WRITERS ON GENRE
Thursdays, 7/8-7/29, 7:30 p.m. - WGAW 2nd Floor.
(800) 838-3006
Writers talk about genre:
Horror (7/8)
Drama and True Stories (7/15)
Sci-Fi & Fantasy (7/22)
Comedy/Romantic Comedy (7/29)
Speakers include Mark Fergus, Scott Frank, Andrea Berloff, Scott Kosar, Adam Mazer, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard, Nicholas Meyer, David Hayter, Dan Petrie, Jr., Gavin Scott, Nicholas Stoller, Wesley Strick, Kurt Wimmer and more.
$20
WRITING FOR TELEVISION 2010: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Saturday, 7/31, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. - WGAW 2nd Floor.
(800) 838-3006
An all-day seminar devoted to writing for television in a changing world. Speakers will include writers, agents, and executives. Includes light breakfast, lunch, and evening wine & cheese mixer.
$150.
Info & tickets -- click on title above.
Showing posts with label borrow genius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label borrow genius. Show all posts
July 07, 2010
November 19, 2009
Free!!!
Russell Banks, Atom Egoyan and the Scripting of Time
Time: 7:00 P.M.
Location: Bovard Auditorium, USC make reservations »
Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Invite you and a guest to a special evening with
Russell Banks, Atom Egoyan and the Scripting of Time
7:00 P.M. on Monday, November 23rd
Bovard Auditorium, USC Campus
Admission is free.
RSVP online at www.usc.edu/esvp
(code: cc1123)
ABOUT THE EVENT
Russell Banks is a critically acclaimed author whose work has received numerous international prizes and awards. His dazzling novels include The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, Cloudsplitter, Continental Drift and Rule of the Bone. Atom Egoyan is one of today's most remarkable independent filmmakers. His spectacular films include his stunning adaptation of The Sweet Hereafter as well as Calendar, Exotica and Ararat. Both Banks and Egoyan powerfully explore themes of tragedy, humanity, alienation and memory in their work.
This event will bring these two geniuses together for a provocative conversation about the treachery of memory and how we learn, forget and lie in time.
Organized by the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Email Address: visionsandvoices@usc.edu
Time: 7:00 P.M.
Location: Bovard Auditorium, USC make reservations »
Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Invite you and a guest to a special evening with
Russell Banks, Atom Egoyan and the Scripting of Time
7:00 P.M. on Monday, November 23rd
Bovard Auditorium, USC Campus
Admission is free.
RSVP online at www.usc.edu/esvp
(code: cc1123)
ABOUT THE EVENT
Russell Banks is a critically acclaimed author whose work has received numerous international prizes and awards. His dazzling novels include The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, Cloudsplitter, Continental Drift and Rule of the Bone. Atom Egoyan is one of today's most remarkable independent filmmakers. His spectacular films include his stunning adaptation of The Sweet Hereafter as well as Calendar, Exotica and Ararat. Both Banks and Egoyan powerfully explore themes of tragedy, humanity, alienation and memory in their work.
This event will bring these two geniuses together for a provocative conversation about the treachery of memory and how we learn, forget and lie in time.
Organized by the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Email Address: visionsandvoices@usc.edu
May 29, 2007
write a story poem
To get started on a story poem, begin by quickly writing down a sequence of events from beginning to end.
For this poem, try one of the following:
1) Write about something that happened within the past week. This doesn't have to be a major, life changing event. Just start right in and write through a quick draft to get started.
2) Write about something that happened at least five years ago. Pick an event you've had time to reflect on, something that stands out now as playing an important part in who you are today. As you write, don't tell why this event is important, just concentrate on getting your reader into the feel of actually being there. Provide plenty of concrete, specific details to make the story come alive.
Whichever of the above options you choose, keep the poem short, compressed, to the point--no more than 24 lines as an absolute maximum. You may want to write this out first as prose, then add line breaks and stanza breaks when you complete your first draft.
