Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 366

A Writer's Moment: Writing From Your Heart

A Writer's Moment: Writing From Your Heart: “I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot...

Writing From Your Heart

“I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot... and memory is important.” – Judy Collins

Born on May 1, 1939, Collins started her amazing music career at age 13 as a piano prodigy, dazzling audiences by performing Mozart's “Concerto for Two Pianos.”  Since then, the award-winning singer-songwriter has earned the esteem of audiences and fellow performers and writers alike for her imaginative interpretations and poignant original arrangements and compositions. 
Her music has ranged from folk to soft rock to classical and gospel.  Her version of “Amazing Grace” was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant.”   Born in Seattle, she spent her teen and young adult years in Colorado and was recently named to the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame for her musical career.                                 As a prose writer, Judy has authored half-dozen books, including the powerful and inspiring Sanity & Graceand her extraordinary memoir Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music.   “I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings,” she said.   “The (things) that you are suppose to write, I believe, are in your heart.”



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A Writer's Moment: The 'Stealth Philosophy' of Fantasy

A Writer's Moment: The 'Stealth Philosophy' of Fantasy: “Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what's happening. In fantasy you ca...

The 'Stealth Philosophy' of Fantasy

“Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what's happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story. “ – Terry Goodkind 
Born in Omaha on this date in 1948, Goodkind is known for his epic Fantasy series The Sword of Truth as well as the contemporary suspense novel The Law of Nines, which has ties to his Fantasy series. The Sword of Truth series has sold 25 million copies worldwide and been translated into 20 languages.
Goodkind has dyslexia, which initially dissuaded him from any interest in writing.   He initially worked building cabinets and violins, and was a marine and wildlife artist, before deciding he had a Fantasy story to share and deciding to make the effort to write it down.  The end result, Wizard’s First Rule, was an immediate hit and changed his life’s course.
Since that book’s publication in 1994, he has produced 15 other bestselling novels and one novella.   Goodkind believes using the Fantasy genre allows him to better tell his stories and convey the human themes and emotions he desires to share with readers.  “I've always said Fantasy is sort of 'stealth philosophy',” he said.       “It allows you to say things that sound very dramatic and get away with it. If you had characters in modern fiction say the same things as they're driving down the street in an Oldsmobile they'd sound ludicrous!”

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A Writer's Moment: Living A Well-Sculpted Life

A Writer's Moment: Living A Well-Sculpted Life: “Treat your life like something to be sculpted.” – Larry Niven Born in Los Angeles on this date in 1938, Laurence...

Living A Well-Sculpted Life

“Treat your life like something to be sculpted.” – Larry Niven
Born in Los Angeles on this date in 1938, Laurence van Cott Niven has been a full-time writer since the early 1960s, starting with a well-received short story “The Coldest Place.” Since then he has built a reputation as the world’s leading “Hard Sci-Fi” writer, especially for his worldwide bestselling series Ringworld.  Called by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “The most energetic future history series ever written,” Ringworld won the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards.
He has written 54 novels, several screenplays and television scripts, and dozens of short stories, novellas and stories for comics, winning numerous awards in the process.  Named by Arthur C Clarke as his favorite author, Niven likes using big science concepts and theoretical physics.   He also created several alien species, one of the best-known being The Kzin, featured in a series of 12 books collectively called “The Man-Kzin Wars.”  In addition to Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Niven often includes elements of the Detective Fiction and Adventure genres’ in his stories.                                          Over the course of his career Niven has put together a list of “Niven's Laws,” which he describes as “how the Universe works” as far as he can tell.   About the possibility of time travel, he said, “I'd  visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.”
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A Writer's Moment: Giving Kids Wit, Charm and Hope

A Writer's Moment: Giving Kids Wit, Charm and Hope: “One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even t...

Giving Kids Wit, Charm and Hope

“One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading.  I have been a reader ever since.”– Beverly Cleary
Cleary, who turned 103 this month, authored more than 30 books about and for children, and generations of children worldwide have embraced them.  Nearly 100 million copies of her works have been sold and they’re still going strong, as is Cleary, who celebrated her birthday on "Drop Everything and Read Day"  (April 12th).
Among her character creations are Henry Huggins, Ribsy, Ralph S. Mouse, Beezus and Ramona – names embedded in our Kids’ Lit Lexicon.   Among her dozens of awards are the Newberry Medal, the National Book Award. The National Medal of Arts, the “Living Legend” Award from the Library of Congress, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal.                                It was working as a children’s librarian that first made Cleary aware she wanted to write children’s books.  Her mother told her that kids like stories filled with wit and charm, so she created stories she hoped would fit that profile while also sparking kids’ interest in reading.
She said she also knew that kids are sometimes confused or frightened by the world around them and feel deeply about things that adults can easily dismiss.   “I didn't start out writing to give children hope,” she said, “but I'm glad that through my books some of them found it.”


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A Writer's Moment: 'No Looking Back'

A Writer's Moment: 'No Looking Back': “I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry...

'No Looking Back'

“I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry. There was no looking back.”– Edwin Morgan

Morgan, born on this date in 1920, was widely recognized as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century.       In 1999, ten years before his death, he was the first to be honored with the title “Scottish National Poet.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Morgan’s,
                      Absence
My shadow --
I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark
and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold
in the early light in my room high over London.
What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire
so that I got up and looked out half-asleep
at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below?
Without fire
Only the wind blew.
But in the dream I woke from, you
came running through the traffic, tugging me, clinging
to my elbow, your eyes spoke
what I could not grasp --
Nothing, if you were here!

The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.


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