A Writer's Moment: 'It's a gorgeous struggle'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's a gorgeous struggle': “My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something ...

'It's a gorgeous struggle'

“My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but the thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.” –  Jess Walter

 

Born in July, 1965 Walter is the Spokane, Wash.-based author of 7 novels, 2 collections of short stories, a non-fiction book, and myriad essays and short stories.  To date, his works have been translated into 32 languages.

 

His award-winning Beautiful Ruins has an interesting premise.  It revolves around the people who surround or interact with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during the filming of the 1963 blockbuster film Cleopatra.   And, of course, everything fits into the “What If?” category. 

 
A frequent guest speaker, he says his best advice for new writers is to “just do it and don’t worry,” noting that he wrote for 7 years and made a total of $25 before finally breaking through.

 

“Forget being 'discovered.' All you can do is write.   If you write well enough, and are stubborn enough to embrace failure, and if you happen to fall into the narrow categories that the book market recognizes, then you might make a little money.   Otherwise, it's a struggle.  (But) A gorgeous struggle.”

 

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Becoming visible, bit by bit'

A Writer's Moment: 'Becoming visible, bit by bit':   “Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way t...

'Becoming visible, bit by bit'

 

“Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age.  The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit.  As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place.” – Patrick Modiano

 

French novelist and 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Modiano was born on this date in 1945.   His analogy of the development of the novel “before our eyes” is a remarkable one that also gives us a bit of a look into his writing style.  He lets the picture slowly unfold, sometimes leaving us startled, sometimes satisfied, sometimes angry, but always interested in what’s coming next.

 

His novels delve into the puzzle of identity in ways seldom seen.   And, he tackles a time in France – the German occupation during World War II – that evokes both heroism and shame depending on whose point of view his tale is being told. 

In addition to the Nobel, Mondiano has been honored with every major European and French writing award including one for his life’s body of work.   He said he writes a few hours every day.

 

“The more things remain obscure and mysterious,” Modiano said, “the more they interest me.  I even try to find mystery in things that have none.”

 

A Writer's Moment: Thoughts from poets about poetry

A Writer's Moment: Thoughts from poets about poetry:   Usually on Saturday I share a “Saturday’s Poem. "  But today, as we start the trek toward summer’s end, I share, instead, a few quot...

Thoughts from poets about poetry

 

Usually on Saturday I share a “Saturday’s Poem."  But today, as we start the trek toward summer’s end, I share, instead, a few quotes from poets who were born in the month of July. For enjoyable hours of reading, I highly recommend each of these great poets' writings.    

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“I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.” –  John Ashbery

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“The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.” –  Margaret Walker

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“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

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“Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.” –  Adrienne Rich

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Here's hoping your summer days are filled with poetic images that enhance your world.

A Writer's Moment: 'Willing to leap into blackness'

A Writer's Moment: 'Willing to leap into blackness':   Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. Yo...

'Willing to leap into blackness'

 

Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. – Chang-Rae Lee

Born in Korea on this date in 1965, Lee emigrated to the U.S. with his family and has used the Korean immigrant experience as the primary focus for his award-winning writing and teaching about creative writing at Stanford.  In his teaching he stresses that students should be aware of the broad spectrum of writing styles.   “I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature,” he said.

 

Lee's novel Native Speaker won numerous awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The novel centers around a Korean American industrial spy and explores themes of alienation and betrayal as felt or perpetrated by immigrants and first-generation citizens, something he’s repeated in other works. 

Often, he said, he isn’t sure where he’s headed when he starts, but that’s not a bad thing.   As for the most challenging aspect of teaching, he said it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

 

Chang-Rae Lee
“I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.”

A Writer's Moment: Characters that impact others' lives

A Writer's Moment: Characters that impact others' lives:   “As a novelist, I'm endlessly fascinated by human behavior and interactions.” –   Juliet Marillier   A New Zealand native who no...

Characters that impact others' lives

 

“As a novelist, I'm endlessly fascinated by human behavior and interactions.” –  Juliet Marillier

 

A New Zealand native who now lives in Australia, Marillier was born on this date in 1948 and while she is a lifelong self-procliamed “lover of fantasy,” she didn’t start writing her own versions until 1999.  Earlier, she focused on music, both on the performing side and in teaching and conducting.  

 

She got into writing with Daughter of the Forest, loosely based on the legend of the Children of Lir and "The Six Swans” (a story that has many versions, including one by the Brothers Grimm).   That book kicked off her “Sevenwaters Trilogy,” and the second in the series, Son of the Shadows, won Australia’s top fantasy fiction award.

