That'll never happen

Last night's meeting was a return to form for WIP. We discussed upcoming events, and did an extended free-write on an interesting prompt.

Events to note:

• This Thursday: RSO Fair for prospies! We'll be tabling from 7:30 to 9:00 in Hutch. Consider volunteering for a shift (even fifteen minutes would be helpful). All you have to do is sit there and talk to excited eighteen-year-olds about creative writing. BEST JOB EVER. Anyway, if you can't do a shift, please do stop by and show your support for WIP.
• Next Thursday: another RSO Fair. Same time and place. Again, please volunteer or stop by if you can.
• Tuesday, May 5: the second annual WIP reading! 7:00 p.m. in Hallowed Grounds, with great food and hip music. This time we're adding Sliced Bread to the list of sponsors, and are opening it up to all kinds of writing. It is tentatively titled "Close/Open," referring to the closing of old worlds and the opening of new ones through epiphany; if your work doesn't fit this mold, though, you are still welcome to read. An official call for submissions is to come, but if you have any work you'd like to share, please contact me. It only needs to be a couple of pages long. And if you're stressed about quality, you can submit it to the workshop for feedback. There's still plenty of time. We will also need volunteers to be present, but details are to come. And if you know of singers or guitarists who'd like to perform, pass on the word, and have them contact me. We have two or three slots for performances.
  

Last night's meeting:

• The prompt was: "Write about an event you are fairly sure you'll never experience. Write it in the first person, and include as much detail as you can. Make it believable. Let your imagination flesh out the scene."
• Over half of us wrote about death. What does this mean?

For next week:

• Continue writing your scene. Those of you who weren't present, respond to the prompt. Polish/rewrite as necessary. Submit two pages to the workshop by Sunday night. We'll discuss them on Tuesday.
  

Tuesday's meeting; recs and NaNoWriMo

Sorry to have been remiss in posting! Here's what we talked about this week.

Recommendations for reading:
+ Wonderboys (Michael Chabon)
+ Riddlemaster of Hed
+ The Name of the Wind (LeGuin)
+ Bleak House (Dickens)
+ The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (... am I the only one in the world who hasn't read this yet?)
+ books by Wilkie Collins
+ books by A. S. Byatt
+ The Shadow of the Wind (Sara, help me out on the author!)

We also talked about the upcoming November, which happens to be National Novel Writing Month. I quote: "National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

Even if you're writing a BA this year, take a stab at writing for NaNoWriMo. Remember, "the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output," so you can write whatever you want and rewrite it later. A lot of you have mentioned that it's hard to just get started, so take this as your chance to put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) and write whatever comes. You can revise it later.

To that end, it's important to start NaNoWriMo with a fresh idea. Don't bring preexisting characters or plots into it. I'll be starting with the kernel of an idea I already have, but not with the complex world I've built around another project in the works.

Having primed you, here's the prompt for this session.

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Write a scene in which a character's body, as well as his mind, is engaged in doing something. Here are some possibilities:
+ repairing something
+ playing solitaire or a game involving other players
+ doing exercises
+ painting a canvas or a wall
+ cutting down a tree
+ giving someone a haircut

Explore how various activities and settings can change what happens within a scene. For example, what happens when characters are planning their honeymoon while they are painting an apartment, or while one of them is cutting the other's hair. Pay attention to body language and choreography.

(adapted from What If: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter)

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Last, but not least, the next meeting will be Monday, August 25, at 7 p.m. at my apartment.

What we did, and what we'll do

In our last meeting, on April 22, we did a free-writing exercise that consisted of the following:

+ Write the sketch of a character.
+ Write the sketch of a character who is opposite to your first character in at least one significant way. It doesn't have to be obvious.
+ Write a scene in which these two characters interact.

For many of us, this exercise made us think differently about characters we'd already been working with.

And for next week, choose your response to one of the three prompts to read aloud. We'll talk more about character development and realistic scenes at the meeting.

