Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 5
October 13, 2025
It's the power of 'language'
“Ithink with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anythingelse. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. Youcan't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes somethingyou're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.” –Kate Grenville
Bornin Australia in October of 1950, Grenville has authored 15 books – includingfiction, non-fiction, biography and books about the writingprocess. Winner of both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize andBritain’s prestigious Orange Prize, she has had her works publishedworldwide. Her most recent novel is 2023’s Restless Dolly Maunder,winner of Australia’s Prime Minister Award (2024) for Literary Fiction.
Grenville’swriting career started in film before she wrote a collection of highly regardedshort stories in the early 1980s. Her 1985 novel Lilian’sStory established her reputation as one of Australia’s best fictionwriters. That multiple award-winning book also was made into asuccessful movie.
Inthe 2000s, Grenville has explored Australia’s colonial past and relationshipsamong its peoples in her acclaimed books The Secret River, TheLieutenant and Sarah Thornhill. A teacher ofwriting, too, Grenville has written or co-written several widely used booksabout the writing process.
“Ilove music, too,” Grenville said, “and I think there's probably no coincidencethere, that the rhythm of the words is almost as important as the wordsthemselves. And when you can get thetwo working together, which usually takes me about 20 goes, I feel a hugesatisfaction.”
A Writer's Moment: It's the power of 'language'
October 11, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'Go ahead . . .risk curiosity'
'Go ahead . . .risk curiosity'
“Oncewe believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, orany experience that reveals the human spirit.” –e. e. cummings
Bornin Cambridge, MA on Oct. 14, 1894, Edward Estlin "E.E." Cummings wrote nearly 3,000 poems, 2 autobiographical novels,4 plays and several essays and was one of the eminent “voices” of 20th centuryEnglish-language literature. Cummings' poetry often dealt withthemes of love and nature but he said some were “just for fun.” ForSaturday’s Poem, here is,
If
Iffreckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,
Life would be delight, --
Butthings couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.
If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.
If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair, –
Yetthey’d all despair,
For if here was there
We
–
wouldn’t be we.
October 10, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'Just choose what you have'
'Just choose what you have'
“When a man ain't got no ideas ofhis own, he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.” –Owen Wister
Born in Philadelphia in 1864, Wisterwas a Harvard classmate and close friend of Theodore Roosevelt and has often been called “The father of the Cowboy novel.” It was a title given to him after hewrote The Virginian, a book that not only spawned the Cowboy genrebut also was made into several movies and a long-running TV series.
Wister started writing about the West in 1891 after half-a-dozen years of traveling to and living in Wyoming and the western Dakotas. Like Roosevelt, Wister was fascinated withthe culture, lore and terrain of the region. In addition to Roosevelt he was lifelong friends with the great Western artist Frederic Remington, who he met near Yellowstone in 1893.
The Virginian,written in 1902, is set during Wyoming’s 4-year Johnson County War between large and small landowners in north-central Wyoming, the area where Wister spent most of his time. Wildly successful, the book was reprinted a remarkable 14times in its first 8 months alone and has continuously been in print eversince. All told, Wister wrote 8 novels, 13 nonfiction books –including one about his friendship with Roosevelt – and 6 collections of shortstories. He also authored numerous essays and poems, severalplays and 6 operas.
Since 1991, The Western Writers ofAmerica have presented The Owen Wister Award to the “Book of the Year set inthe American West.” This year’s award went to Craig Johnson, who writes the Longmireseries and lives in the same Johnson County featured by Wister in TheVirginian.
Wister, who died in 1938, said hefelt “destined” to write about the West. “When you can’t have what you choose,” he said, “you just choose whatyou have.”
October 9, 2025
A Writer's Moment: The art of 'making every scrap useful'
The art of 'making every scrap useful'
“The great advantage of being awriter is that you're there, listening to every word, but part of you isobserving. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even thelongest and most boring of luncheon parties.” –Graham Greene
Born in England on this date in 1904, Greene wasbelieved to have worked as a spy for the British government during World War IIand beyond while continuing to hone his writing career, which ultimately wasone of the greatest of the 20th century. One fellow writer said he was the most accomplished living novelist inthe English language.
Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize inLiterature, Greene produced 25 novels that mostly explored the ambivalent moraland political issues of the modern world. He also wrote shortstories, essays, plays and movie scripts and worked as a journalist during a67-year career. He was working as an editor on The Times ofLondon when his first novel, The Man Within, was publishedin 1929 to immediate critical acclaim. In 1941, he won theprestigious Hawthornden Prize for his masterpiece The Power and theGlory.
Considered one of the most “cinematic” of 20th centurywriters (nearly all of his novels and many of his short stories were made intomovies or television shows), an accomplishment he said came about because he strived for "lively" and sometimes controversial characters.
“(You know) the moment comes when acharacter does or says something you hadn't thought about,” he said, “that moment he's alive and you just have toleave it to him to do whatever he prefers.”
October 8, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'I want people to get lost in my stories'
'I want people to get lost in my stories'
“I just want people to get lost inthe story and at the end kind of sag and say, 'That was fun.' It's hardly mydesire for them to sit and think, 'What a great literary image.'” –Michael Palmer
Born in Springfield, MA on Oct. 9,1942, Palmer leveraged his medical background as an Emergency Room doctorand Internist into writing 21 medical thrillers and three other mystery-thrillers,a number of which made the New York Times bestseller List. His final novel (in 2018 and co-authored with his sonDaniel) was The First Family.
Best known among his workswere Side Effects, a novel based on covert Nazi medical testing inWWII, and Extreme Measures, featuring a promising young doctor whodiscovers criminal activities by his hospital’s leadership team. ExtremeMeasures was also made into a popular movie.
In addition to his writing andmedical practice, Palmer served as an associate director of the MassachusettsMedical Society Physician Health Services, devoted to helpingphysicians troubled by mental illness, physical illness, behavioral issues, andchemical dependency. He died in October of 2013 after overcoming his own substance abuse issues and credited writing with getting him back ontrack. He told the Associated Press that writing suspense thrillers served as a kind oflong-term therapy for him before it became his profession.
“I loved the feeling of being incontrol," he said, "even when my life was not.”
