A Writer's Moment: 'Write What Wants to be Written'

A Writer's Moment: 'Write What Wants to be Written': “With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, qui...

'Write What Wants to be Written'

“With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.  A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.” – Madeleine L’Engle

 

A native of New York City, L’Engle was born this day in 1918.  Her “collaboration” with her writing muse led to the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, the National Book Award-winning A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. 

Although she wrote her first story at the age of 5, she didn’t write A Wrinkle In Time – her first novel – until age 42.  In 2012 the book was voted by  Library Journal readers as the Number 2 children’s book of all time (behind Charlotte’s Web).

The book was rejected 30 times before acceptance.    

 

Of course, once accepted, it opened the floodgates for her as a writer.  She wrote dozens of books for both children and adults in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.  And, it mattered not to her whether it was for one age group or the other.

  

“You have to write the book that wants to be written,” she said. “And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you simply write it for children."

 

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A Writer's Moment: Eternally In The Public Eye

A Writer's Moment: Eternally In The Public Eye:   November is the month of the sinking of the great ore ship The Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior. While many ships have sunk on that ...

Eternally In The Public Eye

 November is the month of the sinking of the great ore ship The Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior.

While many ships have sunk on that often majestic and sometimes stormy Great Lake, it was Gordon Lightfoot’s commemorative song that put it eternally into the public eye.  It was November 1975 when the Fitzgerald became the largest ship ever to have gone down on Lake Superior.  All 29 crew members were lost, their bodies never recovered even after the wreck was found.

Lightfoot wrote his famous song after reading an article in Newsweek magazine titled “Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month,” also published in November 1975. Lightfoot’s song opens with the same words as the article, about the Chippewa legend that the lake never gives up its dead.  It became a mega-hit in 1976 and has been played continuously ever since.

 

Gordon Lightfoot

A Canadian, Lightfoot was born on this day in 1938.  He has written hundreds of songs, many of them based on stories of the people and the land around him.  “You just get the vibes of your surroundings and it rubs off on you,” he said.   And in his case – it comes back through his memorable words and haunting music.

For Saturday’s poem here is Lightfoot’s masterpiece, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A

A Writer's Moment: A Thanksgiving To Remember

A Writer's Moment: A Thanksgiving To Remember:   I was 9 or 10 = 1957 or 1958 - and we were celebrating Thanksgiving on our South Dakota farm with a meal made from the fruits and vegetab...

A Thanksgiving To Remember

 

I was 9 or 10 - 1957 or 1958 - and we were celebrating Thanksgiving on our South Dakota farm with a meal made from the fruits and vegetables we had harvested, and a goose my dad had shot just a week before.  After tough times, this was going to be a feast beyond any we’d had for several years.

The chores were done and it was lightly snowing when we gathered in the kitchen to help get the table ready.  My brothers and I were driving mom half crazy as we bounced around the table and in-and-out of the living room and from outside, hoping to “will” my dad’s arrival with his Uncle George, a bachelor farmer mom had sent him to fetch so he wouldn’t be alone.  Adding to the festive scene were a young couple who had recently moved into a neighboring farm and also would have been alone – not going to happen once mom found out.

Just as mom announced that the goose was ready to come out of the oven and we all rushed inside to see, we heard the car pull up and then my dad and Uncle George came in, brushing off the light snow.  “Everybody’s here!” mom smiled and then looking past my dad to the door, she got a confused look on her face.

“Oh, this is Andy,” my dad announced, stepping back and half pulling a middle-aged man past the threshold and into the kitchen.  “Found him walking down the road about half-mile from here.”  He smiled.  “Looked like he could use a little warming up, and something to eat.”  Everybody grew quiet as if unsure what to say, and then my mom hurried forward and held out her hand in welcome. 

“You’re in luck,” she said.  “More than enough food to go around this year, so the more eaters the merrier.”  She grabbed my dad’s hand, too.  “Dean, you didn’t get cleaned up before you went to pick up George.  Why don’t you wash up.”  She nodded to the homeless man, who in those days we all called “bums” and said, “and maybe Andy wants to get washed up too while we finish getting the meal on the table?”

The man smiled gratefully as my dad led the way to the nearby washbasin, removing his coat and hat at my dad’s urging and letting us boys take them back out to the entryway.

I don’t remember all the details of how long Andy was there that day, but I do remember how – like the rest of us – he ate and ate (it was Thanksgiving after all) and there was lots of laughter during that meal and after.  And aside from the surprise of seeing him when he first arrived, I remember also being surprised to see a grown man with tears in his eyes when he finished and got ready to leave and my dad offered to give him a ride all the way into town.

“Does Andy have a family?” I asked mom as she watched them drive away.  “Yes,” she answered. “At least he does today.” 

It’s that memory that still lingers as one of the warmest in my growing up years, especially each Thanksgiving.

 

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A Writer's Moment: Living With The Characters You Create

A Writer's Moment: Living With The Characters You Create:   “I think about the characters I’ve created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do.   There’s a lot of subconsci...

Living With The Characters You Create

 

“I think about the characters I’ve created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do.  There’s a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.”  - Tom Clancy

I thought of Clancy’s quote while working on my newest novel and realizing that the characters I was working with were once again advancing my story nicely without that much extra effort by me.  I know this is a phenomenon that affects most writers of fiction, but it’s still always a surprise when the words, actions and places in which they are happening connect in this way.

Writers are, of course, immersed in the lives of their fictional characters while doing the writing.  But they tend to find that the activities and actions of the people in their real lives also are creating ongoing ideas and situations that might become the next segments within those stories they are telling.   

 

“My characters are fictional,” said S.E. Hinton when talking about the process.  “But I get ideas from real people.”

It’s this merging of the real world with the fictional one that makes a writer’s life both interesting and exasperating.   Happy writing! 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'The Finest Language'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Finest Language':   “The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.” – George Eliot Born on this day in 1819, Mary Ann Evans was know...

'The Finest Language'

 “The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.” – George Eliot

Born on this day in 1819, Mary Ann Evans was known best by her pen name George Eliot.  The English novelist, journalist, and translator was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, and is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch, often described as “the greatest novel of the times.”

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously, since female authors in her era were often stereotyped as only being writers of lighthearted romances. She also wished to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic at The Westminster Review.

Her writing places an emphasis on realistic storytelling, often about the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution.   That attention to “rural realism” earned her many admirers, and she shared with her friend - poet William Wordsworth -  belief that there was much interest and importance in the mundane details of ordinary people's lives.    

And, she loved that her characters often took her stories in directions she hadn’t first intended.   “Our words have wings,” she said, “but sometimes fly not where we want them to go.” 

 

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