Teaching Theme

Interesting creative writing class last night. I called the segment my "Pulling It All Together" session. I originally conceived the class as a beginning writing course for retirees ready to pick up their pens, possibly for the first time.

My student makeup quickly expanded beyond that when it moved outside the junior college continuing education setting, so I have a mixture of people with varying degrees of experience. I've been working to make sure to show how the techniques I'm espousing relate to memoirs and creative non-fiction as well as fiction. Happily I have students honing creative non-fiction pieces that read like short stories.

I started with developing original ideas, moved through plot, character and the importance of polishing prose.

Theme, suspense and dialog seemed like the next points to hammer on the journey. Those seriously developing new works as part of class are at the point of adding nuance to some excellent works, so my goal was to suggest ways to hone the spirit of work so that it offers more than just a recitation of facts or events.

I quoted various sources in lecture, and we examined a story by John Cheever called "The Sutton Place Story" that's both suspenseful, thematically rich and reliant on characters. I was afraid it was a little esoteric, but it resonated.

Students asked if the class has to end in another week.

Oh yeah, it does, if I'm going to remain standing. But it was nice to have that response.

How Did it Get to Be October?

I'm making slow progress on many fronts. Blogging obviously hasn't been one of them for a while, but I thought I'd check in which a quick update and get back to profound updates when possible.

I have just two classes left in the teaching practicum that's part of my MFA. I've held onto about 10 students for five weeks now. I was worried since it was free I wouldn't get a commitment, but people are hanging in.

We're working on the art of re-writing outside of class and writing theory in class. Exercises, lecture by me and discussion of short stories and brief creative non-fiction. It's tough to do a lot of novels in six weeks, but I think short pieces have been helpful in exemplifying technique.

I've tried to give them a variet of readings including "An Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Marquez and Cheever's thriller-like "The Sutton Place Story." It's a great look at how character affects plot and plot informs theme. Or at least I think it is.

I found a Photoshop contest picture that was surreal and used that for a writing prompt and spurred some people to creativity that was wonderful.

On the novel front, I'm working on rewrites and polish and aiming toward a final draft for readers for next semester.

There's goodness in it at the moment, though it's not perfect.

Really wanted to get something on record since my Oliver film was my last entry. Hope all is well for everyone.

Got a new Flip Ultra for my birthday. Here's a quick test of it.

Making Things Work

I have to teach a class in creative writing as part of my MFA requirement. In academic parlance it's a practicum. Every field has its jargon, I guess.

Bottom line, I have to teach at least three people for 15 hours. I called up the junior college in this burg a while back to see if I could do that in their continuing education program. I thought a class that was part of an established program would be more fun and more beneficial to me. I also figured since they had a marketing program in place it would go smoother i.e. I wouldn't have to do the marketing.

Turned out they hadn't had anyone to offer creative writing in a while, so they signed me up. But it seems the class didn't "make." That's another use of academic parlance. We all know what make means in the more colloquial parlance. Yeah, "make" is what I seem to be left with a big pile of for what seem to be a variety of Catch-22s.

Happily, sometimes things seem to fall into place even when make happens. I discovered three people in my day-to-day encounters who were interested in taking the class. When one of them called to register that's how we found out it had apparently been cancelled. I'd worried about that happening, but I really stayed pretty subdued when I got that word.

The potential participant noted almost instantly that her minister is extremely community minded and opens the doors to provide a venue for many different groups and issues, so I called him up, talked things over, and he said he was down with it and that he'd be the observer I needed for one session.

So, after a little coordination with the other guys who'd expressed interest, looks like we have a creative writing class for the month of September.

While I'm a writer, I can't deny the virtues of direct sales techniques.

The Lesson Plan

My plan is to focus on wringing the cliches out of ideas, look at how to build a story from the nucleus of a core idea then focus in-depth on character and plot development and how character and plot feed each other.

I'd planned to look a little at how John Goodman's character drives the story in "The Big Lebowski," but we may forego clips from that since the language is maybe a little indelicate for a church venue.

I'll start putting flyers around to see if we can attract a few more participants to, er, make things interesting.

