A Writer's Moment: 'Better to be right . . . or wrong?'

A Writer's Moment: 'Better to be right . . . or wrong?':   “Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”    – Aldous Huxley    Best known for  Brave New W...

'Better to be right . . . or wrong?'

 

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

 

 Best known for Brave New World, considered by most critics as one of the ten best language novels of the 20^th Century, and for the non-fiction book The Doors of Perception, Huxley was born into a family of writers and educators in London, England in July of 1894.  

 

Writing by the age of 10, he was editing the distinguished magazine Oxford Poetry in his early 20s before starting his creative writing career doing short stories and poetry.  At age 30 he turned to novels, all successful, though none so much as Brave New World, released in 1931.  Following the novel’s immense success, he became a travel writer and his travel books are still considered among the best ever written.  Huxley finished his writing career as a television and film scriptwriter in the United States, where he died in 1963.   

 

Widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time, Huxley was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Of Brave New World, he said he wrote it out of fear that mankind would lose individual identity in the future and needed to be prepared.  

 

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

A Writer's Moment: 'Well, Imagine That'

A Writer's Moment: 'Well, Imagine That':   “If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering .” – Tom ...

'Well, Imagine That'

 

“If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering.” – Tom Robbins

 

Born in Blowing Rock, NC in July of 1932, Robbins went to school in Virginia and after a stint in the military started his writing as a journalist.  His creative writing career started in the mid-1960s when he rejected an opportunity to write a book about art but told the publisher that he had an idea for a novel.  The publisher gave him a chance and the result was the bestseller, Another Roadside Attraction.

 

Robbins, who died in 2025, wrote 8 bestselling novels, many dozens of short stories and essays, and 2 nonfiction books, including the self-declared “un-memoir” Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life.  Heading up the list of his many successes is his irreverent novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, also made into a popular movie.  Ultimately, Writer’s Digest named him one of the 100 Best Writers of the 20^th Century.

 

“The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination,” Robbins said.  “If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's a search for order'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's a search for order':   “For me, poetry is always a search for order.”  – Elizabeth Jennings Jennings was born in England on this date in 1926 and was lauded f...

'It's a search for order'

 “For me, poetry is always a search for order.” – Elizabeth Jennings

Jennings was born in England on this date in 1926 and was lauded for her lyric poetry and mastery of form.  She started writing in her mid-20s after graduating from Queen Anne’s College and was published in such major journals as Oxford Poetry, New English Weekly, The Spectator and Poetry Review before her first book, Poems, – winner of the Arts Council of Great Britain’s award for “Best First Book of Poetry” – came out in 1953.

She followed it with A Way of Looking, winning the Somerset Maugham Award given to leading writers under the age of 35.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Jennings’,

Delay
The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

A Writer's Moment: 'A most solitary occupation'

A Writer's Moment: 'A most solitary occupation':   “Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He or she must be alone, uninterrup...

'A most solitary occupation'

 

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

 

Born in Indiana on this date in 1902, West wrote dozens of short stories and 20 novels, most notably her acclaimed The Friendly Persuasion – also made into an Academy Award “Best Movie” nominee – and its sequel, Except For Me and Thee, eventually made into a much-heralded television movie.

 

West started her adult life as an elementary teacher in California before contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanatorium for treatment.  While there, undergoing extensive treatment and rehabilitation, she began writing to pass the time and after regaining her health decided to continue pursuing writing as a career.

 

Her stories, loosely based on tales told to her by her mother and grandmother about their life in rural Indiana, often reflect West’s proclaimed love of bygone eras.

  

“The past,” she said, “is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.”

A Writer's Moment: Taking on 'the task of finding reality'

A Writer's Moment: Taking on 'the task of finding reality':   “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck” – Iris Murdoch   Born in Irel...

Taking on 'the task of finding reality'

 

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck” – Iris Murdoch

 

Born in Ireland on July 15, 1919 Murdoch grew up in London and first made her writing “commitment” with a series of philosophical essays and the blockbuster novel Under the Net that catapulted her onto the international literary scene in the early 1950s.  The novel ultimately was selected by both Time magazine and Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.   

