A Writer's Moment: 'Expression of Life'

A Writer's Moment: 'Expression of Life':   “I arise full of eagerness and energy, knowing well what achievement lies ahead of me.” – Zane Grey Best known for his popul...

'Expression of Life'

 

“I arise full of eagerness and energy, knowing well what achievement lies ahead of me.” – Zane Grey

Best known for his popular novels of the Old West, Grey idealized the American frontier.  His 1912 best seller Riders of the Purple Sage was the highlight of an amazing 90 books in the genre, many of which had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions. Overall, his novels and short stories have been adapted into 112 films, two television episodes, and a television series, The Zane Grey Theater.

Born on this day in 1872, Grey grew up in Zanesville, Ohio, a city founded by his maternal great-grandfather Ebenezer Zane, an American Revolutionary War patriot.  From an early age he was intrigued by history and even though he first chose dentistry for a career, he gravitated to writing about history and the American West.   

He wrote some 9 million words in his lifetime (besides his Westerns, he wrote 2 hunting books, 6 children’s books, 3 baseball books, and 8 fishing books).   His total book sales – which made him a millionaire many times over – have been over 40 million.

   

A great athlete (he was a star baseball player in college and as a minor league player) and a frequent brawler as a young man, his writing depicting both athleticism and fistfights were often cited by his readers when talking about the "realism" in his books.  

“Well, what is writing,” he responded,  “but an expression of my own life?”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'The Carriers of Civilization'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Carriers of Civilization':   “Books are humanity in print.   Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standst...

'The Carriers of Civilization'

 

“Books are humanity in print.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”  – Barbara Tuchman

  A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Tuchman's writing has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, led by her 1962 best-selling award winner The Guns of August (a prelude to and first month of World War I), and her 1970 biography on the World War II General Joseph Stilwell. 
 

In 1978, she wrote the wonderful A Distant Mirror about the calamitous 14^th Century but considered reflective of the 20^th, especially in the horrors of war.  That book, too, led the New York Times best seller list and was a finalist for yet another Pulitzer.

Tuchman began her career in the 1930s as a journalist and in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, became one of the few women – along with Martha Gelhorn (Hemingway's third wife) working as a war correspondent – reporting for The Nation.

  

Barbara Tuchman -- born today in 1912

In 1980, not long before her death, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the Humanities.  Tuchman focused her lecture on “Mankind’s Better Moments,” many of which appeared in the 20 books she wrote for us as a lasting historical legacy. 

 

“Books," she said, "are the carriers of civilization."  

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'It's That Grain of Sand in Your Shoe'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's That Grain of Sand in Your Shoe':   “ Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mounta...

'It's That Grain of Sand in Your Shoe'

 

“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.” – Robert W. Service

Born in England in January 1874, Service was a prolific writer and poet, writing his first poem on his 6th birthday.  Ultimately, he published numerous collections of poetry, including the mega-bestseller Songs of a Sourdough or Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (which went into 10 printings in its first year alone).  He also wrote 2 autobiographies and 6 novels, several made into films. And he appeared as an actor in The Spoilers, a 1942 film with Marlene Dietrich.

Service’s writings, books, poems, novels, thoughts and work still have a large readership and are studied in colleges & universities worldwide.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Service’s,

                                      My Masterpiece

                               It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; 

                               Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; 

                               Its words are simple, stalwart too; 

                               Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. 

                               Its pages scintillate with wit; 

                               Its pathos clutches at my throat: 

                               Oh how I love each line of it! 

                               That Little Book I Never Wrote.  

                               In dreams I see it praised and prized By all, 

                               from plowman unto peer; 

                               It’s pencil-marked and memorized 

                               It’s loaned (and not returned, I fear); 

                               It’s worn and torn and travel-tossed, 

                               And even dusky natives quote 

                               That classic that the world has lost, 

                               The Little Book I Never Wrote.  

                               Poor ghost! For homes you’ve failed to cheer, 

                               For grieving hearts uncomforted, 

                               Don’t haunt me now…. Alas! I fear 

                               The fire of Inspiration’s dead. 

                               A humdrum way I go tonight, 

                               From all I hoped and dreamed remote: 

                               Too late… a better man must write 

                               The Little Book I Never Wrote.   

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Just Believe In The Impossible'

A Writer's Moment: 'Just Believe In The Impossible':   “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”   - Lewis Carroll. Born this day in 1832 in the Englis...

'Just Believe In The Impossible'

 

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  - Lewis Carroll.

Born this day in 1832 in the English village of Daresbury, Charles L. Dodgson, best known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was the eldest in a family of 11 children and grew adept at entertaining both himself and his siblings with his storytelling ability.

 

 

 Lewis Carroll

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 where Alice Liddell can be credited with his pinnacle inspiration. 

 

On a picnic outing 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.

The story then 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.” 

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Nothing Is Ever Wasted'

A Writer's Moment: 'Nothing Is Ever Wasted':   “(Writing) is undoubtedly a lonely career.   But I suspect that people who find it lonely are not writers.   I think if you are a writer y...

'Nothing Is Ever Wasted'

 “(Writing) is undoubtedly a lonely career.   But I suspect that people who find it lonely are not writers.  I think if you are a writer you realize how valuable the time is when you are absolutely alone with your characters in complete peace.” - P.D. James

And, settings for novels, she said, can be … well, literally everywhere.

Someone, like you or me, sits down and starts thinking about where and how to “set” a book or a short story or even to tell the story of his or her own life – and pretty soon we have something new to read.  It usually doesn’t happen overnight and it often is a messy process, but regardless of who is doing the writing, it’s yet another completion of a creative process that has led to everything from our neighbor’s “memoirs” to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

 

James (who lived from 1920 to 2014) had this advice for writers:  “Just write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.  Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people.  Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”   

 

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A Writer's Moment: A Story Worth Telling

A Writer's Moment: A Story Worth Telling:   “Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.” – Gloria Naylor ...

A Story Worth Telling

 

“Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.” – Gloria Naylor

The daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers who migrated to New York City’s Harlem area to escape southern segregation, Naylor was born on this day in 1950.  She grew up keenly aware of life in “the mean streets” and kept track of those stories in a daily journal that became a wonderful resource for her writing. 

While her parents had little education, they encouraged both their daughter’s writing and further study.  She earned her bachelor’s degree in English at the City University of New York in 1981, and master’s in African American Studies from Yale University in 1983 sandwiched around her first novel, the award-winning The Women of Brewster Place.  That 1982 work also was made into a movie.

Naylor died in The Virgin Islands in 2016 having had a long and award-filled career in university teaching while also writing 6 more novels.   “I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either,” she said.   

 

“Life is just supposed to make you feel. Life is accepting what is and working from that.”

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