Warren Adler's Blog, page 3
May 30, 2018
Carter Wilson
I literally started writing on one specific day. I had no background in writing and was contentedly entrenched in a consulting career. On this particular day, I was thirty-three and sitting in an eight-hour continuing-education class. Out of boredom, I wrote the following question on my notepad: If three people are murdered the exact same way at the exact same time in different parts of the world, what’s the connection? I spent the rest of the class trying to create a story in my head to answer that question. Back home, I kept working on it. Then it grew. Ninety days later I had a 400-page manuscript, and that’s when I knew I wanted to be a writer. That I was supposed to be a writer.
Fifteen years later I’m a USA Today bestselling novelist with my fifth book having just launched. So I learned when life gives you a very strong nudge to do something, you do it. We are all good at different things, but we are all meant to do one thing.
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May 23, 2018
Liv Constantine
Liv Constantine is the pen name of USA Today and WSJ bestselling authors and sisters Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine.
At heart, all writers are readers, and love of literature came to both of us young. We grew up making weekly trips to the library, passing books around between our mother and our aunt, and having discussions about those books – sort of an informal family book club. In addition to that, we had a grandmother who loved telling us stories from the “old country”, so we were fortunate to be raised with a tradition of the oral history. The love of storytelling is what propels our writing. As sisters and co-authors, we are fortunate to share in creating new worlds inhabited by characters that we together breathed to life. There is nothing like being immersed in a new story, watching the characters develop and their stories unfold. It’s both magical and mystical and adds a reflective dimension to our lives that nothing else has the power to do.
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May 18, 2018
My Salute to English Teachers [as featured on Teaching Channel]
In 1949 when I was twenty-one years old I took a creative writing course at the New School in Manhattan taught by Professor Don M. Wolfe. He had been my freshman English teacher at New York University, where I graduated in 1947, just two months shy of my twentieth birthday.
Dr. Wolfe assigned compositions and encouraged us to stretch the use of the language to create imaginative imagery and use muscular words to tell our stories and create our plots and descriptions. He was extremely diligent in his reading of our material. When I would receive one of my compositions back, he wrote his criticisms in red ink scrawls and you felt dead certain that he had read every word. It was through those red scrawls that I interpreted his message. You can write, son. Keep at it. Many students can cite similar experiences, the mentor, the inspiration, the great teacher who took the student under her or his wing and made the crucial difference, who pointed the way to a fulfilling and prosperous career.
In that fateful freshman year, largely due to Dr. Wolfe’s inspiration (of which he was surely unaware) I decided to be a writer of fiction, changed my major to English Literature, gloried in the study of the extraordinary western canon of authors and have since then pursued a lifetime of obsessive composition of novels, short stories, essays and poems through every imaginable phase of rejection, insult, deprecation, praise, acceptance, and a moment or two of lionization.
As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, I’ve been fishing around for the most ignored, the most threatened, the most neglected and unsung heroes and heroines of our angry, divisive and dysfunctional communities and there is one noble and dedicated breed who do not normally show up on our national radar but are deserving of our most heartfelt special praise and gratitude. They are our English teachers, the rearguards of our intellectual life, holding firm under great odds.
As someone inspired and sustained by a long list of English teachers from elementary school to college and beyond, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my English teachers who have introduced me to the wonders of the written word and armed me with the tools, skills, insight, and encouragement needed to pursue a most satisfying and creative lifetime career in literature.
Acknowledgment of a teacher’s impact is crucial. I dedicated my novel The Casanova Embrace to Dr. Wolfe. It reads, “To Don M. Wolfe who ignited the flame.” We don’t know what someone thinks of us until we tell them. Don’t keep your gratitude a secret. It will brighten a teacher’s day to know that her or his efforts weren’t in vain. That they made an impact.
In an age where the societal perception of the “uselessness” of liberal arts has become all too common, I worry that this noble band of brothers and sisters and the quintessential subject they teach are at risk of obsolescence.
English teachers and professors deserve special praise for plying their talents to educate our children and young adults in the pursuit of literature, grammar, and the glories of the written and spoken word, for instilling our offspring with the values, wisdom and beauty that come to us through the beauty and glory inherent in our great works of literature.
Working writers should volunteer to visit English classrooms for one or multiple sessions. It would be an extremely valuable experience to students who are noodling the possibility of writing as a career path. Hearing from someone firsthand and benefiting from their real-world experiences is a great resource. I taught creative writing at New York University for a semester. It was a mutually rewarding experience. On that note, anyone who has majored in English and gone on to implement those related skills and knowledge is also qualified to pay a visit.
