12 posts tagged “seminars”
Wow, that was my longest break from the blog. Here's a quick summary of what's been happening this summer:
1. Iowa - hot, humid and fun. I made friends. I wrote. I wrote. I wrote. James McPherson is writing me a recommendation. To what, I don't know yet -- but it's handy to have a recommendation letter from a Pulitzer Prize winning writer in case I want to apply to some program somewhere that requires recommendations. I wrote/ revised 5 stories while in Iowa. I think I would have written 6 but for the fact that the 5th is the one we committed to submit to the anthology. Turns out it's harder to write on cue than we anticipated. I've written 3 completely different versions of the anthology story and am still not happy with any of them. Haven't given up, though.
2. 48-hr Film Fest - just participated this weekend. I was assistant director on this project. Amazingly, we wrapped in one day. The script was written Friday night. We shot on Sat. Today, the editor was locked in his room all day, making sense out of what we shot.
3. DIY Days - spent the day today at this awesome conference. Wow, I was impressed. It was free, cutting-edge, informative. More on this later.
Cheers,
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com
We have some fascinating people in our workshop. One of them is Joshua Casteel, who was an army interrogator at the infamous Abu Ghraib. He ended up leaving the army as a conscientious objector. I'd tell you more about him except he's been advised that someone or some group is after him so I'll keep the personal info to a minimum. His book, Letters from Abu Ghraib, just came out. It's a collection of his actual emails to friends and family from Abu Ghraib. He assures me that none of the content was changed from his original emails. He came in as part of the clean-up crew after the scandal. It's a peek into his personal journey from a dedicated soldier to a conscientious objector. It sold out from the local bookstore within 2 hours. I'm waiting for the bookstore to restock it, but my friend, who did manage to buy it, has finished it already and says it's quite good.
Amazon currently says it's temporarily out of stock but if you order it anyway, they'll restock it. Check it out: Letters from Abu Ghraib by Joshua Casteel.
For those of you who have any doubts about Bush lying when he says we don't torture, check out more photos of Abu Ghraib.
Susan Ee
feraldream.com
The economy is putting the squeeze on Hollywood. Studios are having a harder time finding money for their slates. Filmmakers big and small are looking at creative financing, which translates to Dating Attempt 2.0 between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It has yet to go as far as getting into bed together, or marriage (Silicon Valley marriages often last about as long as Hollywood marriages, so at least they have that in common). But there have been more attempts at getting together for coffee and dinner. The last one that sounded really good to me was a breakfast gathering of VCs and a major Hollywood agent. The notices only went out to a select few individuals, which would have guaranteed a small group. The only catch was that it was ungodly early in the morning. Remember my post on how I wouldn't get up for a tornado because it was 5:30 AM?
Anyway, the latest and most interesting Hollywood & Silicon Valley gathering is at the Churchill Club: Hollywood, YouToo? Finding the Money and Eyeballs in Web Video (A San Francisco Event, p.m.) It'll be a large event but it might be worth checking out.
Cheers,
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
I've never seen storms the way they make them here in Iowa City. Strobe-lightning, a chorus of thunder so loud it rattles the windows, and POUNDING rain. It's ultra-dramatic. The tornado siren went off at 5:30 this morning during the storm. This is the 3rd time it's gone off since the beginning of the summer session. The first time, I had already canceled my flight so I was on the West coast when it went off, but I knew about it because they have an automated phone system that gives you a call when there's an emergency. Apparently, the university makes sure you're in the system when you sign up for a class. The second time, I was in the public library and they closed the library and marched us down to the basement to wait it out. This time, I was in bed, half awake from the pounding storm. When the siren went off, I thought long and hard in my semi-awake state, got up, put on a jersey and shorts, put my sandals by the bed and crawled back under the covers. It was 5:30 AM. I'm surprised I did that much.
