Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 12

A Writer's Moment: Just an entertaining good time

A Writer's Moment: Just an entertaining good time: “I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to te...

Just an entertaining good time

“I think good art should always beentertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as awriter has always been to tell a good story and give my readers a good time.” –Kenneth Oppel

Born in Port Alberni, Canada in Augustof 1967, Oppel has had a distinguished career as a children’s and young adultwriter.  He holds the distinction ofwinning both Canada’s Governor General's Literary Prize and the AmericanLibrary Association’s (ALA) Printz Honor Award twice, for the books Airborn and TheTimes.

 

Oppel, who now lives in Toronto,started writing as a teen, penning a humorous story about a boy addictedto video games, leading to his first book Colin's Fantastic VideoAdventure published just as he was starting college.  Whileat the University of Toronto he wrote his second bestseller, TheLive-Forever Machine, in a creative writing class.    His more recent works include Skybreaker,named the ALA’s Best Book for Young Adults and his 2022 novel Ghostlight.  

While his books are popular reads, only one has made it onto film -- a TV show based on his Silverwing series.  He thinks it’s arare possibility for books to become movies.

 

“Realistically,” he said, “the chance of any bookbecoming a film is (very) slim.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins with listening'

A Writer's Moment: 'It begins with listening':   “I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.”  – Jeanette Winterson   Born in Manchester, Eng...

'It begins with listening'

 

“I believe in communication; bookscommunicate ideas and make bridges between people.” –Jeanette Winterson

 

Born in Manchester, England on thisdate in 1957, Winterson first won acclaim for her book Oranges Are Notthe Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenagegirl rebelling against conventional values.

 

Winterson won a basketful of awardsfor Oranges, then followed that by winning the prestigious JohnLlewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion, a novel set in NapoleonicEurope.  Among Winterson’s recentbestsellers is the novel Frankissstein: A Love Story inspired byMary Shelley’s Frankenstein and long-listed for theprestigious Booker Prize. 

 

Also a broadcaster and a professorof creative writing, Winterson has been lauded for depiction of sound in herstories, something she attributes to having a keen ear.

 

“Everything in writing begins withlanguage,” she said, “and language begins with listening.”

'Don't get sucked into drama'

 

“Because Dad was famous, I was soused to being identified as 'John Huston's daughter' that I couldn't think ofmyself as anyone else.” – Allegra Huston

Born in London on this date in 1964, Huston has moved out of her famousfamily’s shadow through her success as an award-winning writer andeditor.     Her novels Say My Name and LoveChild: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found were multiple award winners, theformer also made into an Academy Award winning movie.   She alsois the writer and producer of the award-winning short film Good Luck,Mr. Gorski.     

 

London critic LynnBarber wrote in The Telegraph that, "Huston is anabsolutely outstanding writer, incapable of writing a dullsentence."   In collaboration with the poet James Navé, sheconducts writing workshops called “The Imaginative Storm,” a multi-day programwhich they have taught in many places around the world.   And she’s written two books for writers: Howto Edit and Be Edited, and How to Read for an Audience.

 

Her advice for writers is to thepoint. “Don't waste time on what's not important. Don't get sucked into thedrama. Get on with it: don't dwell on the past. Be a big person; be generous ofspirit; be the person you'd admire.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Don't get sucked into drama'

A Writer's Moment: 'Don't get sucked into drama':   “Because Dad was famous, I was so used to being identified as 'John Huston's daughter' that I couldn't think of myself as ...

'Excelling at a slow, steady award-winning pace'

“Reviewers have called my books'novels in verse.' I think of them as written in prose, but I do use stanzas.Stanza means 'room' in Latin, and I wanted there to be 'room' - breathingopportunities to receive thoughts and have time to come out of them beforestarting again at the left margin” – Virginia Euwer Wolff

Born in Portland, OR on this date in 1937, Euwer Wolff is author of the award-winningseries Make Lemonade, featuring a 14-year-old girl named LaVaughnwho babysits for the children of a 17-year-old single mother.  TrueBeliever, the second in the three-book series (they’re not really atrilogy), won her the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and in2011 she was the recipient of the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children'sLiterature, recognizing all of her writing.

 

Wolff said she uses her own teenageyears as a foundation for her work.  “The teenage years are the yearsto examine faith - the need to be independent and the need to be anchored,” shesaid. “It’s a time to ask, ‘Who made all this? And what do I have to do withit?’” 

  

Slow and steady is herself-proclaimed writing pace and she says she is “several years in” on a new (asyet untitled) novel whose characters are “brave, foolish and goofy . . . anddon’t know what a Kardashian is.”

 

“No one writes as slowly as I do,I'm convinced.  It's so hard for me . . .I make decisions at a snail's pace,” she said. “I work early in the morning before my nasty critic gets up – he risesabout noon.  By then, I've put in much ofa day's work.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Excelling at a slow, steady award-winning pace'

A Writer's Moment: 'Excelling at a slow, steady award-winning pace': “Reviewers have called my books 'novels in verse.' I think of them as written in prose, but I do use stanzas. Stanza means 'room...

A Writer's Moment: 'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling'

A Writer's Moment: 'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling':   “Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.”  –  Lo...

'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling'

 

“Innocence of heart and violence offeeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannotexist without them.” –  Louise Bogan

 

Born in Maine in August of 1897 (she died in 1970) Bogan published her first book Body of This Death: Poems, in1923.  She wrote several bestselling books of poetry then became the longtime poetry editor for The New Yorker magazine.  Named U.S. Poet Laureate in 1945, her works are still widely shared andstudied.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bogan’s,

                                         Roman Fountain

Upfrom the bronze, I saw
Water without a flaw
Rush to its rest in air,
Reach to its rest, and fall.

Bronze of the blackest shade,
An element man-made,
Shaping upright the bare
Clear gouts of water in air.

O, as with arm and hammer,
Still it is good to strive
To beat out the image whole,
To echo the shout and stammer
When full-gushed waters, alive,
Strike on the fountain's bowl
After the air of summer.