Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 507

The power of observation

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” – Marilyn vos Savant
Born this day in 1946, vos Savant is a magazine columnist, author, lecturer, and playwright.   Since 1986 she has written "Ask Marilyn," a Parade magazine Sunday column where she solves puzzles and answers questions on various subjects.  The record holder for the Guinness Book of Records highest IQ – a category retired by Guinness while she still held the title – she started writing about puzzles as a teenager and full time in her current role in her mid-30s after moving full time to New York city.  Since then she has written thousands of articles, essays, many books and her column for 35 years.
 Prior to starting “Ask Marilyn,” she wrote the Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest for Omnimagazine, which included IQ quizzes and expositions on intelligence and its testing.
Married and divorced twice before age 35 (the first marriage at age 16), she now has been wed to Robert Jarvik, creator of the Jarvik artificial heart, since 1987 and has served as the Jarvik company’s chief financial officer since that time.
Author of the best-selling The Power of Logical Thinking: Easy Lessons in the Art of Reasoning…and Hard Facts about Its Absence in Our Lives, she offers the following advice when it comes to decision-making.  “If your head tells you one thing, and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.”

Just passing through

“Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false.” – Barry Unsworth
Unsworth once said that he was a novelist, not a biographer, but his 17 novels – more than half of which were historical fiction – truly brought real people back to life, although in terms and language he often created for them.  “All my fiction starts from a feeling of unique perception, the pressure of a secret, a story that needs to be told.”
Shortlisted three times for The Booker Prize, his 1992 masterpiece Sacred Hunger, which is a story of the English involvement in the slave trade, shared the prize with Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient  (definitely not bad company with which to share a writing prize).
 [image error]Barry UnsworthBorn on this date in 1930 to a family of coal miners, Unsworth said he “got out of that trap” when his father bucked tradition and became an insurance salesman.  “He saved us,” Unsworth said.   He started writing novels in the traditional sense but switched to historical fiction later in life – something I like to identify with since I’m just getting into the genre’ myself.  At the time of his death – in 2012 on the same day as science fiction writer Ray Bradbury – he was so well entrenched in that style that Wall Street Journalwriter Cynthia Crossen noted in a story about their deaths:  "Mr. Bradbury invented the future; Mr. Unsworth invented the past."
As for why he chose to write historical fiction, Unsworth said, “I like the condition of being an outsider, just passing through.”


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All about 'tone' ... and listening

“People think that you have to do something huge, like go to Africa and build a school, but you can make a small change in a day. If you change Wednesday, then you change Thursday. Pretty soon it's a week, then a month, then a year. It's bite-size, as opposed to feeling like you have to turn your life inside out to make changes.” – Hoda Kotb

News anchor and TV host (The Today Show) Hoda Kotb has won accolades for both her broadcasting and writing.  She won a Daytime Emmy for her work on Today and a News Emmy for her reporting on Dateline NBC.   Battling breast cancer in 2007, she allowed NBC’s cameras to follow her through the treatments, surgeries and ultimate recovery and then wrote about it in a bestselling, poignant and funny book called Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee.
Her second book Ten Years Later: Six People Who Faced Adversity and Transformed Their Lives, in which she chronicles six stories by identifying a life-changing event in each subject's life and then revisiting each of those six people a decade later, also hit the New York Times’ Best-Seller list.
The daughter of Egyptian immigrants, she was born in Oklahoma on this day in 1964, lived in Egypt and Nigeria for a time, and then grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., where her mother has had a long career at the Library of Congress.  “To this day, my mom's unsinkable spirit is an inspiration to me. For nearly thirty years, she's worked at the Library of Congress. Everyone knows Sameha simply as 'Sami.' Along with 500 miles of shelved books, her closest friendships are cataloged in that library. They are as much the value of work to my mom as is the work itself.”   [image error]Hoda KotbA graduate of Virginia Tech, where she also has been on the Alumni Board, she said she has learned the value of “measured” use of words and being a good listener.  “Tone is often the most important part of a conversation,” she said,  “and listening is so much more important than what you say.”
Wise words, indeed, in these times of often unbridled rhetoric and noise in our world.


