Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 396

Caring About 'Reluctant Readers'

“Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids.”– Paolo Bacigalupi Born in Western Colorado on Aug. 6, 1972, Bacigalupi grew up on a farm, studied writing and Chinese, traveled the globe, and started his writing career doing stories – both journalistic and creative – about Far Eastern cultures and countries.   But he is perhaps best known today as a science fiction and fantasy writer for Young Adults, a demographic among which he has built legions of followers. 
Winner of most of the major Sci-Fi prizes, including Hugo, Nebula and Michael L. Printz Awards, he also has been nominated for a National Book Award while continuing to be a regular contributor to magazines, journals and newspapers.   “I used to work for a newspaper that covered local resource issues, and my coworkers and friends were journalists,” he said.  Fact-based, journalistic style permeates his work, especially in his award-winning short story collection Pump Six and Other Stories,       and in his breakout novel The Windup Girl, set in 23rd Century Thailand.  A great “What If?” tale, the book made almost every “Best Novel” and “Best Sci-Fi” list.   
Bacigalupi said he’s glad young people are drawn to his works.   “As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers,” he said.   “You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape.”



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Think Twice, Then Create

“Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice.” – Bill Watterson
Born in July 1958, Watterson created his iconic and much-awarded cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes after first trying his hand at political cartooning, developing an interest in lampooning the political arena while majoring in Political Science at Kenyon College in Ohio.
Calvin & Hobbes incorporates elements of Watterson's life:  his interests, beliefs, values and memories of his father's speeches about "building character."  For his efforts, especially creating those thoughtful and provocative statements, he was awarded nearly every major cartooning prize.  In his much-lauded book, The Complete Calvin And Hobbes, Watterson said the precocious Calvin is named for the 16th-century theologian who believed in predestination, while Hobbes is named for "a 17th-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature."
Regardless, his words and images, delivered from a wise little boy and his talking stuffed tiger, stand the test of time – something every writer and artist hopes his or her work will achieve.     Watterson stopped the comic strip when he felt it was becoming too commercialized.  But, after being honored with an international prize for his life’s work in 2014, he says he has many things left to do, including writing.       “God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things,” he said.  “Right now, I am so far behind that I will never die.”


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A Poetic Take On Life

“I think it's crucial that we remember the lives of people, not their deaths. Our deaths are not our lives.” – Ross Gay

Born on Aug. 1, 1974, Gay is the winner of numerous awards, including being a finalist for the National Book Award for his poetry collections.   A professor of poetry at the University of Indiana, Gay’s poems have appeared in the country’s leading literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Columbia: A Journal of Poetry and Art.        For Saturday’s Poem, here are two short Ross Gay poems.
 A Small, Needful Fact
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
                                              Ode To A FluteA man sings
by opening his
mouth a man
sings by opening
his lungs by
turning himself into air
a flute can
be made of a man
nothing is explained
a flute lays
on its side
and prays a wind
might enter it
and make of it
at least
a small final song


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Leading A 'Restoration Of Order'

“In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out.  Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.” – P. D. James

Phyllis Dorothy James, born on this date in 1920 and known professionally as P. D. James, was an English crime writer who rose to fame for her series of detective novels starring police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh.
James also rose from a life of poverty that forced her to leave school as a teenager in order to help support her family.  By the late 1940s, struggling by then to raise her own family she worked two jobs, cared for two young children, and returned to school, earning a degree in hospital administration.    It was while working in that field that she began writing in the late 1950s, had several essays published, and came out with her first novel, Cover Her Face, which introduced Dalgleisch and jump-started one of the most successful writing careers in history.       Her last Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, came out shortly before her death in 2014. 
Inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame, James wrote 20 novels and short story collections and also a “how-to” on crime writing, Talking About Detective Fiction.  “ What the detective story is about,” she said,  “is not murder, but the restoration of order.”


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Immersed In The World Through Writing

“I'm still a firm believer that we were definitely put here to use our minds, and that is what makes us different. And that that's the key. If there is anything that is going to stop mankind from being such a beastly, destructive creature, it is reason.“ – Caleb Carr
Born in Manhattan on Aug. 2, 1955, Carr is a leading military historian and a bestselling writer of such books as The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness, and Killing Time.   In addition to his writing he has been a professor of military history at Bard College, and is a much sought-after consultant and writer for film, television, and the theater.
Carr grew up in a household where his father was close friends with many famous writers and artists, including bestselling authors William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg.  He said their constant presence in his home made him both never want to be a fiction writer and always wanting to be one.    After studying at Kenyon College (Ohio) and New York University, where he earned a degree in military and diplomatic history, he started his writing career in 1980.  His military and political writings have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.      And, Carr is a contributing editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.
 “I'm a fairly ascetic person,” he said of his writing style.  “I do most of my writing at night. You don't get distracted, your brain goes into what you are writing about, into the world you're writing about, rather than into the world you're in.”



