Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 416

Immersing Readers - Start to Finish

“Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation.” – Nancy Kress

Sci-Fi writer Kress, who was born in New York on Jan. 20, 1948, is one of those authors who immerses readers in the story.  The author of 27 novels, 3 books on writing, 4 short story collections, and over a hundred works of short fiction, her books have won numerous "reader's choices" awards, not to mention 6 Nebulas and 3 Hugos.  Her first major multiple-award winner was one of her first novellas, the 1991 Beggars in Spain, later expanded  into a novel by the same title.  She also won multiple awards for 2013’s After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, and 2015’s Yesterday's Kin. 
Kress, who has master’s degrees in both Education and English, has taught at the collegiate level and also spent time working in advertising before turning her attention in the early 1990s to full time Science Fiction.   Her books have sold in the millions and been translated into 14 languages.  Her advice to new writers is to focus on sharp, compelling openings.                        “How many times have you opened a book, read the first few sentences and made a snap decision about whether to buy it?” she said.   “When it's your book that's coming under this casual-but-critical scrutiny, you want the reader to be instantly hooked. The way to accomplish this is to create compelling opening sentences.”






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Singing the poems of life

“There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.”– Edward Hirsch
Hirsch, born on this date in 1950, is a multiple-award winning poet described as “elegant in both his writing and reading of poetry,” bringing his own musical sound into the mix.   
                                  Among his many awards are the National Book Critics Circle Award for his collection Wild Gratitude; numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation; and a MacArthur “genius” award.  He is the author of 8 books of poetry and 7 nonfiction books, and has served as editor of at least a dozen other volumes.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Hirsch’s,
Early Sunday Morning
I used to mock my father and his chums
for getting up early on Sunday morning
and drinking coffee at a local spot
but now I’m one of those chumps.

No one cares about my old humiliations
but they go on dragging through my sleep
like a string of empty tin cans rattling
behind an abandoned car.

It’s like this: just when you think
you have forgotten that red-haired girl
who left you stranded in a parking lot
forty years ago, you wake up

early enough to see her disappearing
around the corner of your dream
on someone else’s motorcycle
roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit
caféfull of early morning risers
where the windows are covered with soot
and the coffee is warm and bitter.





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Presenting a face to the world

“We're all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don't spend any time, or think they don't, on preparing themselves for the world out there - I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.”– Cindy Sherman

Born in New Jersey on this date in 1954, Cynthia Morris "Cindy" Sherman is a renowned photographer and film director and MacArthur (Genius Grant) Fellowship winner who built her reputation through her award-winning conceptual portraits.
She started her career while still a student at Buffalo State (NY) University where she actually failed a photography class as a first-year student before returning to the genre a couple of years later (she re-took and passed the earlier class).  Sherman is noted for creating “series,” typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, she often shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress, and model.
Many of her photos have sold for millions of dollars, including a 2011 print “Untitled #96” – part of a 1981 series of 10 – that went for nearly $4 million, making it the most expensive photograph at the time.        Sherman has either published or been the subject of numerous books of her works and her work, which is credited with being the major influence on contemporary portrait photographers.   Lauded for creating works that challenge the viewer, she noted, “The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer itches to be told.”


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Cather: America's writing daughter

“To note an artist’s limitations is but to define her talent.  A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to her view, but a creative writer can do her best only with what lies within the range and character of her deepest sympathies.”– Willa Cather
Born in Virginia in December 1873, Cather was raised on the prairies of Nebraska.  She always said her writing was greatly affected by her “growing up years” and the vastness of the prairieland that surrounded her – experiences she used extensively in her novels and short stories.
She started as a reporter for the Nebraska State Journal and did a stint on the magazine Home Monthly before serving as drama critic and telegraph editor for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Leader.  After moving on to McClure’sin New York City, she got serious about her creative writing and in the 19-teens did her famous “Prairie Trilogy” of O Pioneers!, Song of the Lark, and My Antonia, some of the best realism written about the life and blend of people on the Great Plains.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, and then wrote what I’ve always thought was one of her best, Death Comes for the Archbishop.   “There are only two or three human stories,” Cather once said, “and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”           “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”



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Escaping through your words

“I'm always terrified when I'm writing.” – Mary Karr

Karr’s sentiment probably echoes all who take pen in hand or pull up to a keyboard or typewriter to put words on paper and begin the creative process.
Born in Groves, Texas on this date in 1955, Karr brought her early years to life in the New York Times bestselling  memoirs, The Liars' Club.   The book delves vividly and often humorously into her deeply troubled childhood, most of which was spent in a gritty industrial section of Southeast Texas. 
The author of 2 other memoirs, Cherry; and Lit: A Memoir, she also has had great successes as both a poet (4 volumes to date) and essayist.  She has won the prestigious Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, and the Pushcart prize for both her poetry and her essays.
“Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself,” Karr said.           “The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail.”


