A Writer's Moment: 'Music brings people together'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's what brings people together'    “I was never trying to write a hit.  I was just trying to write good songs and get a message out, and it was my great good fortune to be p...

'Music brings people together'

 

“I was never trying to write a hit.  I was just trying to write good songs and get a message out, and it was my great good fortune to be popular.” – John Denver

 

Born in Roswell, NM on this date in 1943, Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., best known by his recording name John Denver, wrote more than 200 songs and recorded more than 300 in his relatively short lifetime, becoming one of the world’s most popular folk/country/soft rock singers and performers.  Among his hits were the song known as Colorado’s “unofficial” anthem, Rocky Mountain High, and West Virginia's "unofficial" anthem Country Roads, making him the only American singer/songwriter to hold such a distinction.

 

A great storyteller, he wrote about his love for and activism on behalf of nature as well as beautiful tales about people and relationships.  Among them are the very moving Poems, Prayers and Promises, often sung at funerals; the beautiful Annie’s Song, sung at countless weddings; and one of his signature songs – a call out to the hopes of Spring – Sunshine on My Shoulders.

 

The son of a career military man, Denver moved often in his childhood and wished for a life of "growing up on a farm or ranch and living off the land."    His joyous Thank God I’m A Country Boy spoke to any kid who was raised in those environs.  In his lifetime, which ended in a tragic plane crash in 1997, Denver’s songs sold a remarkable 33 million copies and continue to be re-recorded and listened to by new generations.

 

"Music does bring people together,” Denver said.  “It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same."    

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Endless possibilities'

A Writer's Moment: 'Endless possibilities':   “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug ever used by mankind.”  – Rudyard Kipling   Kipling was born in Bombay, India on this da...

'Endless possibilities'

 

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug ever used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling

 

Kipling was born in Bombay, India on this date in 1865.  Educated in England, he started his prolific writing career with a series of essays called "Departmental Ditties."  His versatility with pen and typewriter earned him acclaim in many genres including journalism and poetry, but it was his epic novels and short stories that brought him lasting fame.

 

Kipling is probably best known for The Jungle Book; Captains Courageous; The Man Who Would Be King and his “Just So” stories, and for receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 41.  He was both the first English language writer and youngest ever recipient of the award.

   

Considered one of the all-time greatest English writers, he ironically wrote most of his pieces while residing in America – particularly Brattleboro, VT, where he lived for many years after his marriage to American Caroline Balestier in 1892.  While most of his works were either about India or Britain, he continued to live and write in the U.S. until his death in 1936.

 

A firm believer in the adage that you are what you make of yourself, Kipling noted, “We are the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities.”

 

 

 

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Speaking to the spirit'

A Writer's Moment: 'Speaking to the spirit':   “Poetry speaks to the spirit by piercing understanding. It interprets all senseless truths – beauty, love, emotion – into sensible scrawl....

'Speaking to the spirit'

 

“Poetry speaks to the spirit by piercing understanding. It interprets all senseless truths – beauty, love, emotion – into sensible scrawl.” – Richelle Goodrich

 

Born in Ogden, UT in 1968, Goodrich earned degrees from Eastern Washington University and has been writing and publishing poetry, short stories, and novels since 2012.  For Saturday’s Poem – from her book Hope Evermore – here is Goodrich’s,

                                                   I HOPED

                                      I hoped for a rose and got lilies.                

                                      I hoped for the sun and got rain.

                                      I hoped for a cat and got puppies.

                                      I hoped for Brazil and got Spain.

                                      I hoped for a raise and got transferred.

                                      I hoped for northwest and got south.

                                      I hoped for ice cream and got yogurt.

                                      I hoped for a kiss on the mouth.

                                     I hoped for more time and got late fees.

                                     I hoped for a cruise, got a flight.

                                     I hoped for Poseidon, got Hades.

                                     I hoped for long days over nights.

                                    You may wonder why I keep hoping,

                                   As fruitless as it seems to be.

                                   But hope is a bow, not an arrow.

                                   Its release depends much upon me.

 

 

 

A Writer's Moment: 'All beginnings . . . never any endings'

A Writer's Moment: 'All beginnings . . . never any endings': “You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.”  – Aidan Chambers   Born in England on this date...

