For those of you who missed Tuesday's meeting, here's what went down.
+ Cat led the meeting!
+ Sara brought in a piece she'd been working on as a staff submission for Sliced Bread. It was read aloud, and then we offered our critiques. Continue to bring in the material you're working on!
+ We talked about the differences between writing for class/workshops and for yourself.
+ Daniel opened to us the world of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (text here). Although I was thinking about doing a prompt based on setting, we agreed that the story was a better example of the possibilities in simple wordplay. I was also intrigued by the ways Poe shows us that his narrator is unreliable.
+ The prompt this week: Write a piece which prominently features wordplay, ambiguity, or some kind of misunderstanding. Yeah, it's nebulous -- but that gives you lots of room to do what you want. Give some thought to the way Poe uses wordplay and double meanings to show that his narrator has some serious psychological issues, giving us clues for how to interpret the story. You, too, can use subtlety to reveal your character's secret flaw.
And that's it! The meeting will be at my house next Tuesday at 7:00. Please bring the work you've done with the cigarettes prompt, and anything else you've been working on. In order to have your material workshopped at the meeting, please e-mail it to me by 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I'll then e-mail it out to everyone on my list for the meeting. (Please also send me your e-mail address, if you haven't yet, so that you'll be in on the workshopping.) When you receive the material, please look it over and be ready to workshop it at the meeting.
1/25/2008
1/20/2008
How's work with the prompt?
I finally sat down in earnest last night to start responding to the prompt from last week's meeting, about the girl with the cigarettes. I had been wanting to work with a particular set of characters for a few weeks now, and this was my chance! So I started writing. The first scene presented itself to me fully formed, and I dutifully recorded it. But the next scenes -- not so much. I'm having trouble deciding what exactly this story is about, and so I can't be economical with my language just yet. The story is running in circles. I don't know what kind of progress to expect for my main character, and it's frustrating me. He's frustrating me. I can sense him wanting a bigger role, a more richly detailed humanity, a set of needs and expectations and disappointments all his own. If I keep working at it, I hope all this will come to him.
What kinds of problems are you encountering, as you sit down to give this prompt a serious look?
What kinds of problems are you encountering, as you sit down to give this prompt a serious look?
1/19/2008
On the Use of Imagery
From a Potebnya quotation in Victor Shklovsky's seminal essay on Formalism, "Art as Technique":
Since the purpose of imagery is to remind us, by approximation, of those meanings for which the image stands, and since, apart from this, imagery ins unnecessary for though, we must be more familiar with the image than with what it clarifies.
The statement above comes from a supposition that the purpose of art is to present the unknown in terms of the known. Shklovsky objects that actually the opposite happens frequently--for example, one writer's comparison of the sky to a garment of God, in which an image that is difficult to grasp is used to describe an object with which everybody is familiar.
This may seem like an obscure and irrelevant excerpt, but as writers I think it's useful and important to think about how and why we use images and the specific relationship we invoke between the image and the object to which it points. At the worst, images become a way to avoid mentioning something directly in order to sound high-brow or delicate, but with some work put into them, you can create structural and thematic interplay and all kinds of other fun things.
P.S. This part is not even the main brunt of a really groundbreaking essay. If it seems interesting to you, I'd love to discuss it or point you to where you can find it to read on your own.
Since the purpose of imagery is to remind us, by approximation, of those meanings for which the image stands, and since, apart from this, imagery ins unnecessary for though, we must be more familiar with the image than with what it clarifies.
The statement above comes from a supposition that the purpose of art is to present the unknown in terms of the known. Shklovsky objects that actually the opposite happens frequently--for example, one writer's comparison of the sky to a garment of God, in which an image that is difficult to grasp is used to describe an object with which everybody is familiar.
This may seem like an obscure and irrelevant excerpt, but as writers I think it's useful and important to think about how and why we use images and the specific relationship we invoke between the image and the object to which it points. At the worst, images become a way to avoid mentioning something directly in order to sound high-brow or delicate, but with some work put into them, you can create structural and thematic interplay and all kinds of other fun things.
P.S. This part is not even the main brunt of a really groundbreaking essay. If it seems interesting to you, I'd love to discuss it or point you to where you can find it to read on your own.
1/17/2008
intermeeting post!
Hey, all. The next meeting will be at my place at 7 p.m. next Tuesday.
The agenda for Tuesday:
+ talk about your work on the prompt so far
+ discussion of material? (bring in what you're working on!)
+ "The Cask of Amontillado" and setting as a key element of a story
+ ideas for the blog: weekly posts, random journaling, posting material to the blog
As always, e-mail me or the group with questions, suggestions, and comments.
