Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 6

'First write a gripping yarn'

“My first duty to write a grippingyarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel.Only third comes the idea.” – David Brin

 

Born in California on Oct. 6, 1950Brin is an astro-physicist who turned his talents to writing and became anaward-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus,Campbell and Nebula Awards – basically a “clean sweep” of all the top awards inhis genre.

His Campbell Award winning novel The Postman was adapted as afeature film that starred Kevin Costner.  His nonfiction book TheTransparent Society won both the Freedom of Speech Award (from theAmerican Library Association) and the McGannon CommunicationAward.   

 

Many of Brin's works focus on theimpact on human society of technology humankind develops for itself, mostnoticeably in his novels The Practice Effect, Glory Season and KilnPeople.   During the past fewyears he has been writing what he calls “The High Horizon” series – Colony Highin 2021 and Castaways of New Mojave (with Jeff Carlson) in 2023.   

Brin helped establish the Arthur C. ClarkeCenter for Human Imagination (UCSD), serves on the advisory board of NASA’sInnovative and Advanced Concepts group, and frequently does “futuristic”consulting for businesses and industry and said he’s glad he’s a scientistfirst.

 

“There's no doubt,” he said, “thatscientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction.”   

A Writer's Moment: 'First write a gripping yarn'

A Writer's Moment: 'First write a gripping yarn': “My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea...

'The Spirit of Place'

 

“It may seem unfashionable to sayso, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect.History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, ofcharacter and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama ofthe human spirit.” – Peter Ackroyd

 

Born in England on Oct. 5, 1949Ackroyd is a novelist, critic and biographer of award-winning books on William Blake, Charles Dickens and T.S.Eliot.  His historical novels also have earned him great acclaim,including the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards, for Hawksmoorand The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde.  He is noted for the depth of his research and volumeof his work – some 20 novels, several books of poetry and more than 40nonfiction books, the latest being The English Soul: Faith of a Nation.

 

His novel The Great Fire ofLondon, a reworking of Dickens’ Little Dorrit (a terrificexample, by the way, of the “serial” writing style that first made Dickenspopular), first put Ackroyd on the writing map.   Thatbook set the stage for his many novels dealing with the complexinteraction of time and space and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit ofplace.” 

  

“To be a writer was always mygreatest aim,”Ackroyd said.  “I rememberwriting a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, atleast to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The Spirit of Place'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Spirit of Place':   “It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a stor...

A Writer's Moment: 'We are listening'

A Writer's Moment: 'We are listening':       “A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.”  ...

'We are listening'

 

 

 “A poem records emotionsand moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched togetherand hinted at metaphorically.” – Diane Ackerman

 

Poet, essayist and naturalist –known for her wide-ranging curiosity and poetic explorations of the naturalworld –Ackerman was born in Waukegan, IL on Oct. 7,1948.   Among her best-known poetry collections (of the 22 shehas published) is Jaguar of My Destroyer: New and Collected Poems.  Alsoknown for her study of (and essays on) the senses, she said she is fascinatedby how they affect people’s lives.   

“We live on the leash of oursenses,” she said.   For Saturday’s poem, here is Ackerman’s,

  We Are Listening 

As our metal eyes wake

to absolute night,

where whispers fly

from the beginning of time,

we cup our ears to the heavens.

We are listening

 

on the volcanic lips of Flagstaff

and the fields beyond Boston

and in a great array that blooms

like coral from the desert floor,

on highwire webs patrolled

by computer wires in Puerto Rico.

 

We are listening for a sound

beyond us, beyond sound,

 

searching for a lighthouse

in the breakwaters of our uncertainty,

an electronic murmur,

a bright, fragile I am.

 

Small as tree frogs

staking out one end

of an endless swamp,

we are listening

through the longest night

we imagine, which dawns

between the life and times of stars.

A Writer's Moment: 'Where are the readers?'

A Writer's Moment: 'Where are the readers?':   “I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but t...

'Where are the readers?'

 

“I didn't mean to spend my lifewriting American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but Isaw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I could think of a lot ofcheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzing George Washington and AaronBurr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so I did it.” –Gore Vidal

 

Born at West Point, NY on this datein 1925 (his father was a military officer serving as the first instructor ofaeronautics in the Military Academy’s history at the time), Vidal became one ofthe most well-known and sometimes controversial writers in American history.  He authored novels, essays, screenplays andstage plays while also taking on a larger-than-life public role as anintellectual, debater and historian.

 

Vidal wrote 28 nonfiction books, 32novels, 8 plays, and 16 screenplays and teleplays.  Many of his bookswere bestsellers, but especially gripping were his historical novels Burr,Lincoln, 1876 and Empire.  And he won the NonfictionNational Book Award for United States: Essays 1952–92.

 

“I never wanted to be a writer,” hesaid.  “I mean, for me, that was the lastthing I wanted.”  Just before his deathin 2012 he did an interview lamenting the state of “Reading in America.”

 

“You hear all this whining going on,'Where are our great writers?'” he said. “The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?”

A Writer's Moment: 'Where miracles happen'

A Writer's Moment: 'Where miracles happen':   “The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.” – Thomas Wolfe   Born in...

'Where miracles happen'

 

“The reason a writer writes a bookis to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to rememberit.” – Thomas Wolfe

 

Born in Ashville, NC on this date in1900, Wolfe is considered one of America’s leading 20th centurywriters.  William Faulkner called him “the greatest talent of ourgeneration,” and his home state often lists him as the greatest writer ever tocome from there.

 

Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels aswell as many short stories, dramatic works, and novellas before his early death(at age 37 from tuberculosis).  His works are often studied for theirinteresting mix of writing styles and for their reflection on America’s rapidlychanging culture in the 1920s and ’30s.

 

Wolfe studied theatre and planned tobe a playwright, but he could never keep his works short enough for the popularstage, so he turned to fiction.  His first novel, LookHomeward, Angel, was nearly 350 thousand words before being drasticallyedited by the famous Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins (also the editor forboth Hemingway and Fitzgerald).  Often at odds with people in hishometown (both for including versions of them in his works and for excludingthem in others), he based some of You Can’t Go Home Again onthat turbulent relationship.    

 

Wolfe lived for a time in Europe,seemingly estranged from his home country, but after witnessing the growingbrutality of Hitler’s Germany, he came back to America to stay.  

 

“America - it is a fabulous country,the only fabulous country,” he said.   “It is the only placewhere miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.”