'All beginnings . . . never any endings'

“You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.” – Aidan Chambers

 

Born in England on this date in 1934, Chambers won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for his wonderful Postcards from No Man's Land (1999).  And for his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

 

First a teacher and an Anglican Priest, Chambers left both teaching and the priesthood to concentrate on writing, lecturing, and editing in the late 1960s. 

 

Gaining a reputation for straightforward writing that treats young readers with the understanding that they can comprehend the same difficult world and ideas that adults deal with, he also wrote several books for teachers and librarians on the topic, including The Reading Environment and Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk. 

 

Encouraging young readers to become young writers, he noted, “When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time.   So adolescent stories are all beginnings.   There are never any endings.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The adult version of a kid creating'

A Writer's Moment: 'The adult version of a kid creating':   “Being a novelist is the adult version of a kid creating a make-believe world. But unlike a child, a writer of fiction has to come up with...

'The adult version of a kid creating'

 

“Being a novelist is the adult version of a kid creating a make-believe world. But unlike a child, a writer of fiction has to come up with a structured story, one that has as much meaning for others as it has for her.” – Susan Isaacs

 

Born in New York City on Dec. 27, 1943, Isaacs began her writing career as a freelance political speechwriter while simultaneously serving as an editor for Seventeen magazine.  In her mid-30s she decided to veer away from journalism and speechwriting and try her hand at fiction.  Good move.  Her first novel (and first attempt at fiction), Compromising Positions, was chosen as a main selection of the Book of the Month Club and was a New York Times bestseller.

 

Since then she’s authored 17more books – her latest being 2023’s Bad, Bad Seymour Brown – numerous essays, screenplays, and a work of cultural criticism, Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women are Really Doing on Page and Screen.

 

In addition to writing books and screenplays, Isaacs is a noted reviewer having reviewed both fiction and nonfiction for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Newsday.

 

But writing is her forte' and she said she loves the writing process.   “There are days where I lose track of time, of place, of everything else because I've been transported to another universe. “

 

 

A Writer's Moment: The story behind a 'magical' Christmas tale

A Writer's Moment: The story behind a 'magical' Christmas tale:   “’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house . . .” – Clement Clarke Moore   Moore was a straitlaced, no-nonsense Clas...

The story behind a 'magical' Christmas tale

 

“’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house . . .” – Clement Clarke Moore

 

Moore was a straitlaced, no-nonsense Classics Professor at New York’s General Theological Seminary when he composed A Visit from St. Nicholas for his kids after a Christmas Eve sleighride in 1822.   Arguably, the lilting tale of Santa Claus has become one of the best-known verses ever written by an American.

 

The scholarly Moore, born in New York City in 1779, was at first hesitant to publicly acknowledge his association with such an “unscholarly” verse (he published it in 1823 but didn’t publicly acknowledge his authorship until 1837).  But his kids – for whom he had composed the piece in the first place – were proud of their father’s tale and wanted children everywhere to know who to thank for creating it.

Moore’s poem is widely considered the basis for depicting Santa Claus as we know him today – including his physical appearance, mode of transportation, number and names of his reindeer, and the tradition that he brings toys to children.

 

By the way, before he was moved by the spirit of the season to pen his famous poem, Moore’s most notable work was a two-volume tome titled A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language.  Christmas miracles indeed. 

 

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

 

A Writer's Moment: The Christmas Medals

A Writer's Moment: The Christmas Medals:   This Christmas remembrance was published in the current issue of South Dakota Magazine .    I enjoyed writing it and hope you enjoy it too...

The Christmas Medals

 

This Christmas remembrance was published in the current issue of South Dakota Magazine.   I enjoyed writing it and hope you enjoy it too.  – Dan Jorgensen

 

The Christmas Medals

 

            Dean Jorgensen was not my biological father, but he was my Dad in the truest sense. That was cemented the first Christmas he shared with my two younger brothers and me. We three boys were Mom’s from a first marriage; ultimately there would be seven boys in our new blended family. For Dean, all seven were “his boys.”

 

            Our first Christmas together was in 1955. Dean and my mother Virginia had married after a courtship that seemed to include us boys as much as the two of them.

 

            When he came to our little home to pick up Mom for dates, he would be greeted by joyous shouts of “Dean! Dean!” because we were as taken with him as was our mother. Often, while waiting for her, he would share stories with us, some about superheroes he named Starkhans and Johhny. Other stories were about his childhood, or his Army days.

