Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 94

A Writer's Moment: 'Stumbling upon cause and effect'

A Writer's Moment: 'Stumbling upon cause and effect':   Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the ...

A Writer's Moment: 'Driven to communicate'

A Writer's Moment: 'Driven to communicate':   “A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to com...

'Driven to communicate'

 

“Awriter writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the needto communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind theneed to share is the need to be understood.” – Leo Rosten

 

Born in Poland on April 11, 1908Rosten became an American novelist, scriptwriter and humorist who also had adeep interest in the relationship of politics and the media and the intricaciesof their connections. 

 

Rosten emigrated to and grew up inNew York City, started writing at age 9 and worked his way through all levelsof school, including earning a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.  An economist, he did a series of governmentinformation jobs during WWII but gravitated to writing doing screenplays, thenfeature writer and essays for Look Magazine for nearly 25 years. 

 

Fascinated by the power of ofwell-placed words, he once noted, “Words must surely be counted among the mostpowerful drugs man ever invented.”

 

Rosten died in 1997 but his quoteslive on, including one of his most famous – a version of which is oftenmisattributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. "The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable.  It is to be compassionate.  It is to matter; to have it make somedifference that you lived."

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A Writer's Moment: Becoming a 'good user' of English

A Writer's Moment: Becoming a 'good user' of English:   “How do you become a good user of English?   Well, a person should read. And read, and read. Preferably good things. I might suggest The N...

Becoming a 'good user' of English

 “How do you become a good user ofEnglish?  Well,a person should read. And read, and read. Preferably good things. I might suggest The New Yorker,for instance.” – Mary Norris  

Norris, born in Cleveland in 1952, is a longtime copy editor at The New Yorker, a magazine justly famous for the care it takes with words.  To read about common mistakes many writers make, take a look at her excellent book, Between You & Me:Confessions of a Comma Queen.
The title, she said, references the mistake of "using I instead of me in phrases such as 'between youand me'.   How can youtell when you're messing it up? Put the 'I' first.  You mightmake a mistake — I hope not — and say 'between you and I,' but you would never make the mistake of saying 'between I and you.'"
 [image error] Norris began working at The New Yorker in 1978 andsaid that over her many years there she’s worked with all kinds of writers,great and small, but one of the easiest was the wonderful John Updike. “John Updike was very careful in his prose and very attunedto details," Norris said.  "The only danger there was that it was so slick, your pencil wouldslide off the page! It was really beautifully done.”

A Writer's Moment: The test of 'true friendship'

A Writer's Moment: The test of 'true friendship':   “Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.” – Walter Winchell   Born o...

The test of 'true friendship'

 

“Gossipis the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.”– Walter Winchell

 

Born on this date in 1897, Winchellrose from what he termed “The mean streets of New York” to become the somewhatmean writer about New York and the entertainment world.   A grade school dropout (6thgrade) who ran off to join the Vaudeville stage, he became a conduit forsharing showbiz tales at the age of 15, first posting stories on theater wallsand then feeding them to entertainment journals.

 

By age 20, Winchell was working for The Vaudeville News and by 30 for the NewYork Daily Mirror, where he started a gossip column called On-Broadway.  Ultimately, King Features made it the firstsyndicated column, and Winchell became a worldwide phenomenon.  At the height of his popularity 50 millionpeople read his daily column and another 20million tuned in for his Sunday Night radio broadcast.

 

Noted for taking a stand againstHitler, Mussolini and Facism and for his support of Civil Rights, he also wasnotorious for often unjustified attacks on those he thought were trying to hurthis career.   But, if he was your friend,he was a true friend no matter what.

 

“A real friend,” he said,  “is one who walks in when the rest of theworld walks out.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'Through the eyes of another'

A Writer's Moment: 'Through the eyes of another':   “Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.”...

'Through the eyes of another'

 “Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takesyou somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to liveanother life.” – Barbara Kingsolver

 Since 1993, the year of her firstnovel The Poisonwood Bible, every one of BarbaraKingsolver's 16 books have reached The New York Times Best Seller list. Born in Appalachia on this date in 1955, Kingsolver intended to be aclassical musician and, in fact, had a college scholarship to become one.  But, she said she realized that “only about 6people a year get hired in that world.”  Soshe switched her focus to the study of science and on a whim tried her hand at “creative” writing. 

Kingsolverhas split her adult life between homes in Appalachia andArizona, where she wrote some of her most memorable works including Pigs in Heaven earning a reputation as a writer focusing on socialjustice, biodiversity and the interaction between humans, their communities andtheir environments.   [image error]BarbaraKingsolver “Every time I write a new novelabout something somber and sobering and terrible I think (of my readers) ‘OhLord, they’re not going to want to go here.’ But they do.  Readers of fiction read, I think, for adeeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that’s brave."

'For Dynamic -- The Play's the Thing'

 

“Anovel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing thatmoves past one.” – Kenneth Tynan

One of the most impactful theatercritics of the mid-20th Century, Tynan was born on this date in 1928and in his relatively short lifetime (he died at age 53 of emphysema) he becamea force in the theatrical world. 

 

His understanding of what made goodwriting (and a good show) led to his eventual appointment as literary managerof the British National Theatre Company. In that role he not only greatly expanded the Theatre’s reach and choiceof plays but also established his own worldwide reputation.

 

Tynan's career first took off in1952 as a young theatre critic for the London Evening Standard.   In 1954, he joined The Observer andit was there that he rose to prominence. After becoming part of the National Theatre’s management team, hecontinued his writing as a film reviewer. During the final decade of his life he lived in California, writingoften for The New Yorker and doingscreenplays and theatrical pieces, including the very popular Oh, Calcutta!   He also kept diaries that have been muchstudied, both in writing courses and by historians.

“A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre ofhis time,” Tynan wrote, when asked what advice he might give to aspiringcritics. “A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.”

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