Warren Adler's Blog, page 18
October 31, 2016
The Role of the Fiction Writer in Our Current Presidential Election
The true test of talent for a fiction writer is the ability to imagine pain, angst, despair, discouragement, frustration as well as joy, ecstasy, elation and pleasure. This is the power that runs the machine of character creation that lies at the very heart of storytelling.
As we fiction practitioners understand, craft can be learned, but without the innate power of the imagination the characters that power stories become merely stick figures in a charade bereft of emotional content, a pallid portrayal of clichés that offer the reader no window into the search for truth that is the bedrock motivation of the serious fiction writer. But the imagination is no passive instrument, it has to be fed with the imagery of intense observation and experience, alerting all the senses of the creative writer who absorbs them deeply and understands their signals and meaning. What goes on in the furnace of the mind is mysterious and miraculous, often impossible to define despite being what I have characterized as the essential ingredient.
It might seem like a bit of a stretch to relate these thoughts to the intense activity of our current national election but the fact is that fiction writers are deluged with information and experience that offers a lot more than statistics, sound bites and a veritable flood of anger and insult. For a serious fiction writer the imagination is deeply challenged to discover the real truth of what seems like a never-ending tornado of words without meaning, like breadcrumbs flung into a swamp to feed a starving multitude of hapless creatures fighting for survival. Writers must try to understand the pain of those who built things in the old America; our cars, our roads, our steel, who cut our timber, who poured our concrete, laid our pipes, strung our wires, grew our food, constructed our homes, those who built, sacrificed and fought for an America that answered our needs for economic comfort, safety and the ability to enter the aspirational challenge of “getting ahead.”
A writer must understand the pain felt as well by the deprived and the discriminated who have come up against the wall of hatred and blind unfeeling bias on the basis of skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, mental and physical handicaps, and the myriad variations in appearance and intellect that make up the extraordinary diversity of humanity.
For the creative writer of noble aspiration he or she must cast themselves within the psyche of their characters and summon up their motivation, fully understanding the conflict that must be dealt with as the story moves on with its mission of completion.
What the fiction writer understands is that the human animal struggles to attain the joyous sensation of optimism and can easily fall prey to pleas of comfort and assurance in the face of the mysterious void that awaits them and for which many have devised ways to find hope in what is commonly referred to as the “afterlife.”
The current election in this age of technology offers us a menu of acute and all encompassing naked revelation of the problems that afflict humanity in its attempt to create rational boundaries to protect and allow it to survive, prosper and live in comparative safety and, as our wise founders once wrote, attempt the pursuit of happiness, a worthy aspiration of infinite definitions that will always engage the serious fiction writer.
If out of this election year experience a novel emerges by some creative writer banging the keyboard in their parents’ basement, I do not think, despite all the “sturm und drang,” despite the avalanche of empty and often angry words, despite the comedy, posturing and torrent of accusations, despite the costuming, staging and endless analysis by witless journalists and tiresome pundits, despite the infinite polling and intellectual autopsies by self-proclaimed experts and faux historians, whatever the outcome, the great novel it will inspire will be rich in irony, humor, character development, conflict, insight and wisdom and not, as the pessimists in our midst might predict, in desolation and doom. That novel will offer one of the most telling learning experiences in the history of our times.
The post The Role of the Fiction Writer in Our Current Presidential Election appeared first on Warren Adler.
October 26, 2016
Erika L. Sánchez
I came to poetry with a deep desperation to be acknowledged, to find alternate realities, to exist in a space that belonged only to me. Books, poems, and words offered me the respite I couldn’t find in the physical world. When I read a book, I completely disappeared into that reality. I was not a sullen self-piteous misfit growing up in a shitty neighborhood; I was something else entirely. Novels and poems gave me the hope for a better life. My imagination grew like wild brambles. There were so many times I became unhinged in a magical, and sometimes terrifying way.
The cliché about literature changing one’s life is a cliché for a reason. Who doesn’t remember the first time a book or poem blew their mind wide open? When I was in sixth grade, we read “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe in class, and my heart fluttered. I was in love. The lines reverberated in my head for days, and I became insatiable for more. I borrowed Poe’s collected poems from the library, and when I read the poem “Alone,” I felt like a warm syrup had been poured all over my insides. Reading it as an adult, I cringe a little, but I can’t even describe what this maudlin poem did for fat and awkward 12-year-old me. I was beside myself.
The post Erika L. Sánchez appeared first on Warren Adler.
October 20, 2016
Top Halloween Reads from Warren Adler
The post Top Halloween Reads from Warren Adler appeared first on Warren Adler.
October 19, 2016
Sherri Smith
Why do I write? Well for the money of course! When I received my first my advance, I dumped the entire $72.50 on my bed and just rolled around in it, while blasting Coolio’s Money. However, I think, before I was corrupted by wealth, my drive to write came from a much more organic place.
