A Writer's Moment: 'Simply the best way to experience a story'

A Writer's Moment: 'Simply the best way to experience a story':   “I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.” – Philip Reeve Born in E...

'Simply the best way to experience a story'

 

“I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.” – Philip Reeve

Born in England on Feb. 28, 1966 Reeve is a bestselling author and the cartoonist /illustrator of many books for kids, including the “Dead Famous” book Horatio Nelson and His Victory, and a number of books in the clever Horrible Histories and Murderous Maths series.  He authored the very popular "Utterly Dark" series for Young Adults and the "Buster Bayliss" books for young readers with such clever titles as Night of the Living Veg, The Big Freeze, Day of the Hamster, and Custardfinger. 

And he delved into historical fiction with his award-winning book Here Lies Arthur, an alternative look at the King Arthur legend.  

Reeve said he was always fascinated by the illustrations as much as the writing and strives to make his illustrations as palatable as possible for young readers.  

 

“Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story."

A Writer's Moment: Filling each blank page

A Writer's Moment: Filling each blank page:   “Blank paper has always inspired me.” – Daniel Handler Born in San Francisco on this date in 1970, Handler is a writer, musician an...

Filling each blank page

 

“Blank paper has always inspired me.” – Daniel Handler

Born in San Francisco on this date in 1970, Handler is a writer, musician and journalist perhaps best known under the pen name Lemony Snicket, after publishing his 13-book children's series A Series of Unfortunate Events and  4-book series All the Wrong Questions under the pseudonym^.    Handler also has published or contributed to a number of adult novels under his own name, including his first book The Basic Eight and the 2019 book Bottle Grove.

Handler began writing A Series of Unfortunate Events – about three orphaned children who experience increasingly terrible events following the death of their parents and burning of their home – in 1998 after struggling to get The Basic Eight published.  “My first novel took almost six years to sell and was rejected 37 times in the interim, and then finally sold for the smallest amount of money my literary agent had ever negotiated for a work of fiction,” he said.    

The Lemony Snicket books, however, were an immediate and worldwide success, already selling some 70 million copies in 41 languages and spawning a film, a video game, assorted merchandise, a mainstream movie, and a Netflix television series.   

 

“I kind of always think my work is unfilmable," Handler said.  "When I meet people who are interested in filming it, I'm always stunned.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Knocking loud enough and long enough to be heard'

A Writer's Moment: 'Knocking loud enough and long enough to be heard':   “What a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen.” -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Longfellow may be the only poe...

'Knocking loud enough and long enough to be heard'

 

“What a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen.” -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow may be the only poet to ever have a rock song written about him.  Neil Diamond's 1974 hit "Longfellow Serenade," echoing the reverence people had for the man when he was living in the mid-19^th Century.

Born on this date in 1807, Longfellow wrote many lyric poems not just known for their musicality but also for presenting stories of mythology and legend, including the renowned Song of Hiawatha and the favorite of school children almost from its first day, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.   

 

 He was the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas, so admired that his poems commanded huge fees and young people turned out to welcome him much like rock stars of today.   His 70^th birthday took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. 

Although a “rock star” at the end, the beginning of his career started more slowly.  “Overnight success” didn’t come until he’d been writing for more than 20 years. 

“Perserverance is a great element of success,” he said.  “If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody eventually.”

A Writer's Moment: Breathing life into pages from her Journals

A Writer's Moment: Breathing life into pages from her Journals:   “It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.” – Elizabeth George   Susan “Elizabeth” George, born in Ohio o...

Breathing life into pages from her Journals

 

“It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.” – Elizabeth George

 

Susan “Elizabeth” George, born in Ohio on this date in 1949, writes about “ordinary and extraordinary” days in the life of British Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley utilizing a technique called “journaling” as the foundation for her work. 

 

“I’ve always liked creating a journal.  It’s like the way I clear my throat,” she said.  “I write a page every day, maybe 500 words (that’s two pages double-spaced).  It could be about something I’m specifically worried about in a new novel; it could be a question I want answered; it could be something that’s going on in my personal life.  I just use it as an exercise.”

 

George holds two degrees - one in teaching and one in counseling/psychology - as well as an honorary doctorate in humane letters, presented to her after she became a worldwide celebrity from her books about Detective Lynley. 

