Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 401

Emotional Connections Equals Writing Success

“There is no better test of character than when you're tossed into crisis. That's when we see one's true colors shine through. So I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them.”– Tess Gerritsen
Gerritsen, born on this date in 1953, grew up in San Diego and longed to be a writer, but her family had reservations about the sustainability of a writing career, so Gerritsen chose a career in medicine.
But while home on maternity leave, she finally took the plunge into the writing world, although not into the genre’ that would ultimately make her famous.  Instead, she went with Harlequin and did a series of paperback romance novels.  Her colleagues kept urging her to combine her writing skills and medical background instead, and finally in 1996 she wrote Harvest, her first medical thriller.  It’s the story of a detective and doctor working together (sound familiar?) to solve the mystery of orphans disappearing and who they think are being used as organ donors.  Three more bestselling medical thrillers followed before she wrote her landmark medical examiner/detective partnership called Rizzoli and Isles.  Twelve books and a 7-year television series followed.   To date she’s had her books published in 40 countries with sales of over 25 million.                                       “I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material and the smarts,” Gerritsen said in a bit of advice to any fellow doctors hoping to get into the writing field.  “They have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.”

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'Good Hands' for Great Writing

“A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.”– Saul Bellow
Canadian by birth and later a naturalized U.S. citizen, Bellow attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University where he studied writing and English but earned degrees in sociology and anthropology.  The fact that he was an anthropologist probably is not a surprise for his readers who find anthropological references sprinkled throughout his many award-winning books.  
Born on this date in 1915, Bellow’s 3 best-known novels are Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Humboldt’s Gift.  For his work, he won every major writing award, including the Nobel Prize, the National Book Award for Fiction (3 times), the Pulitzer Prize (twice) and the National Medal of The Arts.                                          “When we ask for advice,” Bellow once noted with his usual wry sense of humor, “we are usually just looking for an accomplice.”




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Poems For The Human Spirit

“We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.” – Nikki Giovanni
  Born on this date in 1943, Giovanni is an essayist, commentator, activist, and educator, and one of the world's best known African-American poets.  Her work includes anthologies, recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature.  Among her myriad awards are the Langston Hughes Medal, the NAACP Image Award, finalist for a Grammy for The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, and being honored as one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 "Living Legends.”      One of Giovanni’s most poignant poems was her tribute to Robert F. Kennedy, written just days after his assassination 50 years ago this week.  Here, for Saturday’s Poem, is Giovanni’s,     A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. KennedyTrees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . .
is yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . .
Not when their cooling shade . . . has yet to comfort . . .

Yet there are those . . . unheeding of nature . . . indifferent to
ecology . . . ignorant of need . . . who . . . with ax and sharpened
saw . . . would . . . in boots . . . step forth damaging . . .

Not the tree . . . for it falls . . . But those who would . . . in
summer's heat . . . or winter's cold . . . contemplate . . . the
beauty . . .

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Poignant Poetry By A Living Legend

“We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.” – Nikki Giovanni
  Born on this date in 1943, Giovanni is an essayist, commentator, activist, and educator, and one of the world's best known African-American poets.  Her work includes anthologies, recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature.  Among her myriad awards are the Langston Hughes Medal, the NAACP Image Award, finalist for a Grammy for The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, and being honored as one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 "Living Legends.”      One of Giovanni’s most poignant poems was her tribute to Robert F. Kennedy, written just days after his assassination 50 years ago this week.  Here, for Saturday’s Poem, is Giovanni’s,     A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. KennedyTrees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . .
is yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . .
Not when their cooling shade . . . has yet to comfort . . .

Yet there are those . . . unheeding of nature . . . indifferent to
ecology . . . ignorant of need . . . who . . . with ax and sharpened
saw . . . would . . . in boots . . . step forth damaging . . .

Not the tree . . . for it falls . . . But those who would . . . in
summer's heat . . . or winter's cold . . . contemplate . . . the
beauty . . .

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Having That 'Transformative' Impact

“I realized I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book.”– Sara Paretsky  Born in Iowa on this date in 1947, Paretsky grew up in Kansas.  Despite an inclination toward writing from an early age – “I always wrote;” she said, “my first story was published in The American Girl when I was 11.” – she earned a degree in Political Science from the University of Kansas.   But, the pull toward writing was too strong and at age 30 she took up the pen to write the novel Indemnity Only, creating a hard-boiled, crime-fighting female hero in the process.  Today, Paretsky’s protagonist V.I Warshawski is one of detective fiction’s best known. A Chicago-based private investigator, Warshawski has appeared in all but two of Paretsky’s 20 novels and also has been brought to life on the big screen by actress Kathleen Turner.

Paretsky helped transform the role and image of women in the crime novel genre’, earning Ms. Magazine’s “Woman of the Year” award, and the British Crime Writers Gold Dagger Award and Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement.  She also had an entire issue of Clues: A Journal of Detectiondevoted to her work.       Beyond her novels, Paretsky has written half-dozen nonfiction books and two short story collections.   Founder of Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports and promotes women in the mystery writing field, she has this simple advice for new writers:  “Write what you care about.”