I grew up in a relentlessly crowded household and competition for space was fierce. The only space I could consistently rely on was made available by books and whatever stories I could think up. The more elaborate, the better transported I was.
From there, writing just became a bad habit. I journaled everywhere, all of the time. Like writing out my thoughts was the necessary long equation to get to the answer of how I really felt about something. It seemed natural to then take those godawful feelings and attribute them to made up people so I didn’t have to admit to having them.
Now, I write because it’s just what I do. Mostly for the money.
The post Sherri Smith appeared first on Warren Adler.
October 12, 2016
Eva Lesko Natiello
I began writing to combat loneliness. This might seem strange because writing itself is a lonely affair. But after I left my job of twelve years and moved out of state to stay home to raise my young children, I had to start over: new town, new friends, new purpose. Bringing life to characters who would (in my mind) travel everywhere I went, kept me company as I acclimated and made real friends! For as long as I can remember, I’ve always imagined fictional story lines when I’m plopped into new experiences. Like, if I’m on a plane, I imagine the passengers in different scenarios. Call it an active imagination. So with the extra brain time, I started to write about these imaginings. Also, my love for acting and singing led naturally to another form of entertaining: storytelling. A newspaper article inspired the story of my first book, and I haven’t looked back since. I couldn’t have predicted all of the gains that writing would bring: the joy of storytelling, the support and friendship of a writer/author community and an ever-expanding group of readers with whom I communicate every day.
The post Eva Lesko Natiello appeared first on Warren Adler.
October 5, 2016
Warren Adler’s Favorite Mystery Books
The post Warren Adler’s Favorite Mystery Books appeared first on Warren Adler.
Lisa Kramer
Words have power. I feel that power whenever I sit down to put my thoughts into an understandable form. I love language and the ability of some to string words together in a way that thrills your heart while encouraging people to think, to question, to dream. I believe in the power of story—whether those are written down on the page, performed on the stage, or painted on a wall. Through story we learn what it means to be human, to be alive, to be connected, and to be ourselves. I write for all those reasons. I always have made sense of my life by writing—journals, poems, letters, blog posts, essays, short stories, books. I write because words are my place of safety, where I can uncover the meaning of my life. I write because my personal motto—“Life on my own terms’—requires that I strive to learn, think, understand, question and grow. I write because through words I can find my truth. I write, also, to inspire others to discover their own truths. Writing is just one of my strongest tools of communication, and communication is part of what makes our lives so rich and wonderful and worth living.
The post Lisa Kramer appeared first on Warren Adler.
September 28, 2016
Oona Piipponen
Writing is a place I go. The journey starts with a deep breath that pushes out all other places, places of rush and to-do lists and expectations of others. My writing-place then starts to come alive.
I fly over the forests of my creation and take in the world. It’s always the same path, the same forest I see. It’s like falling into a map that contains another reality. Then I hear the characters. Feel them. Become them. They are all remarkably real in my writing-place. Sometimes I distance myself, look at them from all angles, to see if they would pass the credibility test. Will a reader find her way inside these make-believe people and love them as I do?
What I see always surprises me. I always see me. Going to my writing place is like walking into a hall of mirrors and being reflected infinitely in the people looking back at me. That’s lucky – I’m the only reader I really have to please!
So I write. The characters lead the way and always raise strong opposition if I try to force them down a different path. Sometimes we struggle and toss and turn and tumble and come out gasping for breath – but afterwards my chest is filled with the glow of victory that nothing in the outside world, the-not-writing-world, can tarnish. Even after I leave and get on with rush and to-do lists and, well, life, I know that writing is a place I can always go.
The post Oona Piipponen appeared first on Warren Adler.
September 23, 2016
The Endurance of The War of the Roses: A Cautionary Tale of Divorce and its Aftermath
The North American premiere of my play The War of the Roses, based solely on the original novel, has opened at the Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington to spectacular reviews. It avoids using any of the brilliant changes concocted by the screenwriters and director that made the movie an enduring hit that plays somewhere in the world on TV on any given day and is streamed again and again.
My sequel novel, The Children of the 
Roses, is now heading to the silver screen, currently in production with Grey Eagle Films. The sequel deals with the aftermath of a messy divorce, the impact on the two offspring of the Roses and the lingering effect on their grandchildren. For those who follow celebrity divorces, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt come right to mind. They are said to be concerned about the necessity of protecting the lives of their six children from a protracted and ugly divorce, known worldwide these days as a “War of the Roses” divorce that might become a destructive and traumatic experience. Ironically, in going over casting possibilities for the Broadway production of my play, the Jolie/Pitt duo were seriously considered as lead actors. Go figure.
