A Writer's Moment: 'Unlocking creativity'

A Writer's Moment: 'Unlocking creativity':   “Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.” – Jane Green Green, who lives...

'Unlocking creativity'

 

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

Green, who lives in Connecticut, was born in London on this date in 1968 and has become one of the world's leading authors of commercial women's fiction, with millions of books in print and translations in over 25 languages.  Her most recent bestseller is Sister Stardust.

A journalist by training, she worked as a feature writer for several London-based newspapers, including The Daily Mail, before turning to a successful and lucrative creative writing career in the late 1990s, now authoring some two dozen bestsellers. 

 

Green made the move from journalistic to creative writing following an interesting regimen.  “I treated my books as a very long journalistic exercise," she said.   "I just 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.”

A Writer's Moment: 'One word at a time'

A Writer's Moment: 'One word at a time':   “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 boo...

'One word at a time'

 

“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

  

During his senior year at Springfield, IL, High School, Clements’ English teacher handed back a poem he’d written awarding him an A—a rare event in this teacher’s class.  And, she’d written in large red letters, “Andrew—this poem is so funny. This should be published!”

As many writers say, a teacher often shapes their writing lives, definitely true for Clements, who was born on May 29, 1949.   In college, he began writing regularly and authored more than 70 books, while also working in publishing and as a writing teacher.         His books have won some two dozen major awards.

“Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books,” he said.   “The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating pictures in people's minds'

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating pictures in people's minds':   “Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.” – Melissa Etheridge A native of Leavenworth, Kan., Etheridge...

'Creating pictures in people's minds'

 
“Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.” – Melissa Etheridge

A native of Leavenworth, Kan., Etheridge was born on this date in 1961 and almost from the time she could walk and talk was interested in music, singing everywhere she went and learning to play the guitar at age 8.

Known for her mixture of "confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, and raspy, smoky vocals," her songs often are inspired by her own experiences. “But, sometimes,” she said,  “they (the words) are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.”

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 (now in remission) she underwent surgery and chemotherapy and said it caused her to celebrate life each and every day. "I don't have a bucket list," she said.  "Whatever I do each day IS my bucket list."

A gay rights activist she wrote her award-winning album “Yes, I Am” about being gay in the early 1990s and has continued to be a champion for gay rights since. She is also a committed advocate for environmental issues.

 

“As an artist, singer and songwriter,” she noted,  “I try to use my words to create pictures in people's minds.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Dancing in the breeze'

A Writer's Moment: 'Dancing in the breeze':     “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” – William Wordsworth For Saturday's Poem -  to accompany the clouds...

'Dancing in the breeze'

 

 

“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” – William Wordsworth

For Saturday's Poem -  to accompany the clouds wandering through a  Colorado sky -  here is Wordsworth’s,

 

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

A Writer's Moment: 'Capture the wind and the place'

A Writer's Moment: 'Capture the wind and the place':   “An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.” – Tony Hillerman ...

'Capture the wind and the place'

 

“An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.” – Tony Hillerman

 

Born on this date in 1925, Hillerman, who died in 2008, is best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mysteries featuring two iconic police officers – Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.  Several of his books have been adapted as big-screen and television movies, including A Dark Wind and the multiple-award winner A Thief of Time.

 

A native of Oklahoma, Hillerman gravitated to New Mexico after serving in World War II.  Starting as a journalist, he worked out of Santa Fe, and then moved to Albuquerque where he both wrote for newspapers and earned a master’s degree in writing.  It was while covering crime news that he met a sheriff who became the model for his Navajo cop Joe Leaphorn and sparked an idea for his first book The Blessing Way. 

 

A consistently bestselling author, he wrote 18 books in his Navajo series and more than 30 books total, among them a memoir and several about the Southwest, its beauty and its history.  Given numerous awards, he said two of the most meaningful were one from the Navajo Nation and another from the Department of the Interior, recognizing his attention to Native culture and his encouragement for maintaining nature and the land. 

