Warren Adler's Blog, page 19
September 14, 2016
Mark David Gerson
I like to joke that my Muse tricked me into being a writer, slyly pushing against my longstanding blocks until, suddenly, I was a writer and there was no turning back. Growing up, you see, I never viewed myself as creative and could never imagine wanting to be a writer. Now, of course, I can’t imagine doing anything else! I actually tried stopping once. My books weren’t selling at the time, and I was tired of putting out all that effort for minimal results. My “strike” lasted barely two weeks and ended while I was listening to an interview I had recorded with mystery writer J.A. Jance. Something she said reignited my writer self, and I was back at it the next day…with no concessions from my employer-Muse! I love my readers, and their response to my books is always gratifying. In the end, though, the greatest reward for me is what my books reveal to me as I write them – about themselves and about me. That’s because I never plan, plot or outline. My books are as wondrous a journey of discovery for me as I hope they are for my readers.
http://www.markdavidgerson.com
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September 7, 2016
Daliah Husu
The healing power of written words revealed itself to me in my early thirties. I was heartbroken by someone I loved and the physical and emotional pain was unbearable. During those times of seclusion, as I spent days and nights in bed mourning my loss, my only companions were my iPad, my index finger, and my anguished heart. Words poured out of me and onto the sticky notes app of my pad, words that I later recognized as poetry. With time, and as most humans tend to do, I healed and momentarily forgot about writing. A few years later, and once again finding myself in a much bigger crisis, I began writing my memoir. I thought that by being a transgender woman and by sharing my story, I’d be able to use that same power of written words that I once had experienced to help others heal from their pain. Remarkably, I was right! Today, I write because it is vital for my well-being and because writing has become an insatiable need that I must satisfy for as long as I live.
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September 6, 2016
Read More, Live Longer
I’ve always believed that reading was the one essential pastime to assure the most fulfilling quality of life. It now appears, based on new research, that reading actually extends life.
The assertion is based upon a study revealed in Social Science and Medicine, as reported in the New York Times. The researchers used data on 3635 people over 50 who had answered questions about reading. The scientists divided the sample into three groups, those who read books up to three and a half hours a week,those who read books more than three and a half hours, and those who did not read at all. I’m not sure how these hourly moments were tracked and quantified but then I do not want to be a spoil sport in assessing this most encouraging outcome.
The study concluded that those who read for up to three and a half hours a week were 17% less likely to die over 12 years of follow up, and 
those who read more than that were 23% less likely to die. Book readers, so the survey points out, lived an average of almost two years longer than those who did not read at all. Reading newspapers and periodicals found a similar but weak association.
It wasn’t all good news for the male gender since the study pointed out that book readers tended to be female, college educated, and in higher income groups. Thus, the researchers controlled for these factors as well as age, race, self reported health, depression, employment and marital status.
As a natural cynic who has decried the shrinking population of serious readers, I do take some comfort in these findings. Of course, “books” in contemporary terms is a catchall definition which could mean any string of words that communicate between people through a variety of devices. Am I getting too technical?
The study doesn’t seem to differentiate what kind of books, fiction, non-fiction, instruction, genre, and categories that would stretch far beyond the confines of this essay. Considering my profession, please understand that my focus is purely literary.
Nevertheless, I’m inclined to be less cynical about the outcome of this study, since I have always believed that reading, the very act of quiet concentrated communication between writer and reader is beneficial on many levels.
As a writer of the imagination and a reader of works of the imagination I believe it has given me insight, understanding and greater comprehension of the human condition on all levels. It has taken me out of the living moment into the mind and motivation of others, both past and present, and showed me a path to empathy and potential wisdom. Perhaps. I like to think so.
The researchers who designed the study are on to something. It is no secret that the brain which defines what is meant by the mind is the controlling force in every creature that lives on this planet, especially its most advanced species…meaning us humans. Whether or not it extends life is a matter worth considering in this age when baffling diseases short circuit the brain and mock such extension, but that is another matter.
The article in the Times ends with a quote from the senior author of this report, Becca R. Levy, a Professor of epidemiology at Yale. “People who report half-hour a day of book reading had a significant survival advantage over those who do not read.”
That’s good news for readers, writers and publishers. Make sure you put in your hours, I’m all for the extra time.
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August 31, 2016
Viga Boland
I’ve always had a love affair with the power of words. Words can build us up or tear us down in seconds. Whichever way they are used, there are lifelong ramifications for all who read or hear them.
As a victim of child sexual abuse, I know all too well how harsh, unkind words can destroy self-esteem. As a teen, writing poems and songs helped me cope. Today, as an aging survivor and thriver, I want the words I speak and write to motivate and inspire others to explore their talents and realize their dreams, as I have mine.
I hope that all who read my books, even my disturbing memoirs, will take away the positives I’ve presented in all of them.
