Writing Those Difficult Moral Dilemmas

“Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.” – Pat Barker

Patricia Mary W. Barker, born on this date in 1943, is an English writer whose Regeneration Trilogy collectively has often been cited among the 10 Best Historical Fiction works in English literature.   Winner of numerous awards, she generally focuses her writing on themes of trauma, survival and recovery.

Barker grew up as a voracious reader in a working class neighborhood in Yorkshire.  She studied international history at the London School of Economics and turned to writing in her mid-30s.  After early failures (her first 3 novels were rejected), she broke onto the scene in 1982 with Union Street, the first of 3 books set in the Yorkshire region of her youth.

Barker won the 1983 Fawcett Society Prize for Fiction for Union Street.  In 1993 she won the Guardian Fiction Prize for Eye in the Door, and in 1995 she won the Booker Prize for The Ghost Road.   Her exciting and compelling writing style often incorporates real historical figures with those she creates.  

                                     “When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.” 

 

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A Craftsman's Command of the Language

“If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say” – Jeffery Deaver

Deaver, born on this date in 1950, is one of America’s premiere mystery/crime writers having earned most of the top awards in the genre and making almost every major bestseller list around the globe.  A native of Illinois and graduate (in journalism) from the University of Missouri, and in Law from Fordham University, he started in a law career before realizing that what he really wanted to do was write. 

Among his awards are a Nero Wolfe and three Ellery Queen Reader's Awards for Best Short Story and Best Novel of the Year.        Deaver's most popular series features Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic detective, and NYPD Detective Amelia Sachs.  His books The Devil’s Teardrop, which first introduced Rhyme, and The Bone Collector, the first in the Rhyme series, both were made into popular television movies.  His newest The Cutting Edge is just out on the market in both text and audio versions.

When asked what has led to his success, his answer was simple:  “To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.”

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Poetry Was Always At The Heart of It

"When you're a poet, you're a poet first.  When it comes, it's like an angel." – May Sarton

I wrote earlier this week about Sarton, who shares a May 3^rd birthdate with me (she was born in 1912 and died poetry 1995).      A writer of many different types of literature and essays, it still was poetry that was at the heart of her life's work.     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Sarton’s,

                A Country Incident

Absorbed in planting bulbs, that work of hope,
I was startled by a loud human voice,
“Do go on working while I talk. Don’t stop!”
And I was caught upon the difficult choice—
To yield the last half hour of precious light,
Or to stay on my knees, absurd and rude;
I willed her to be gone with all my might,
This kindly neighbor who destroyed a mood;
I could not think of next spring any more,
I had to re-assess the way I live.
Long after I went in and closed the door,
I pondered on the crude imperative.

What it is to be caught up in each day
Like a child fighting imaginary wars,
Converting work into this passionate play,
A rounded whole made up of different chores
Which one might name haphazard meditation.
And yet an unexpected call destroys
Or puts to rout my primitive elation:
Why be so serious about mere joys?
Is this where some outmoded madness lies,
Poet as recluse? No, what comes to me
Is how my father looked out of his eyes,
And how he fought for his own passionate play.

He could tear up unread and throw away
Communications from officialdom,
And, courteous in every other way,
Would not brook anything that kept him from
Those lively dialogues with man’s whole past
That were his intimate and fruitful pleasure.
Impetuous, impatient to the last,
“Be adamant, keep clear, strike for your treasure!”
I hear the youthful ardor in his voice
(And so I must forgive a self in labor).
I feel his unrepentant smiling choice,
(And so I ask forgiveness of my neighbor).

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A Key Part of the Human Condition

“As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own; ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.” – Kim Edwards

Born on this date in 1959, Edwards is the author of two bestselling novels – The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which has been translated into 38 languages, and The Lake of Dreams – plus a collection of short stories, The Secrets of a Fire King.   Her writing honors include the Whiting Award, the British Book Award, and USA Today's Book of the Year (for Memory Keeper’s Daughter).

A graduate of Colgate University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she has taught widely in the US and Asia and now makes her teaching home at the University of Kentucky.    

                                In her teaching, Edwards says she often reflects on people’s desire to share stories as one of the things “that make us human.”   “I don’t think we’ll ever lose the desire for people to tell stories or to hear stories or to be entrapped in a beautiful story,” she said.  "It’s simply a part of the human condition."

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Writing That Moves And Creates

“The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.” – May Sarton

One of my favorite poets, May Sarton was born on this date in 1912 in Wondelgem, Belgium.  After emigrating to the U.S. at age 4, she grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and began writing poetry as a young teen.  Her first published volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was released in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938, both after she had decided that it was acting and not writing that she most wanted to pursue.

 

She actually started an acting company in New York, but with the ongoing success of her writing career, she finally left the theater to devote full time to her true compassion. During her prolific career that stretched to a final book of poetry, Coming Into Eighty in 1994,  Sarton wrote two dozen books of fiction and many works of nonfiction, including autobiographies and journals, a play and several screenplays. Still, she was best known and most highly regarded as a poet. 

                                                 When asked about the sometimes-tedious process of revising and rewriting, something every writer must face, she shrugged it off. “Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation.”

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The Importance of Names

“Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.” – Martha Grimes

Grimes was born in Pittsburgh, PA, on this date in 1931, a fact that sometimes shocks her readers – not that she was born in Pittsburgh, but that she was born in America.  That’s because many of her best-known mysteries feature Scotland Yard detective Richard Jury and most people thought she was British.

Grimes, who spent much of her youth in Western Maryland, where her mother owned a hotel, earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Maryland.  And her “Emma Graham” series of novels is set in a Maryland hotel that seems very familiar to those who have ever been to her mom’s hotel.   Named “Grand Master” by the Mystery Writers of America, Grimes also has a Mystery Writer of the Year Award for her novel The Anodyne Necklace.  

                                              Each of her Jury mysteries is named after a pub, and while she didn’t intend to have her hero do a story in the U.S., one just seemed to come naturally.

“In Baltimore,” she said,  “I was walking with a friend who was playing at a pub he kept referring to as the Horse. But when I saw the sign 'The Horse You Came In On' - I thought, 'My God.' I had no intention of ever setting a Jury novel in the U.S., but when I saw that, I thought, 'That's it.' The names are very important.”

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All's Possible In May

"The world's favorite season is the spring.  All things seem possible in May."
-  Edwin Way Teale

Happy May Day.  It’s  always seemed to be an inspirational month for writers and – lucky for me –  it’s also the month of my birth. 

Teale, quoted above was an American naturalist, photographer and writer perhaps best known for his series The American Seasons, four books documenting over 75,000 miles of automobile travel across North America following the changing seasons.      

Another writer I’ve enjoyed is English poet William Watson, who published his famous Odes And Other Poems in 1894.     Included in that book is Ode In May first published, coincidentally, on May 1^st.  So, to writers everywhere, enjoy your writers’ moments, and Happy May Day!

                                                            Ode in May

"What is so sweet and dear
As a prosperous morn in May,
The confident prime of the day,
And the dauntless youth of the year,
When nothing that asks for bliss,
Asking aright, is denied,
And half of the world a bridegroom is,
And half of the world a bride?"

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