 

“Remember, he advised, "you write for both yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated and at least as smart as you are.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Make every day the best day'

A Writer's Moment: 'Make every day the best day':   “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson, born on this date in 1803, was t...

'Make every day the best day'

 

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

Emerson, born on this date in 1803, was the first American to advocate for Americans developing a writing style of their own; to create “American” writing and not just copy that of their forebears from other parts of the world.

He was born 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 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. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A yardstick for language'

A Writer's Moment: 'A yardstick for language':   “Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the l...

'A yardstick for language'

 

“Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.” – Joseph Brodsky

Born in Leningrad on this date in 1940, Brodsky first started writing at age 15 getting published before he was out of high school.  His early writings got him in deep trouble with both Stalin and his successor Nikita Khrushchev as being “anti-Soviet” and by his late 20s he had been jailed, “confined” to a mental institution, and finally expelled from his homeland.  Luckily for the writing world, he came to live in the United States thanks to the  help of poet W. H. Auden.

From that point until his death in 1996, he taught writing and poetry at many different U.S. universities, including Yale, Columbia and Michigan before becoming a full-time faculty member at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts.                 

 

In 1987, Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” And in 1991, he was appointed United States Poet Laureate, the first naturalized citizen to be so honored.

He said coming to America was the best thing that could have happened to him.  After living under totalitarianism and oppression America was a breath of fresh air that renewed his spirit and belief in his fellow human beings. “Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family,” he advised.  “Know how delightful it is to find a friend in everyone you meet.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'It's an obvious fact'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's an obvious fact':   “A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lu...

'It's an obvious fact'

 

“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.” –Arthur Conan Doyle

Born in Scotland on this date in 1859, Doyle was noted for his "good use of his brain's furnishings" and as his iconic literary creation Sherlock Holmes once commented, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”  

Originally a physician (I always thought that he resembled what I imagined Holmes' sidekick Dr. Watson to look like), Doyle wrote his first Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887.  It was the first of just four novels he wrote about Holmes and Dr. Watson, but he “filled out” the Holmes library with over 50 short stories featuring his famous detective.   

 

The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.   The tales spawned many dozens (if not more) of uses of Holmes by other writers and in movies and television programs.  He also brought Deerstalker hats and Meerschaum pipes into vogue. 

 

Doyle, who died in 1930,          was a prolific writer whose other works included fantasy and science fiction, plays, romances, poetry and historical novels.  

Among the many sayings Doyle created and which have become part of the lexicon is, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”  Words to both solve mysteries and live by.

A Writer's Moment: 'A Living Legacy'

A Writer's Moment: 'A Living Legacy':   Daniel Grayling Fogelberg was born in May of 1951 in Peoria, IL where his father Lawrence was an established musician, ...

'A Living Legacy'

 

Daniel Grayling Fogelberg was born in May of 1951 in Peoria, IL where his father Lawrence was an established musician, teacher, and bandleader. His first instrument was the piano, but he gravitated to the guitar in high school and became one of the nation’s pre-eminent singer-songwriters during his lifetime.  He died in 2007 in Colorado.

 

In 1981 his album The Innocent Age took the country by storm, led by the following song  written as a tribute to his father.   For Saturday’s Poem (and widely available in its musical version on YouTube), here is Fogelberg’s,

 

                    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

                                                                                         

A Writer's Moment: 'Fairness: The key to good journalism'

A Writer's Moment: 'Fairness: The key to good journalism':     “People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what's happened is that there are so many diff...

'Fairness: The key to good journalism'

 

 

“People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what's happened is that there are so many different avenues, there are so many different outlets, so many different ways to debate and discuss and to inquire about any given news story.” – Jim Lehrer

 

Born in Wichita, KS on this date in 1934, Lehrer was the longtime news anchor of PBS Newshour and known for his role as a debate moderator for a number of U.S. presidential elections.  He also authored numerous books, drawing on his experiences as a newsman and his interests in history and politics. 

 

Lehrer's journalistic career -- starting as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News -- earned him numerous awards and honors, including several Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Broadcast Award, the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s Medal of Honor, and the William Allen White Foundation Award for Journalistic Merit.  

