Monday, March 26, 2018

What Writers Can Learn From A Writer of Yesteryear

Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck  1892-1973

THE GOOD EARTH   Pearl S. Buck  First Edition 2nd Printing

The woman pictured above happens to be one of my all-time favorite authors. I discovered her books at my local library when I was a young teen. After reading one, I devoured every other book on the shelves that had her name listed as author. 

My Book Club is reading Pearl Buck's Pulitzer Prize novel, The Good Earth, the second book she wrote. This will be the third time that I have read the book. At each age I have read the book, I look at it from a different perspective. Ms. Buck was a prolific writer, writing over 100 books. I zipped through 47 pages last evening and upon slipping my bookmark inside and closing the book, I started thinking about they way books were written in Ms. Buck's time as compared to today. 

She went to college in Virginia, leaving China where she grew up with her missionary parents, then returned to that Asian country once she graduated. She spent over half her life in China, so it is no wonder that most of her novels are set there. I spent some time today reading a bit about her life. Guess why she started writing? To earn some money. Sound familiar? 

She didn't attend writing instruction classes, she picked up her pen or sat at her manual typewriter pounding the keys and learned as she went. Yes, we did have to 'pound' the keys on a manual. How amazing that she won the Pulitzer Prize with the second novel in 1932. A born storyteller? Perhaps. 

The opening line in The Good Earth is 'It was Wang Lun's marriage day.' How simple and yet it immediately makes the reader want to know who this person is. The name makes us want to know where the person is from. We sit up and pay attention when we learn this person is about to get married. We also want to know if Wang Lun is man or woman. Six words that leave you with questions and so we read on. Ms. Buck knew that the opening line had to hook her reader.

In one biographical sketch, she was quoted as saying that when ready to begin a new book, she had a fresh ream of paper and proceeded to fill the pages. A ream is a great deal of paper. Think how daunting it wold be to face 500 blank pieces of paper and you have given yourself the task of filling them all with words that tell an interesting story. 

She had no Scrivener, no Nano writing challenge in November of each year. She most likely did not belong to a critique group in China. She didn't blog to promote her books. She didn't belong to facebook or twitter or instagram or snapchat. None of those things were there to help her gain readers. Once published, her publisher helped market the books. Today's publisher pushes the writer to do a great deal of the marketing. 

I doubt that she had access to a myriad number of the how-to-write instruction books that writers today have available. She was on her own. Perhaps the phrase learn as you go might be applied to her methods. 

She picked a topic that was of interest to people here in the USA. In the 1930's, people knew little of the people of China and they were curious. Read one and they wanted more.

What this all comes to is that we writers today have so many tools at our finger tips to teach us and help us produce some good writing. We probably don't give enough credit to the writers of old. Some wrote entire books by hand. Would you be willing to do that? 

Despite being pretty much on her own, Pearl Buck did a lot of things right, even by today's standards. Human instinct? Maybe. A natural storyteller? Most likely. An intelligent reader of other books. I'd bet on it.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of The Good Earth. I have a feeling I might check at my library to see how many more books by Pearl Buck are sitting on the shelves.

Pick out a favorite book you read long ago and see what you think of it now. As you read, give thought to the era the writer lived in, how was the writing world different then? 




2 comments:

  1. The Good Earth was my favorite book when I was in high school! I, too, have re-read it several times. I didn't know until a couple of years ago that she had a series of 3 books on Wang Lun's sons. Thanks for giving us such inspiration through the writing life of Pearl S. Buck.

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  2. Thanks. Glad to have a comrade-in-arms regarding Pearl Buck's books. Did you ever read her biography? Not sure on the name but you might google it. I read it years ago and admired her even more than previously. It may have been an autobiography.

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