The Writer August 2014

Not long ago, an out-of-town friend and I were sitting in a train station discussing book recommendations over lunch. On my way to meet him, I had been reading John Irving’s In One Person on the subway, and I was considering where I wanted to go next. My colleague had recommended The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and novels by Elif Shafak and Malorie Blackman were high on my list. That morning, I had heard an interview with Edward St. Aubyn (whose Patrick Melrose stories I’ve read). Both my friend and I were marveling: How do you write stories so meticulously brilliant as St. Aubyn’s? This led to a discussion about works by Spencer Quinn and Fred Vargas. Clearly, we spun out of control naming books each thought…

You must remember this. TRANSCRIBING OLD JOURNALS CAN SPARK INSPIRATION. I remember 9/11. Mom’s early phone call, with news of smoldering towers just blocks from her childhood Manhattan apartment. My son’s unused plane tickets, from a flight cancelled moments after the towers’ collapse. Friend and colleague Aaron Brown thrust in the red-hot spotlight his very first day at CNN. Years later, almost every detail of that day is indelible. I don’t remember 9/22. The fine points of 11 days later had not stayed with me. My daughter’s soft backseat sobs as the family station wagon headed south on the interstate, dragging her miles and hours closer to a suddenly dreaded first day of college. NPR’s Scott Simon on the car radio, finding poetry amid sorrow. A cropduster’s ominous shadow across…

Isabel Allende During the 1960s, Chilean novelist Isabel Allende was fired from a job translating romance novels into Spanish after it was discovered that she was altering the dialogue of the female characters to make them sound more intelligent. Allende quickly turned to creating intelligent female characters of her own and has gone on sell more than 56 million books, which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have won multiple awards in Chile and throughout the world. Allende is most famous for her literary novels – such as The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna – which often incorporate elements of magic realism and autobiography. Her prose style, illustrated in the following quote from The House of the Spirits, is both poetic and precise: “She had…

I’ve written most my life, but it was not until my retirement from a career in banking that I started really putting in the time. I’m hopeful about my progress, but I get easily discouraged because of my age. Is it just too late for me? No, it’s not too late. Annie Proulx was in her 50s when she published her first story collection, Heart Songs. Frank McCourt published his memoir Angela’s Ashes in his mid-60s after a career teaching in New York schools. Deborah Eisenberg’s collection of short stories, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, was published when she was 41. When Raymond Chandler was 44, he lost his job as an oil company executive. Seven years later he published his most famous book, The Big Sleep. Donald Ray Pollock…

What does it take to make someone laugh out loud while reading a book? The answer is a sorcerous blend of neurology, human spirit, shared experience and words. Always words. We asked our online followers to recommend the funniest books they’ve read. Here’s their list. Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far) by Dave Barry The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N by Leonard Q. Ross Biff America: Steep, Deep, and Dyslexic by Jeffrey Bergeron Ned the Seal series by Joe R. Lansdale Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner Jeeves series by P. G. Wodehouse My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell Inconceivable by Ben Elton Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming…

Summertime adventures can happen on the page. These writers use the long, sunny days to tackle their works in progress. FA Michaels @FAMichaels Up early, on treadmill, adding words to my WIP. Come on, characters. Let’s have some fun. #amwriting Caroline Jones Lewis @CarolineJonesLe Oh lazy hazy days of summer, of wine & roses, lolling in the garden or by the sea; of endless excuses not to write! How hard it is! #writers Marc Wobschall @MarcWobschall Bad writing weather! Glorious outside. Oh well, nose to the grindstone! Dean Crawford @DCrawfordBooks Feeling refreshed after a week’s holiday with the family :) Back at desk now and slaving over a hot keyboard as usual #amwriting carla ching @carlaching Beautiful outside today. Locked inside writing. On deadline so no time for cleaning, laundry,…