Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 479

Using your beliefs and experiences

“Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I've got left, I intend to write artistic books - for kids - because they're still open to new ideas.”– Gary Paulsen
I first met Gary Paulsen in the late 1980s when he was a guest speaker at the Northfield (MN) Middle School and my oldest daughter was a student who had the opportunity to hear him both read from his bestseller Hatchett and also answer kids’ questions about writing.  As a dad who was “helping” with writing classes at the Middle School at the time, I was invited to “listen in,” and I was so very impressed with his ability to talk to kids on their own level and truly bring his writing and characters to life with his reading.
Best known for “coming of age” stories and about the importance of nature and the wilderness, Paulsen has authored more than 200 books, 200-plus magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers or “Tweens.”    In 1997, he won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens. 
Paulsen said every writer should use personal experiences and personal beliefs in their creative writing.  “I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I've been through,” he said.  “And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking the g+1 button below.

Ideas -- they're all around you

“The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was 17.” –  Bruce Coville
Born on this date in 1950 in Syracuse, NY, Coville is the author of more than 100  kids’ and Young Adult fiction books.   Enraptured with reading novels at a young age, Coville was first published in 1977.  He started seriously writing 10 years earlier but had trouble “breaking through.”  While waiting to publish that first novel, The Foolish Giant, Coville was employed in a number of professions including toymaker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, assembly line worker, and elementary school teacher working with 2nd  and 4th  graders.
“I loved teaching,” he said.  And for a time he thought that was going to be his life’s work.   He said he talked to kids about what they wanted to read, and it sounded a lot like what he also liked to read when he was a kid.         
 “I read books that made me laugh but also made me shiver in terror. I wanted to make books that made other people feel the same way.”

In 2012, Coville was honored with the Empire State Award for Excellence in Literature for Young People, given by the New York Library Association for his life’s work.  As for advice to aspiring writers, he says keep looking “everywhere” for your ideas.   “Ideas are all around you - everything gives you ideas,” he said.  “But the real source is the part of your brain that dreams.”   Write, and live, your dreams.


Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

Finding life's shape and meaning

“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.” – Katherine Anne Porter
A Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist, Porter was born on this date in 1890.  Known for her penetrating insight, particularly in her short stories and essays, she wrote only one novel – but it was a good one!   Ship of Fools not only was a worldwide bestseller, it also earned her the Pulitzer, The National Book Award, and a box office hit movie. 
She also won the National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, which I highly commend to you as a hallmark of short story excellence.      Writing short stories may have come as second nature to Porter, since her father’s cousin was William Sydney Porter – known to posterity as THE American short story writer O. Henry.  And, she was descended from American history, tracing her family tree to frontiersman Daniel Boone.
Katherine’s journalism career began on the East Coast, then gravitated to Colorado where she was writing for the Rocky Mountain News when she almost died during the 1918 flu pandemic. When she was finally discharged from the hospital, she was frail and completely bald and when her hair finally grew back, it was white and remained that way for the rest of her life.  Her life-and-death experience was reflected in her trilogy of novelettes led by the wonderful Pale Horse, Pale Rider.  That work earned her the 1940 Gold Medal for Literature from the Society of Libraries of New York University.

A prolific writer right up until her death in 1980, Porter advised young writers to look upon writing as an art AND a profession.  “Writing is a craft,” she said.  “Take an apprenticeship in it just like any other profession.”


Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking the g+1 button below.

Poetic songs of ourselves

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” –  May Sarton   May Sarton was the pen name American poet, novelist and memoirist Eleanore Marie Sarton, born on May 3, 1912 in Belgium, but who grew up in Boston after her parents fled Europe at the start of World War I.   She went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started theatre lessons in her late teens at around the same time she started writing poetry, publishing her first collection Encounter, in 1937.   Her award-winning works tackle many deeply human issues of love, loneliness, aging, nature, and self-doubt.  Here, for Saturday’s Poem, is Sarton’s
A Country Incident   Absorbed in planting bulbs, that work of hope,
I was startled by a loud human voice,
“Do go on working while I talk. Don’t stop!”
And I was caught upon the difficult choice—
To yield the last half hour of precious light,
Or to stay on my knees, absurd and rude;
I willed her to be gone with all my might,
This kindly neighbor who destroyed a mood;
I could not think of next spring any more,
I had to re-assess the way I live.
Long after I went in and closed the door,
I pondered on the crude imperative.

