A Writer's Moment: The 'Magic' of Words and Writing

A Writer's Moment: The 'Magic' of Writing: “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark...

The 'Magic' of Writing

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you." -  Carl Sagan

 Born in Brooklyn, NY, in November 1934, Sagan was an astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astrobiologist who also wrote more than 600 articles and authored, co-authored or edited 20 books. 

Sagan's award-winning and best-selling novel Contact was the basis for a popular movie, and he also co-wrote, produced and narrated Cosmos, the most widely watched series in the history of American Public Television. 

 

 He died of pneumonia at the young age of 61, but just before his death he spoke these wonderful words about "the magic" of writing.

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

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A Writer's Moment: 'All Prose Responds To Work'

A Writer's Moment: 'All Prose Responds To Work': “Writing is revision.   All prose responds to work.” –Tracy Kidder Kidder turns 74 today and I thought about him ...

'All Prose Responds To Work'

“Writing is revision.  All prose responds to work.” –Tracy Kidder

Kidder turns 74 today and I thought about him and his writing during yesterday’s Veterans Day activities and recently while working on a writing project for Research Computing at CU Boulder.  A Vietnam War veteran, Kidder is well known in both the writing and computing worlds for the work that won him the Pulitzer Prize, The Soul of a New Machine.

While that is Kidder’s prize winner, I think his book House might be even more deserving.  Kidder, who lives in Williamsburg, MA, said he hit on the idea of writing a book about the trials and tribulations of building lawyer Jonathan Souweine's Amherst home while following some local carpenters around. 

 

    His hundreds of hours of research and interviews with everyone from the architect to Souweine’s in-laws to the builders shows how ordinary parts of our lives can be brought into extraordinary focus through a writer’s portrayal.

"In fiction,” Kidder said, “believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. (But) It has everything to do with those things in nonfiction. I think that the nonfiction writer's fundamental job is to make what is true believable."

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A Writer's Moment: The Wonderful World of Words

A Writer's Moment: The Wonderful World of Words: “The wonder of reading. When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - you're terrifically aware of that. But when ...

The Wonderful World of Words

“The wonder of reading. When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.  It takes you anywhere.” – Janet Fitch

Author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which also became a hit film, Fitch was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 9, 1955, and grew up in a family of voracious readers, even though, “none of them were literary, or writers.”    “My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers and he instilled that in me.”

Planning to be a historian because of history’s powerful narratives, scope of events, colossal personalities, and the potency and breadth of its themes, she found herself, instead, drawn to writing about things historical and so she did. 

Fitch regularly teaches fiction writing at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers summer workshops and has taught at a number of colleges and universities.   Her short fiction and essays have appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout Southern California and she has produced several more novels, including Paint It Black – named for the Rolling Stones’ song (and also made into a movie). 

“I write all the time,” she said, “whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.”

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A Writer's Moment: Using Words Most Effectively

A Writer's Moment: Using Words Most Effectively: “ The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communi...