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A Writer's Moment: 'Property of the imagination' : “The English language is nobody's special property. ...
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A Writer's Moment: 'Information In; Creative Responses Out' : “One of the great joys of life is creativity....
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A Writer's Moment: 'Be willing to fail' : “I'm always terrified when I'm writing.” – Mary Karr ...
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A Writer's Moment: 'Story ideas surround you' : “I always tell my students, 'If you walk around with your eyes and ears...
Friday, November 29, 2024
A Writer's Moment: Cold Moon on the rise
Cold Moon on the rise
Today, I heard a story on
the radio that said December’s “Cold Moon” was coming, signaling winter’s
arrival. The story reminded me of May Sarton’s poem “December Moon.” Sarton was born Elinore Marie Sarton in Belgium
in 1912. She and her family moved to England at the outset of WWI and then on to Boston in
1915. She not only became a deeply
engrained New Englander but also one of America’s greatest and most prolific
poets, writing as “May,” the month of her birth.
So, on this Black Friday
weekend as we leave Thanksgiving and autumn behind, spiraling toward our first
“winter month,” here Sarton’s poem,
December
Moon
Before
going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did I hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Never hope more than you work'
'Never hope more than you work'
“Art is moral passion
married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda,
and entertainment without moral passion is television.” –
Rita Mae Brown
Born in Pennsylvania on
Nov. 28, 1944 Brown is a writer, activist, and feminist who first earned
acclaim for her novel Rubyfruit Jungle. She’s
been on many bestseller lists for her two long series’ of mystery novels, the
“Mrs. Murphy” and “Sister Jane” series. Her most recent books are 2023’s
Lost and Hound in “Sister Jane” and 2024’s Feline Fatale
in the “Mrs. Murphy” series.
Over the years Brown has interspersed her more than 50 books of mystery and suspense with 10 screenplays, several books of poetry, 4 nonfiction pieces, and 10 screenplays, two of which earned her Emmy nominations. Her I Love Liberty story and screenplay got both an Emmy nod and a Writer’s Guild of America Award.
“Creativity comes from
trust,” Brown said. “Trust your instincts. And never hope more than
you work.”
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Continue dreaming and believe in dreams'
'Continue dreaming and believe in dreams'
“We have to think big. We
have to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other people
imagine and lead us down what paths they want to take us. Sometimes they're
very limited in the way their ideas are constructed. We need to imagine much
more broadly. That's the work of a writer, and more writers should look at it.” – Alexis
Wright
An award nominee for many of her writings, she has
published both fiction and nonfiction and is a noted essayist as well as
novelist. Her major nonfiction books are Take Power, an
anthology on the history of the land rights movement, and Grog War on
the introduction of alcohol restrictions in her native Tennant Creek
area.
But it is her fiction that has earned her top accolades. Her 2006 book Carpentaria, based on the interconnected stories of several inhabitants of the fictional town of
Desperance on Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, won both the Miles Franklin Award (Austrailia’s premiere writing prize) and the Stella
Prize, an annual award recognizing the best book by a female writer in any
genre.
This year, she repeated both honors for her 2023 novel Praiseworthy, a dystopian tale set in a fictional northern Australian community. She is the first Australian author to win both awards twice.
“My role as a novelist is to explore ideas and
imagination,” Wright said. “Hopefully that will inspire people from
my world to continue dreaming and to believe in dreams.”
Monday, November 25, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Everyday life's inspiring moments'
'Everyday life's inspiring moments'
“(I) . . . see something in everyday life that inspires me. And . . . Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.” –
Kevin Henkes
Born in Wisconsin , in November, 1960 Henkes is a leading light in the Children’s Book world. He has won numerous awards, including both a Caldecott Honor Book Award and a Geisel Honor
Book Award for his book Waiting, only the second
time in publishing history that an author won both awards for the same book.
As an illustrator, Henkes earlier won the Caldecott Medal for Kitten's First Full Moon and a Caldecott Honor for Owen. For his writing he earned Newbery Medal Honor Book Awards for both Olive's Ocean and The Year of Billy Miller. All told, he has authored and (mostly) illustrated more than 50 bestselling books.