The most rewarding part of writing for me is the freedom it gives me to speak my truth. That reward is bettered only by the feedback from my readers when they say my words helped them realize they are not alone in their struggles, and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
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August 24, 2016
George Clowers
I read something, a Frost poem perhaps, at the age of eleven, and thought, “I want to write something that affects others the way I was affected.” The music I heard at home and my mother and her sisters singing to her piano playing set off a desire to write what I was seeing and feeling. Little did I know a poet was just waiting to be given expression. In reciting an “I Am a Negro” essay and being called to recite it often, that helped merge the listener to the recorder.
Throughout having a poem rejected as not being my own by an eighth grade teacher, being mentored by an English author one summer, and running around with the wrong crowd for a few years, the story always followed me: the story of what people liked to do.
As kids we sat around telling bad jokes and listened as the older folks debated the issues of the day. In my turn it was to either recite the ‘songs’, or capture the essence of what was being said, in poetic fashion.
It is the same today as I’ve been able to publish a novel, a novella, a poetry collection, and a short story. The fifty-year journey is completed. We’ll see what happens going forward.
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August 17, 2016
Elaine Viets
My grandpa was a master storyteller, a real raconteur. He’d tell his stories in a redbrick saloon on St. Louis’s south side, the city’s German-American neighborhood. Back then, saloons were working people’s clubs. The bartender-alderman, who knew more about sin than a priest, gave Grandpa this accolade: “He was a snappy dresser. Drank two beers and went straight home to his wife.”
Grandpa gave me his rules for storytelling: Keep it short. Keep it funny. Make fun of yourself, not other people. He was one of eleven children, and quit school in the fourth grade to work, but he believed in education, and insisted I finish college. Grandpa wasn’t perfect: Like many Depression-era people, he was tight with a buck. Grandma swiped his pocket change to get extra money. But I hope my storytelling is as good as his. Feel free to crack open a cold one while you listen.
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August 10, 2016
Natalia Leigh
When I don’t write, I feel a sort of loneliness seep into my life. It’s as if my characters and stories are always there in the back of my mind, reprimanding me for neglecting them. Writing allows me to chase dreams and go on adventures that aren’t possible in my everyday life. And I think that’s one of the reasons I write – to escape the mundane and step into the magical. On the page I can live vicariously through my characters. I can be the huntress, the king, the assassin, the heinous villain. We all have these characters inside of us, and writing allows me to explore mine. I think Andrea Barrett says it best, “I’ve never known a writer who didn’t feel ill at ease in the world. We all feel unhoused in some sense. That’s part of why we write. We feel we don’t fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we’re not of it. You don’t need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world.” I write to feel whole. Without the magic of stories and the written word, I would be so much less than I am now.
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August 3, 2016
Francis Sparks
When I was eleven years old, I discovered a fantasy series by way of our library’s bookmobile that sparked my imagination like nothing I had read before. That series began my love affair with dragons, magic, flawed heroes, complex villains and most of all, books. I found solace in my books during the tough times of my adolescence and I began to dream of the worlds I would create for others and the idea of writing as a profession seemed possible. Then college and life happened and the desire to write burned low for a time. Thirty found me listless and unfulfilled in my career so I finally began to write. Through fits and starts, rejection and perseverance I became the writer I wanted to be. Now, I write about complex villains and flawed heroes and big ideas and issues and if I don’t write and enough time passes I am again listless and unfulfilled. I have two small children that I hope will never have to escape to worlds of dragons and magic for any other reason than they want to.
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July 27, 2016
April Henry
I write for so many reasons.
First, I write because no one will pay me to read and eat Doritos, which would probably be the perfect job.
I write because I was once a teen who needed to escape into stories. I grew up poor in a little town, but books showed me all different kinds of lives. Now I write books that allow other readers to escape. To imagine that they could be as brave and resourceful as the people in my thrillers.
Being a writer has also led to me learning so many interesting things, like what it’s like to be blind, how to get out of handcuffs with a bobby pin, or whether you could really crawl through duct work like they do in the movies.
I write because I love to hear from people who thought they didn’t like to read—until they read one of my books.
Books are like magic and now I’m a magician.
http://www.aprilhenrymysteries.com/
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July 20, 2016
Tara Ison
I began writing because I wanted to be a “Writer.” Not, initially, for the love of story or words or character, or the rich whiff of ink and paper, or the romantic conviction that I had anything of value to say, but because I became infatuated at an early age with the images of “Writers” I saw in movies. It seemed every cinematic writer hung out in a Parisian garret or a beach house, lived on cigarettes and sandwiches, wore fabulous linen jackets and/or rumpled pajamas, influenced global events, and was the love object or muse of a slew of brilliant other artist-types. I fell in love with the idea of being a writer, with the six-second montage of the writer writing at an old-fashioned clack clack clack typewriter, drinking Scotch or red wine, forehead attractively creased in thought, and voila, there is the story, the book, the play! And it only took six seconds! I started writing because I wanted that title, that label – “Writer” – and I suspected if I didn’t actually write anything, at some point people would notice. What a lie that effortless, glamorous, seductive six-second writing montage really was…but I had no idea how just how passionately I would fall in love with story, words, and characters, with the rich whiff of ink and paper, with the passionate conviction that I had, maybe, something of value to say.
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