 

            After their marriage at the beginning of the year and our move to Dean’s farm, those Army stories included tales about medals and military insignia that he treasured from his time in service. Each medal had a story. Mom often implored us to “leave poor Dean alone,” especially after a hard day of farm chores or fieldwork. But regardless of how tired he might be, he would share them.

 

            As our first “family” Christmas approached, we also were excited that Mom was having a baby. Our new brother or sister might even be born on Christmas!

 

            Mom went into labor on December 23, and we all raced to the hospital 50 miles away where our brother was born. We spent that night and Christmas Eve morning with Mom until our grandparents offered to drive us back to the farm. “We’ll take you home and then come back to get you tomorrow,” Grandma said. “We can all share Christmas with Virgie and the baby at the hospital.” Dean, who was very tired, readily agreed. We piled into Grandpa and Grandma’s car and headed to the farm.

 

            We didn’t have a telephone, so Dean told our grandparents we would see them on Christmas morning and off they went. We boys bounded inside, not at all tired. “Yay!” we shouted. “We’ve got a new brother! And tonight Santa Claus is coming!”

 

            Many years later, Dean told us that he then realized he had forgotten about Santa and that the Christmas gifts planned for our stockings were in the trunk of the car in the hospital parking lot 50 miles away. So, after dinner and checking the livestock, he quietly tucked us into bed and smiled at our excitement over Santa’s pending arrival. He had a plan.

 

            When we raced from our beds Christmas morning, our stockings were bulging. But before we could look into them, Dean lifted a letter off the table. “Look! A letter from Santa,” he said. He opened it and read: “Hello boys! I know how much your Mom and new brother want to see what you’re getting from me for Christmas, so I’ve taken your presents to the hospital so you can open them there after you go back with your Grandpa and Grandma.”

 

            “Ain’t that nice of him boys?” Dean said. “Your Mom will be so happy.” We all looked a bit skeptical at that but could still see that our stockings seemed pretty full of something.

 

            “What’s in our stockings?” I asked.

 

            “Well, let’s take a look.” Dean stepped aside and we reached in to pull out apples, oranges, nuts, toothbrushes and a shiny piece of cardboard. Affixed to that cardboard in each of our stockings were Army medals and insignia.

 

            “Well, would you look at that,” Dean said. “Just like mine. Santa must’ve heard me telling you about them and knew how much you liked them.”

 

              They were Christmas gifts beyond our wildest dreams; a memory created by our new Dad to last a lifetime.

                                                                              © Copyright January 2024 by Dan Jorgensen

A Writer's Moment: 'A testimonial to survival'

A Writer's Moment: 'A testimonial to survival':   “I started writing poetry when I was about 13.” – Al Purdy   Born in Ontario, Canada in December, 1918, Purdy had a 56-year writing ca...

'A testimonial to survival'

 

“I started writing poetry when I was about 13.” – Al Purdy

 

Born in Ontario, Canada in December, 1918, Purdy had a 56-year writing career led by a remarkable 39 books of poetry.  Often called Canada's "unofficial poet laureate,” he wrote right up to his death in 1999.  His death bed, in fact, was cluttered with his books and papers he was writing, and he was a bit chagrined by the fact that his publisher was planning a “collected works” version of his poems.

 

“A ‘collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival,” he said.  Here, from Beyond Remembering: The collected poems of Al Purdy – and for Saturday’s Poem – is Purdy’s,

 

        Listening to Myself

 

I see myself staggering through deep snow
lugging blocks of wood yesterday
an old man
almost falling from bodily weakness
— look down on myself from above
then front and both sides
white hair — wrinkled face and hands
it's really not very surprising
that love spoken by my voice
should be when I am listening
ridiculous
yet there it is
a foolish old man with brain on fire
stumbling through the snow

— the loss of love
that comes to mean more
than the love itself
and how to explain that?
— a still pool in the forest
that has ceased to reflect anything
except the past
— remains a sort of half-love
that is akin to kindness
and I am angry remembering
remembering the song of flesh
to flesh and bone to bone
the loss is better

 

 

A Writer's Moment: Using just the 'right' word: priceless

A Writer's Moment: Using just the 'right' word: priceless:   “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when ...