 

Twice named Teacher of the Year in California’s largest county, she started taking bits and pieces from her journals, including from travels to England, to begin her writing.   She's now published 28 books – 21 in the “Lynley” series, which also has adapted for the BBC’s The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

 

For George, each story itself becomes a character.  “If you don't understand that story is character and not just idea,” she said,  “you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.”

A Writer's Moment: Flushing great works into the world

A Writer's Moment: Flushing great works into the world:   “One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you d...

Flushing great works into the world

 

“One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.” – Jane Hirshfield

 

Born in New York on this date in 1953, Hirschfield has authored countless essays and numerous award-winning books of poetry – including 2001's Given Sugar, Given Salt; 2006's After; and 2023’s The Asking: New & Selected Poems.  Her works have been published worldwide in 15 languages.

 

For Saturday’s Poem, here is Hirshfield’s,

 

A Person Protests to Fate

A person protests to fate:

"The things you have caused
me most to want
are those that furthest elude me."

Fate nods.
Fate is sympathetic.

To tie the shoes, button a shirt,
are triumphs
for only the very young,
the very old.

During the long middle:

conjugating a rivet
mastering tango
training the cat to stay off the table
preserving a single moment longer than this one
continuing to wake whatever has happened the day before

and the penmanships love practices inside the body.

A Writer's Moment: 'You can't go wrong if it's real'

A Writer's Moment: 'You can't go wrong if it's real':   “If we judge others it is because we are judging something in ourselves of which we are unaware.” – John Camp   No...

'You can't go wrong if it's real'

 

“If we judge others it is because we are judging something in ourselves of which we are unaware.” – John Camp

 

Novelist and journalist Camp, who writes as author John Sandford, was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on this date in 1944.  I first met him in 1985 when he was writing feature stories for the St. Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch.   As a feature writer myself, I admired Camp’s craftsmanship and style.

 

At the time of our meeting in the Pioneer Press newsroom, Camp was writing a series about the life and struggles of a farm family in southwestern Minnesota – not far from where I had lived as a child on a nearby South Dakota farm.  We had a pleasant talk and I asked him what he might be doing next.  “I want to write books,” he said.  “I like newspapers, but I think I’ve got a book or two in me.”  That next spring, he won the Pulitzer Prize for that farm series so I was positive he would stay in journalism. 

 

But Camp followed his dream and started writing thriller/suspense/crime novels about a loner detective (Lucas Davenport) who goes against the grain to solve crimes, written with the same realism Camp put into his feature writing.   This year Camp/Sandford is releasing his 58th novel, Toxic Prey, and still going strong, although it’s sad the journalism world lost his gifted voice.  

 

“Write it as you see it.   Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you’ll find it’s a very nice piece of writing.  You can’t go wrong if it’s real.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Steadily and smoothly'

A Writer's Moment: 'Steadily and smoothly':   “I think I'm a writer, and it's my job. People in other professions are expected to do their jobs all the time. Why shouldn't...

'Steadily and smoothly'

 

“I think I'm a writer, and it's my job. People in other professions are expected to do their jobs all the time. Why shouldn't I?” – Richard Greenberg

Born in New York on this date in 1958, Greenberg is a playwright and television writer who has written more than three-dozen plays, including the multiple award-winning Take Me Out and the highly acclaimed Three Days of Rain, both finalists for The Pulitzer Prize.

Greenberg studied at Princeton under Joyce Carol Oates, then in the Yale School of Drama’s playwriting program and said he sometimes questioned whether he was in the right field, even though he started his career with The Oppenheimer Award for  "Best New Playwright" for The Bloodletters. 

 

 “When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill,” he said.  “When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament.” 

 

"I want to be a playwright  the way people are bank tellers.  I want to keep doing it and have it go steadily and smoothly."

 

 

 

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding stories in History's margins'

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding stories in History's margins':   “I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.” – Philip Kerr  ...

'Finding stories in History's margins'

 

“I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.” – Philip Kerr

 

Born in Scotland on Feb. 22, 1956 Kerr (who died in 2018) earned accolades for his “Bernie Gunther” historical thrillers primarily set in Germany during the 1930s, World War II and the Cold War.  He authored more than 30 books of fiction, several nonfiction works and a dozen children's books, including the Children of the Lamp series under the name P.B. Kerr.

