A Writer's Moment: 'The Way Life Is'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Way Life Is':   “Sometimes I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.” – Bernardo Bertolucci   Born in Italy on this date in 1941,...

'The Way Life Is'

 “Sometimes I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.” – Bernardo Bertolucci

 

Born in Italy on this date in 1941, Bertolucci not only was an award-winning movie director but also an award-winning writer of novels, short stories and numerous screenplays, both for his own films and for films directed by others.

 

Writer and Director of  “Last Tango in Paris,”  “The Last Emperor” (which won him Golden Globes and Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay), and “Stealing Beauty” (which introduced Liv Tyler in her first leading role), he also was the first recipient of an Honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Bertolucci began writing novels and short stories at the age of 15, and earned several

prestigious literary prizes including Italy’s Premio Viareggio.   Planning to follow in his father Attilio’s footsteps as a poet, anthologist and film critic, he turned instead to film writing after working for famed filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.  His first film came out in 1962.

 

“I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope,” he said shortly before his death in 2018.   “This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: Channeling Those Inner Voices

A Writer's Moment: Channeling Those Inner Voices:   ‘”I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. W...

Channeling Those Inner Voices

 ‘”I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper.” – Ridley Pearson

 

Born in Upstate New York on March 13, 1953, Pearson is the author of some 30 suspense and thriller novels for adults, and two dozen (and counting) adventure books for children.  Among his best known are Never Look Back, Choke Point and Cut and Run, and the wildly successful Peter and the Starcatcher series for kids.  His series set inside the Disney theme parks, The Kingdom Keepers, also has earned him accolades from kids and adults alike.

 

Pearson’s novels have been published in two-dozen languages and have been adapted for network television and the Broadway stage. His Edgar-nominated crime novels have earned a reputation as fiction that “grips the imagination.”   

 

And, like most successful writers, he encourages writers to be good readers.

 

“My favorite novel is To Kill a Mockingbird because of its broad sweep, its tackling of big issues in ways that even young minds can make sense of and for the heart of the characters, who span a wide range of ages,” he said.   “I reread it every year.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'As Dancing is to Walking'

A Writer's Moment: 'As Dancing is to Walking': “Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.” – John Barrington Wain   Born in England on March 10, 1925 Wain was a prolific poet, novelis...

'As Dancing is to Walking'

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.” – John Barrington Wain 

Born in England on March 10, 1925 Wain was a prolific poet, novelist and journalist, associated with the post-WWII literary group known as "The Movement.”   Wain also taught  at several major universities capped by a Poetry Professorship at Oxford.  

 

Among his best-known works are the novel Hurry On Down and a poetry collection Letters To Five Artists.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Wain’s,

 

            Outside, gulls squabbled in the empty street

 

Outside, gulls squabbled in the empty street.  Criticism

and name-calling.  Salt air scrubbed the gleaming

Sunday morning walls.  Gutter-split stalks, leaves, fuelled the

squalling

and wheeling.  Feet, motors, slept. The inured citizens

turned over to snore again.  Beside me, my darling

 

slept in a deeper peace, like a princess in a fable

all through the sea-clean, gull-torn dawn, slept below

dreaming,

stunned by those hours of outrageous bliss, bliss upon bliss,

when love leapt higher than even the fiercest lovers were able.

Patient, I lay, expecting tea and her morning kiss.

 

                                                                           

                                                J.B. Wain

A Writer's Moment: Write First For Your Heart

A Writer's Moment: Write First For Your Heart:   “When my writing really started to take off was when I made a decision that I would write only what I wanted to write,...