Here are some photos of the last time a tornado hit the town, 2 years ago:
Life is so simple here in Iowa City. I write, go to class, hang out with my friends, workout, read comic books, critique other people’s work. It’s awesome. No stress. No complications. No responsibilities. No logistics. No money issues (rent is $500/mo here). Seriously, my most common concern for the day is whether it’ll rain or not. I love it.
My backwards story was a difficult process. Although I like the story that come out of it, I plan to try the experiment again. I had tried to come up with an ending first, then the story. That was really hard in that I kept thinking, that's a great beginning! Adrian Khactu, my highly entertaining and brilliant classmate here in Iowa, was the one who told me about this particular backwards exercise. He says that he first freewrites enough to get an idea of the story, THEN envisions an ending. Oh. No wonder it was hard. That makes a lot more sense.
My next experiment will be to incorporate a particular city into a story, where the city matters. Adrian and I are both doing this not because we think it'll improve our writing, necessarily, but because we're cheap whores who want to be accepted into a particular anthology. Submission to the anthology is by invitation only and we managed to crassly invite ourselves. So our stories had better be dazzling. And that's the plan. :-)
Susan Ee
The 4 emotional stages of the Iowa Writers Workshop, summer session:
EXCITEMENT - there's always so much excitement to joining a new group, especially when I go to an exotic place like Iowa City!
HAPPINESS - downtown Iowa City is awesome. Lots of restaurants, lots of cafes, several gyms, a few grocery stores, a great library with comfy chairs and all of it within walking distance of both the campus and my place. And because Iowa City really is a writers mecca, there's this sense of being in a very special place. I love that they have quotes of authors imprinted on the sidewalks and more bookstores than I can count. Here, if you meet someone, there's a very good chance s/he is a serious writer and you can talk about the art and craft of writing to your heart's content.
DISAPPOINTMENT - our instructor is highly respected, absolutely adorable and lovable, kind, generous, funny and brilliant... but he doesn't say much in class. There are no lectures, very few pearls of wisdom that get passed on to us, no real craft discussions. He's an artist. His discussions are esoteric and enigmatic and its up to you to fill in the gaps on what should be done to improve your work.
The students are the best group of writers I've worked with -- they're all talented and skillful with interesting voices. But it's not the best group of critiquers I've seen. I'm not necessarily talking about each individual critique, I'm talking about clarity and the need to get some consensus on the feedback so the writer can put weight on a particular issue. With our group, it often feels that everyone has a different opinion on what should be done to take the story to the next level. At the end of the critique sessions, I feel that the writers often walk away with a muddied picture of what to do next.
My last disappointment was that we only get two story submissions per student for the quarter. I'm used to a much more intense workshop format. At Clarion West, we wrote a story a week for 6 weeks and critiqued everyone's submissions every weekday. It was intense and transformative. I was hoping for something just as intense and just as transformative.
CONTENTMENT - I've now reached a good balance in how I feel about my time here.
Although our prof doesn't say much, when my story came up, he caught me in the hallway before my critique and told me that it was "really amazing." He also talked about my story for 30 minutes in our private conference and lent me 3 books on heroes, myths and feminist writing. I still don't know how to improve my story exactly, but the fog is slowly clearing as I learn to interpret his enigmatic suggestions and allusions. This is his style. I've realized it's my job to fill in the blanks because it's my story. And how I interpret his comments will be strongly colored by how I see my story. I'm cool with that.
Re our critiques -- at first, I thought it was just luck of the draw that our group had so little agreement in our constructive feedback. But now, I'm thinking that this may be normal at this level of writing. It's easy to agree on what needs to be done when there are basic problems in a story. But it's much harder to agree on what needs to be done to improve that last 10% - 20% -- questions of how you modulate the voice of your narrator, get your story to breathe, add more emotional weight to your ending and questions of whether this story needs any of these things in the first place. These are very difficult questions and we're no longer talking craft, we're talking art. And because we're talking about art, which comes from the heart and not from the head, people can get quite passionate about their opinions. I've decided to stop focusing on how the overall picture is muddied and start focusing on how each person approaches a story. They're good writers -- their instincts work for them and I can learn something by opening my ears.