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Set your writing course and start moving

Wise words today from three writers representing three ages and three eras.   
 Lauren Hammond is a Young Adult writer, under age 30.  Ralph Waldo Emerson lived and wrote 150 years ago, yet his words still sparkle and resonate with today’s generations.  Stephen King is in his 5thdecade of writing and everything he touches turns to writing gold.    
“A good book should pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget.” – Lauren Hammond

“Inspire your readers.  Books are for nothing but to inspire.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.  It should transport the reader.” – Stephen King

So, start your tale, plot the course and make the journey.  Time to inspire.
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Finding a comfortable voice

“The most important thing when starting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you're comfortable. You need to find a persona that is very much like you, but slightly caricatured.”– Anne Fadiman
The daughter of renowned literary, radio, and television personality Clifton Fadimam and World War II correspondent and author Annalee Jacoby Fadiman, Anne Fadiman has been comfortable around celebrity since she was a child.  A Radcliffe grad, she roomed with novelist Wendy Lesser and in the same dorm with Benazir Bhutto and Kathleen Kennedy – all great fodder for her terrific essays.
Fadiman was a founding editor of the Library of Congress magazine Civilization, and has had a great career as a writer, editor and teacher of essays.  But it was her award-winningbook The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down that brought her the most acclaim (and many awards). Researched in a small county hospital in California, it examines a Hmong immigrant family and their cultural, linguistic, and medical struggles in seeking treatment for their epileptic child.
 [image error]Anne Fadiman was born this day in 1953  
An intense reader as well as writer, she noted that she is grateful for modern electronics and how they have improved the lives of writers and readers alike.  And while she, like many, have done reading on e-books, she prefers a text copy in her hands.
“There is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association,” she said. “Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, I think it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.”


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A question, not an answer

“I read, because one life is not enough, and in the page of a book I can be anyone.” – Richard Peck
And, as prolific as he is as a reader, Peck is equally prolific as a writer of modern Young Adult literature.   Over the years he has won dozens of awards for his writing for Young Adults, picking up both a Newbery Medal  (for his novel A Year Down Yonder) and the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for his cumulative contributions to the genre’. 
Along the way, of course, he also has developed a devoted “adult” population of readers, myself included.  Thus, when my new book came out and some in the ALA dubbed it “Young Adult” as well as “Mystery” and “Adventure,” I was flattered to be included in Peck’s world.
Peck’s career as a writer actually started when he was sidetracked from what he thought was going to be a career as a high school teacher.  He was happily teaching high school in the 1950s when he was transferred to a junior high to teach English.  Upset about the move, he decided to take time away from teaching to try writing, focusing on his observations about the junior high school students he didn’t want to teach.  "Ironically,” he said,  “it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I was hired to teach them."
While his highest accolades come for his Newbery winner, I highly recommend his book Amanda/Miranda, a twist on both the old Prince and the Pauper story and the tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic.    [image error]  Richard PeckPeck believes each book should be a question, not an answer and that before anything else can happen a book needs to be entertaining. “A young adult novel ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning,” he said, “with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.”

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Think twice, write (or draw) once

“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

When Bill Watterson was creating names for the characters in his award-winning comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, he supposedly decided upon Calvin (after the Protestant reformer John Calvin) and Hobbes (after the social philosopher Thomas Hobbes), allegedly as a "tip of the hat" to the Political Science Department at Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied political science - even though he said he always knew he wanted to be a cartoonist.
 In The Complete Calvin And Hobbes – of which I am a proud owner – Watterson stated that Calvin is named for "a 16th-century theologian who believed in predestination,” and Hobbes for "a 17th-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature."  Either way the words he wrote for the wise little boy with a talking stuffed tiger as his best friend stand the test of time – something every writer and artist hopes his or her work will achieve. 
Born on this day in 1958, Watterson created Calvin and Hobbes after first trying his hand at political cartooning.   He said he incorporated elements of his life, interests, beliefs and values into his work—for example, his hobby as a cyclist, and memories of his father's speeches about "building character."  For his efforts he has been awarded virtually every major prize in cartooning, often writing thoughtful and provocative statements in the process.
 [image error] He stopped his comic strip when he felt it was becoming too commercialized and has focused mostly on art since 2000.  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 some 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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Saluting a writing watchdog