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Standing For Journalistic Freedom

“In the end, does it really matter if newspapers physically disappear?  Probably not:  the world is always changing.  But does it matter if organizations independent enough and rich enough to employ journalists to do their job disappear?  Yes, that matters hugely; it affects the whole of life and society.”– Andrew Marr
Born this day in 1959, Andrew Marr is a British commentator, broadcaster, print journalist, one-time editor of The Independent, and longtime host of “The Andrew Marr Show” on BBC News.                              He reflects a worry shared by many who started as or continue to serve as journalists – that our newer generation of readers is forgetting about the valuable role that journalists have in a free society, and that funding for investigative journalism and newspapers as we long have known them is rapidly disappearing.   
“The business of funding ‘digging journalists’ is important to encourage,” he noted.  “It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don’t have access to politicians, who don’t have easy access to official documents, who aren’t able to buttonhole people in power.” 

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Unfolding The Novel 'Bit By Bit'

“Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age.  The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit.  As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place.”– Patrick Modiano
French novelist and 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Modiano turns 73 today and his analogy of the development of the novel “before our eyes” is a remarkable one that also gives us a bit of a look into his writing style.  He lets the picture slowly unfold, sometimes leaving us startled, sometimes satisfied, sometimes angry, but always interested in what’s coming next.
His novels delve into the puzzle of identity in ways seldom seen.   And, he tackles a time in France – the German occupation during World War II – that evokes both heroism and shame depending on whose point of view his tale is being told.   The winner of almost every major European and French writing award, he was honored for his life’s body of work even prior to winning the Nobel and was – up until that award – one of the few international writers whose work had never been translated into English.                                               Modiano expressed what most novelists feel about the writing process when he discussed “starting” a new work.  “I quickly realized that it is difficult to get started when writing a novel. You have this dream of what you want to create, but it is like walking around a swimming pool and hesitating to jump in because the water is too cold.”
  
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Being Willing To Leap Into The Unknown

“Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap.” – Chang-Rae Lee
Born in South Korea on July 28, 1965, Lee is a novelist and professor of creative writing at Stanford University.  Much of his writing focuses on his family’s immigrant experience in moving to the U.S., but what he stresses for his students is to be aware of a broad spectrum of writing and writing styles. 
“I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes,” he said, “and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching.”
  Lee's first novel (in 1995), Native Speaker, jump-started his own career as it won numerous prizes, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The novel centers around a Korean American industrial spy, and explores themes of alienation and betrayal as felt or perpetrated by immigrants and first-generation citizens.  His book about the Korean War, The Surrendered, was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize for Literature.                                            Often, he said, he isn’t sure where he’s headed when he starts writing, but that’s not a bad thing.   As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, he said it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.   “I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.”



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Reaching People, One-By-One

“Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.” – Robert Graves
Graves, born in England in July, 1895, made his living as a historical novelist (I, Claudius and The Golden Fleece are just two examples), critic, and translator of Greek and Roman Classics.  But poetry was his first love and he wrote hundreds of poems on every topic imaginable..  His study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess—has been continuously in print since 1948.  “To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession,” he said.
For Saturday’s Poem, here is Graves’
Free Verse
I now delight
In spite
Of the might
And the right
Of classic tradition,
In writing
And reciting
Straight ahead,
Without let or omission,
Just any little rhyme
In any little time
That runs in my head;
Because, I’ve said,
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march,
Stiff as starch,
Foot to foot,
Boot to boot,
Blade to blade,
Button to button,
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.
No! No!
My rhymes must go
Turn ’ee, twist ’ee,
Twinkling, frosty,
Will-o’-the-wisp-like, misty;
Rhymes I will make
Like Keats and Blake
And Christina Rossetti,
With run and ripple and shake.
How pretty
To take
A merry little rhyme
In a jolly little time
And poke it,
And choke it,
Change it, arrange it,
Straight-lace it, deface it,
Pleat it with pleats,
Sheet it with sheets
Of empty conceits,
And chop and chew,
And hack and hew,
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat,
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!

 
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Hers Is A Recipe For Success

“Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.” – Cassandra Clare
Born to American parents in Iran on this date in 1973, Judith Rumelt took on the writing nom de plume of Cassandra Clare while still in high school in Los Angeles, where she mostly grew up.  By the time she finished college in the late 1990s she was writing under the name full time, beginning with a series of magazine jobs and then switching to YA fiction in 2005.    She is perhaps best known for her bestselling series The Mortal Instruments, which include her mega-seller titles City of Bones and City of Ashes.   Her sequel to the series, the Dark Artifices series, is currently “In Progress,” with Lord of Shadows now on the market.
A prolific writer, she has 22 books either on the market or coming by year’s end and also has written more than a dozen shorter works of fiction, all highly acclaimed and most as award winners.  Clare said her philosophy for “lots of writing” is simple:
“Write every day. Don't kill yourself. I think a lot of people think, 'I have to write a chapter a day' and they can't. They fall behind and stop doing it. But if you just write even one hundred words a day, it's not that much. By the end of a month, you'll have three thousand words, which is one chapter.”         “And write what you love - don't feel pressured to write serious prose if what you like is to be funny.”


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