Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 59

A Writer's Moment: 'Ink into words and pictures'

A Writer's Moment: 'Ink into words and pictures':   “A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a da...

'Ink into words and pictures'

 “A newspaper is lumbermade malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born,grows up and dies of old age in a day.” – Jim Bishop

 

Born in Jersey City, NJ,on this date in 1907, Bishop dropped out of school after 8th grade, thenstudied typing and shorthand on his own in hopes of becoming ajournalist.  In 1929, he was hired as a copy boy at the NewYork Daily News, the start of a 50-year career writing for newspapersand magazines. 

 

When not writingjournalistically, Bishop began working on biographies and ultimately publishedhalf-a-dozen including the bestselling The Day Lincoln Was Shot, abook that took him 24 years to complete but ultimately sold over 3 millioncopies.  The book has been re-published in two dozen languages andmade into two television specials and a feature-length movie.

 

Bishop also was asyndicated political columnist, book reviewer and critic, although the latterrole concerned him, noting,  “A goodwriter is not, per se’, a good book critic, no more than a good drunk isautomatically a good bartender."

A Writer's Moment: 'The Writer's Art of Observation'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Writer's Art of Observation':   “Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die when you’re right in the middle of it.” –  P.J. O'Rourke. Born in Toledo,...

'The Writer's Art of Observation'

 

“Always read stuff thatwill make you look good if you die when you’re right in the middle of it.”– P.J. O'Rourke.

Born in Toledo, OH onNov. 14, 1947 Patrick Jake O'Rourke was a conservative politicalsatirist, journalist, creative writer and regular on the hit NPR show"Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me” until his death from cancer in 2022.

O’Rourke authored 23books, including the mega-bestseller None of My Business: P.J. ExplainsMoney, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He's Not Richand Neither Are You.   He alsoco-wrote National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook with DouglasKenney, the book that inspired the movie Animal House.

O’Rourke said judging whoand what people are all about is easy to determine through the writer's art ofobservation. 

“People will tell youanything,” O’Rourke said, “but what they do is always thetruth.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Nothing is more important'

A Writer's Moment: 'Nothing is more important':  

'Nothing is more important'

 

A Writer's Moment: Creating terse, imagistic poems

A Writer's Moment: Creating terse, imagistic poems:   “ Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. ” – Charles Simic   Simic, born in Belgrade in...

Creating terse, imagistic poems

 

“Poetry is an orphanof silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.” –Charles Simic  

Simic, born in Belgradein 1938, won a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for TheWorld Doesn’t End and writing with a style called literaryminimalism, creating terse, imagistic poems. Critics have referred toSimic poems as "tightly constructed Chinese puzzle boxes."

Displaced by World War IIand eventually emigrating to the U.S., Simic didn’t speak English until he was15, but once he learned the language he became one of our most prolificwriters, producing some 60 books, the last being No Land In Sight: Poems, published in 2022.   Named U.S. PoetLaureate and winner of the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, he died in 2023.    For Saturday’s Poem here is Simic’s,

                                                 The Wooden Toy

     The wooden toy sitting pretty.

   No … quieter than that.

      Like the sound of eyebrows

      Raised by a villain 

      In a silent movie.

    Psst, someone said behind my back.

A Writer's Moment: 'The driver of great stories'

A Writer's Moment: 'The driver of great stories':   “When you're a writer, you're always looking for conflict. It's conflict that drives great stories.”  – William Kent Krueger ...

'The driver of great stories'

 

“Whenyou're a writer, you're always looking for conflict. It's conflict that drivesgreat stories.” –William Kent Krueger

 

Bornin Torrington, WY on Nov. 16, 1950, Krueger grew up in the Cascade Mountains andmany of his books – especially the Cork O’Connor series – have an “Old West”feel even though he’s made his home in St. Paul, MN for decades and sets hisbooks in Northern Minnesota.

 

Ifirst met Krueger in the early 2000s when I was teaching and doing publicrelations at Augsburg University in Minneapolis and he would stop over to visitwith English classes there.  Afterhearing the “back story” on his own writing career as well as how he created O’Connorand the cast of characters that surround him, I was hooked on his writing.   I have long been amazed that Krueger doesn’thave any Ojibwe blood, since he does a remarkable job of incorporating greatdetail about Ojibwe culture into his stories. 

 

Witheach of the 20 books in the series, beginning with Iron Lake and up tothis year’s offering Spirit Crossing (he’s also written 5 stand-alonenovels), I’ve learned much, much more about the Ojibwe, something Krueger sayshe very much enjoys researching and writing

 

“Readersanticipate that a significant element of every story will be additionalexposure to the ways of the Ojibwe,” he said. “The truth is that I enjoy thisaspect of the work.  Although I have no Indian blood running through myveins, in college I prepared to be a cultural anthropologist, so exploringother cultures is exciting to me.”