My favorite Guest Speakers at the intensive Writer's Workshop course, Millersville University, June 20-24, 2016
Leslie Gates: Leslie is a woman who has it all! Listening to her talk and realizing all that she has on her plate, I was once again reminded that I do not want a life that busy and I’m glad I have a more simple life. But she seems like she’s made for it. A mother and wife, art teacher and art writer, op/Ed writer and many, many other things, she has such a diverse palette of talents and skills. And she has a formula for everything. Although I’m also well-rounded with my passions, she actually gets paid for many of hers! Good for her for figuring out how.
I loved Leslie’s act of “pre-writing through a work of art”. As a previous art major many moons ago, I found that process fascinating. I most benefitted, however, from her well-timed advice on “building up a palette” and “collecting to write faster”. I coupled that with Barbara’s poetic nature-experience advice the next day, and also with our outdoor writing exercise, and quickly came to the conclusion that MY collecting is the collecting of nature experiences. The little videos and snapshots I take, my bird journal that I record in, my talks with my husband about our daily visitors, and watching my night visitors outside the window–all of these are part of building up my arsenal.
Her PowerPoint writing process was a little rigid for me, but it works for her! And if I learned nothing this week, I learned that every writer is truly unique, and has to find their own process. Thanks Leslie.
Caleb Corkery: At one point in my undergraduate life at Millersville several years ago, I didn’t even know who Dr. Caleb Corkery was. But the first time I passed him as he was walking into the Boyer building, I just knew. It wasn’t his age (because I too didn’t fit the undergrad mold in that way) but rather it was his demeanor. He gave me a warm smile and said hello, and I figured he was a professor of education.
Not long after that, he came in to fill in for one of my professors who was out for medical reasons; that confirmed who he was. Though I regret I’ve never had him for a class, I was thrilled to have had the opportunity to hear him speak at our workshop.
Even though Caleb’s talk was on writing drama and plays, I took more notes on his visit that on anyone else’s so far. My greatest takeaway from his talk was that the #1 point of interest in a piece is tension and focusing on that in one person. I learned that as writers we need to “construct a way to make sense of our lives”.
Additionally, he explained the three things that reveal tension. Those three things are incredibly simplistic, but I’m sure are easy for novice writers to overlook: what other people say about a character, what the character says about himself, and what the character does. I already used that information in my first Freewrite after his lesson.
He went on to explain that contrast is a key element as well. Where traditional writing and play writing take a different course are interesting–you get past the words and get to the action in play writing. That’s interesting to me since acting is on my bucket list and I also like to write.
I’m so curious that he never wanted to act in his plays, but I understand as well. I’m sure there are lots of film writers and producers, etc. who too don’t act. Just as there are many record producers and engineers who can’t carry a tune. If I put it into the that perspective then it makes sense to me. Though with Caleb’s kind demeanor and soft-spokenness, he’d make a great protagonist. :-)
Barbara Strasko: Barbara’s visit was perfectly timed for me. A nature and poet lover already (and having once briefly been involved in a workshop with Lancaster’s 2nd poet laureate), I had great interest to meet her. I also had a fantastic nature experience at my home the night before her visit and was anxious to write about it. She helped that to evolve even more for me.
She said during her talk, “originality (and freshness) is so important” and eluded to the idea of collecting through experiences (as one of our other guest speakers collected through physical trinkets) and that stressed the importance of keeping myself open to experiences, meeting and talking with people, and frequenting mentor texts in my interest area.
I didn’t realize–but I suppose I should have–that there is such a cohort of environmental writers! I was interested to hear about the conferences and contests that are available for those of us who are interested in such writing experiences. I’m going to look into the Bread Loaf Conference in Vermont and also the River of Words environmental poetry contest that she mentioned. I’m sure there’s a whole environmental writer’s world out there that I didn’t even know about!
Shaun Karli: I was left feeling disappointed for Shaun that he hasn’t yet had a producer grab his screenplay. But I know things happen for a reason. Just the fact that he got to speak with a producer at such length is wonderful for him. I hope that he continues to pursue what is his obvious passion.
He gave us a great lecture on the basics of screeenplay writing 101. I wrote down lots of notes about his thesis and book which focused on the 1970’s and Jack Nicholson. As a teacher of books and films from that era, it was interesting to hear him speak abou the anti-hero and how it related to society at the time.
His advice about “flushing out” a character and giving yourself plenty of choice and details about a character (in the form of research, pre-writing, and character ideas, etc.) was a good one. I also found his words powerful: “Film is a visual and suggestive medium for telling a story through symbolic images.” Additionally he went on to say that the “difficulty in screenplay writing is in its simplicity. Show more. Tell less.” My love of photography and lighting gets that!
His last advice was also very powerful for probably many types of writing: “Tell a simple story in a way that the audience hasn’t seen before.” I enjoyed his visit.
Carol Allen-Gordon: Carol was such a delightful and “real” speaker.
I loved her idea about the “two-notebook method”–one for writing a novel and one for reflection. This is because I have this strange OCD when it comes to getting my journals out of order. By providing a specific spot for reflections, it doesn’t ruin the flow of the novel itself. For me, I think I’d change it so that my writing would be on one page, and my notes and reflections would be on the facing page, that way I can see them as they happen in real time.
The 5-10 minute/1 page per day idea was shocking. I couldn’t believe with that math how fast it would be to write a book. I know it’s not as easy as that sounds, but I’m sure there would be some days that you’d write more than a page, and some days that you’d delete several pages. Either way, it makes a novel sound doable. A full-length novel is not on my list of aspirations right now… A children’s book is… Which in many ways might be harder to write. It’s a whole art among itself. Each word is so important in a children’s book. But hearing her story about writing a novel was still interesting.
“The writing didn’t come today again. What is wrong with me? Maybe I need to go get some guacamole?!” That was a great line of reflection! I also thought it was neat that she collects quotes and sentences. I actually just started collecting words and phrases since she visited.
Lastly, I was pleased to hear her use the term “poetic prose”. I had just been reminded the day before that my poetic prose is a strong asset of my writing. I once had a professor tell me, “You are a poet! You have poetry laced throughout even in your pedagogical writing. You can’t help it.” I took that as a compliment. :-)
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