While I am not advocating that such commercially marketable subjects like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics not be vigorously pursued, ignoring bedrock principles of written communication and the wisdom and insight available in works of literature is treacherous. It leaves us profoundly ignorant of the real meaning not only of a life well lived but of our understanding of ourselves and our fellow inhabitants of this planet.
Thankfully, they are preserved and perpetuated by a hardy band of teachers who have chosen as their life’s work the perpetuation of those subjects that come under the traditional scholastic venue of “English.”
I might be tempted to use some timeworn clichés about the barbarians at the gates or such homilies that man does not live by bread alone, but I doubt they would penetrate the well-meaning pubahs of the education establishment who seem to be ignoring an essential ingredient of the truly educated.
In the writing video Writing to Learn on Tch, which applies to all grades and all subjects, Andrea Culver, 9th Grade Pre-AP English 1 says, “When we Write to Think, that’s when you’re organizing your own thoughts. What the students really get out of these kinds of activities is they’re able to process the information in a way that’s going to make them retain it.” This really resonates with me. Not only is it another example of the advancements that English teachers are making with students who are interested in all kinds of activities and subjects, but it is a major key to unlocking what we have within us.
Being a teacher of “English” at any level is a profession of the highest order and worthy of enormous praise. What they do might not be conventionally thought of as providing most students with fuel for the pocketbook but that is to miss the point. Their dedication to instilling the values and wisdom that come to us through our great works of literature is fundamentally more sublime, offering a lifetime treasure trove for the soul, the most valuable gift that a teacher can provide a student as he/she navigates life.
So hats in the air in celebration of English teachers who teach and maintain the standards of literacy and literature in a world that is increasingly indifferent to such pursuits. I salute them all.
As featured on Teaching Channel here
The post My Salute to English Teachers [as featured on Teaching Channel] appeared first on Warren Adler.
May 16, 2018
K.L. Murphy
Growing up, I didn’t consciously know I wanted to be a writer. As a teen, I worked as the editor of my high school yearbook, wrote for the school paper, and devoured books at a fast clip. But when I went to college, I found myself majoring in business, not writing or journalism.
For years, I worked in finance and banking. One winter, a co-worker and I decided to take a night class in creative writing. We thought it would be fun—number crunching by day and writing by night—and we were right. I vividly remember reading my first story for the group. I thought it went fine until another woman in the class read. Wow. She was phenomenal and none of us could touch her. (I sincerely hope she’s still writing today.)
Years later, when I got serious about writing, I remembered that writer and how great storytelling has the power to captivate and entertain. Since then, I’ve written several mystery and crime novels that I hope do just that. I’ve been fortunate to have great support along the way and today, I’m still an avid reader, but I’m an even more avid writer.
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May 11, 2018
May 9, 2018
Hannah Mary McKinnon
Like so many authors, I loved writing at school, revelled in “essay time”, bugged my teachers when days passed without an assignment. But then life happened. As I forged a successful career and had a family, writing fell by the wayside. I considered it a luxury I’d never have time for.
Fast forward a couple of decades. You know the saying “when one door closes, another opens”? Well, the door that slammed in my face was the spectacular failure of my HR company, which I founded after we moved to Canada in 2010, and tanked within a year. While it hurt (a lot), and shook my self-confidence, it gave me that rare opportunity to examine what I really wanted to do. The answer was writing, not just short stories, but novels. And I wanted the agent, publisher and multiple book deal, too. Ambitious (some might say naïve) and utterly terrifying, but when the idea for my first novel popped into my head, I started typing, and never looked back.
Now I write because I can’t not write. It’s excruciating at times (first drafts are the worst), but creating something out of nothing, finishing a manuscript, going through the revision process with my awesome editor, seeing the cover art for the first time, working with the marketing and PR teams, and, ultimately sending the people I’ve imagined off into the world for others to discover…that feeling is hard to beat, and utterly addictive. I can’t imagine doing anything else.
The post Hannah Mary McKinnon appeared first on Warren Adler.
May 8, 2018
My Salute to English Teachers
Happy #TeacherAppreciationDay!
In 1949 when I was twenty-one years old I took a creative writing course at the New School in Manhattan taught by Professor Don M. Wolfe. He had been my freshman English teacher at New York University, where I graduated in 1947, just two months shy of my twentieth birthday.