Maybe you can combine the two to find the similarities or differences between the two events.
A beautiful example of a story poem:
TOMATOES
by Stephen Dobyns
A woman travels to Brazil for plastic
surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty
and has the usual desire to stay pretty.
Once she is healed, she takes her new face
out on the streets of Rio. A young man
with a gun wants her money. Bang, she’s dead.
The body is shipped back to New York,
but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son
is sent for. He is told that his mother
is one of these ten different women.
Each has been shot. Such is modern life.
He studies them all but can’t find her.
With her new face, she has become a stranger.
Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.
He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him?
He presses their hands to his cheek.
Which ones consoled him? He even tries
climbing onto their laps to see which
feels most familiar but the coroner stops him.
Well, says the coroner, which is your mother?
They all are, says the young man, let me
take them as a package. The coroner hesitates,
then agrees. Actually, it solved a lot of problems.
The young man has the ten women shipped home,
then cremates them all together. You’ve seen
how some people have a little urn on the mantel?
This man has a huge silver garbage can.
In the spring, he drags the garbage can
out to the garden and begins working the teeth,
the ash, the bits of bone into the soil.
Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes.
They grow straight from seed, so fast and big
that the young man is amazed. He takes the first
ten into the kitchen. In their roundness,
he sees his mother’s breasts. In their smoothness
he finds the consoling touch of her hands.
Mother, mother, he cries, and flings himself
on the tomatoes. Forget about the knife, the fork,
the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial
starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.
For this poem, try one of the following:
1) Write about something that happened within the past week. This doesn't have to be a major, life changing event. Just start right in and write through a quick draft to get started.
2) Write about something that happened at least five years ago. Pick an event you've had time to reflect on, something that stands out now as playing an important part in who you are today. As you write, don't tell why this event is important, just concentrate on getting your reader into the feel of actually being there. Provide plenty of concrete, specific details to make the story come alive.
Whichever of the above options you choose, keep the poem short, compressed, to the point--no more than 24 lines as an absolute maximum. You may want to write this out first as prose, then add line breaks and stanza breaks when you complete your first draft.
Maybe you can combine the two to find the similarities or differences between the two events.
A beautiful example of a story poem:
TOMATOES
by Stephen Dobyns
A woman travels to Brazil for plastic
surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty
and has the usual desire to stay pretty.
Once she is healed, she takes her new face
out on the streets of Rio. A young man
with a gun wants her money. Bang, she’s dead.
The body is shipped back to New York,
but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son
is sent for. He is told that his mother
is one of these ten different women.
Each has been shot. Such is modern life.
He studies them all but can’t find her.
With her new face, she has become a stranger.
Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.
He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him?
He presses their hands to his cheek.
Which ones consoled him? He even tries
climbing onto their laps to see which
feels most familiar but the coroner stops him.
Well, says the coroner, which is your mother?
They all are, says the young man, let me
take them as a package. The coroner hesitates,
then agrees. Actually, it solved a lot of problems.
The young man has the ten women shipped home,
then cremates them all together. You’ve seen
how some people have a little urn on the mantel?
This man has a huge silver garbage can.
In the spring, he drags the garbage can
out to the garden and begins working the teeth,
the ash, the bits of bone into the soil.
Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes.
They grow straight from seed, so fast and big
that the young man is amazed. He takes the first
ten into the kitchen. In their roundness,
he sees his mother’s breasts. In their smoothness
he finds the consoling touch of her hands.
Mother, mother, he cries, and flings himself
on the tomatoes. Forget about the knife, the fork,
the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial
starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.
May 25, 2007
WRITE A TANKA
Tanka is an ancient form of Japanese poetry believed to exist for the last 1300 years which makes it older than haiku. As a form, the tanka poem consists of 31 syllables arranged in a metric pattern of 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7.
In Japanese, tanka is written in one straight line with no stresses and no rhyme scheme though the sounds and words are meant to resonate emotionally as in contemporary American free verse.
