Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 370

A Writer's Moment: Letting Each Story 'Tell Itself'

A Writer's Moment: Letting Each Story 'Tell Itself':   “I'm not into high literature, but I think all my books are literate.” – James Herbert Born in London on April 8, 1943, Herbert...

Letting Each Story 'Tell Itself'

 “I'm not into high literature, but I think all my books are literate.” – James Herbert
Born in London on April 8, 1943, Herbert said he never intended to write horror stories and yet once he started writing them “they just poured out of me.”
The son of a marketplace shop owner, Herbert also never intended to be a writer, studying in art school and looking to a career in advertising design.  But he said he had a couple story ideas he wanted to try out and in quick succession published The Rats and The Fog, both immense worldwide bestsellers that launched his writing career and defined the type of writing he’d do from that point (age 29 and 30) on.  Up to his death in 2013, Herbert wrote 23 horror and ghost novels, 2 nonfiction books, and half-a-dozen short stories.  Sales of his books have reached over 60 million in some 3 dozen languages.
He also published one graphic novel, doing his own illustrations and design, something he  also did for most of his book covers.  “I've always loved comic books,” he said when his graphic novel, The City, came out in 1993.  “As a kid, I used to read cowboy stories and historical comics about other worlds, unknown places that would take me out of myself and which helped to develop my imagination.”         In 2010 The World Horror Convention gave him its Grand Master Award (presented by Stephen King) and he was Knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his lifetime achievements.   “I never plan my novels,” Herbert said about his prolific career,  “because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I just let each story tell itself.”
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A Writer's Moment: Tense, Highly Readable Plots

A Writer's Moment: Tense, Highly Readable Plots: Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in.   It is a logi...

Tense, Highly Readable Plots

Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in.  It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.” – Elizabeth George
George, born in February 1949, develops a plot as well as – if not better than – any writer in any genre.  Hers is in the mystery world, and in particular revolves around her well-known (both on the page and on the screen) Inspector Lynley.  From her first novel, A Great Deliverance (1988) to her most recent, The Punishment She Deserves (2018), George has written success after success with tense, highly readable plots.
I’ve heard through the grapevine that she’s exploring a series of books for Young Adults, and I hope that is true, because developing stories that will bring in the next generation of readers is crucial to the writing world.  I can think of few other writers today who I’d put at the forefront of tackling such a task.                                 “Writing is no dying art form in America,” George said,  “because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.”
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A Writer's Moment: When The Caged Bird Sings

A Writer's Moment: When The Caged Bird Sings: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget...

When The Caged Bird Sings

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”– Maya Angelou   
For Saturday’s Poem, here is Angelou’s,
    Caged BirdThe free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.


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'The Impulse To Explain Who We Are'

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the ocans – because we can.   We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.  That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone, that’s why we write – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.” – Maya Angelou
Author, poet, dancer, actress, and singer, Angelou, who was born in St. Louis, MO, on this date in 1928, published 7 autobiographies, 3 books of essays, many books of poetry, and a long list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning 50 years.  Over that time she was honored with dozens of awards and some 50 honorary degrees.                              While much acclaim came to her for her essays and biographies – especially her 1968 title I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings – it was her poetry that drew the most attention, especially when she herself performed them at the dozens of public readings and talks she did each year.  It was my good fortune to hear her on several occasions, and at one held on the campus of Augsburg College I met with and asked her if she wrote her poems first for herself and then to share, or the other way around.
“I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader,” she said.  “I do.  But I write for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say.  So I write for myself and that reader who will pay his or her dues.”


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A Writer's Moment: 'The Impulse To Explain Who We Are'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Impulse To Explain Who We Are': “We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the ocans – because we can.    We have some ...

Writing for Nature and the World

“For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.”—John Burroughs

Born into a New York farm family (in upstate New York) on this date in 1837, Burroughs was a naturalist and writer who called himself – "a literary naturalist with a duty to record perceptions of the natural world.”   While he loved farming, he wanted to explore and study nature more and left the farm to teach elementary school at age 17 so that he could earn money to fund a college education in that field.  By his early 20s he was already living in the wild and writing about his experiences.  His first break as a writer came in 1860 when the Atlantic Monthly, then a fairly new publication, accepted his essay Expression.
From then until his death in 1921, Burroughs wrote hundreds of essays and some two dozen books on the natural world and the people who lived and worked in it.  Among his lasting works are books on Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John David Muir and Camping and Tramping With Theodore Roosevelt, written during Roosevelt’s second term when Burroughs often accompanied the President on his trips into America’s wilderness.                                      Burroughs’ impact as a writer about the natural world was honored just before his death when he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.“Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature,” he said in his acceptance.  Near the end of his life, he wrote wistfully, “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.”
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A Writer's Moment: Writing for Nature and the World

A Writer's Moment: Writing for Nature and the World: “For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no p...