 

Marillier’s novels combine historical fiction, folkloric fantasy, romance and family drama, and the strong elements of history and folklore in her work reflect her lifelong interest in both fields. However, her stories focus above all on human relationships and the personal journeys of the characters.  Her newest, in her "Warrior Bards" series, is called A Song of Flight.

 

                                                                                                    

Since 1999 she has written over two dozen novels and dozens of short stories, 5 which have won Aurealis Awards and 4 the Sir Julius Vogel Award.  She’s also been named for the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and France’s Prix Imaginales.

“Each of my novels features a protagonist undertaking a difficult personal journey," Marillier said.  "On the way, each of these characters - mostly female - discovers something about herself and at the same time makes an impact on other people's lives."   

A Writer's Moment: 'That space between known and unknown'

A Writer's Moment: 'That space between known and unknown':   “Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”   – Aldous Huxley     Best known for his dystopian ...

'That space between known and unknown'

 

“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”  – Aldous Huxley

  

Best known for his dystopian novel Brave New World, considered by most critics as one of the ten best English language novels of the 20^th Century, Huxley was born into a London family of writers and educators on July 26, 1894.  

He was already writing as a young teen and by his early 20s was editing the distinguished magazine Oxford Poetry at a time when others his age were still finishing their studies or interviewing for positions. He had dozens of short stories and poetry pieces published before age 30, then switched to novels, all successful though none so much as Brave New World in 1931.  Following the novel’s immense success, he started traveling the world and writing about that.  His travel books are among the best ever written.  He finished his career as a television and film scriptwriter in the United States, where he lived until his death in 1963.   

 

His writing was focused on “that space between things known and unknown.  In between are the doors of perception.” 

 

“The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong,” he said about Brave New World.   “The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.”

A Writer's Moment: Integrity and imagination: Good writing companions

A Writer's Moment: Integrity and imagination: Good writing companions:   “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and...

Integrity and imagination: Good writing companions

 

“Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.” – John D. MacDonald

Born on this date in 1916, MacDonald achieved the highest accolade in his genre, named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America shortly before his death in 1986.   A self-proclaimed “accidental writer,” he also was the winner of a National Book Award, and is perhaps best-known for his popular, critically acclaimed Travis McGee series. 

MacDonald's literary career began in 1945 while in the Army.  Waiting in the Pacific for a ship home, he wrote a short story and mailed it to his wife Dorothy.  She loved it and submitted it to Esquire -- which promptly rejected it.  So, she sent it to Story magazine, which accepted it for $25, pretty good payment for the time.

So, MacDonald decided to give writing a further try.  After hundreds of rejection slips a second story was finally accepted, this time from Dime Detective which paid him $40.  Encouraged, he re-worked other stories and was off and running.  Ultimately, he sold more than 
500 short stories to detective, mystery and adventure magazines.                       

His first novel appeared in 1950, but it was his 1957 book The Executioners that put him on the map.  An almost continuous best-seller since then, it also holds the distinction of being the focus of two feature films, both box office successes.    

His Travis McGee character made his first appearance in 1964 in The Deep Blue Good-bye, starting a run of 21 "McGee" bestsellers with each title including a color. "My purpose," MacDonald wrote about the McGee success,  "was to entertain myself first and other people second."  Seemed he did both quite well.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Discovering' your own poem

A Writer's Moment: 'Discovering' your own poem:   “Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?” – John Leonard Born in Great Bri...

'Discovering' your own poem

 

“Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?” – John Leonard

Born in Great Britain in July 1965, Leonard was raised and educated there but now makes his home in Australia where he served as poetry editor of the magazine Overland.

 

For Saturday’s Poem, from his book Braided Lands, here is:

 

You Don't Write a Poem

 

You don't write a poem-

What you do is discover

That there is a world,

Quite similar to our own,

Except that it contains

This one extra poem.

 

And what you recognise

Is that this one poem

Makes all the difference

© John Leonard

A Writer's Moment: Writing from heart and soul

A Writer's Moment: Writing from heart and soul:   “I love writing novels, even if only a few thousand people read them. Here's my soul; I hope it appeals to your soul.” –   Mark O&#39...

Writing from heart and soul

 

“I love writing novels, even if only a few thousand people read them. Here's my soul; I hope it appeals to your soul.” –  Mark O'Donnell

Writer and humorist O’Donnell was born on this date in Cleveland, OH, in 1954 and despite his love of novels, he was best known for his smash Broadway hit and subsequent hit movie Hairspray, for which he won a Tony Award.  He also earned a Tony nomination for his 2008 Broadway show Cry-Baby.  He did have two best-selling novels, Getting Over Homer and Let Nothing You Dismay.