Using just the 'right' word: priceless

 

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” – Mark Twain

 

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, MO in 1835, Twain said that the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.  For Twain, obviously, the reason was to write and he had a lot to say about how to use words, not the least being that you should write using plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences.

 

While he was not averse to having nice things said about his writing, he abhorred flowery adjectives in those descriptions just as he disdained using them in his own writing.  “Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in,” he advised.

 

He was pleased when he coined a word or phrase that others liked to use (mentioning that it came from him, of course) and noted that the use of “a pregnant pause” also could be a great writing style.  

 

“The right word may be effective,” he wrote, “but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

A Writer's Moment: The 'What If?' Approach

A Writer's Moment: The 'What If?' Approach:   “If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.”  – Kate Atkinson   Born in York, England on Dec. 20, 1951...

The 'What If?' Approach

 

“If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.” – Kate Atkinson

 

Born in York, England on Dec. 20, 1951 Atkinson is three-time winner of one of Britain’s most prestigious awards – the Whitbread Book of the Year prize.  The author of 13 novels, two plays and a short story collection, she said her favorite approach to writing is to start with the “What If” factor and advance from there..

 

“Alternate history fascinates me,” she said, “(just) as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.”   Honored by Queen Elizabeth for “Services to Literature,” she is noted for works filled with “wit, wisdom and subtle characterization,” and for works with “surprising twists and plot turns.”  

 

While all of her books have earned acclaim, she is best known for her stand-alone novels Behind The Scenes at the Museum and Life After Life and her series featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie, adapted into a BBC series called Case Histories.   Her latest in that series is this year’s Death at the Sign of the Rook.  

 

“I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon,” she said.  “When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence.  So you recycle.  I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in.”

A Writer's Moment: That wide-open eye called imagination

A Writer's Moment: That wide-open eye called imagination: “Imagination is the wide-open eye which leads us always to see truth more vividly.”  – Christopher Fry   Born in England on this date in...

That wide-open eye called imagination

“Imagination is the wide-open eye which leads us always to see truth more vividly.” – Christopher Fry

 

Born in England on this date in 1907, Fry was a multiple award winning poet and playwright.  He is best known for his verse dramas, notably The Lady's Not for Burning, voted by critics as one of the 100 best plays of the 20^th Century.  It has been revived a number of times and also made into a major movie.   His One Thing More, a play about the 7th century Northumbrian monk Cædmon, who was suddenly given the gift of composing song, also won wide recognition.

 

He not only focused on his own works but also translated some of the better known plays from other nations.  Among them were Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, and French playwright Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and The Fantastiks, all widely popularized through Fry’s stage productions.

 Fry wrote or translated three dozen major works and was voted the most popular playwright in England on many occasions.  He said that perhaps his popularity also was due to his ability to write for and about ordinary people and their lives.

 

“In my plays I want to look at life - at the commonplace of existence - as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'As familiar as the air we breathe'

A Writer's Moment: 'As familiar as the air we breathe':     “Writing surrounds us: it's not something we do just in school or on the job but something that is as familiar and everyday as a pai...

'As familiar as the air we breathe'

 

 “Writing surrounds us: it's not something we do just in school or on the job but something that is as familiar and everyday as a pair of worn sneakers or the air we breathe.” 

Born in 1942, Lunsford has been a teacher, presenter and author at Ohio State and Stanford Universities and the world-renowned Bread Loaf School of English near Middlebury, VT (also a favorite teaching haunt for poet Robert Frost in his day).

 

Author of the great text Everyday Writer, Lunsford has written or edited numerous books, chapters and articles. Among her most recent is Everyone's an Author.

“No doubt stories have touched your life . . . from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper.  We might even say that a major goal of living is to create the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the lead-in to more'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the lead-in to more':   “In the Cut  was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote mo...

'It's the lead-in to more'

 

“In the Cut was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.” – Susanna Moore

 

Born in Pennsylvania on this date in 1945, Moore grew up in Hawaii and then worked as a model and script reader in Los Angeles and New York City before beginning her writing career. Her first novel, My Old Sweetheart (1982) earned her a PEN Hemingway nomination.