 

Murdoch went on to produce 25 more novels and many additional works of philosophy, poetry and drama, winning The Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea, The Whitbread Literary Award for Fiction, and the James Tait Black Award for The Black Prince.  Shortly before her death in 1999, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature.”

 

Her literary life was further honored by two memoirs from her husband John Bayley -- the books serving as the basis for the movie Iris, featuring Kate Winslett and Judi Dench as the younger and older Murdoch.

 

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion,” Murdoch wrote.   “The great task in life is to find reality”

A Writer's Moment: 'Lke arranging pieces of music'

A Writer's Moment: 'Lke arranging pieces of music':   “Ordering is difficult. It's like arranging pieces of music in a concert: What do you put first? What do you put after the intermissio...

'Lke arranging pieces of music'

 

“Ordering is difficult. It's like arranging pieces of music in a concert: What do you put first? What do you put after the intermission? I want the reader to be sort of surprised, to come to each story freshly.” – Lydia Davis

Born in Massachusetts on July 15, 1947 Davis is primarily a short story writer, although she’s also published novels and essays and served as a translator from French and other languages.  She’s especially noted for her translations of French literary classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.  

 

 Winner of the Man Booker Prize for her lifetime body of work, Davis has been acclaimed for the brevity and humor of many of her short stories.   Davis has compared her shorter stories to skyscrapers, because, "They are surrounded by an imposing blank expanse."  Some of her stories have been labeled poetry, even though she insists they are not.  A number of her stories are highlighted in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis.  Her most recent works are 2023’s Our Strangers: Stories and 2025’s Into the Weeds. 

 

While both her parents were writers and teachers, Davis gravitated toward a career in music, initially studying piano, then violin.  But she said it probably was inevitable that she would become a writer.

 

"I was probably always headed to being a writer, even though that wasn't my first love,” she said.  “I guess I must have always wanted to write in some part of me or I wouldn't have done it.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating an appropriate past'

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating an appropriate past':   Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?” – John Leonard   Born in Great Britain in July of 1...

'Creating an appropriate past'

 

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

 

Born in Great Britain in July of 1965, Leonard was raised and educated there but now makes his home in Australia.  The author of 5 poetry collections, his most recent work is the 2024 novel Shakespeare in Virginia.  For Saturday’s Poem, from his book Braided Lands, here is:

 

You Don't Write a Poem

You don't write a poem-

What you do is discover

That there is a world,

Quite similar to our own,

Except that it contains

This one extra poem.

 

And what you recognise

Is that this one poem

Makes all the difference

© John Leonard

A Writer's Moment: 'Just grow up and write'

A Writer's Moment: 'Just grow up and write':   “I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way, for me, it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen ...

'Just grow up and write'

 

“I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way, for me, it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen in hand. I'd always been told that it was impossible to be published, so I was writing only for myself.” – Jane Hamilton

 

Born in Illinois in July of 1957, Hamilton was the youngest of five children and started writing early, accumulating prizes for poetry and short stories even before she was out of high school.    

 

 At Carleton College in Minnesota, she continued along her literary pathway, earning a degree in English and then heading off to an internship at Dell Publishing for Children.   But she got sidetracked enroute, meeting her husband-to-be in Wisconsin and deciding to forego book editing to join his apple growing business – something they still do.  But, since apple growing is “seasonal," she had time to pursue her writing during “off season.”

 

Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award for Best First Novel.   She followed it with A Map of the World, firmly establishing her credentials.  Both books also became critically acclaimed films.   Much of her work (she now has 8 best-selling novels) reflects her personal experiences, settings and characters.  Her latest is 2025’s The Phoebe Variations.

 

Hamilton said she always thought that even though she was not a particularly good speller, writing was just something she was meant to do. 

 

“I just assumed that if you were a girl-child, you were supposed to grow up and write.”

A Writer's Moment: Writing 'a clear vision of life'

A Writer's Moment: Writing 'a clear vision of life':   “My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is. “ – Jill McCorkle   Born in Lu...