An identical twin – his brother is award-winning television writer Steve O’Donnell – Mark collapsed and died suddenly in 2012 and no cause has ever been determined.       

In the years leading up to his death, he had been teaching regularly at Yale where he had many successful students and offered young writers this advice:  “Everybody has parents. As a dramatist, whenever you write a character, you must write their parents as well, even if the parents aren't there.”

A Writer's Moment: Strictly from the imagination

A Writer's Moment: Strictly from the imagination:   “Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, a...

Strictly from the imagination

 

“Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.”— Jessamyn West

Mary “Jessamyn” West, born on this date in 1902, was an American author of both short stories and novels.   Although shaped by her imagination, her works are loosely based on tales told to her by her mother and grandmother about a Quaker farm life that she herself never experienced. 

 Two of her popular 21 novels -- The Friendly Persuasion and its sequel Except for Me and Thee -- also were made into very successful movies.

                         

West set nearly all of her stories in Indiana, a state in which she did not live and seldom visited, spending her own adult life in California.   

 

"I write about Indiana because knowing little about it, I can create it from the images I’ve learned from my grandmother’s (and mother's) stories," she noted.   "The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as is the future.”

A Writer's Moment: It's that 'Rainbow Connection'

A Writer's Moment: It's that 'Rainbow Connection':   It was in this month in 1978 that the wonderful song “Rainbow Connection” was written by the award winning songwriters Paul Williams and ...

It's that 'Rainbow Connection'

 

It was in this month in 1978 that the wonderful song “Rainbow Connection” was written by the award winning songwriters Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher.

Many people know, of course, that the song originally was performed by muppet Kermit the Frog (voiced by the late, great Jim Henson) in  the 1979 hit The Muppet Movie (if you haven’t seen that movie, it’s another one of those “Not to be missed” things to put on your list).

Williams and Ascher, both in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, earned Oscar nominations for the movie’s score and this terrific song, which often has been compared with “Over The Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz exactly 40 years earlier.  Both songs are beautiful, make up the opening scene of their respective movies, and reflect each singer's urge to find something more in life.

"Rainbow Connection" has been recorded by hundreds of artists around the world – everyone from Jason Mraz to Willie Nelson and Sarah McLaughlin to the Yale University Whiffenpoofs and the Cast of “Glee.”  The American Film Institute rated it the 74^th greatest movie song of all time – not bad for being sung by a frog.

Here's a version by the late Karen Carpenter, whose voice truly took every song to its highest level.  May you find your own rainbow connection in life and in your writers' moments.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYuE2roIkH0

A Writer's Moment: 'This is who we are and what we must do'

A Writer's Moment: 'This is who we are and what we must do':   “I try for a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what ...

'This is who we are and what we must do'

 

“I try for a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what we must do” – Mari Evans

 

Evans, born on July 16, 1919  not only authored poetry but also children’s literature and plays.  And perhaps her biggest mark was made through editing countless works of others and serving as editor of the award-winning Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation.

Her first poetry collection, Where Is All the Music? established her as a serious poetic writer, and her second, I Am a Black Woman gained her worldwide acclaim. Her definitive poem “Who Can Be Born Black” has often been anthologized.

  

    Evans also wrote and produced a 6-year weekly award-winning television program, “The Black Experience" in her adopted hometown of Indianapolis, where she lived for 70 years until her death in 2017.

 

I Am A Black Woman resonated with the power and beauty of Black women and set the bar for many of her fellow female Black writers in the latter part of the 20th century.  

 

 “I am a black woman,” Evans wrote, “tall as a cypress, strong beyond all definition, still defying place and time and circumstance, assailed, impervious, indestructible.”   

A Writer's Moment: It's 'for the people'

A Writer's Moment: It's 'for the people':   “Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.” –   June Jordan Born on this date in 1936, Jorda...

It's 'for the people'

 

“Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.” –  June Jordan

Born on this date in 1936, Jordan was the daughter of Jamaican immigrants who earned dozens of writing honors, among them a Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship, and an Achievement Award for International Reporting.

 

She founded the "Poetry for the People" program at UC-Berkeley in 1991, it’s aim to inspire and empower students to use poetry as a means of artistic expression.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Jordan's,

These Poems

These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?

These words
they are stones in the water
running away

These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.

I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me

whoever you are
whoever I may become.