And in 2020, he won the Children’s Literature
Legacy Award honoring a U.S. author or illustrator whose books have made a
"significant and lasting contribution to literature for children."
“I
like examining the ordinary,” Henkes said, “and by doing so, one hopefully
reveals the extraordinary nature within.”
Saturday, November 23, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Out of which miracles leap'
'Out of which miracles leap'
“A
poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by
lightning.” – James
Dickey
All 331 of his poems can be found in The Complete Poems of James Dickey. For Saturday’s Poem, here is Dickey’s,
At
Darien Bridge
The sea here used to look
As if many convicts had built it,
Standing deep in their ankle chains,
Ankle-deep in the water, to smite
The land and break it down to salt.
I was in this bog as a child
When they were all working all day
To drive the pilings down.
I thought I saw the still sun
Strike the side of a hammer in flight
And from it a sea bird be born
To take off over the marshes.
As the gray climbs the side of my head
And cuts my brain off from the world,
I walk and wish mainly for birds,
For the one bird no one has looked for
To spring again from a flash
Of metal, perhaps from the scratched
Wedding band on my ring finger.
Recalling the chains of their feet,
I stand and look out over grasses
At the bridge they built, long abandoned,
Breaking down into water at last,
And long, like them, for freedom
Or death, or to believe again
That they worked on the ocean to give it
The unchanging, hopeless look
Out of which all miracles leap.
Friday, November 22, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'The important work of moving the world forward'
'The important work of moving the world forward'
“It’s never too
late to be who you might have been.” – George Eliot
Born in England on this date
in 1819, Mary Ann Evans realized early in her career that if she was going to
be taken seriously as a novelist she needed to change her
identity. While women did write under their own names during
her lifetime, she said she used a male pen name to escape the stereotype of
women only writing lighthearted romances. She also wished to have her fiction
judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor
and critic.
So, she became
George Eliot, regarded as one of the best novelists of the 19th Century,
authoring such classics as Mill on the Floss and Silas
Marner – known for their realism and psychological
insights. Self-taught, she was the first female writer
for The Westminster Review, starting in 1850 and becoming assistant
editor in 1851. By the time she started writing novels she was
pretty much running the magazine, contributing many essays and reviews,
something she continued even after her success with creative fiction.
“The important work of
moving the world forward," she said, "does not have to wait to be
done by perfect men.”
Thursday, November 21, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'A treasure house of self-knowledge'
'A treasure house of self-knowledge'
“One thing that makes art
different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix
our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart
and mind and tongue and tear.” – Marilyn French
Born in Brooklyn on this
date in 1929, French began her writing career in journalism while still in
college, although she hoped to become a musician and
composer. After marrying and having two children, she went
into teaching for several years, earned both her Master’s and Doctorate degrees
in English, and returned to writing. While she was an essayist and
sometime short story writer, her biggest impact came through her novels.
French's first and
best-known novel, The Women's Room, follows the details and lives
of Mira and her friends in 1950s’ and 1960s’ America during the dawning and
subsequent impact of militant radical feminism. The 1977 novel sold
over 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 20
languages.
Shortly before her
death in 2009, she was asked what advice she might give beginning writers, and
she said to capitalize on things that might seem to get in your way, such as
fear of failure.
“Fear is a question,” she
said. “What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasure
house of self-knowledge if only we explore them.”
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Ink into words and pictures'
'Ink into words and pictures'
“A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.” – Jim Bishop
Born in Jersey City, NJ, on this date in 1907, Bishop dropped out of school after 8th grade, then studied typing and shorthand on his own in hopes of becoming a journalist. In 1929, he was hired as a copy boy at the New York Daily News, the start of a 50-year career writing for newspapers and magazines.
When not writing
journalistically, Bishop began working on biographies and ultimately published
half-a-dozen including the bestselling The Day Lincoln Was Shot, a
book that took him 24 years to complete but ultimately sold over 3 million
copies. The book has been re-published in two dozen languages and
made into two television specials and a feature-length movie.