In English, we usually divide the lines into the five syllabic units:
5
7
5
7
7
TANKAS BY IZUMI SHIKIBU
Lying alone
my black hair tangled
uncombed,
I long for the one
who touched it first.
The bamboo’s
old root
hasn’t changed at all –
Is there even one night
he sleeps at home? No.
In Japanese, tanka is written in one straight line with no stresses and no rhyme scheme though the sounds and words are meant to resonate emotionally as in contemporary American free verse.
In English, we usually divide the lines into the five syllabic units:
5
7
5
7
7
TANKAS BY IZUMI SHIKIBU
Lying alone
my black hair tangled
uncombed,
I long for the one
who touched it first.
The bamboo’s
old root
hasn’t changed at all –
Is there even one night
he sleeps at home? No.
April 15, 2007
brewery artwalk in la
If you've never done the Brewery Artwalk - I highly encourage you to go. A wonderful chance to see into artists studios and meet them in person. A wonderful way to spend the day.
The Brewery Spring 2007 Artwalk
Saturday & Sunday
April 21st & 22nd
11 am - 6 pm
I really encourage you to check out Dave Lefner's studio. His print is above. He writes:
"Please visit me in my studio to view all the new limited-edition, linoleum block prints"
Dave Lefner
620 Moulton Avenue,
Studio 212
Los Angeles, CA 90031
Main Street Exit @ the 5 Freeway near Downtown Los Angeles
FREE admission & secured parking
For more info www.breweryartwalk.com
The Brewery Spring 2007 Artwalk
Saturday & Sunday
April 21st & 22nd
11 am - 6 pm
I really encourage you to check out Dave Lefner's studio. His print is above. He writes:
"Please visit me in my studio to view all the new limited-edition, linoleum block prints"
Dave Lefner
620 Moulton Avenue,
Studio 212
Los Angeles, CA 90031
Main Street Exit @ the 5 Freeway near Downtown Los Angeles
FREE admission & secured parking
For more info www.breweryartwalk.com
February 15, 2007
make it a combo
Somedays, it feels like it's all you can do just to manage from minute to minute - an entire day can be spent putting out fires so that there is no long range vision, you can be only in the present, just in the moment.
Today has been one of those days and yet, even in the chaos, I think it relates to our work as artists and our particular work this month of "Borrowing Genius" from the artists that inspire us.
The works that we've gathered, the masterpieces and the flops - only in hindsight can we see the larger themes, the broader vision that an artist might have had. That artist, in that moment, was painting a single picture, carving a single sculpture, sewing a single stitch on a dress, writing one line at a time.
The artist was focused on the work at hand.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Think small. Very, very small. Pick one line, one passage, one picture, one frame, one element from all that you've collected from Artist # 1. Now do the same from Artist # 2.
How can these two tiny moments be combined to make a unique third?
Today has been one of those days and yet, even in the chaos, I think it relates to our work as artists and our particular work this month of "Borrowing Genius" from the artists that inspire us.
The works that we've gathered, the masterpieces and the flops - only in hindsight can we see the larger themes, the broader vision that an artist might have had. That artist, in that moment, was painting a single picture, carving a single sculpture, sewing a single stitch on a dress, writing one line at a time.
The artist was focused on the work at hand.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Think small. Very, very small. Pick one line, one passage, one picture, one frame, one element from all that you've collected from Artist # 1. Now do the same from Artist # 2.
How can these two tiny moments be combined to make a unique third?
February 11, 2007
tackle artist # 2
So far, all of your research and gathering has been focused on your "Artist #1" - you've identified what they accomplished during their lifetime, created a master list of their works and hopefully, by now you've collected a few of the masterpieces and flops and have started reading/examining them in detail.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Repeat everything you've done for Artist #1 to your new search about Artist #2. Look back over the exercises for February and gather your materials for your second genius.