Writing 'a clear vision of life'

 

“My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is. “ – Jill McCorkle

 

Born in Lumberton, North Carolina on this date in 1958, McCorkle is an award-winning short story writer and professor of creative writing at North Carolina State University.   Winner of the Dos Passos Prize – given annually to a writer in the middle of his or her career who is deemed to be “under-recognized for his/her life’s work” – she also is a frequent speaker at regional and national book and author events.  

 

McCorkle has published seven novels and five collections of short stories, led by Going Away Shoes; Final Vinyl Days & Other Stories; and Life After Life.  Her most recent work is the 2024 collection Old Crimes.

 

“For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow,” she said about her stories.  “It's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Just telling a good story'

A Writer's Moment: 'Just telling a good story':   “I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my workday is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an...

'Just telling a good story'

 

“I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my workday is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.” –  David Eddings

 

Born in Spokane, Washington on this date in 1931, Eddings made that statement shortly before his death in 2009.  And the writings about which he spoke were several fantasy series’ mostly created in partnership with his wife Leigh.  

 Eddings grew up in the Puget Sound area and that rugged region became the setting for some of his early (and moderately successful) stories, like High Hunt, but it was in the Fantasy genre’ that he made his mark.   His call to the world of fantasy came from a doodled map he drew one morning over coffee - a doodle that became the geographical basis for a world he called Aloria.

 

A terrific chess player, too, Eddings took Leigh’s suggestion that he incorporate elements of chess into his books.  Combining that with the new world he imagined led to he and Leigh writing 5 best-selling series, starting in 1982.  Their last, The Dreamers, ended in in 2006 after she died following a series of strokes.   The Dreamers featured characters who could use their dreams to foresee visions of the future.  His tales often seemed prophetic but David pooh-poohed those who held him up as a visionary.

 

“I'm a storyteller, not a prophet,” he said.  “I'm just interested in telling a good story.”

A Writer's Moment: It's finding that 'right word' combination

A Writer's Moment: It's finding that 'right word' combination:   “Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary - how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one...

It's finding that 'right word' combination

 

“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary - how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
 

Born in July of 1804, Hawthorne became one of the prominent mid-19^th Century American writers, primarily through tales about his native New England. His fictional works, labeled by some as "Dark romanticism," have themes centering on the inherent evil and sin of humanity with moral messages and deep psychological complexity embedded in them.

 

His most prominent story that has lasted through the ages, is his tale of adultery, The Scarlet Letter.  It’s success catapulted him from near obscurity into the center of the New England writing movement that included such prominent writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  He took advantage of his new popularity to rapidly publish The House of the Seven Gables, Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, and a new version of Twice-Told Tales, which hadn't succeeded in its earlier release.

 

The great-great grandson of one of the judges at the Salem Witch Trials, Hawthorne wrote often about Puritanic themes and espoused being pure, accurate and meticulous, especially when it came to the power that writers' words can convey.   

“Accuracy," he said, "is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy of dishonesty.  Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

A Writer's Moment: The 'Ongoing Gleam' of hope

A Writer's Moment: The 'Ongoing Gleam' of hope:   Francis Scott Key, 1779-1843, was a lawyer and amateur poet from Georgetown, Washington, D.C., when he wrote the poem “The Defence of Fort...

The 'Ongoing Gleam' of hope

 

Francis Scott Key, 1779-1843, was a lawyer and amateur poet from Georgetown, Washington, D.C., when he wrote the poem “The Defence of Fort McHenry” that gave us our nation’s national anthem. 

 

Key had been sent to negotiate the release of American prisoners aboard one of the British ships in the Baltimore Harbor but instead was detained aboard the ship as the British prepared to bombard Fort McHenry and capture the city.  Unable to do anything but watch the bombardment – on the night of September 13–14, 1814 – he saw at dawn that the American flag still flew above the embattled fort and excitedly reported the outcome to the other prisoners being held on the ship.

