Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 13
August 25, 2025
'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'
August 23, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'Innocense of heart, violence of feeling'
'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.
August 22, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'Small Stories; Big Impact'
'Small Stories; Big Impact'
“I have a feeling that books are alot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated inhigh school will strike you with the force of a revelation when you're older.” –Lauren Groff
Born in Cooperstown, NY (home of theBaseball Hall of Fame) on Aug. 23, 1978 Groff writes both novels and shortstories and is a frequent contributor to magazines like The New Yorker,Atlantic Monthly and Ploughshares. Her debut novel TheMonsters of Templeton won accolades from Amazon and the SanFrancisco Chronicle, and her bestselling novel Fates and Furies wasnominated for the National Book Award. Her most recentnovel, The Vaster Wilds, also has been a multiple award-winner.
A graduate of both Amherst Collegeand UW-Madison, she was recently named by Time Magazine as one ofAmerica’s 100 most influential people. AGuggenheim (“Genius”) grant recipient, she became both a book writer and sellerlast year when she opened a bookstore in Gainesville, FL.
Her advice to new writers is tothink about the small stories that create the larger whole.
“Bigger stories are made out oflonger acquaintance with fact and character,” she said, “but I also love thetiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined.”
August 21, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'Doing Extraordinary Stuff'
'Doing Extraordinary Stuff'
“It's kind of a misnomer aboutscience fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It'sabout people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.” –Greg Bear
Born in San Diego on this date in1951, Sci-Fi writer and illustrator Bear published more than 30 novels and 5story collections, earning nearly all the top writing awards including 5 Nebulas,2 Hugos, 2 Endeavours and the Galaxy Award from China. He was one of the original founders of SanDiego’s Comic-Con.
Among the best known of his booksare the Forge of God and The Way series, andhis works on “accelerated evolution” – Blood Music, Darwin'sRadio and Darwin's Children. Bear’s last title, published just before hisdeath in 2022, is The Unfinished Land.
Blood Music,first published as a short story, is the first in science fiction to describemicroscopic medical machines and treat DNA as a computational system capable ofbeing reprogrammed. Often classified as a “hard” science fictionauthor due to the level of scientific detail in his work, his tales oftenaddressed major questions in contemporary science and culture and then proposedsolutions.
“Science fiction works best,” he said, “whenit stimulates debate.”
August 20, 2025
'Like keeping in touch with friends'
“The characters I'm most emotionallyinvolved with are like friends you leave behind when you move away. You don'tsee them regularly anymore, but you still love them and keep in touch.” –Mary Doria Russell
Born in Illinois on this date in1950, Russell, who now resides in Cleveland, OH, has authored 7 novels, earningacclaim for all.
Planning to be an anthropologist,she already had earned a doctorate in biological anthropology and was teaching anatomyas a “post-doc” at Case Western dental school when she tried her hand atwriting, authoring a Sci-Fi tale called The Sparrow. A massive bestseller and winner of numerousprizes – including the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award – it led to her earning“Best First Novelist” accolades and put her on a new career path.
Among her other top titles are asequel to The Sparrow called Children of God, the historical murdermystery Doc, about notoriousgunfighter, gambler and dentist John Henry “Doc” Holiday, and her most recenttitle The Women of the Copper Country. Set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the meticulously researched noveltells the story of the young union organizer Annie Clements, once known asAmerica’s Joan of Arc.
“Wisdom begins when youdiscover the difference between ‘That doesn’t make sense’ and ‘I don’tunderstand,' " she said. "I don’t have much in theway of advice, but here it is: Read tochildren. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who’sselling fear.”
