Posts tagged class
You are what you read
Apr 20th
Apologies for my absence in general, things have been hectic lately.
I started classes over at Gotham Writers again, which is always a good thing because it gets me writing and it forces me to set aside time for reading, reviewing and studying the craft. The problem is I have two classes this time and the workload is heavier than I was expecting.
In short, I have one to two free nights per week that I can devote to classwork and enough work to last three or four nights. Mostly, this work involves reading. Reading assigned stories and novels, reading lectures from my noble instructors and reading the work of my peers.
Stephen King once said something like “if you want to be a writer you need to do two things: read a lot and write a lot.” Several other great writers have made similar statements about reading. If you’re learning, studying, and attempting to perfect a craft – shouldn’t you observe successful practitioners of the craft?
Honesty in Fiction
Oct 29th
I read over a lecture in my class last week dealing with honesty in fiction. I think that’s something worth exploring here.
So what do we mean when we say honesty? Well we mean telling the truth and not a lie. But what is fiction if not a fabulous, intricate lie? So then we must say that honesty in fiction is a little different. My instructor describes it as being true to the characters and the story. In other words, the reader must feel as if the actions of the character or the decisions that lead to the result of the story are undeniably the actions that the character would make/choose. That way, the reader won’t feel cheated by an unrealistic event or some dues ex machina that resolves all the obstacles in the plot miraculously.
I commented on a perfect example of a time when I felt cheated by this very thing. In the original Superman movie, with Christopher Reeve, the plot is woven thick with enormous obstacles and events that Superman must somehow overcome to save the world. (Yes, leave it to me to bring up Superman in a creative writing class.) In this particular instance, he’s drowning with a heavy kryptonite necklace holding him down, there are two nuclear missiles headed in different directions (destined to kill thousands) and an earthquake meant to drift the west coast and (more importantly) Lois Lane into the Pacific.
On the mark for Nano
Oct 22nd
50,000 words. 30 days. Nuff said.
Once a year, thousands of people from all over the world spend the month of November trying to do what I stated above. It’s a contest called National Novel Writing Month, or NanoWriMo, where the only prize is getting to call yourself a Novelist – and having a pretty bad case of Carpal Tunnel developed in record time.
This year will be my third Nano, and hopefully my first completion of the goal. I’ve set up accountability meetings with some friends from the blogroll on your right, and I’m hoping they can slap me around a bit when I get lazy. In order to complete this feat, we’ll have to write about 1667 words everyday. Although I probably write many more than that per day if you were to count them all, it’s a lot more difficult when they are all going toward telling one story. And then there’s the other thing. The fact that I’m extremely bad at self-motivating.
Why?
Oct 16th
Yes, it is the (many times) repeated question of every child regarding any and every topic during the early years. Yes, it is a repeated query of the obnoxious when something is just not getting through their thick sculls. It is also a question that I ran into while reading the other night, and a question I thought would be interesting to explore in a blog post. Bear with me, we’re about to pick up a string and run with it. (Refer to method of composition post for explanation of metaphor).
For my upcoming class, Advanced Fiction Writing, I was required to purchase two books. Textbooks if you will. One of them is entitled Writing Fiction – The practical guide from New York’s Acclaimed Creative Writing School. This book is written by teachers and contributors form Gotham, where I’m enrolled in the Fiction Certificate Program. Although I don’t have to read it for my class, I decided to read it anyway because writing is my passion and when I have a passion for things I like to absorb as much about them as I can.
Sneak peak now available
Oct 9th
As I alluded to in several previous posts, an excerpt from my new short story is now available for your viewing pleasure. This story is nowhere close to done and has not been thoroughly edited, so the excerpt you see may not reflect the final draft.
What’s interesting about this story is it started as an assignment from my first writing class at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. I was at the beach enjoying a mini-vacation and had to catch up on my homework. I was not in the mood to do any writing, but homework is homework and I broke out the laptop one night to get busy. The assignment was an introduction of a character to the reader, and I chose to write in first person because I thought it would probably be easier to introduce a character that way. Also, I wanted to experiment a little with voice, which was a lesson from a previous week.