 

But it was her fourth novel, In the Cut – the story of a teacher and detective caught up in investigating a series of grisly murders – that put her on the worldwide writing map.   The book gained her critical writing acclaim and was adapted into a successful (and suspense-filled) movie by the same name. 

 

Since then, she's turned out many best-selling books, including 2020’s Miss Aluminum: A Memoir; and 2023’s historical adventure novel The Lost Wife.     Also a well-known lecturer, she’s presented at many of the nation’s top colleges and universities as well as some in Germany and Australia, always advocating for the writing life.

“The point always is to be writing something,” she said.  “It leads to more writing.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The fear of poetry'

A Writer's Moment: 'The fear of poetry':   “Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.”  – Muriel Rukeyser   Born on this date in 1915 Rukeyser started writing poetry while stil...

'The fear of poetry'

 

“Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.” – Muriel Rukeyser

 

Born on this date in 1915 Rukeyser started writing poetry while still in high school but didn’t write it seriously until 1935.  That year her first book, Theory of Flight was published by the “Yale Younger Poets Series,” selected personally by poet laureate Stephen Vincent Benét, who wrote the book’s introduction.   In her lifetime (she died in 1980) Rukeyser wrote 25 books, 18 of them poetry.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Rukeyser’s,

                       Reading Time: 1 Minute 26 Seconds

                           The fear of poetry is the
                           fear: mystery and fury of a midnight street
                           of windows whose low voluptuous voice
                           issues, and after that there is not peace.

                           The round waiting moment in the
                           theatre: curtain rises, dies into the ceiling
                           and here is played the scene with the mother
                           bandaging a revealed son's head. The bandage is torn off.
                           Curtain goes down. And here is the moment of proof.

                         That climax when the brain acknowledges the world,
                         all values extended into the blood awake.
                         Moment of proof. And as they say Brancusi did,
                         building his bird to extend through soaring air,
                         as Kafka planned stories that draw to eternity
                         through time extended. And the climax strikes.

                         Love touches so that months after the look of
                         blue stare of love, the footbeat on the heart
                         is translated into the pure cry of birds
                         following air-cries, or poems, the new scene.
                         Moment of proof. That strikes long after act.

                        They fear it. They turn away, hand up, palm out
                        fending off moment of proof, the straight look, poem.
                        The prolonged wound-consciousness after the bullet's
                                 shot.
                        The prolonged love after the look is dead,
                        the yellow joy after the song of the sun.

A Writer's Moment: A tried and true pathway into writing

A Writer's Moment: A tried and true pathway into writing:   “I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.”  – Amy ...

A tried and true pathway into writing

 

“I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.”  – Amy Hempel

 

Born in Chicago on Dec. 14, 1951 Hempel is a short story writer and journalist who teaches creative writing at The Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. 

 

Termed a “minimalist” writer, she is one of just a handful of writers who has built a reputation based solely on short fiction; many of the stories published in her multi-award-winning, best-selling Collected Stories of Amy Hempel.  Her "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" is one of the most anthologized stories of the last quarter century.

 

Hempel’s pathway to creative writing came through journalism and she continues to write for both magazines and journals.  She recommends that journalistic path as a good way to enter the writing world, something I did myself.

“I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer,” she said.  “I had no idea how to write fiction.  So, I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily”

A Writer's Moment: It's each nation's 'living memory'

A Writer's Moment: It's each nation's 'living memory':   “Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living me...

It's each nation's 'living memory'

 

“Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

 Born in Russia on this date in 1918, Solzhenitsyn spent nearly half his life in prison, in work camps, or in exile for writing with honesty and a genuine willingness to stand for those ordinary people depicted in the works he created.   After being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, he lived for a number of years in the U.S. where he continued to turn out amazing literature before he was finally able to return to Russia in 1994.  He died in 2008.

 

I’ve been reading The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett and one of the interesting side stories in Book 3 is about a Soviet dissident imprisoned in Siberia who not only finds a way to write down the experience but also how to smuggle the story out to a publisher.   That is the story of Solzhenitsyn whose historic novels The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch provide a deep understanding of the horrors that faced ordinary people daring to confront the evil of totalitarianism. 

Awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature” Solzhenitsyn gave this advice to writers willing to stand for social justice: “Own only what you can always carry with you; (and) know languages, know countries, know people.  Let your memory be your travel bag.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Embodying the human spirit'

A Writer's Moment: 'Embodying the human spirit':   “I strongly believe that literature can do something that nothing else can do, and that is embody the human spirit.”  –  Thomas McGuane ...

