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.
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1 comment:
I think the only way I can post is by leaving comments, which works fine so:
I know I have some issues with perhaps relying too heavily on imagery (especially when I don't know how to directly articulate what it is I want to say. Or when I think that what I want to say is too mundane to be in a story without being really decorated). I think the more I write, the more I'll be able to distinguish which imagery is just my style and which is my hiding inexperience behind daisies and the like.
That said, I remembered a fabulous idea from the equally fabulous Megan Stielstra on why you should always carry around a small notebook and writing utensil. Basically, if your imagination is sparked by something that you see or a sudden thought (perhaps also brought on by something that you saw, or smelled, or touched, or tasted), you can quickly scribble it in the notebook. You don't have to use the image or feeling for a while. But eventually you'll be stocked up with a nice little inventory of images whose meanings you do in fact understand and can apply to a story. With some kind of intentionality as opposed to just spewing out all crazy lyrical.
It might be a hassle sometimes, but I really think that it could be really useful when you're stuck on a story to have something to look through and maybe inspire you. Hell, if you're having a bad day, you might want to look through the notebook then too. Hopefully, at least some of the images you get down will be uplifting.
Even if you don't get a chance to sit down and write a story for a long while, this notebook will keep you writing creatively until then.
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