 

Then, inspired, he wrote his famous poem about the experience – the first stanza becoming our anthem.  For Saturday’s Poem, here are the first two stanzas (there are 4 stanzas in the complete poem) of Key’s later re-titled,

 

The Star Spangled Banner 

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,   

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming;   

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;   

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave   

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?       

 

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,   

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, 

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,   

As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?   

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,   

In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;   

‘Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave 

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!       

A Writer's Moment: 'It was the key to success'

A Writer's Moment: 'It was the key to success':   “Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of you...

'It was the key to success'

 

“Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.” – Neil Simon
 

Born in the Bronx, NY on July 4, 1927 Simon grew up during the Great Depression – a great shaper of both his life and his art.  Writing about “life” became the grist for his creative mill, beginning with work on comedy scripts for radio and then gravitating to the Broadway stage.

 

He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, earning more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.   After breaking onto the playwriting scene with Come Blow Your Horn in 1961, Simon won his first Tony for the long-running and one of the most widely performed plays in history, The Odd Couple. 

 

The first playwright to earn 15 “Best Play” awards, he was given a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.   Simon, who died in 2018, also won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Lost in Yonkers, was named for the Mark Twain Prize, America’s top humor award, and was the first living playwright to have a Broadway theater named in his honor.    

 

While humor is at the heart of most of Simon’s works, his rich variety of entertaining, memorable characters also portray the human experience with serious themes.   His said he thought his willingness to try new things was a key to his success.   

 

“If no one ever took risks,” he said, “Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”

A Writer's Moment: The foundation for 'the biggest stories'

A Writer's Moment: The foundation for 'the biggest stories':   “The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together.” –   Susan Glaspell   Born on July 1, 1876 ...

The foundation for 'the biggest stories'

 

“The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together.” –  Susan Glaspell

 

Born on July 1, 1876 Glaspell was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright as well as an actress, novelist and journalist who joined with her husband George Cram Cook to found the Provincetown Players, America’s first modern American theater company.    She also served in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project, created during the Great Depression as a relief measure for artists, writers, directors and theater workers to help keep regional theater alive.

 

A prolific writer, Glaspell wrote 9 novels, 15 plays, more than 50 short stories, and a biography, a leading writer on issues of gender, ethics, and dissent.  She has been recognized as a pioneering feminist writer and America’s first important modern female playwright.  Her one-act play Trifles, written in 1916, is frequently cited among the greatest works of American theater.  It also was adapted as a short story and 50 years later as a popular movie A Jury of Her Peers.

 

Inspired by the great investigative journalist Nellie Bly, she worked as a school newspaper reporter at  Drake University where she got her first taste of “being on-stage” as a leading member of the school's debate team.  She simultaneously worked at the Des Moines Daily News and became the paper's first full-time female reporter after graduation.

“I am glad I worked on a newspaper,” she said of that experience. “It made me know I had to write . . .  whether I felt like it or not.  And I loved it!”

A Writer's Moment: 'The difficult challenge of fiction'

A Writer's Moment: 'The difficult challenge of fiction':   “Truth is, every writer has to be a good editor, and you have to edit yourself. It's a skill every writer has to acquire.”  – Lisa Sco...

'The difficult challenge of fiction'

 

“Truth is, every writer has to be a good editor, and you have to edit yourself. It's a skill every writer has to acquire.” – Lisa Scottoline

 

Born in Philadelphia on this date in 1955, Scottoline grew up in Merion – site of many great pro golf tournaments – and earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.   On track toward a law firm partnership, she decided to try her hand at writing after the birth of her daughter and penned the award-winning crime mystery Final Appeal.  And, just like that, she switched careers.

 

Now the author of more than 30 books, her works have been translated into 30 languages and sold over 30 million copies.  Among her titles are Look Again and Don't Go, both reaching number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list.  Her most recent is 2024’s The Truth About The Devlins. 

 

An Edgar Award winner, Scottoline has served as President of the Mystery Writers of America and also has co-authored a number of bestselling non-fiction memoirs with her daughter (Francesca Serritella). 

 

“I love writing both fiction and memoir,” she said.  “Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.”