I’m amazed at the strange journey of The War of the Roses written more than forty years ago. Of all of my more than fifty novels, it has found its way into the world’s mainstream and become a brand name for domestic strife and divorce.
Essentially it is a work of the imagination, a cautionary tale of how possessions can distort one’s perspective on what is really meaningful in a marriage. It is miraculous that it has lost none of its punch and it is an author’s dream to have their work live on long beyond its launch date.
Above all, an author’s goal is revelation through storytelling that plumbs the depths of the human condition and offers insight into the central question of “what happens next?” The novel is the ideal medium to allow an author to plumb hidden truths through the minds of imaginary characters that reveal the impetus of their motivations as they wrestle with life’s joys and calamities.
Material for these stories are everywhere and the novelist’s job is to find them and render them for readers through language, logic and style that keep them interested from the opening line to the
last. There is no way of knowing in advance how readers might react, which makes the author’s work speculative and risky. Most novels, even runaway bestsellers, fade quickly and are rarely heard from again. Frankly I am humbled by the lasting power of this work and it has encouraged me to take stock of the long term fate of my work which underlines the reason I chose to set up my own publishing company more than twenty-five years ago after twenty-seven of my books were published by traditional publishers. Under the banner of Stonehouse Press, the number of novels I have published have nearly doubled and at this moment ten of my books are in development for television, film and audio.
I have learned through the adventure of the publishing history of The War of the Roses as an original novel that the possibilities of endurance through other mediums via the technology highway offer unique opportunities for the committed novelist. Of course, such a fate is totally unpredictable and often depends on the mysteries of word of mouth and luck.
In The War of the Roses I set out to write a book about the hazards of putting too much faith in acquiring “things” and how people can become slaves to them and destroy their once loving relationships because of them. Most of the people who championed this book from editors to movie producers were divorced or in deep agreement with the book’s philosophical underpinnings.
Beyond the book, the movie introduced a massive interest and I have encountered many people who actually quote lines from the movie and the book. I have come to believe, too, that perhaps one of the secrets of the story’s endurance extends not only to the bitterly divorced but to those who live in stable marriages who may often fantasize about those thoughts and outrageous actions which motivate the fictional Roses but pass quickly as brief anomalies rarely followed up by action. 
Now comes the theatrical contribution where the initial critics offer these lines of reaction to the play:
“Warren Adler adapted his original novel for the stage, and 30 years on, this tale reveals more about our culture than it did in the late 1980s… Never has a generation of Americans so much indulged the joy of destruction, with each blockbuster earning applause by wiping out cities with war, alien invasion, and natural disaster.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
“Though the novel was written 40 years ago, the issues and hijinks ring as outrageous and yet relatable as today. The Roses are ruthless, but you can’t help but love them.” (DC Metro Theater Arts)
“The War of the Roses is the perfect guilty pleasure.” (Delaware Arts Info)
I haven’t a concrete clue to what I can attribute this cavalcade of praise, but I am grateful to have, to use an obvious metaphor, planted a tree and seen it grow and branch over the years. In an odd way, too, it is a tribute to the human animal and the power of the brain to imagine and record through language. It’s a work of the imagination.
After all, I have been married for 65 years – one time only – and that counts as a lifetime.
READ THE ORIGINAL NOVEL for $8.99 AND CATCH THE SEQUEL FOR $1.99 ON KINDLE
The post The Endurance of The War of the Roses: A Cautionary Tale of Divorce and its Aftermath appeared first on Warren Adler.
September 21, 2016
Peggy Toney Horton
Nothing excites me as much as writing. When I was a child, I’d lie on my bed and dream up poems relevant to what was going on in my life at the time. Sometimes my writing was happy, and other times, it was incredibly sad. When my dog died, the poetry echoed the despair I felt, and as I became older, it was more about friendships, first love, happiness and heartbreak.
It’s still that way today. Whatever is going on is what motivates me.
Isn’t it like that for all writers? Our writing reflects our moods. And that’s not a bad thing. Perhaps it’s a way to avoid problems. It’s a well-known fact that artistic people are more emotional than others. So, instead of allowing our emotions to turn inward causing ulcers, high blood pressure and other health issues, we pour them into our stories and poems for others to enjoy. Or not.
At any rate, we get rid of them. If we’re lucky, we manage to put something worthwhile on paper. And if we’re very fortunate, others benefit from what we write. I’ve been told many times that a particular story “made someone’s day,” or “made them laugh – changing the direction of their day.”
When I’m tempted to give up because my book isn’t selling well, or when I get another rejection slip from a magazine editor, I think about those dear people who actually feel something when they read my words!
And I go back to my computer.
The post Peggy Toney Horton appeared first on Warren Adler.
Warren Adler's Blog
- Warren Adler's profile
- 111 followers