“We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.” – Helen Thomas
One evening in 1999, my wife and I picked Helen Thomas up at the Twin Cities airport. With time to kill until she was to do a keynote speech at a scholarship event, she asked us to drive around, show her the area, and talk about reporting.
It was among the fastest two hours I ever spent.  She regaled us with stories about time in the White House Press Corps, her work at home and abroad with the United Press, and how journalism was changing, some for the better, but much to her chagrin, much for the worse.  She worried about where things might be headed and how as writers we needed to be diligent in telling the whole story and not caving in to the ever-growing pressure that many in the profession were feeling from the growing influence of the internet.
Thomas, who would’ve turned 95 today (she died in 2013), plowed new ground for women in journalism and spoke eloquently that night about staying the course and being true to the term “Watchdogs for Democracy.”  It was just when her new book Front Row at the White House came onto the market, and at evening’s end she gracefully took a copy from her bag and signed it to us as we returned her for a redeye flight home.
Author and news reporter for 60 years, she covered the administrations of 11 U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama.  She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, and the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.  She wrote thousands of articles for the UPI, for radio broadcasts, and for newspapers, literally beginning in the trenches as a copygirl and ending at the highest echelon, earning every major newswriting award and 30 honorary doctorate degrees along the way. 
 [image error]Helen Thomas
Her starting salary for the United Press in 1943, by the way, was $24 – a week.  “I wasn’t in it for the money,” she quipped.  When she handed me that signed book, I was flabbergasted.  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I stammered.  “That’s so unexpected.”   Her response:  “When you’re in the news business, always expect the unexpected.”  It’s a line I’ve never forgotten.    

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Write the relationships first

“Writing, basically breaks down to relationships between people and that is what you write about.” – Leon Uris

I first read Leon Uris when I was in junior high, geting a beaten up copy of his World War II novel Battle Cry when my mother found it at a garage sale and brought it home to our South Dakota farm.  After reading that book, I knew I had found an author who wrote things I enjoyed so the next time we went to Sioux Falls (which was nearly 80 miles away), I asked Mom to go find another garage sale and see if he had written anything else.
That was 1959 and his book Exodus was now on the market, and – as luck would have it – at a garage sale.  She bought it for me and I have since read every book this amazing author wrote, many actually purchased in book shops.  [image error]Leon Uris
Born this day in 1924, Uris started his own reading at age 3, writing by 4 and writing creatively by age 8.  But it wasn’t until after he came out of World War II (he enlisted at age 17 and spent 4 years in the service) that he started his successful career, first writing for newspapers and then doing short stories before writing Battle Cryin 1951.  Known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels, he wrote 20 novels and many nonfiction works.
Both Exodus and Trinity (the first work that really helped me understand what was going on in Northern Ireland) were mega-bestsellers, and many, many more were on the New York Times Bestsellers List.   Also a screenwriter, he had three of his own books – Battle Cry, Exodus and The Haj – made into successful movies.
Uris wrote continuously for 50 years until he was struck down by kidney failure in 2003.  He said he always was proud that the work he wrote in 1950 was just as much read as that written 30 or 40 years later.   “You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and hope that it is accepted,” he said.   “You do not – and should not – write specifically to a generation.”  Good advice for every writer.


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A 'delicious' legacy for the world

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.” – Beatrix Potter
This past week was the anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s most beloved writer/illustrators, Beatrix Potter. 
Potter wrote and illustrated The Tale of Peter Rabbit, self-published first in 1901 just for herself, family and close friends.  But those who read and saw it urged her to do more and in 1902 the 3-color edition was published by Frederick Warne & Company. 
Although the book obviously should have been published for all to see, her editor Norman Warne had a bit of an ulterior motive, since he was wooing Beatrix to become his fiancée, which she did after the book’s broader release.  Unfortunately Warne developed leukemia and died before they could wed.  
She married in her later years and with the earnings from her books – she had done 23 by then – she and husband William Heelis purchased a large farm in Lancashire where she became a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write and illustrate, and to design spin-off merchandise based on her children's books for Warne, until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue.   [image error][image error] Beatrix Potter and her most famous creation Peter
Potter died at age 77 in December, 1943, willing most of her property to the National Trust.  Much of the land comprises the Lake District National Preserve, which includes a replica of Farmer McGregor’s Garden and small statues of Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and, of course, Peter.


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