Bishop also was a syndicated political columnist, book reviewer and critic, although the latter role concerned him, noting, “A good writer is not, per se’, a good book critic, no more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender."
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'The Writer's Art of Observation'
'The Writer's Art of Observation'
“Always read stuff that
will make you look good if you die when you’re right in the middle of it.”
– P.J. O'Rourke.
Born in Toledo, OH on
Nov. 14, 1947 Patrick Jake O'Rourke was a conservative political
satirist, journalist, creative writer and regular on the hit NPR show
"Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me” until his death from cancer in 2022.
O’Rourke authored 23
books, including the mega-bestseller None of My Business: P.J. Explains
Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He's Not Rich
and Neither Are You. He also
co-wrote National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas
Kenney, the book that inspired the movie Animal House.
O’Rourke said judging who
and what people are all about is easy to determine through the writer's art of
observation.
“People will tell you
anything,” O’Rourke said, “but what they do is always the
truth.”
Monday, November 18, 2024
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Creating terse, imagistic poems
“Poetry is an orphan
of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.” –
Charles Simic
Simic, born in Belgrade
in 1938, won a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The
World Doesn’t End and writing with a style called literary
minimalism, creating terse, imagistic poems. Critics have referred to
Simic poems as "tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes."
Displaced by World War II and eventually emigrating to the U.S., Simic didn’t speak English until he was 15, but once he learned the language he became one of our most prolific writers, producing some 60 books, the last being No Land In Sight: Poems, published in 2022. Named U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, he died in 2023. For Saturday’s Poem here is Simic’s,
The Wooden Toy
The wooden toy sitting pretty.
No … quieter than that.
Like the sound of eyebrows
Raised by a villain
In a silent movie.
Psst, someone said behind my back.
A Writer's Moment: Creating terse, imagistic poems
Friday, November 15, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'The driver of great stories'
'The driver of great stories'
“When
you're a writer, you're always looking for conflict. It's conflict that drives
great stories.” –
William Kent Krueger
Born
in Torrington, WY on Nov. 16, 1950, Krueger grew up in the Cascade Mountains and
many of his books – especially the Cork O’Connor series – have an “Old West”
feel even though he’s made his home in St. Paul, MN for decades and sets his
books in Northern Minnesota.
I
first met Krueger in the early 2000s when I was teaching and doing public
relations at Augsburg University in Minneapolis and he would stop over to visit
with English classes there. After
hearing the “back story” on his own writing career as well as how he created O’Connor
and the cast of characters that surround him, I was hooked on his writing. I have long been amazed that Krueger doesn’t
have any Ojibwe blood, since he does a remarkable job of incorporating great
detail about Ojibwe culture into his stories.
With
each of the 20 books in the series, beginning with Iron Lake and up to
this year’s offering Spirit Crossing (he’s also written 5 stand-alone
novels), I’ve learned much, much more about the Ojibwe, something Krueger says
he very much enjoys researching and writing
“Readers
anticipate that a significant element of every story will be additional
exposure to the ways of the Ojibwe,” he said. “The truth is that I enjoy this
aspect of the work. Although I have no Indian blood running through my
veins, in college I prepared to be a cultural anthropologist, so exploring
other cultures is exciting to me.”
Thursday, November 14, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Every writer's foremost requirement'
'Every writer's foremost requirement'
“Over the years, my students influenced me
greatly, and I’ve learned many lessons from
them. I have an immense amount of respect
for them, and I think that respect for your
audience is the foremost requirement for
anyone who wants to write.” – Susan Campbell
Bartoletti
Born in Pennsylvania in November of 1958, Bartoletti
was a writing teacher for 20 years
before turning to writing herself, inspired by the
junior high students she was teaching at
the time. Working with kids also gave her many of the
traits and patterns she uses in
developing her characters. “I felt immense satisfaction in watching my
students grow as
writers and I wanted to practice what I
preached.”
After publishing her first short story in 1989, she
wrote her first children’s book, Silver at
Night, in 1992. Since then she's authored 15 more books, both fiction and nonfiction,
including Growing Up in Coal Country, Dancing With
Dziadziu, and Hitler Youth:
Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow,
winner of the Newbery Medal.
