Questions worth writing about

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke

Born on this date in 1917, British writer Clarke is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time.   A farmer’s son who “loved looking at the night skies,” he was mostly self-taught about astronomy but later earned major degrees in physics and astro-physics before turning to writing.

An avid popularizer of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability, he wrote nearly 30 books – both fiction and nonfiction – and more than a dozen collections of short stories.  He also wrote hundreds of essays, which appeared in various popular magazines. In 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize by UNESCO for his efforts in popularizing science.  His science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership made him one of the towering figures of science fiction. 

Clarke died in 2008 not long after being knighted            

 by Queen Elizabeth for “Services to Literature.”  Today science fiction writing awards in Britain and more than a dozen other nations are presented in his honor and recognizing his never-ending quest to learn more and share more about space and  space travel.
 

“I don't pretend we have all the answers,” he said.   “But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.”

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Our 'witness' to understanding

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser

Born on this date in 1913, Rukeyser was called by critic Kenneth Rexroth “the greatest poet of her exact generation.”  Also one of the leading American activists of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, she was best known for her poems about equality, feminism and social justice.

One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in West Virginia in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.  She said that she was drawn to write her testament and testimony to their spirits.  “The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness,” she said.

A leading journalist as well as poet, she wrote on both the American and world scene, covering events like the Scottsboro Case in Alabama and The Spanish Civil War.   Good writing, she said, is not only needed but essential –  to democracy, human life and understanding.

"I should like to use another word (about both                     

 reporting and writing),” she said.  “I suggest the old word 'witness,' which includes the act of seeing and knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence.  Nothing less is demanded of us.”

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Crafting one good sentence after another

 

“Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.   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 on this date in 1951, Hempel is a native of Chicago who spent her formative years in California, the setting for much of her fiction.  A journalist and creative writer, she has written for numerous magazines and newspapers while also writing short stories and teaching.  Currently living in Florida, she is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Florida.

Hempel is one of only a handful of U.S. writers to build a reputation solely on short fiction.  She jump-started her career by producing what has arguably been one of the most anthologized short stories ever written, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried.”  That 1985 story and nearly every other one of her first 20 years’ efforts are in her award-winning The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, named as one of The New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2007.    It’s truly a primer on how to do short story writing.

“I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people,” she said about her writing style. 

“I’ve always known when I start a story what                      

 the last line is.  It’s always been the case . . . I don’t know how it’s going to get there, but I seem to need that destination.”

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That 'I wonder what if?' factor

“If you aren't having fun, if you aren't anxious to find out what happens next as you write, then not only will you run out of steam on the story, but you won't be able to entertain anyone else, either.” – Tamora Pierce

Born on this date in 1954, Pierce has excelled at writing fantasy fiction for teenagers and featuring strong young heroines.   She won the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2013 for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature."

Pierce started writing when she was in the 6th grade, but not seriously until she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania.  There, she started writing the books that became her first best-selling set, The Song of the Lioness quartet, published from 1983–1988.  The series followed a main character named Alanna through the trials and triumphs of training as a knight.  Alanna, it turned out, was modeled after her younger sister Kimberly.    Tamora’s second “quartet” of best sellers was the 1999-2002 series Protector of the Small, and it was that series that cemented her nomination for the ALA award.   

Her writing style is inclusive to the point that the reader feels             

 like part of the story.   “The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that's rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, 'What if I wandered into this writer's people here?',” she said.  “If you've done your job and made your people and your settings well enough, (as a writer) that adds an extra dimension that you can't buy.”

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Journalistic foundation, Creative punch

“My earliest, most impactful encounter with a book was when I was seven and awoke early on Christmas morning to find Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in my stocking. I had never been so excited by the sight of a book - and have possibly never been since!” – Sophie Kinsella

  

Born on this date in 1969, Madeleine Sophie Wickham writes under the pen name Sophie Kinsella, an English author known for writing under the loosely termed style  “Chick Lit.”    Her fame has grown through her books The Shopaholic Series, led by 2009’s Confessions of a Shopaholic.  Those books have literally taken the world by storm, being translated into more than 30 languages.

  

“When I had the idea for Shopaholic, it was as though a light switched on,” she said.  “I realized I actually wanted to write comedy. No apologies, no trying to be serious, just full-on entertainment. The minute I went with that and threw myself into it, it felt just like writing my first book again - it was really liberating.”

Kinsella started as a financial journalist then branched into creative writing at age 24, publishing her first best-seller in 1995 The Tennis Party (re-released in 2012 as 40 Love) – under the name of Wickham.  Since then, she has churned out 23 novels, the latest Finding Audrey.

 

Glad she started as a journalist, she said journalism                     

 is a good foundation.  “Being a journalist is good if you want to write books: it teaches you to get beyond the blank screen. My books have been described as froth, but there's scope to be witty and ironic about everything in life.”

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Buckling down and getting to work

“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 the adventurous life of a writer as much as the prospect of writing. He began a serious devotion to writing by the age of 16, studied writing at Michigan State and then got into playwriting and dramatic literature while studying for his MFA at Yale.

His first novel, The Sporting Club, published in 1969, set the high standards he has followed the rest of his career and also set up the types of things about which he likes to write.  “I like to write about the solitary things people do,” he said.  “Humans seem to function best when they're alone.”  And, he noted,  “I think there's only one interesting story... and that's struggle.”

McGuane said he never wanted to be a celebrity writer, but he always wanted to be a good writer. “I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.”   His best-known work – besides the screenplay he wrote for the Jack Nicholson movie The Missouri Breaks – is probably 92 in the Shade, also made into a movie.  And while he said he sometimes worries about the health of the novel, he’s still a leading

 advocate for it as an art form.                                          

“A lot of the writers I've known for 20 years, who used to say, 'Maybe they're right - the novel is dead!' - well, now they don't feel that it's necessarily the biggest job or most sacred calling on the planet. But it's definitely a real thing - it's always been here, always will be here, and one might just as well buckle down and get to work.”

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Words that foster change

 “No matter how brief an encounter you have with anybody, you both change.” – Carolyn Kizer

This fall, I had the good fortune to visit Spokane, Wash., the birthplace of the wonderful poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Carolyn Kizer, who would have been celebrating her 91^st birthday today.   Kizer, who won the Pulitzer for her 1984 poetry book Yin, was the first director of Literary Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966.   She also held appointments as poet-in-residence or lecturer at many of the nation’s leading universities in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Her first published poem was in The New Yorker                

 at age 17, but she said the first real poem she remembers writing “was about the wheat fields between Spokane and Pullman” when she was 14.   Her first book of poems – The Ungrateful Garden – was published in 1961, two years after she helped found Poetry Northwest in Spokane.  She served as its editor until her appointment to the NEA.  In addition to the Pulitzer, she won the Pushcart Prize 3 times and the Frost Medal for her body of work.  She died in 2014.     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Kizer’s,

A Poet’s Household

1
The stout poet tiptoes
On the lawn. Surprisingly limber
In his thick sweater
Like a middle-age burglar.
Is the young robin injured?

2

She bends to feed the geese
Revealing the neck’s white curve
Below her curled hair.
Her husband seems not to watch,
But she shimmers in his poem.

3

A hush is on the house,
The only noise, a fern,
Rustling in a vase.
On the porch, the fierce poet
Is chanting words to himself.

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