, he was a staunch supporter of education for girls and women and helped found a Massachusetts school for girls.  And, from the mid-1840s on, he was a national leader of the abolitionist movement.  Known for his kindness and support of others, he said simply, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

 

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'The Best Thing'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Best Thing':   If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.”                                        – Rober...

'The Best Thing'

 If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.”                                       

– Robert Browning

 

  Photo by Dan Jorgensen

  

"The clouds gathering."  Looking west from the Colorado prairie near Fort Lupton toward Long’s Peak.  As a writer, whenever I find myself stuck, I know I can always turn to nature to provide the necessary inspiration for writers' moments.

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