 

Kerr started writing in middle school and in his lifetime was honored for his creative work by a number of British writing groups and organizations.  He also was a frequent contributor of essays to The Sunday Times and The Evening Standard, although his forte’ was historical fiction. 

 

Kerr said his best advice to historical fiction writers was to "immerse yourselves in the time period" about which you are writing. 

 

“History asks us to imagine ourselves in a period, but it's a very different situation when you're in that period and faced with those situations,” he said.  “The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.”

A Writer's Moment: Passion + History equals Success

A Writer's Moment: Passion + History equals Success:   “You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.” – Alan Furst Born in New York City on this date in 1941,...

Passion + History equals Success

 

“You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.” – Alan Furst

Born in New York City on this date in 1941, Furst is noted for spy novels set just prior to World War II, an era and genre’ he first explored in the late 1980s after taking a trip along the Danube.  Before becoming a full-time novelist, he studied English at Oberlin College, worked in advertising and wrote articles for both magazines and newspapers, including the prestigious International Herald Tribune in Paris. 

 

 Furst, who arguably can lay claim to the title “Inventor of the Historical Spy Novel,” has especially been lauded for his successful evocations of Eastern European peoples and places during the tumultuous era of 1933-1942.  While all of his historical espionage novels are loosely connected, only his mega-bestsellers The World at Night and Red Gold share a common plot.   

    “I don't really write plots," he said.   "I use history as the engine that drives everything."      

A Writer's Moment: 'Reflecting life as you see it'

A Writer's Moment: 'Reflecting life as you see it':   “I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and ...

'Reflecting life as you see it'

 

“I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.” – Helen Fielding

An English novelist and screenwriter, Fielding is best known as the creator of the character Bridget Jones and her novels and films about the the life of this 30-something Londener trying to make sense of life and love.

Written in the 1990s Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason sold multi-millions  and spawned two award-winning films of the same name.  Her 2016 book Bridget Jone's Baby: The Diaries also had great success.  A survey conducted by The Guardian newspaper, Bridget Jones’s Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century.

Born on this date in 1958, Fielding gravitated to writing at an early age and became a journalist right out of college, first working for the BBC and then as a journalist and columnist for several major British newspapers. 

                         

She actually wrote Bridget Jones’s Diary as a weekly "serial" column in the London newspaper The Independent, much in the way that you might make entries in a journal or diary.  Eventually she had both a great following of readers and the chapters of her book.

Fielding credits Bridget’s success to the fact that, at heart,  the story is about “the gap between how we feel we are expected to be and how we actually are.”  And, of course, she says her use of humor made it even more popular.  “Comedy tends to come out of things which are quite painful and serious.”  

A Writer's Moment: 'Feeling experience and pressing it further'

A Writer's Moment: 'Feeling experience and pressing it further':   “One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, questi...

'Feeling experience and pressing it further'

 

“One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.” Jane Hirshfield

Poet and essayist Hirshfield, born in New York in February of 1953, is the author of 10 poetry collections, including this past year’s The Asking: New and Selected Poems.  Each has earned numerous awards as has her highly regarded book of essays about poetry, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry.   

                                            

 “My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of, and then press it a little further,” she said.   For Saturday’s poem here is Hirshfield’s,

 

 

Changing Everything

I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.

Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.

There, I said to myself,
that's done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.

A Writer's Moment: 'Always about the most important things'

A Writer's Moment: 'Always about the most important things':   “Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.” – Richard Ford   A novelist, short story writer and awar...

'Always about the most important things'

 

“Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.” – Richard Ford

 

A novelist, short story writer and award-winning editor, Ford is perhaps best-known for his novels The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day (winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and The PEN/Faulkner Award), The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You, also a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

 

A native Mississippian born on this date in 1944, Ford also wrote the terrific short story collection Rock Springs, which has been widely anthologized. A story collection mostly set in Montana, it includes some of his most popular stories and cemented his reputation as one of the finest writers of the last 50 years.

 

Ford struggled with dyslexia in his growing up years and didn’t get seriously interested in even reading literature until his college days at Michigan State.  He has stated in interviews that his dyslexia may, however, have helped him as a reader and writer forcing him to read and write at a slow and thoughtful pace.