 

He said he was especially proud of the White Award, named for the great newspaper editor from Emporia (not far from his hometown of Wichita).  

 

Lehrer, who died in 2020, said he was pleased with his journalistic recognition because he’d always prided himself on fairness in his reporting.   “I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues -- that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job is all about.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Talent, Stubbornness and Sheer Luck. Any two wil...

A Writer's Moment: 'Talent, Stubbornness and Sheer Luck. Any two wil...:   “If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third ...

'Talent, Stubbornness and Sheer Luck. Any two will do'

 

“If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two out of the three. Any two will probably do.” –  Fred Saberhagen

 

Born on this date in 1930, Saberhagen wrote science fiction and fantasy, and is most famous for his Berserker series of short stories and novels.  He also was one of the first writers to put together a series of vampire novels in which the vampires (including the famous Dracula) are the “good guys.”  “I used the same tools that make any writer good,” he said, “plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.” 

 

A native of Chicago and a Korean War veteran, Saberhagen went to work for Motorola after the war.  At age 30, he started writing fiction and his first novel The Golden People came out in 1964.  He said he was “filled with ideas” and just felt the urge to write every day.  “Ideas are everywhere,” he said.   “It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words that can, and usually does, get to be a writer’s labor.” 

 

Still writing “serious science,” too, he served as editor and writer for all Chemistry articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s.  But, from that point until his death in 2007 he only wrote science fiction.       

           

           As for advice to aspiring science fiction writers, he said, “The advice would be the same as for any kind of fiction.  Keep writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be added, but this is fundamental.”

A Writer's Moment: Hope chronicled; Memories preserved

A Writer's Moment: Hope chronicled; Memories preserved:   “We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hop...

Hope chronicled; Memories preserved

 

“We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Good I hope.'  'Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'  Memory is valued, and I hope that we never lose memory.” – Studs Terkel 

 

Born on May 16, 1912 Louis “Studs” Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster who won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for his book on World War II titled The Good War. Besides that book, he is probably best remembered for his oral histories, his other terrific book Working, and his unbending optimism about life and the goodness of people.

  

WFMT, the Chicago radio station which broadcast Terkel's long-running interview program, preserved 7,000 tape recordings of Terkel's interviews and histories.  After his death in 2008 at age 96, The Library of Congress announced a grant to digitally preserve and make available those recordings, which it called "a remarkably rich history of the ideas and perspectives of both common and influential people living in the second half of the 20th century." 

  

Louis “Studs” Terkel

"For Studs, there was not a voice that should not be heard, a story that could not be told," said Gary T. Johnson, president of the Chicago Museum of History, the initial recipient of the recordings. "He believed that everyone had the right to be heard and had something important to say. He was there to listen, to chronicle, and to make sure their stories are remembered."

A Writer's Moment: 'Shaping handfuls of confusion into a frame'

A Writer's Moment: 'Shaping handfuls of confusion into a frame':   “Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, thin...

'Shaping handfuls of confusion into a frame'

 

“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.” – Katherine Anne Porter

A Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist, Porter was born on this date in 1890.  Known for her penetrating insight, particularly in her short stories and essays, she wrote only one novel – but it was a very good one.   Ship of Fools not only was a worldwide bestseller, it also earned her the Pulitzer and The National Book Award and was a hit movie. 

She also won the National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, a hallmark of short story excellence.

                                 

 Her journalism career began on the East Coast, then gravitated to Colorado where she was writing for the Rocky Mountain News when she almost died during the 1918 flu pandemic. When she was finally discharged from the hospital, she was frail and completely bald and when her hair finally grew back, it was white and remained that way the rest of her life.  Her life-and-death experience was reflected in her trilogy of novelettes led by the wonderful Pale Horse, Pale Rider.  That work earned her the 1940 Gold Medal for Literature from the Society of Libraries of New York University.

A prolific writer right up until her death in 1980, Porter advised young writers to look upon writing as an art AND a profession.  “Writing is a craft,” she said.  “Take an apprenticeship in it just like any other profession.”