The winner of numerous other awards including the
Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction,
and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, she still
teaches but now her students are
Master’s degree candidates in various writing programs
as well as enrollees in writing
workshops across the nation.
Character development remains at the heart of every
piece that she does and what she
stresses to her writing
students. “When I create a character, it happens in layers,”
she
said. “The more I write and revise, the
better I understand my characters.”
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
A Writer's Moment: The 'surprising' act of writing
The 'surprising' act of writing
“The act of writing surprises me all the time. A miraculous thing happens when you have an idea and you want to convert it into words... and then you start to create a work of art,and that's another miracle, and it remains mysterious to the writer, or to this writer anyway.” – Janette Turner Hospital
Born in Australia on this date in 1942, Turner Hospital has spent most of her adult life in either Canada or the U.S. “All my writing, in a sense, revolves around the mediation of one culture (or subculture) to another,” she said. Best known for her novels, she also is an accomplished and productive short story writer and has won numerous awards in both genres.
One of Turner Hospital's most accomplished novels is Borderline, set on the “borderline”of Canada and the U.S. While primarily a thriller, the story also focuses on where to draw the "borderline" between intrusions into others' lives and the responsibility for them.
Among her many awards are Canada’s Seal Award, the CDC Literary Prize, and the Australian National Book Council Award. Also a teacher of both literature and creative writing, she has been writer-in-residence at major universities in Australia, Canada, England and the U.S. and recently has been Visiting Writer-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina.
“The themes of
dislocation and connection are constant in my work,” she said. “So are
the themes of moral choice and moral courage. I am always putting my characters
into situations of acute moral dilemma . . . to find out what they will do.”
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Saturday, November 9, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Waiting for that music'
'Waiting for that music'
“Poems
have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different
kind of music of necessity. That's, in a way, the hardest thing
about writing poetry; waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if
it's going to come.” –
C.K. Williams
Born
in New Jersey in November of 1936, poet, critic and translator Charles Kenneth
“C.K.,” Williams won nearly every major poetry award including the 1987
National Book Critics Circle Award for Flesh and Blood, the 2000
Pulitzer Prize for Repair, the 2003 National Book Award
for The Singing, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime
achievement, awarded shortly before his death in 2015.
Williams once noted, “When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry, the writing of poems becomes incredibly pleasurable and addictive.” For Saturday’s Poem, here is Williams’
SILENCE
The heron methodically
pacing like an old-time librarian down the stream through the patch of woods at
the end of the field, those great wings tucked in as neatly as clean sheets, is
so intent on keeping her silence, extracting one leg, bending it like a paper
clip, placing it back, then bending the other, the first again, that her
concentration radiates out into the listening world, and everything obediently
hushes, the ragged grasses that rise from the water, the light-sliced vault of
sparkling aspens.
Then abruptly a flurry, a
flapping, her lifting from the gravitied earth, her swoop out over the field,
her banking and settling on a lightning-stricken oak, such a gangly, unwieldy
contraption up there in the barkless branches, like a still Adam's-appled
adolescent; then the cry, cranky, coarse, and wouldn't the waiting world laugh
aloud if it could with glee?
Friday, November 8, 2024
A Writer's Moment: A well-balanced approach
A well-balanced approach
“I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.” – Kate Seredy
Born in Hungary on Nov.
10, 1896, Seredy won the prestigious Newbery Medal for best children’s book for
The White Stag, the Newbery Honor (runner-up) twice, and the Caldecott Medal
for Best Children’s Book Illustration for The Christmas Anna Angel. She also won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award
for The White Stag.
After growing up in
Hungary and spending time in Paris, especially during World War I, Seredy
emigrated to the U.S., ran a children’s bookshop and started her career as a
children’s book illustrator. Encouraged by editor May Massee to
write down bits and pieces of her “growing up” years, she wrote the children’s
novel The Good Master, published in 1936 and winner of a Newbery
Honor for best book.
