Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 379

Be A Reader - Every Day

“Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.”– Jane Yolen

Born in New York City on this date in 1939, Yolen was immersed in writing almost from birth, the daughter of a journalist and public relations writer.  She started writing in elementary school and created a “newspaper” in her Manhattan apartment building while still in junior high, a time when she also wrote multi-page essay about New York State’s manufacturing industry – in rhyme.
In high school, she won a Scholastic magazine poetry contest, and edited and wrote for the school newspaper, something she continued at Smith College.  There, she also wrote a book of poetry, was president of the Press Board, and penned song lyrics for theater productions in which she was involved.   On her 21st birthday, she sold her first book (nonfiction) about female pirates titled Pirates in Petticoats.  “After that,“ she said, “I was a book writer for good.”
The author or editor of nearly 400 books and short stories, her best known tales are The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella; the Nebula Award-winning short story Sister Emily's Lightship; a novelette Lost Girls; and her children’s books Owl Moon, The Emperor and the Kite, and the Commander Toad series.                         Yolen said a writing technique she has always employed is to read everything aloud, no matter whether it’s a novel, an essay, or a children’s picture book.  “I believe the eye and ear are different ‘listeners’,” she explained.  “So as writers, we have to please both.”

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The talent of a writer

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him." - Mel Brooks  
Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, NY, in 1926, Brooks started his long, successful show business career by organizing entertainment for combat troops who had advanced across Europe in the last part of WWII.  That was when he wasn't defusing landmines and destroying pillboxes as part of a special combat engineering unit - service that won awards for heroism.While many only think of Mel Brooks as a comedian, the multi-talented 92-year-old also is a thoughtful writer who is one of only a handful of people to have won all four of the major entertainment awards - Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony - three of them for writing.A poet, too, he wrote: Hope for the best.Expect the worst.  Life is a play.  We’re unrehearsed. [image error] 

A Writer's Moment: The talent of a writer

A Writer's Moment: The talent of a writer: “Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate...

A Writer's Moment: Genre-hopping writing success

A Writer's Moment: Genre-hopping writing success: “Often, when you look at history, at least through the lens that many of us have looked at history - high school and c...

A Writer's Moment: 'Wising Up'

A Writer's Moment: 'Wising Up': “We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its ba...

'Wising Up'

“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.” – James Stephens         Irish novelist and poet Stephens, born on this date in 1882, produced many retellings of Irish myths and fairy tales, often marked by a rare combination of humor and lyricism.  His Irish Fairy Tales is especially praised, as his novel  The Crock of Gold.  “Quietness,” Stephens once said, “is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.”   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Stephens’,
        In The Poppy Field
Mad Patsy said, he said to me,
That every morning he could see
An angel walking on the sky;
Across the sunny skies of morn
He threw great handfuls far and nigh
Of poppy seed among the corn;
And then, he said, the angels run
To see the poppies in the sun.

A poppy is a devil weed,
I said to him - he disagreed;
He said the devil had no hand
In spreading flowers tall and fair
Through corn and rye and meadow land,
by garth and barrow everywhere:
The devil has not any flower,
But only money in his power.

And then he stretched out in the sun
And rolled upon his back for fun:
He kicked his legs and roared for joy
Because the sun was shining down:
He said he was a little boy
And would not work for any clown:
He ran and laughed behind a bee,
And danced for very ecstasy.

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Genre-hopping writing success

“Often, when you look at history, at least through the lens that many of us have looked at history - high school and college courses - a lot of the color gets bled out of it. You're left with a time period that does not look as strange and irrational as the time you're actually living through.”– Karen Joy Fowler
Born in Indiana on this date in 1950, Fowler studied Political Science, then took dance classes with an eye on being a classical dancer before trying her hand at writing and realizing that was the right career path for her to follow.  Although she might be best known for her mega-best selling novel The Jane Austen Book Club, she started her career penning short stories, beginning with the award-winning “Recalling Cinderella.”          After 10 years of short story writing, she published her first novel, Sarah Canary, to critical acclaim, winning the prestigious James Tiptree, Jr. Award in the process.  That literary prize is given for science fiction or fantasy that "expands or explores our understanding of gender."  Sarah Canary focuses on a group of people experiencing a peculiar kind of “first contact.”   Fowler said she wrote the book to "read like a science fiction novel to a science fiction reader" and "like a mainstream novel to a mainstream reader,” leaving it to each individual reader’s interpretation. 
Fowler’s career has been marked by her willingness to try several different genres, particularly Science Fiction, Fantasy and Literary Fiction.   “The smart way to build a literary career is you create an identifiable product, then reliably produce that product so people know what they are going to get,” she said.  “That's the smart way to build a career, but not the fun way. Maybe you can think about being less successful and happier. That's an option, too.”



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Putting words into conscience

“I don't write to give joy to readers but to give them a conscience.”– Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Born on this date in 1925, Toer was an Indonesian author of novels, short stories, essays, polemics and histories of his homeland and its people. His works span the colonial period, Indonesia's struggle for independence, its occupation by Japan during WWII and the post-colonial authoritarian regimes of Sukarno and Suharto.  He died in 2006.
Imprisoned several times, including a 10-year period, for his writings on behalf of human rights and freedom of expression, he became a cause célèbre for advocates of social justice around the globe. 
Best known for his four novels called the Buru Quartet – This Earth of Mankind; Child of All Nations; Footsteps; and House of Glass – he was honored around the globe for his writings, including major awards from France, the United States, and Norway, the latter for his contribution to world literature and his continuous struggle for the right to freedom of expression.  Toer died in 2006 but his writings continue to be taught and used as inspiration for human rights efforts worldwide.                           “Even though no one admits it,” Toer said at the time of his Norwegian honor,  “writers are leaders in their communities.”


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An actor immersed in the story

“If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.” – Russell Hoban

Born in Pennsylvania on this date in 1925, Hoban spent 41 years living and writing in England (where he died in 2011).  While there, he wrote most of his mainstream adult fiction, poetry, and several plays to complement some 3 dozen children’s and young adult books that he wrote throughout his lifetime.    
A World War II veteran (and winner of a Bronze Star for heroism), Hoban started his post-War career as an illustrator, painting several covers for Time, Sports Illustrated, and The Saturday Evening Post before he wrote and illustrated his first children's book, What Does It Do and How Does It Work? Power Shovel, Dump Truck, and Other Heavy Machines.   The book’s success put him on a new career path from which he never looked back.
Among his many other lasting children’s books are the Frances the Badger series, which he also illustrated, and the multiple award-winning How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen, which shared the annual Whitbread Award for Children's Books in 1974.   Science Fiction, Fantasy and Magical Realism are the basis for most of his Adult and Young Adult works.  His novel Riddley Walker won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.    
“When I write a book,” Hoban said,  “I don't have a plan or an outline. The characters move the action, and the action develops the characters. When I write a book, I become an actor, really, taking the role of the person who is speaking or acting at the time, and so their reactions to whatever they see are my reactions.”

Putting Thoughts Into Words

“A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work.
“To write a novel?  No – that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on ‘till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.” – Mark Twain 
Discouragement can be the biggest enemy of any writer and often I am confronted by someone who says “I’d like to try writing a novel, but all I have is this idea, or a couple words or sentences, and I don’t think I can move forward from there.”   Thoughts to words; words to sentences; sentences to paragraphs; to chapters; to books.  Happy writing.