What it is to be caught up in each day
Like a child fighting imaginary wars,
Converting work into this passionate play,
A rounded whole made up of different chores
Which one might name haphazard meditation.
And yet an unexpected call destroys
Or puts to rout my primitive elation:
Why be so serious about mere joys?
Is this where some outmoded madness lies,
Poet as recluse? No, what comes to me
Is how my father looked out of his eyes,
And how he fought for his own passionate play.

He could tear up unread and throw away
Communications from officialdom,
And, courteous in every other way,
Would not brook anything that kept him from
Those lively dialogues with man’s whole past
That were his intimate and fruitful pleasure.
Impetuous, impatient to the last,
“Be adamant, keep clear, strike for your treasure!”
I hear the youthful ardor in his voice
(And so I must forgive a self in labor).
I feel his unrepentant smiling choice,
(And so I ask forgiveness of my neighbor).

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

Always time to turn over a new leaf

“The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life.  You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose. “ – Arnold Bennett 
Bennett, best known as a novelist, also worked in other fields such as journalism, propaganda and film.    The British writer was born in 1867 and had determined that he would be an editor before taking on a weekly syndicated column for his newspaper after being perplexed by the lack of good material from other writers.  He quickly discovered that he had a great knack for writing and by 1900 was devoting all of his time to his new profession. 
One of his most popular non-fiction works, which is still read to this day, is the self-help book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, from which the above quote comes.   Bennett wrote 30 novels and his The Old Wives' Tale, published in 1908, is considered one of the great works in English literature.  It gives us an in-depth look at 70 years in the lives of two sisters, following their stories from youth through old age, and also stands the test of time.  A very good read, especially for those interested in history and historical fiction.
Bennett also was acclaimed as a “discoverer” of other great writers and his reviews were highly sought after.   Reviewing a constant stream of new books, he unerringly picked out the important writers of the next generation—James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway—and praised them discerningly.  He said, in his mind, everyone has “artistic” moments.  When looking for a photo of him to use here, I came across this combination photo and quote and thought it appropriate in that regard.

                                                        Happy weekend as you uncover your own artistic (and writer’s) moments.

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

Sometimes you have to take sides

“They said it was against the rules to take sides on a controversial issue. I said, 'I wish you had told me that during World War II, when I took sides against Hitler.'” – Howard K. Smith
Longtime reporter and then co-anchor of the ABC Evening News, Howard K. Smith was born on this date in 1914.  One of the original “Edward R. Murrow boys” in London, he first bolted onto the national and international scene when he was literally expelled from Germany for his negative news coverage of Hitler and Nazism just before the start of World War II.
He always considered that expulsion “providential,” since he left for Switzerland on Dec. 6, 1941.  Had he been there on Dec. 7, he might have been detained and even imprisoned since he was persona non grata with the Nazis at that point.  The story of his tumultuous reporting year in Germany (for CBS) and expulsion became the topic for his international best-seller, Last Train From Berlin, first published in 1942 and revived and reprinted in 2001, shortly before his death.
A native of Louisiana, Smith worked his way through Tulane University, majoring in both Journalism and German, making him an extremely valuable reporter for CBS and Murrow’s team before, during and after the war.        
Among his many awards at ABC were 7 Overseas Press Awards, a Peabody, several Emmys, and both the DuPont and Sigma Delta Chi Awards for reporting excellence.  He also produced hundreds of TV documentaries and on-air essays and wrote 3 other books, highlighted by a remarkable memoir, Events Leading Up to My Death: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter, published in the late 1990s.  For anyone aspiring to a career in journalism, I put in on the “must-read” list.


Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

A window to the Universe

“Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of books, even the smell... Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing.” –  Zilpha Keatley Snyder  Born on this date in 1927, Snyder wrote 43 books for children and young adults – one per year during the height of her writing prowess - winning three Newbery Awards along the way.  Honors went to her adventure stories The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm, all remarkable works and really not that different from many of her others which seemed to me to be equally deserving of awards.      
She was the ultimate storyteller and in an article in The Writershe shared about how she approached her craft.  To see what she thought about her writing in her own words, check out this link:  http://www.zksnyder.com/writers.html   Snyder, who died in 2014, said she always dreamed of writing and couldn’t imagine any other profession.  “It grew from those dreams I always had as a child,” she said. “I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.”




Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

Immersed in writing ... and reading

“I love to write. I love to make things up. I'm in a library or a bookstore most days of the week, because I love to be around other people's books, too. Reading and writing books takes up most of my life.” – Caroline B. Cooney
Born on this date in 1947, Cooney has written more than 80 Children’s and Young Adult novels, earning dozens of honors and accolades along the way.
She credits a 6thgrade teacher with giving her the writing bug.  “Every Friday, he made us write a short story,” she said.   “He had a stack of covers from New Yorker magazines — detailed and brightly colored, like cartoons. He'd pass them out and we'd have to write a short story to match the picture we got. I was the one in the class who never stopped.”
Cooney said she loves all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.  All the details.  And, she said making up the final details is really the way to go.  If you write a story based on a real      person, she said, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story.

Cooney is a master of mixing spellbinding suspense with thought-provoking insight into teenagers' lives.  “I write about good kids trying to do their best, even if the world around them has crumbled and doesn't always offer good choices.”




Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

Celebrating with The Piano Man

“I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.” – Billy Joel
Born on this day in 1949, American pianist, singer-songwriter and a composer Billy Joel first hit the big time with his autobiographical "Piano Man” in 1973.  Since then he has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, in the process becoming the 6th best-selling recording artist and the 3rd best-selling solo artist of all time.  Joel has had 33 Top 40 hits in the U.S., and many others around the globe.  He is a 6-time Grammy Award winner (nominated 23 times).     
Joel has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, and been the recipient of a Kennedy Center Award, the nation's highest honor for influencing American culture through the arts.
A New York City native, Joel said he is proud that his words and music have been so well-received by a diverse and broad-based audience.  “Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts,” he said.
As for advice to up-and-coming songwriters, he says, “Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.”
Here’s a link to some of my favorite Joel songs (Especialy check out, "You May Be Right").  Happy Birthday Billy!
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=Songs+by+Billy+Joel&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001


Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.

Writing for adventure and conservation

“Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.” – Peter Benchley
Born on this date in 1940 – the same day that future Hall of Fame rock star Ricky Nelson was born – Benchley made his mark with the his breakthrough novel Jaws, subsequently made into a blockbuster movie by Steven Spielberg.  Several more of his works also were adapted for cinema, including The Deep. 
Benchley was born to writing, the third generation of Benchley authors.  His father was Nathaniel and grandfather Robert, one of the founders of the famed writing group known as the Algonquin Round Table.  Despite that, Peter struggled to get his foot in the publishing door and nearly decided against it.  After working as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson, he was knocking around as a part-time freelancer for several years before pitching his idea for Jaws, “one final attempt to stay alive as a writer.” The shark novel attracted Doubleday editor Thomas Congdon, who offered him an advance of $1,000 to put together the first 100 pages.
Much of the initial writing had to be rewritten as the publisher did not like Benchley’s style, but Jaws was published in 1974 and became a huge success, staying on the bestseller list for some 44 weeks. Spielberg said he initially found many of the        characters unsympathetic and actually wanted the shark to win.  Much of Benchley's writing beyond his novels was of conservation of our oceans.  That led to the establishment of the annual Benchley Awards, recognizing those who have dedicated their lives and work those conservation efforts.
Shortly before his death in 2006, Benchley said that while he didn’t have “personal” experience with a Great White Shark, much of everything else he wrote was based on something that happened to him or that he knew a great deal about.  “Ideas for my stories came to me based on my life.”  As for other writers, he added,  “I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there was any single writer who influenced me.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking g+1 below.