'Embodying the human spirit'

 “I strongly believe that literature can do something that nothing else can do, and that is embody the human spirit.” –  Thomas McGuane

 

McGuane may be the only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters who’s also a member of both the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame and the Flyfishing Hall of Fame – both subjects for his writing.  His work includes 10 novels, lots of short fiction, and many screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors.

 

Born in Michigan on this date in 1939, McGuane envisioned himself as a writer from a very young age, admiring what he perceived as an “exciting, adventurous life.” He began a serious devotion to writing by the age of 16, first studying creative writing at Michigan State and then playwriting and dramatic literature at Yale.    His first novel, The Sporting Club, was published in 1969.   

 

Among McGaune’s best-known works are screenplays for The Missouri Breaks and 92 in the Shade.  His treasure trove of papers, manuscripts, and correspondence are located in the Montana State University Archives and Special Collections, where they are available for research purposes.  In 1993 Montana State awarded him an honorary doctorate degree and in 2023 its Award for Excellence in Service to the MSU Library, recognizing him “for advancing scholarship and access to unique materials.”                                   

McGuane said he never wanted to be a celebrity, just a good writer. “I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'The raw material of our craft'

A Writer's Moment: 'The raw material of our craft':   “Increase your word power.  Words are the raw material of our craft.  The greater your vocabulary, the more effective your writing.  We wh...

'The raw material of our craft'

 “Increase your word power.  Words are the raw material of our craft.  The greater your vocabulary, the more effective your writing.  We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world.  Respect it.”  - P.D. James

Born in 1920 and a high school dropout (who left school to support her impoverished family), James is one of the most celebrated crime writers in history.  Mostly self-taught, her works have been lauded by critics and readers alike, who rewarded her by purchasing more than 13 million of her books (to date).

Conferred with a life peerage by Queen Elizabeth (giving her the title of Barnoness)  for her contributions to literature and the British Empire, Jamess served in the House of Lords for several years and continued writing right up to her death in 2014.

"God gives every bird his worm," she said, "but He does not throw it into the nest."

A Writer's Moment: 'Where I'm going; not how to get there'

A Writer's Moment: 'Where I'm going; not how to get there':   “My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard yo...

'Where I'm going; not how to get there'

 

“My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.” – Joanna Trollop

 

Born in Gloucestershire, England on this date in 1943, Trollope (who often has written under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey) started her writing career at age 37 and with a bang.  Her first novel Parson Harding's Daughter was named the 1980 Romantic Novel of the Year by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Since then she’s authored three dozen books, several of which have been adapted for television, especially on the award-winning PBS Series “Masterpiece Theater.”  Her “upmarket” family dramas and romances tend to transcend these two genres, and she’s noted for writing with “striking realism,” especially in terms of human psychology and relationships.   Her most recent book is the bestseller Mum and Dad.

“I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end.  So, I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there,” she said.  “That gives (my) characters the chance to develop organically, just as happens in real life as you get to know a person.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'It just needs editing'

A Writer's Moment: 'It just needs editing':   “Poetry is everywhere.    It just needs editing.”– James Tate   Born in Kansas City, MO on Dec. 8, 1943 Tate grew up hoping to become...

'It just needs editing'

 

“Poetry is everywhere.   It just needs editing.”– James Tate

 

Born in Kansas City, MO on Dec. 8, 1943 Tate grew up hoping to become a gas station attendant.  After struggling in high school and overcoming being in a gang, he fell in love with writing while taking college classes on a dare.

  

Ultimately he earned three college degrees, taught poetry and creative writing in several major colleges, and became one of America’s greatest poets, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.    He authored 16 books of poetry and 30 books altogether before his death from cancer in 2015.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Tate’s,

 

                                         Teaching The Ape To Write Poems

                                                    They didn’t have much trouble

                                                    Teaching the ape to write poems:

                                                    First they strapped him into the chair,

                                                    Then tied the pencil around his hand

                                                     (The paper had already been nailed down).

                                                     Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder

                                                     And Whispered into his ear:

                                                    “You look like a god sitting there.

 

                                                      Why don’t you try writing something?”