Dr. Wolfe assigned compositions and encouraged us to stretch the use of the language to create imaginative imagery and use muscular words to tell our stories and create our plots and descriptions. He was extremely diligent in his reading of our material. When I would receive one of my compositions back, he wrote his criticisms in red ink scrawls and you felt dead certain that he had read every word. It was through those red scrawls that I interpreted his message. You can write, son. Keep at it. Many students can cite similar experiences, the mentor, the inspiration, the great teacher who took the student under her or his wing and made the crucial difference, who pointed the way to a fulfilling and prosperous career.
In that fateful freshman year, largely due to Dr. Wolfe’s inspiration (of which he was surely unaware) I decided to be a writer of fiction, changed my major to English Literature, gloried in the study of the extraordinary western canon of authors and have since then pursued a lifetime of obsessive composition of novels, short stories, essays and poems through every imaginable phase of rejection, insult, deprecation, praise, acceptance, and a moment or two of lionization.
As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, I’ve been fishing around for the most ignored, the most threatened, the most neglected and unsung heroes and heroines of our angry, divisive and dysfunctional communities and there is one noble and dedicated breed who do not normally show up on our national radar but are deserving of our most heartfelt special praise and gratitude. They are our English teachers, the rearguards of our intellectual life, holding firm under great odds.
As someone inspired and sustained by a long list of English teachers from elementary school to college and beyond, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my English teachers who have introduced me to the wonders of the written word and armed me with the tools, skills, insight, and encouragement needed to pursue a most satisfying and creative lifetime career in literature.
Acknowledgment of a teacher’s impact is crucial. I dedicated my novel The Casanova Embrace to Dr. Wolfe. It reads, “To Don M. Wolfe who ignited the flame.” We don’t know what someone thinks of us until we tell them. Don’t keep your gratitude a secret. It will brighten a teacher’s day to know that her or his efforts weren’t in vain. That they made an impact.
In an age where the societal perception of the “uselessness” of liberal arts has become all too common, I worry that this noble band of brothers and sisters and the quintessential subject they teach are at risk of obsolescence.
English teachers and professors deserve special praise for plying their talents to educate our children and young adults in the pursuit of literature, grammar, and the glories of the written and spoken word, for instilling our offspring with the values, wisdom and beauty that come to us through the beauty and glory inherent in our great works of literature.
Working writers should volunteer to visit English classrooms for one or multiple sessions. It would be an extremely valuable experience to students who are noodling the possibility of writing as a career path. Hearing from someone firsthand and benefiting from their real-world experiences is a great resource. I taught creative writing at New York University for a semester. It was a mutually rewarding experience. On that note, anyone who has majored in English and gone on to implement those related skills and knowledge is also qualified to pay a visit.
While I am not advocating that such commercially marketable subjects like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics not be vigorously pursued, ignoring bedrock principles of written communication and the wisdom and insight available in works of literature is treacherous. It leaves us profoundly ignorant of the real meaning not only of a life well lived but of our understanding of ourselves and our fellow inhabitants of this planet.
Thankfully, they are preserved and perpetuated by a hardy band of teachers who have chosen as their life’s work the perpetuation of those subjects that come under the traditional scholastic venue of “English.”
I might be tempted to use some timeworn clichés about the barbarians at the gates or such homilies that man does not live by bread alone, but I doubt they would penetrate the well-meaning pubahs of the education establishment who seem to be ignoring an essential ingredient of the truly educated.
In the writing video Writing to Learn on Tch, which applies to all grades and all subjects, Andrea Culver, 9th Grade Pre-AP English 1 says, “When we Write to Think, that’s when you’re organizing your own thoughts. What the students really get out of these kinds of activities is they’re able to process the information in a way that’s going to make them retain it.” This really resonates with me. Not only is it another example of the advancements that English teachers are making with students who are interested in all kinds of activities and subjects, but it is a major key to unlocking what we have within us.
Being a teacher of “English” at any level is a profession of the highest order and worthy of enormous praise. What they do might not be conventionally thought of as providing most students with fuel for the pocketbook but that is to miss the point. Their dedication to instilling the values and wisdom that come to us through our great works of literature is fundamentally more sublime, offering a lifetime treasure trove for the soul, the most valuable gift that a teacher can provide a student as he/she navigates life.
So hats in the air in celebration of English teachers who teach and maintain the standards of literacy and literature in a world that is increasingly indifferent to such pursuits. I salute them all.
The post My Salute to English Teachers appeared first on Warren Adler.