 

Like many great writers, Ford states the best way to be a great writer is to write about what you know best.  “Happiness for me,” he said,  “is getting to write about the most important things I know.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Like a very complex game'

A Writer's Moment: 'Like a very complex game':   "In a crazy way, writing is a lot like any kind of very complex game - like chess, where you have the knowledge as...

'Like a very complex game'

 

"In a crazy way, writing is a lot like any kind of very complex game - like chess, where you have the knowledge as you're composing all of the ramifications of each move, of each choice you make." – Adam Ross

 

Born in New York City this date in 1967, Ross is a novelist, short story writer and magazine editor whose novel Mr. Peanut was named both a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best books of 2010  by The New Yorker, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New Republic, and The Economist.   An intricate murder mystery, the book has been translated into 16 languages.

 

A gifted athlete who won a high school state wrtestling championship, Ross also grew up interested in acting and appeared in several movies and numerous television commercials.  He is working on a semi-autobiographical novel on those youth acting experiencs.

 

Now the editor of the historic literary magazine The Sewanee Review (since 2016), he and his family live in Nashville, where his writing includes frequent contributions to such newspapers and magazines as The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast and The Nashville Scene.  His short stories have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly.

“I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep,” he said.   “But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A smile is the beginning of love'

A Writer's Moment: 'A smile is the beginning of love':   "Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." — Mother Teresa   The...

'A smile is the beginning of love'

 

"Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love."— Mother Teresa

 

There are varying opinions as to the origin of Valentine's Day, but some experts believe it originated from a Roman martyred as St. Valentine who refused to give up Christianity and died for his faith on February 14, 269 AD.  Legend also says Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer's daughter, who had become his friend, signed, "From Your Valentine.”

 

The date of his death was just a day before the feast of Lupercalia, celebrated on February 15 to honor the god Lupercus, protector of people and their herds from wolves.     Dances were held for all the single young men and women as part of this Lupercalian feast and as a sort-of “spin the bottle” variation, a man would draw his dance partner's name from a piece of papyrus placed in a bowl. 

 

The man not only danced with that partner but was obligated to protect her throughout the next year. In many cases, the partners became sweethearts and were soon married.   Gradually, St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers and the Lupercalian celebration also shifted to February 14 – the two combined into a day marked by sending poems and gifts like flowers. 

 

And as card companies and poets both know it not only became a day for showing love, but also one of the great days for creating “writers’ moments.”   Happy Valentine’s Day!

A Writer's Moment: Putting his audience focus first

A Writer's Moment: Putting his audience focus first:   “I think about my audience when I write, to some extent. Thinking of writing for young adults, I try to keep the stories moving, never a ...

Putting his audience focus first

 

“I think about my audience when I write, to some extent. Thinking of writing for young adults, I try to keep the stories moving, never a dull moment, to hold their interest.” –  William Sleator

Born on this date in 1945, William Warner Sleator III wrote science fiction for young adults and children.  His highly entertaining books typically follow a “rapid fire” style – a technique that most young readers love but his critics have sometimes blasted.  

  

Born in Maryland and raised in Missouri, Sleator (pronounced Slay-tor) was the son of a scientist and a doctor.   He often liked to intertwine          elements of theoretical science into his works, pitting his young heroes and heroines against some sort of peculiar phenomenon in the process. 

One of 4 children, he often portrayed family relationships and close friendships in his writing. 

 

“My stories,” he said, “develop from both things I read and from my own experiences; and the experiences of people I know.”

A Writer's Moment: Why writers write

A Writer's Moment: Why writers write: “Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird or A Wrinkle in Time, you understand t...

Why writers write

“Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird or A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel.  Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.”—Anna Quindlen

  

And so –  as Sonny & Cher once so famously sang – the beat goes on.

 

 If you're intrigued by why writers sit down each day with pen in hand, or at a typewriter or computer, and begin the creative process, that's probably the reason why.   While the process not only can be immensely challenging it also can be immensely rewarding.  

 

I was thinking about that when I awoke today and wondered why the first thing I was thinking was I needed to do was get back to writing my latest novel.  Then I realized that first I should write words for  A Writer's Moment so why not this as a topic?   

 

Seeking inspiration, I first looked for other writer's quotes, finding Quindlen's and then this one by John Steinbeck.  

“Writers write," Steinbeck said,  "simply to tell the truth about things as we see them."   And the beat goes on.