She wrote 12 children's books and illustrated dozens more, dedicating her last book, Lazy Tinka, to Massee. Seredy’s papers and illustrations are mostly part of the May Massee Collection at Emporia State University and I had a chance to see them when I spoke to writing classes and then presented as part of the ESU Writers’ Series. It’s a wonderful collection and I highly recommend visiting the school to view it.
“For yesterday and for
all tomorrows,” she said, “we dance the best we know.”
Thursday, November 7, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Think it; Dream it; Do it'
'Think it; Dream it; Do it'
“It’s a cliché, but most people are good at something, and most people are good at what they’re enthusiastic about.” – Tim Rice
“We all dream a lot –
some are lucky, some are not,” Rice said of his career. “But if you think it,
want it, dream it, then it’s real. You are what you feel.”
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
A Writer's Moment: Sharing stories and 'reaching for the sun'
Sharing stories and 'reaching for the sun'
“To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.” – Joyce Maynard
Born in New Hampshire on Nov. 5, 1953 Maynard has authored critically acclaimed books in genres ranging from Young Adult to crime, and general fiction to nonfiction memoirs. She has written 22 books – the latest How The Light Gets In - out this year. And she writes journalistically for a number of newspapers, magazines and National Public Radio, and is a successful screenwriter.
Perhaps her most talked about memoir was At
Home In The World about her years living with reclusive author J.D.
Salinger. The book earned her both praise and scorn from the literary
world. “I wonder what it is that the people who
criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to
tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to
hear?”
“You write about what you
know," Maynard said, "and you also write about what you want to
know.” One of those "things she knows" is raising
kids. The mother of three said her children influenced and helped her
writing become stronger.
“It's not only children
who grow. Parents do too,” she said. “As much as we watch to see
what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do
with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach
for it myself.”
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Interesting things happening to interesting people'
'Interesting things happening to interesting people'
Monday, November 4, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'Slow and steady to win the race'
'Slow and steady to win the race'
“Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.” – Charles Frazier
As a “deliberate” writer myself – especially when I’m working on fiction – I can commiserate with Frazier and long ago decided that getting it done right, regardless of how long it takes to finish is the best route to follow. Frazier agrees, noting, “Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.”
Born on this date in 1950 in Asheville,
NC (much in the news these days from the horrific floods they’ve endured),
Frazier has authored 5 books beginning with the terrific Cold Mountain – winner of awards as both a book and a movie. His most recent book is 2023’s The Trackers, which follows a painter tracking down a woman with a valuable painting during The Great Depression.
Frazier’s writing is a study in how to draw upon the culture and history of a region – in his case his home state and the Appalachian region. He said he also loves the music of the region and finding ways to incorporate it into his writings to “flesh out” his stories.
“It always helps me connect with characters,” he said, “to think about what music they respond to.”
Saturday, November 2, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'To a place in the imagination'
'To a place in the imagination'
“I'm
trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at
a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place
to another, and it's usually from a realistic place, to a place in the
imagination.” – Billy Collins
Born in New York City in 1941, the two-time
U.S. Poet Laureate’s works range from humorous to thought-provoking to deeply
moving. His most recent book is Musical Tables: Poems. For Saturday’s Poem, here is
Collins’
Invention
Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,
and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look
like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.
But eventually --
by the end of the month,
I reckon --
it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,
and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen.
Friday, November 1, 2024
A Writer's Moment: 'How life is lived, you know'
'How life is lived, you know'
“When
I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional
experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a
distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived,
you know?” – Charlie Kaufman
Born in New York City in November of 1958, Kaufman is a screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist who wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for which he won an Academy Award. All three scripts appear in the Writers Guild of America’s list of the 101 greatest movie screenplays ever written.
It’s been a busy 2024 for Kaufman, writing the Netflix animated movie Orion and the Dark and now his second novel This Face Can Even Be Proved by Means of the Sense of Hearing. He’s also producing the Broadway play Pre-Existing Condition.
“I want to create situations that give people something to think about,” Kaufman said about his works. “When I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.”