A Writer's Moment: 'Finding writing opportunities around the globe'

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding writing opportunities around the globe':   “As a writer, when you fall in love with a place, you want to spend more time in it, either physically or mentally, and so you write abou...

'Finding writing opportunities around the globe'

 

“As a writer, when you fall in love with a place, you want to spend more time in it, either physically or mentally, and so you write about it.” – Don Winslow

Thriller/crime writer Winslow, born on this date in 1953, is a native New Yorker who has lived and worked around the world, getting the chance to “fall in love” and write about many different locales.

A private investigator before he became a writer, Winslow earned a degree in African History, has a master’s degree in Military History, and worked as a safari guide in Africa and hiking guide in China before getting into writing in the 1990s.  His first novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, is set in NYC where he was doing his private eye work and became the first in a series of books about investigator Neal Carey.  His current series - "City on Fire" - also is set in NYC.

But he likes to write about many things and places. “My problem is not that there are too few ideas out there,” Winslow explained.  “It's that there are too many.”     

 

  A self-proclaimed insomniac, he starts his writing day at 5:30 a.m., writes for several hours before going for a 6 or 7 mile hike, then hits the keyboard again.  His routine has resulted in two dozen novels, almost all bestsellers, the latest being this summer's City of Dreams.

 

When he first started he set a page count goal.  “So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book,” he said.  “Producing words isn't a problem for me. And I usually write two books at a time. When one horse gets winded, you just jump on the other.”

A Writer's Moment: Writing literature 'In the deepest and highest sense'

A Writer's Moment: Writing literature 'In the deepest and highest sense':   “I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deep...

Writing literature 'In the deepest and highest sense'

 “I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.” – Robert Caro

Caro, born on this date in 1935, is best known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson and as winner of the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.  Over his lifetime, Caro has won nearly every major nonfiction writing award.

A native of New York City, Caro began his professional career as a reporter with The New Brunswick (N.J.) Daily Home News, and from there he went on to six years as an investigative reporter with the Long Island newspaper Newsday.

While there, he wrote The Power Broker, a biography of Robert Moses, the New York metropolitan area urban planner.  It was the first of many award-winning books for Caro.   The book not only won a Pulitzer Prize and rose to the top of most best-seller lists, it also was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the 20^th Century.   Among his other books since then are four of a planned five volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012).

While the Johnson books also have received numerous                  

 accolades, it is The Power Broker that is widely viewed as a seminal work because it combined painstaking historical research with a smoothly flowing narrative writing style.  

  “I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man.," Caro said.  "I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Distress and Loveliness'

A Writer's Moment: 'Distress and Loveliness':   “I began as a writer of light verse, and have tried to carry over into my serious or lyric verse something of the stri...

'Distress and Loveliness'

 

“I began as a writer of light verse, and have tried to carry over into my serious or lyric verse something of the strictness and liveliness of the lesser form.” – John Updike

 

Born in Pennsylvania in 1932, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike was a novelist, short story writer, art critic, literary critic – and poet.  He authored 8 books of poetry, the last in 2009, the year of his death.      

 

Updike wrote poetry for most of his life. In his teens, he was already publishing poems in magazines, and his first book, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures (1958), was a poetry collection.   With the month nigh upon us, here for Saturday’s Poem is Updike's,

              

                            November 

 

                                    The stripped and shapely
                                    Maple grieves
                                    The ghosts of her
                                    Departed leaves.

 

                                    The ground is hard,
                                    As hard as stone.
                                    The year is old,
                                    The birds are flown.

 

                                    And yet the world,
                                    In its distress,
                                    Displays a certain
                                    Loveliness.

 

                     

 

A Writer's Moment: 'The best way to change people's minds'

A Writer's Moment: 'The best way to change people's minds':     “A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.” – Will Rogers ...

'The best way to change people's minds'

 

 

“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.” – Will Rogers

Rogers, born in 1879 near Claremore in what was then Oklahoma Territory, appears in my novel And The Wind Whispered as a 15-year-old.  He grew to become one of America’s most beloved writers and entertainers before his untimely death in a plane crash in 1935.    

 

During his life he wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns carried by more than 600 newspapers.  He rarely missed a story deadline, saying that among all the things he was doing – and that was a lot – his writing was at the top of his list.

 

In addition to his columns, he wrote 20 books, making him one of the nation’s leading writers in the first half of the 20^th century.  He also did a regular radio show and frequent radio commentaries.

 

All told, books, columns and commentaries combined, Rogers wrote more than 4 million words.   His columns alone reached a potential audience of 40 million readers, and all of his books were major sellers as his words spread wisdom and reflections that still remain timely a century later.  He said the best way to change people's minds was by setting a good example.

 

“People’s minds are changed through observation,” Rogers said, “not through argument.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Just trying to tell a story'

A Writer's Moment: 'Just trying to tell a story':   “I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method...

'Just trying to tell a story'

 

“I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.”  – Anne Tyler

  

Born on this date in 1941, Tyler made a splash with her novels The Accidental Tourist, and Breathing Lessons, finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Breathing Lessons won the award0.   She also is well known in the cinematic world with 7 of her 20 novels being made into movies.  Her latest work is 2022's French Braid.

Also the author of dozens of short stories, Tyler has earned the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Sunday Times’ Award for Literary Excellence.       

                              

Noted for her attention to detail and character development, Tyler primarily focuses her writing on everyday Americans and the ordinary details of their lives, putting us – her readers – deep into those lives and the trials and tribulations we all face.   “I don’t think of my work in terms of themes," she said.   "I’m just trying to tell a story.”

Her advise to new writers is simple:   

 

“Write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.”

A Writer's Moment: 'How long is a novel anyway?'

A Writer's Moment: 'How long is a novel anyway?':   “How long is a novel anyway?   Only thing I have here outside of French and Spanish is 1563 pages (of something called)...

'How long is a novel anyway?'

 

“How long is a novel anyway?  Only thing I have here outside of French and Spanish is 1563 pages (of something called) War and Peace by a man calls himself Tolstoi.  Very discouraging.  I’ve only done 200 pages of 200-220 words apiece … (but) Think it’s going to be a Wham.  Hope so”  - Ernest Hemingway

 

 Every couple days I read a few more pages from  The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and I’m always rewarded with some little tidbit about him or his writing that I didn’t know.  And the bonus is that they come directly from him.  The above note was from late August, 1925 from his hotel in Spain – where he had isolated himself to finish writing what would become The Sun Also Rises.   He added to the note, “Hadley’s (his first wife) just gone up to Paris yesterday.  I’m staying here to finish a novel.  Have 10 ½ chapters done."

His letters are written to a wide range of friends, family and publishing associates during the months he was working on the manuscript of the novel he was calling Fiesta, a name that it would be marketed under in most of its European editions. 

 

I was surprised to find out that he really wasn’t sure just how long his manuscript should be before it was considered “A Novel.”    Hemingway, born in July of 1899, was noted for his short stories, and had just cobbled together a dozen of them into the book In Our Times, but he really hadn’t done a novel in the traditional sense until this point.

When asked what inspired him to be a better writer, he noted, “When people talk, listen completely.  Most people never listen.”

  

Ernest Hemingway with Lady Duff Twysden, wife 

Hadley (center), and friends, during the July 1925 

trip to Spain that inspired The Sun Also Rises.