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Stepping away from the real world

“Every book that you pick up takes you a step away from your real world, but if you read a book about magic, it takes you an extra two steps.”– Jenny Nimmo

British author Nimmo, born on this date in 1944, is a master of the “magical” genre, having authored numerous fantasy and adventure novels for kids and teens. Born in England, she has lived mostly in Wales for the past 40 years. 
Nimmo spent several years with the BBC and actually started her writing career by adapting other writers’ works for television shows.  Her first novel, The Bronze Trumpeter, started as a TV script of her own and then grew into a full-fledged book.  Among her best-known works are the fantasy novels: The Magician Trilogy, contemporary stories rooted in Welsh myth; and the bestselling Children of the Red King, a series about schoolchildren endowed with magical powers.
Also known as the Charlie Bone series, her primary protagonist is Charlie Bone, whose magical talent embroils him in sinister intrigues in his school. The Charlie Bonetitles have been published in some 20 languages worldwide.       She likes to keep an objective eye on what her characters are doing – even those with special powers.
 “I try not to identify too strongly with any of my characters. I like to stand back and see them objectively. I think this is why I often use boys instead of girls, just in case I get too close and lose the overall picture. “


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Capturing 'The Mind of a Generation'

“The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history.   A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.” – John Dos Passos
Born in Chicago on this date in 1896, Dos Passos was a renowned novelist and artist and one of Ernest Hemingway’s closest friends both during the Lost Generation’s days in Paris and their times spent together in Key West, Spain and Italy.
Like Hemingway he served as an ambulance driver in Italy during W.W.I., a bond that kept them close until events during the Spanish Civil War tore them apart in the late 1930s.                              Dos Passos’ writing career started immediately after the war and his first novel, One Man’s Initiation: 1917, came out in 1920.  His best-known work is his 1930s U.S.A. Trilogy  – the bestselling novels The 42nd Parallel; 1919; and The Big Money.   In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the U.S.A. Trilogy 23rd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.  Another of his most recognized books is the anti-war novel Three Soldiers.
In advice to young writers, he once noted, “There are too many ‘creative writing’ courses and seminars, in which young writers are constantly being taught to rewrite the previous generation. They should be experimenting on their own. Every writer faces different problems which he must solve for himself.”

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The poetry of friendship

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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;</style><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">– Khalil Gibran</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Born in Lebanon on this date in 1883, Gibran is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book <i>The Prophet</i>, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">    </span><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KhrWktVEmsM..." imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KhrWktVEms..." /></a>     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Gibran’s,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>On Friendship</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Your friend is your needs answered.<br />He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.<br />And he is your board and your fireside.<br />For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.<br /><br /><br />When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the 'nay' in your own mind, nor do you withhold the 'ay.'<br />And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;<br />For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.<br />When you part from your friend, you grieve not;<br />For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.<br />And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.<br />For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.<br /><br /><br />And let your best be for your friend.<br />If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.<br />For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?<br />Seek him always with hours to live.<br />For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.<br />And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.<br />For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Share <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Writer’s Moment</i> with a friend by clicking the g+1 button below.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 13.5pt;"><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b></div>

Interpreting the human spirit

“Writers, not psychiatrists, are the true interpreters of the human mind and heart, and we have been at it for a very long time.” – Florence King
Born on this date in 1936, Florence Virginia King was a longtime essayist and columnist mostly featured in The National Review, where her column “The Misanthrope’s Corner” not only served up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques but also earned her the title “The Queen of Mean.”
King grew up in the District of Columbia where she earned a degree in history from American University before starting her journalism career, winning the North Carolina Press Woman Award for Reporting at Raleigh News and Observer before taking her job at The National Review. 
She also wrote a couple of romance novels and penned Southern Ladies and Gentlemen, a humorous "Guide to the South for Yankees” before authoring her most popular book, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady.  That semi-autobiographical work focused on, among other things, her grandmother's, mother's, and father's construct of what it meant to  “be a lady.”                                      For great examples of King’s acerbic, humorous writing check out the book STET, Damnit! the National Review’s 2002 tribute to King and her long career at the magazine.   King, who died in 2016, advised young writers to write clearly, succinctly and with purpose.  “Writers who have nothing to say,” she noted,  “always strain for metaphors to say it in.”


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Find 'true life' in literature

“It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.” – Gao Xingjian

Born in China on this date in 1940, Nobel Prize-winning writer and critic Gao is now a naturalized French citizen who makes his home in Paris.  He is also a noted translator (particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco), and a screenwriter, stage director, and celebrated painter.  
Known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China, where Signal Alarm and Bus Stop 1983) were produced during his term as resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre from 1981 to 1987. Influenced by European theatrical models, it gained him a reputation as an avant-garde writer.    After his early successes, he started writing plays that criticized the government’s policies, ultimately leading to his move to France.                                                      Gao said he feels that many writers “simply have to believe in themselves” in order to  carry on with what they are doing, even when they are receiving little support for their efforts.   “In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors,” he explained.   “If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?”
“When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive,” Gao said.   “Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.”