Additionally, please spread the word to your classmates and friends about Nic's Q&A, which will be at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 6, in Rosenwald 405. There will be food. In case you're debating whether or not to attend, refer to Sara's account of an after-class talk with Nic, in which he decried UChicago's lack of support for writers who really would like to use their skills practically. A kindred spirit, he.

Notes from Week 1 Meeting

Here's another minutes post, because you all love them so much.

+ meetings every week!
+ two or three submissions per meeting
+ Nic's talk, tentatively sched. for 4/22/08 at normal meeting time and place
+ we need publicity for this event! and funding!
+ we need someone to talk to ENGL and CRWR departments/committees to ask for funding and build networking, as well as sending out an e-mail to the listhosts ([ugrad-english] and whatever the CRWR one is, sent out by Julia Klein)
+ let's get started on the online magazine: if anyone has ideas for the website or the magazine itself, or about lj-style cuts to excerpt works on this blog, let me know
+ weekly writer's journal: blog about the problems and successes of everyday writing (this will rotate)... who's first?

And the prompt: write a piece that could only take place in a particular season. Explore the effects of setting on your action and characters.
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new prompt

The prompt for our next meeting:

Write a scene whose forward movement is propelled by a character’s belief in something: a tale such as the one in Alice Hoffman’s White Horses, a religion, astrology, the I Ching, winning the lottery, etc.

Fifth-Week In-Meeting Prompt

Here's the prompt we worked on fifth week:

"You've just received bad news. Show your reaction to the news by describing your surroundings with concrete details. One object in particular catches your attention, and reminds you of a memory. Describe this memory concretely. When you emerge from the memory, your experience colors the way you interact with the object you noticed earlier, as well as letting you deal with the news in a different way. Describe emerging from the memory and reacting to the news, again choosing concrete details."

Sorry this was late guys. Hope you enjoy!
(remember you're always free to workshop pieces that are entirely unrelated to the prompts- the prompts are just there to give the creative juices a buzz).

5th-week meeting

Yo kids,

A meeting went down tonight! If you missed it, here's the deal:

+ We responded to a prompt RIGHT THEN AND THERE. The content of the prompt will be posted tomorrow. This prompt, in addition to the prompt from last week (describe the same event from different perspectives), will be discussed in the meeting in two weeks.

+ Changes to the structure of WIP!

- meetings will now be Tuesdays at 7, every other week
- stay posted for a location, soon to be made permanent (and on campus!)
- three/four people will be workshopped at each meeting
- submit your work by Sunday at 8 p.m. before the meeting, if not earlier
- we are now an RSO, but I think this is the twelfth time I've said this

+ Daniel, Catalina, and Matt will be submitting pieces for the workshop in two weeks. If you would like to be the fourth submitter, let me know.

Notes from Week 3 Meeting

I've sent out a few e-mails already, but here are the most recent news:

+ RSO status! This means we'll be holding meetings on campus, as well as making good use of ORCSA resources and funds. I need a member to accompany me to the RSO orientation next Friday at 1:30. We can talk compensation.

+ Reduced workshop loads. Expect to workshop two to four pieces per week. If your piece will be workshopped at the upcoming meeting, please e-mail a copy to me by Monday at 8 a.m. This way, everyone will have more time to read and comment on your piece. It'll also save you from staying up until 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday to finish your material. (Quit breakin' my heart, you guys!)

+ General guidelines on how workshopping will work, from now on: feel free to bring in whatever you're working on. Respond to all the prompts, but don't submit everything. Show us the things that you're most committed to, because if you don't believe wholeheartedly in your characters and scenes, we won't, either. What does this mean for future workshops? It means we'll be seeing a lot of cigarettes.



Annnd the prompt for 2/12/2008:

Since each of us has her own favorite point of view and voice, it's worth pushing our boundaries to see what different perspectives can do to a piece. In light of this, please describe a moment or short interaction from at least three points of view. While the same actions will take place, the voices you use to describe them will change from scene to scene. In addition to playing with first/second/third person, present/past/future, and regional diction, break out of your comfort zone by writing from the opposite gender's perspective for at least one of your iterations.

Notes from Tuesday's meeting

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.

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.
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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!