As you do this, notice if there are any similarities between the two artists. Are they wildly different in their approach to art or their perspective on the world, life, love, etc? What were the major themes that each of these artists were wrestling?
Again, remember, this is just your surface impressions. Are there any aspects of their work that strike you as obviously related or obviously opposed to one another?
Follow your gut.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Repeat everything you've done for Artist #1 to your new search about Artist #2. Look back over the exercises for February and gather your materials for your second genius.
As you do this, notice if there are any similarities between the two artists. Are they wildly different in their approach to art or their perspective on the world, life, love, etc? What were the major themes that each of these artists were wrestling?
Again, remember, this is just your surface impressions. Are there any aspects of their work that strike you as obviously related or obviously opposed to one another?
Follow your gut.
February 05, 2007
gather the goods
At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of how much your "Artist #1" accomplished during their lifetime. Maybe they had one masterpiece or maybe they were insanely prolific and now, you're depressed!
Fret not! Our goal is to borrow their genius, allow their power and talent to rub off on us - you already created a master list of the works you need to know about. Today, it's time to start collecting those works.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Do a little research to identify which of the pieces created by your Genius Artist were considered flops and which were considered masterpieces. Narrow it down to 3 or 4 master works and 1 or 2 flops.
In my case, I'm also going to have to research which translations most authorities accept as most accurate - you may need to do the same. Once you have a good idea of the pieces and the accepted translations, it's time to find the actual work.
Use the library or download some free e-books or find a museum or a track down the actual artist and ask to visit their studio. Whatever it takes. Try to find stuff that you can buy cheaply (used book store?) or download for free from the web.
I'm gonna give you a couple of days to gather your materials!
Fret not! Our goal is to borrow their genius, allow their power and talent to rub off on us - you already created a master list of the works you need to know about. Today, it's time to start collecting those works.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Do a little research to identify which of the pieces created by your Genius Artist were considered flops and which were considered masterpieces. Narrow it down to 3 or 4 master works and 1 or 2 flops.
In my case, I'm also going to have to research which translations most authorities accept as most accurate - you may need to do the same. Once you have a good idea of the pieces and the accepted translations, it's time to find the actual work.
Use the library or download some free e-books or find a museum or a track down the actual artist and ask to visit their studio. Whatever it takes. Try to find stuff that you can buy cheaply (used book store?) or download for free from the web.
I'm gonna give you a couple of days to gather your materials!
February 02, 2007
focus on the first
Hopefully, you have picked the two artists you're going to investigate for February. I've decided to focus on the playwright Moliere and the painter Edgar Degas.
I know a couple of Moliere's plays and have even "modernized" one of them for fun but I'm not an expert on his entire body of work so I have chosen to further explore what he was up to "back in the day" as a dramatist and a person.
I recently walked through the Getty and was slightly disturbed by a Degas bather so I decided to throw him into the mix.
The goal this month is to gain a better understanding of the works created by these artists and also to learn about their personal lives and the worlds that surrounded them as they worked.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Focus on Artist #1 - the artist who worked in your medium - and identify, as thoroughly as you can, their entire body of work. Track down a comprehensive list of their creations.
All you have to accomplish today is the list that provides a guide from their earliest work to their last.
I know a couple of Moliere's plays and have even "modernized" one of them for fun but I'm not an expert on his entire body of work so I have chosen to further explore what he was up to "back in the day" as a dramatist and a person.
I recently walked through the Getty and was slightly disturbed by a Degas bather so I decided to throw him into the mix.
The goal this month is to gain a better understanding of the works created by these artists and also to learn about their personal lives and the worlds that surrounded them as they worked.
TODAY'S CREATIVITY CHALLENGE:
Focus on Artist #1 - the artist who worked in your medium - and identify, as thoroughly as you can, their entire body of work. Track down a comprehensive list of their creations.
All you have to accomplish today is the list that provides a guide from their earliest work to their last.
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