That Inspiration To Improve

“Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.” – Kimberly Willis Holt

Born on Sept. 9, 1960, Holt is perhaps best known for the novel When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, which won the 1999 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature.  Daughter of a US Navy Chief in Pensacola, Florida,  she spent most of her childhood in Forest Hill, LA, “growing up” experience that inspired her award-winning first novel, My Louisiana Sky.  Her experiences as a “Navy brat” are reflected in her Piper Reed series.   To date she has written 18 books for Young Adults and Children

Holt said she’s often amazed how the tiniest real life moments can grow into books, and that she always has in the back of her mind that her characters really don’t go away once a book is finished.

 “My biggest disappointment (as a writer),” she said, “is that once I’m finished working on the characters, I really do expect to see them in the flesh one day.” As many readers would agree, it is often hard to “let those characters go.” 
                                    Holt also has some great advice for young authors who say they struggle with “wrapping up” a piece on which they’re working.  “If you're having trouble finishing a book, it might be that you're trying to hard to fix it as you go. Just finish the story, no matter how terrible you think that first draft is. Then let it cool off.  In other words, don't look at it for a while. Then you can rewrite it.”

 

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Your Necessity for Success

"Persistence is a necessary ingredient for success." - Debasish Mridha 

Mridha is a neurologist and attending physician at Covenant HealthCare at the Michigan Neurology Center who also enjoys writing, both for relaxation and as a way to express his creativity.  

 

Renowned as both a healer and a poet and essayist, he has written extensively on the importance of the power of words in the healing process.  “Focus on your dreams, believe in yourself, and know that anything is possible if you put your heart and mind into it,” he said.    “A writer creates wings of words and lets them fly in the sky of readers’ minds.”   

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

     Dreams of Desire 

In my heart, a live fire,
Like the morning sun
Burning my mind, to purify the soul
That is my love.

In my dream, a burning desire,
Like the light from a diamond
Make my life ever precious
That is my love.

My mind is ever longing,
As the moon longs for night.
Make the night dreams of desire
That is my love.

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Life's Greatest Adventure

“Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.” – Taylor Caldwell

Born in England this date in 1900, Caldwell emigrated to the U.S. in 1907 and spent many of her formative years living in poverty after her father died.  It shaped her values and she said she always wanted to have money and never again live in fear of want.

A writer even before leaving England (where she won a Charles Dickens Prize for young writers) she became a prolific author of popular fiction, writing under her own name and the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner, and by her married name of J. Miriam Reback. 

In her fiction, she often used real historical events or persons combined with her own vivid imagination, writing bestsellers like Dynasty of Death, Dear and Glorious Physician (about Saint Luke), The Earth is the Lord's (about Genghis Khan), and Captains and the Kings.   Over her long lifetime (she died at age 85), she had nearly 50 novels published and purportedly discarded more than 150 more.  To date, her books have sold upward of 40 million copies worldwide.

                   “A born skeptic” she believed firmly in education and hard work.  “I wanted to acquire an education, work extremely hard and never deviate from my goal to make it.”

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Exploring 'Voice' Possibilities

“I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.” – China Miéville

Award-winning writer Miéville (for such books as King Rat and The City & the City) was born in England on this date in 1972 and said he got his name in a rather unorthodox fashion.  “My parents went through the dictionary looking for a beautiful name, nearly called me Banyan, flicked on a few pages and came to China, which is cockney rhyming slang for mate,” he said.

Miéville is a noted political activist and intended to have a career in academics, earning degrees in social anthropology and international relations, then teaching English in the Middle East before trying his hand at writing in the late 1990s.  Good choice.  Since then he has won dozens of writing honors, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times), the British Fantasy Award (twice), the Hugo, Kitschies and World Fantasy Awards, and Locus Awards for Best Fantasy Novel (four times), Best Novelette, and Best Young Adult book.  

             A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has authored 12 novels, 3 collections of short stories, several comic books and children’s books, 6 nonfiction books, and several collections of essays and said he has plans to write a book in every genre, if possible.

“Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice,” he said,  “and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.”

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Extolling Literary Social Justice

“I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.” – Jonathan Kozol 

Born on Sept. 5, 1936 Kozol is an American writer, educator, and activist best known for his books on public education in the United States.

Death at an Early Age,  his first non-fiction book, is a description of his first year as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools. It was published in 1967 and won the National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion.  It has sold more than two million copies in the United States and Europe.  

      His book Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America received the Robert F. Kennedy Book award and the Conscience-in-Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.   And those were just two of his many books and essays.

 

“I don't know if anything I write will endure," Kozol said,  "but I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children.” 

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Drawn To Complicated Tales

“As a writer, the best mindset is to be unafraid.” – Malcolm Gladwell

While reading my first Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers: The Story of Success, I couldn’t wait to share things from it with anyone who would listen.  Thus, when Gladwell’s next book, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, was released, I rushed to get that one, too, and was not disappointed. 

Gladwell, born on this date in 1963, is a Canadian journalist (born in England) whose books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences.  He also makes frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology.  While that might sound dry, it’s absolutely the opposite and some of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking reading you might encounter.

Also optimistic.  “All my books are optimistic,” Gladwell said.  “I wrote my first book when I was in my late 30s, and I had so much optimism to share by that time.”  He said he may have gone through the angst of youth, but he didn’t write about it.     He has written 5 books now and all have been on the New York Times bestseller list.   He has been a regular for The New Yorker since 1996 where most of his stories have originated.

When asked about the process behind his writing, he said "I have two parallel things I'm interested in. One is, I'm interested in collecting interesting stories, and the other is I'm interested in collecting interesting research. What I'm looking for is cases where they overlap.  Actually, I've had the most un-traumatic life a human being can have.  But I've always been drawn to those who have had far more complicated histories.” 

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The Poems Happening Around Us

“The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.” – Rita Dove

Born in August 1952, Dove is both a poet and essayist who served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in the mid-1990s.  A native of Ohio, she now lives with her family in Charlottesville, VA.        “I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life,” she said.  “It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Dove’s,

Golden Oldie

I made it home early, only to get
stalled in the driveway-swaying
at the wheel like a blind pianist caught in a tune
meant for more than two hands playing.
The words were easy, crooned
by a young girl dying to feel alive, to discover
a pain majestic enough
to live by. I turned the air conditioning off,
leaned back to float on a film of sweat,
and listened to her sentiment:
Baby, where did our love go?-a lament
I greedily took in
without a clue who my lover
might be, or where to start looking.

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