Re the number of stories -- by great luck, it turns out that someone else in my class is also a Clarion West Alum. Yay! I was really surprised because Iowa is not exactly known for their speculative fiction, despite the fact that they had Kurt Vonnegut on their faculty. Anyway, we've agreed to write a story a week and give each other feedback. I'm also recruiting others to give me feedback as well, although I'll only ask them to read one or two. I'm experimenting with each story. The one I turned into class was my most experimental piece ever. Wild and wacky and a blast to write. The next one was a story that mixed a literary character within a genre story. I was trying for emotional weight in a Twilight Zone-ish plot. The one I just finished is my first hard science fiction piece wrapped in a light-hearted story. My next one is going to be written backwards -- by envisioning the ending, then writing the rest of the story to get there. Each has its own challenges and pleasures. Each has its own volume of lessons for me.
ACK! This entry is way longer than I expected. I have a backwards story to write. Happy 4th!
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
The Writers Guild Foundation is having their annual Screenwriting Craft Seminar in LA. I went to one a couple of years ago and it was pretty good as far as panels go since they were crammed full of working and accomplished screenwriters. It's not nearly as advertised nor attended as those "commercial" seminars and there are way more panelists from recognizable movies/shows. It's pretty easy to talk one-on-one with the screenwriters, especially since about half of the attendees were also WGA members, meaning they've done at least some pro work. It's $150 for the general public. If you're itching to hear directly from people in-the-know, it's probably worth checking out:
Saturday, July 19. Tickets & Info: www.wgfoundation.org
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
Downtown Cedar Rapids was under 31 feet of water yesterday. It's receding today. Cedar Rapids has the nearest airport to the university but the university is just south of that in Iowa City. 16 university buildings are flooded but the last I heard, the library is still okay. The University of Iowa library is special in that if you name any great American author, there's a pretty good chance that his/her senior or master's thesis is in that library. University of Iowa has the oldest writing program in the country and because of its prestige, it has attracted many of the greatest writers in America's history. And their very first collection of stories or novel manuscript, later published or not, may be sitting on those shelves.
I'm sad to know that the university museum is flooded. The last time I took classes at Iowa, I spent several hours wandering around that museum. My expectation was that it would be tiny and pitiful but I was blown away by their wonderful collection of African artifacts. It was a gorgeous gem of a museum.
Anyway, I'm now seriously wondering whether their summer session is going to happen at all. I would lose my flight tickets, a month of prepaid rent and a great opportunity to expand my writing... but it's hard to feel too sorry for myself in light of what others have lost.
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
Iowa is flooded. The airlines are still sending people there but I found out that once you get there, you're stuck at the airport indefinitely. I was supposed to fly out there tomorrow to start my summer writing program but no such luck. University of Iowa is closed and all classes have been cancelled for next week. I was so ready to go out there and steep myself in writing but that'll have to wait another week. I'm now flying out next Friday.
Looks like there are 13 people in the summer program. So far, I know that 2 are from SF, one is from NY, one from Vermont. Don't know about the rest yet. The instructor is James McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction, a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship as well as the MacArthur Fellowship. He went to both Harvard and Yale Law Schools and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He's now a regular faculty member of the Workshop. One of his stories was selected to be in John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century. I'm looking forward to meeting him as well as my classmates... wonder if they like monster movies?
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
The 2008 Producers Lab and Sloan Grant are now accepting applications. The Producers Lab deadline is June 9 (early) and July 7 (final). It's an intensive program for indie producers.
The Sloan Grant deadline is July 7 -- $25k in development funds, admission into the Producers Lab and year round support from Film Independent. They want scripts and films about science and technology. My mad scientist story ideas probably wouldn't qualify. :-)
Good luck!
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/