With any luck, this project will turn out to be "The Make!"

Twisted Tales: The Lime Works

My current MFA advisor has a reading list that was given to him by a professor of his, though he's refined it a bit. It's a wonderfully eclectic collection of titles, and I'm happy to have learned of a book called The Lime Works from that list.

It's a book that may not be to all tastes. It's a rather eccentric work, and I had to get it via interlibrary loan because it's momentarily out of print, thus used-copy costs have sky-rocketed, but I believe it's scheduled for re-publishing next year as a mass market paperback.

Originally published in German, it is the tale of Konrad, an eccentric scholar denied formal education by his parents but determined in later years to craft a masterwork on the science of hearing.

Toward that end, he thwarts a cousin's efforts to prohibit his purchase of a vast, abandoned lime works and moves his invalid wife to the dark, cold plant to conduct hearing experiments to contribute to the perfect book he's convinced resides inside his head.

Author Thomas Bernhard tells Konrad's story in a manner that virtually puts the reader inside the character's twisted mind, though it's not a point of view story exactly. Instead the virtually stream-of-consciousness narrative is the amalgamation of several accounts compiled by an insurance man after Konrad's murder of his wife, which occurs on the opening page.

It's a twisted, dark tale of obsession, madness and one of the worst cases of writer's block ever. If you see a copy for under $40 grab it, and immerse yourself for a little while in the chilly, shadowy world of the lime works.

Cooking Shows And the End of Life

I think the gist of Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine piece "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch," which coincides with the release of the Meryl Streep movie about Julia Child, Julie and Julia, is that more people are watching cooking shows than actually cooking.

Sometimes that's not a bad thing.

I do a fair amount of culinary work at home, so I might not fit the pattern described, but I had occasion to watch The Food Network a good bit a few years ago. It helped pass the time as I sat with my mom in hospital rooms on a few different occasions, and I recalled that as I perused Mr. Pollan's article.

My mother was a home economics teacher for most of her career, an expert on food preparation, and sewing. Her memory had faded by the time she neared the end of her days, so I sought things that might seem familiar to her such as food preparation.

She never really developed much of an interest in the shows, but I sat watching, whiling those endless hours between doctor visits as she fought one condition or another. In a trapped situation, any diversion becomes more engrossing.

It winds up being an oddly fond memory now that she's about a year gone, not the best of memories by far, but a pleasant moment. Sitting with her, watching Emeril prepare a chicken dish or one of the other hosts dishing pasta or barbecue rubs.

Watching those shows provided peaceful lulls between the strife-filled moments. They were just entertainment, not instructional shows. They were something we could share in a strange way, something my mother might once have appreciated but couldn't fully on her slow journey toward the end.

I printed out some of the recipes from the web later. They're in the folder with all of our recipes, but I've never attempted any of them.

New Podcast Episode - Flash Fiction By Brett Williams And More Podcast News

After a quasi-hiatus, Fear on Demand is back for July with a new episode.

Brett Williams aka @crucify_brett on Twitter contributed the brief and chilling flash piece, Cambion, that's now live at Fear on Demand. Check out more about Brett on his website, brettwilliamsfiction.com.

Brett's story is read by Julie Hoverson a writer and actress who is the creator of the fabulous and award-winning audiodrama podcast 19 Nocturne Boulevard.

Julie and I met online because she heard my Southern accent on a FOD introduction and asked me to play a gambler in a weird Western installment of her show.

Age of the Zombies

The second episode of Age of the Zombies is currently live, featuring me wearing a different hat. I'm the voice of Jake, ex-Master Sergeant and current and future zombie-fighter. Again, the Southern accent is serving me well.

I've just learned AOTZ is a finalist for a Parsec Award for speculative fiction in podcasting, which is kind of exciting.

You can listen to any and all of the stuff mentioned above online without an MP3 player though it's also fun to download them and take them with you.

Necropolis Studio Productions, producers of AOTZ, also have a new podcast coming soon, Call Me Jack, a show about THAT Jack.

Check them all out and enjoy, but be warned, they're not for the squeamish.