The agenda for Tuesday:
+ talk about your work on the prompt so far
+ discussion of material? (bring in what you're working on!)
+ "The Cask of Amontillado" and setting as a key element of a story
+ ideas for the blog: weekly posts, random journaling, posting material to the blog
As always, e-mail me or the group with questions, suggestions, and comments.
1/15/2008
First things.
Thanks to everyone who came to the first meeting of WIP. It rocked... and there were five of us. Please try to make it to the next meeting! We are awesome, and you want to hang out with us. Trust me.
Here are the conclusions we've reached about meetings:
+ I'll introduce one new prompt at each meeting. We'll spend fifteen minutes working on the prompt during the meeting, and then take it home to work on it more. Give each prompt two weeks, so that at any given time you'll have two ideas to be working on. Do bring what you've done to meetings, so that we can workshop this material.
+ We'll be workshopping material each week. Given the number of people involved, and since we want to give pieces the attention they deserve, workshopping will be on a rotational basis. Details to come. However, it's certain that, in order to workshop your material, you must send it out to group members at least six hours before the meeting, preferably twenty-four. To do this, e-mail your piece to thisworkinprogress@gmail.com. This way, your piece will be distributed to the mailing list. Do this with both the material you're currently developing and the pieces that grow out of your responses to prompts.
+ We'll bring in writers to speak about the craft, the business, and other relevant, fascinating things in later weeks. Feel free to suggest potential speakers. Please note that, if we do host a speaker, you should be at least cursorily familiar with the speaker's work.
+ Prompts will include anything and everything. Send ideas along. If the prompt is not a specific sentence or passage to be incorporated into your work, it'll serve as a kind of springboard. For example, "Poe's 'Cask of Amontillado,' which could not have been so effective had it not been set in its particular time and place; write a scene which derives its movement and meaning from its setting."
+ Everything is currently in flux. At each meeting we'll try something new and see if it works. This means that your attendance is important! Please come to meetings; if you can't, contact a member in the group (before the meeting) to make your ideas heard.
-----------------------------------
And now, concrete things.
The prompt from this week's meeting is:
"She was on her third cigarette, and it wasn't helping."
Write a scene that continues with this character. Feel free to change the gender and tense. Consider who she is, where she is, why she's smoking. Why isn't it helping? What has just happened prior to this first sentence? What's around her? Who's around her? Who/what isn't? Has she always smoked? Answer these questions through action and interaction, not narration.
Also, I'll bring in Poe's "Cask of Amontillado," possibly for use as a prompt, next week. Start thinking!
Here are the conclusions we've reached about meetings:
+ I'll introduce one new prompt at each meeting. We'll spend fifteen minutes working on the prompt during the meeting, and then take it home to work on it more. Give each prompt two weeks, so that at any given time you'll have two ideas to be working on. Do bring what you've done to meetings, so that we can workshop this material.
+ We'll be workshopping material each week. Given the number of people involved, and since we want to give pieces the attention they deserve, workshopping will be on a rotational basis. Details to come. However, it's certain that, in order to workshop your material, you must send it out to group members at least six hours before the meeting, preferably twenty-four. To do this, e-mail your piece to thisworkinprogress@gmail.com. This way, your piece will be distributed to the mailing list. Do this with both the material you're currently developing and the pieces that grow out of your responses to prompts.
+ We'll bring in writers to speak about the craft, the business, and other relevant, fascinating things in later weeks. Feel free to suggest potential speakers. Please note that, if we do host a speaker, you should be at least cursorily familiar with the speaker's work.
+ Prompts will include anything and everything. Send ideas along. If the prompt is not a specific sentence or passage to be incorporated into your work, it'll serve as a kind of springboard. For example, "Poe's 'Cask of Amontillado,' which could not have been so effective had it not been set in its particular time and place; write a scene which derives its movement and meaning from its setting."
+ Everything is currently in flux. At each meeting we'll try something new and see if it works. This means that your attendance is important! Please come to meetings; if you can't, contact a member in the group (before the meeting) to make your ideas heard.
-----------------------------------
And now, concrete things.
The prompt from this week's meeting is:
"She was on her third cigarette, and it wasn't helping."
Write a scene that continues with this character. Feel free to change the gender and tense. Consider who she is, where she is, why she's smoking. Why isn't it helping? What has just happened prior to this first sentence? What's around her? Who's around her? Who/what isn't? Has she always smoked? Answer these questions through action and interaction, not narration.
Also, I'll bring in Poe's "Cask of Amontillado," possibly for use as a prompt, next week. Start thinking!
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