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One of Life's Treasures

“Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.” – Louise Erdrich
Born on this date in 1954, Erdrich is one of our most significant Native American writers, winner of the National Book Award for The Round House, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for The Plague of Doves, and author of the beautiful and heart-wrenching Love Medicine. In 2015 Erdrich was honored with the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. 
It has been my good fortune to meet her and be part of literary discussions with her on several occasions. Her thoughtful and “calming” conversations about writing and character development always struck me as seeming to come from a Native Elder, even in the years when she was still in her 20s and 30s. 
She and her sisters are often presenters of their works at writers’ workshops and reading sessions, well known in both the writing and Native communities.  Her sister Heidi – who writes as Heid – is a gifted poet, and sister Lise is a children’s book author and writer of literary essays.          In addition to her ongoing writing, Louise operates Minneapolis bookshop Birchbark Books, focusing primarily on Native American literature and support for the Native community.
As we approach Father’s Day, Erdrich shares this comment about her father’s influence on her writing.  “My father is my biggest literary influence. Recently, I've been looking through his letters. He was in the National Guard when I was a child, and whenever he left, he would write to me. He wrote letters to me all through college, and we still correspond. His letters, and my mother's, are one of my life's treasures.”


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Reading ... and Writing ... for Inspiration

“Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.” – Sarah Dessen

Born in Evanston, Illinois on this date in 1970, YA novelist Dessen said she got interested in writing early in life and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t writing.  After moving to Chapel Hill, NC as a child (her parents were college professors), she studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina and then dived right in – to a job as a waitress at a burrito restaurant, waiting tables at night and writing by day.  Her first novel, That Summer, hit the market in 1996 and by 1997 she was writing full time.  Both That Summer and her second novel Someone Like You were honored by the American Library Association in their “Best Fiction for Young Adults” category – the first two of seven of her books to achieve that honor.    Those two novels also inspired the popular movie “How To Deal,” starring Mandy Moore and Allison Janney.
All 14 of her books (to date) have been best sellers, and led to Dessen’s being selected for the ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award  “ . . .for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.”
Dessen gives the same advice that many other best-selling writers do:  First be a good reader.  “I was always a big reader, mostly because my parents were,” Dessen said.       “I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once.”

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Reading For Inspiration ... And Writing

“Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.” – Sarah Dessen

Born in Evanston, Illinois on this date in 1970, YA novelist Dessen said she got interested in writing early in life and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t writing.  After moving to Chapel Hill, NC as a child (her parents were college professors), she studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina and then dived right in – to a job as a waitress at a burrito restaurant, waiting tables at night and writing by day.  Her first novel, That Summer, hit the market in 1996 and by 1997 she was writing full time.  Both That Summer and her second novel Someone Like You were honored by the American Library Association in their “Best Fiction for Young Adults” category – the first two of seven of her books to achieve that honor.    Those two novels also inspired the popular movie “How To Deal,” starring Mandy Moore and Allison Janney.
All 14 of her books (to date) have been best sellers, and led to Dessen’s being selected for the ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award  “ . . .for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.”
Dessen gives the same advice that many other best-selling writers do:  First be a good reader.  “I was always a big reader, mostly because my parents were,” Dessen said.       “I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once.”

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Combining History and Imagination

“I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.” – Ken Follett
Born in Wales on this date in 1949, Follett has carved out arguably the number one spot in the world for writing a combination of thrillers and historical fiction.  Since the publication of his first book Eye of the Needle in 1978 he has sold a remarkable 380 million copies (and counting) achieving a rare three number ones in a row on the New York Times Bestseller List with his “Century Trilogy.”                   I agree that doing the research is both interesting and an absolute “must” if you’re going to tackle the historical fiction genre’.  You build and build on a folder full of facts, figures and personalities until, of course, you realize that if you’re ever going to actually create your story you have to stop researching and start writing.  And, then it's fun to connect “real” historical personalities with those you imagine.   Follett likes that process.  “I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation,” he said.  “I want readers to feel:  ‘Okay, this probably didn’t happen…but it might have.’”


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The Fun of Combining History and Imagination

“I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.” – Ken Follett
Born in Wales on this date in 1949, Follett has carved out arguably the number one spot in the world for writing a combination of thrillers and historical fiction.  Since the publication of his first book Eye of the Needle in 1978 he has sold a remarkable 380 million copies (and counting) achieving a rare three number ones in a row on the New York Times Bestseller List with his “Century Trilogy.”                   I agree that doing the research is both interesting and an absolute “must” if you’re going to tackle the historical fiction genre’.  You build and build on a folder full of facts, figures and personalities until, of course, you realize that if you’re ever going to actually create your story you have to stop researching and start writing.  And, then it's fun to connect “real” historical personalities with those you imagine.   Follett likes that process.  “I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation,” he said.  “I want readers to feel:  ‘Okay, this probably didn’t happen…but it might have.’”


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