43
A lot of reading helps with writing, author says
By HAROLD GWIN
YOUNGSTOWN
Jennifer Armstrong, author of more than 100 books, offered some advice to young writers attending the 32nd annual English Festival at Youngstown State University this week.
“I read as much as I possibly can in the research process,” she said. “What I like to do more than write is read.”
That attention to detail paid off in her first nonfiction work, “Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World,” required reading for more than 3,000 middle- and high-school students attending the festival this year.
The story tells the adventure of the ill-fated Sir Ernest Shackleton expedition to cross Antarctica in 1914. Amazingly, every crew member survived having their ship get stuck in and destroyed by an ice pack before they could reach the continent.
Armstrong, the award- winning author of “Black-Eyed Susan” and “The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan” and the Thomas and Carol Gay Lecturer for the festival, said people who read the book asked her if she had journeyed to Antarctica in preparation for writing it because the book was so detailed and she made it all seem so real.
Her explanation?
“I went to the library,” she said. That’s where she did her research to learn about sailing, navigation and more.
The editing process, in which a book editor reads and makes comments and suggestions about a manuscript, is extremely helpful as well, she said. It allows the author to address questions raised by an editor and makes the book as good as it can possibly be, she said.
Armstrong illustrated her address to the students with a slide show of photographs of the Shackleton expedition itself and some shots from a movie made about the event. The slide show ended with some highlights of her own trip to Antarctica.
She had no real desire to go, she admitted, but someone told her about the National Science Foundation program offering grants to writers to travel to that continent.
She applied for a grant to go to the South Pole to do a project on all forms of ice and spent six weeks in Antarctica, eventually getting to visit the South Pole. She also got to visit an earlier Shackleton expedition hut that remains much as it was when it was built in 1909.
The English Festival offers writing workshops and competitions, journalism and poetry workshops and more, and students come prepared to participate.
Some, such as Neal Worman, a junior from Mohawk High School in Lawrence County, Pa., bring special items to help them perform well.
In Worman’s case, it was a buffalo hat, complete with ears and horns, that he said he borrowed from teammate Shelby McKee.
“I think it does,” he said, when asked if the hat helps his performance.