May 4, 2018
A Reflection on Hemingway’s Wayward Leopard
“Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai ‘Ngaje Ngbi’, the House of God. Close to its summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.” -“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway
In the epigraph of my novel Private Lies, I got permission from Ernest Hemingway’s heirs to use a quote from his story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” It describes finding the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard on the western summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. The short story is about a writer who has traded in his creative skills for a life of travel, luxury, and ease, having married a very rich woman who can afford to provide him with these so-called comforts and adventures. The writer is dying of blood poisoning and reflecting on his life – he is filled with despair at having traded his creative talent for the life his wife’s money can provide.
The metaphor struck me as painfully clear. He is the leopard who has strayed too far and because of this lack of direction will die frozen and alone near the summit of the mountain. I have often, quite often, in fact, thought about this Hemingway story and this reference to that wayward leopard.
I have been reading and re-reading Hemingway’s short stories since I was seventeen years old. I did not think of using that epigraph until I conceived the book Private Lies in which the major action takes place on a safari in Kenya. I chose that epigraph because at the time it seemed to mirror what I had in mind for my novel about people who were not being faithful to each other or to themselves.
It speaks to every creative artist in whatever realm who abandons her or his “calling” for the alleged comforts of luxury and ease. To sustain ourselves and continue to write we must believe in our talent and the intrinsic worth of our work. This requires an unshakable belief that the writing is worth exerting the creative energy required for its composition.
Stay the course. Never abandon your calling. I strived to never allow myself to take rejection as anything but a contrary opinion that is usually wrong. You have to will yourself not to allow self-doubt to cripple you. I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was sixteen. Writing, or any other brand of artistry, requires not only total focus but concentration, often isolation. Writing has always been a hunger. An obsessive need. It’s a need that can’t be measured by the metric of worldly success or celebrity. It’s not simply a conscious act of discipline and will. My dream is an ever-evolving creature.
What is sacrificed in the effort to reach the top of the mountain? My wife, my children, all knew the nature of my dream. I spent long hours in my writing space. There were moments when my wife, while she was editor of her magazine, insisted that I write something she needed. She was focused on her own dream and would brook no resistance and I complied as best I could, proud of her ambition and activity. I made sure I was available to them when needed.
To this day, I feel I have pursued my journey because I had to. It was always my number one priority and everyone around me knew it. I did my duties as a husband and a father and provided for my family. I have no regrets.
Ambition is a double-edged sword. It means being motivated to achieve some imagined goal. For many, it is a singleness of purpose to achieve riches or power or serving others like helping the poor or widows and orphans. Ambition for me has always meant writing works of the imagination and I have achieved that purpose.
As for me, I’ll keep climbing…
The post A Reflection on Hemingway’s Wayward Leopard appeared first on Warren Adler.
May 2, 2018
Jenny Milchman
My mother says that I began writing before I could write. She tells stories about me telling stories, walking around the house as a toddler. When I was three years old, we took a trip to Canada and my parents worried that the eighteen-hour car ride would be tough with a small child. But I was so quiet in the back seat, they actually had to turn around to check on me. When they asked what I was doing, I told them: “Making up a story.” Writing is something I’ve always done, that’s always been a part of me. The industry side of writing is a whole other story though (so to speak). Once I realized I wanted to write crime fiction and began trying to get an agent, it took me two novels and over a year before I found one. If this felt slow at the time, I was to learn otherwise–eleven years, two more agents, and five additional unpublished novels before I was offered my first book deal. Through all the heartache and rejection, what kept me going was the original magic that sent a toddler around the house in a fugue of story. The moment that I tip over into the world of a new character and her quest feels like I’ve slipped through a portal to a parallel universe. I can’t wait to get there again.
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April 25, 2018
Vincent Chu
I began writing at a young age. I guess there was always this natural urge to create, whether it was drawing or writing or filming movies or backyard wrestling. I always wanted to recreate whatever content I was consuming at the time. I think a lot of kids have this urge but eventually outgrow it. I simply stayed with it. Eventually writing took over as my main creative outlet. After some time doing it I started to appreciate how much joy and satisfaction I got out of it. It was the one hobby that didn’t go away, no matter how low the lows were. I won’t sit here and say that writing is the window to my soul, the fire of my loins, the sole reason I wake up every morning. I just like doing it and want to get better each time and enjoy sharing it with others. I always write with the person on the other side in mind, to try to offer something interesting, entertaining, meaningful to this reader who has been kind and generous enough to give my words a chance. And if I can make that reader smile or nod or just say damn, I know that feeling, well, I guess that’s why I write.
https://www.vincentchuwriter.com/
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