Other Worlds and Escaping

I am reading a title called I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing by A. D. Jameson and he give a short overview of the concept (popular now in fantasy and young adult writing) known as world building. And he used Tolkien's ideas in connecting escapism and plausibility together. He said, 

"Tolkien further argued that in order for this experience to succeed, in order for the faerie to be able to work its magic, the secondary worlds must be credible enough that we fall completely under their spell, to which end authors must give them "the inner consistency of reality."" 

This is a fascinating concept that brings the idea that world building is based on things that are different, but consistent with the basic working of reality. I was more interested in the Star Wars elements of this book, however, there are some fascinating asides that really have been notable. 

In many ways, this is how we view truth in fiction. Yes, it is fiction and completely made up, but the theme, the possibility of the action, and the plausibility all come back to this idea of "consistency of reality." Can we learn something fictional and find it based on truth? Of course, we can. It is the possibility that is so compelling in fiction. It isn't how exotic the realm is, but how compelling we find the characters. We know winter is coming in The Game of Thrones because we've seen the northern wall, hell, we know people who have fought there. And winter is coming. How do I know that? Because I've seen it myself. 

In the end, world-building as an idea is vast and creative. It is attractive to writers. But to me, it feels like the most important part of world-building is that we can still find ourselves, even in the most exotic or different realms. 

Interactive Storytelling: NetNarr Alchemy Lab

Very excited to be part of this dynamic and creative NetNarr 
Alchemy Lab which included creative and stunning story creators including Niall Barr, Todd Conaway, Charlene Doland, Sheri Edwards, Simon Ensor, Roj Ferman, Terry Greene, Kelli Hayes, Kevin Hodgson, Sarah Honeychurch, John Johnston, Alan Levine, Keegan Long-Wheeler, Algot Runeman, Wendy Taleo, Clare Thomson, Susan Watson and Lauren Zucker.

https://sites.google.com/view/netnarr-mediajumping/home

Book Review / Gods of Howl Mountain

Taylor Brown
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN 978-1250111777
p304

When it comes to protagonists, Taylor Brown has changed that paradigm in his novel Gods of Howl Mountain. Rory Docherty is a wounded Korean veteran, back home to bootleg liquor, clash with local factions, evade the law, and appease all his family. He is a gritty car guy who knows the long history of the mountain and the mill town at the bottom of the valley. While Rory is a cut-throat stock car racer and bootlegger, he also knows the mountain and people. A novel as much about place and time as it is story and conflict. 

Rory has returned with a missing leg. Living with his grandmother, in the mountains, they live among the herbal remedies and folklore that haunts the misty mountains. When Rory falls in love with the daughter of a snake-handling preacher, their world is pulled apart by violence, rivalries, love, and ghosts from the past.

Thinking that some evil has invaded Rory's heart, Granny May keeps her shotgun close and her distrust closer. She is mystical in her mountain herbal remedies and her shotgun judgments of the world. Her life as a matriarch and medicine woman draws people to her who want different cures for what ails their lives in town. She also is the link between Rory and the mother he never knew. 

Taylor Brown's prose is as mystical and lyrical as the ghosts high in the mountains. It is not always a beautiful place, but the mountain, the people, and the hard lives all resonant with a profound beauty that shifts from grace and wisdom to deceit and violence. Brown has masterfully crafted this world, grounding in the reader a sense of place and time in America, now long gone. 

Mentoring

Among Those Things

In my previous post about creating Misfit Manifestos in class, it occurred to me that over the course of the semester I give a lot of writing assignments. Not all of them are a lengthy research paper, but they are intentionally designed for the continuous practice of writing. It is important in my class to understand that writing is a practiced skill and they should be writing often. And like someone learning a musical instrument, sometimes who are better off doing scales and sometimes you play the whole concerto. 

Yet, as I was writing about their experience with the Misfit Manifestos, it occurred to me that sometimes, students connect with assignments in a way that opens their ideas, and changes the way they see their own lives. The point being is that through a variety of writing opportunities, it is very hard to tell which assignments are going to connect with the students in the classroom. But what comes with experience: is knowing that something will connect with the students.  

It is clear that these writing assignment was a needed break away from writing about Virginia Woolf and modernism. And it was clear from their writing that they wanted to say something important about who they are. It reminds me of the letter writing assignment I work on with my creative writing students. They write letters to people that they can't send them too because of death, or distance, or something else. Every time I do that creative writing exercise, it is clear that they have something that need to say immediately. It is almost like writers are just waiting for the right idea, the right acceptance and permission to say those things that have been waiting their for the right moment. That is what it felt like with my students, particularly with a student who said, "This will be the easiest assignment so far, I've been screwed up my entire life." And that was the release he needed to explain it all to me. 

Are we looking for permission to write these stories about ourselves? Are these stories just waiting, just under the waves of our everyday life waiting for the right prompt or the right group to share it with? This type of writing is where your story can be a superpower. This is where you sit in class and awe at the struggles, the humanity that comes from writers, and you see something so brave in a writer - the act of writing down something that has always been kept from the world. And there it is on a desk, so common place, like a pen, a notebook. Among those things, you know what a privilege it is. 

Space for Writing

Every since I was writing, I had some kind of desk. But desks can be distractions and then can be places where things just sit. In thinking about spaces that are important to creation, workshops, or quiet spaces, it is also important to think about how much you need.

When I am working, I don't really care what's around me, because I am working. But all the time spent supporting the creation of something is what space means. For me it isn't that I need a big office or a nice desk to write, I can write at work, or in a public space. But to practice something and get good at it, you need a space that is ready for you and a place that is reliable.

When I was in college, I lived in my parent's attic. It was a great space for college students, but with my bed, TV, drum set, and everything else, I ended up moving my desk into the storage space. And not a lot of it, but just one little corner. Even though it was still just around the corner, it was enough to separate my living space, my "I work at a restaurant" space into something that is my own little writing space. And it was little. I used a small computer desk and my word processor and that is where it happened.

My space!

When I moved into an apartment, there was really no place I called my office, maybe the kitchen table. And it wasn't until I moved into my house now that I set up an office in an unused bedroom and worked on my masters. In the last five years, I refurbished my attic space into a great den, TV space, and a wall. And around the corner is my office. Lately, I've expanded my shelves and made this space more productive and more useful.

Part of what I need in a working writing space is not really for the writing part. Sitting in front of my computer typing along can happen (literally) anywhere. But when I I look around my office, I see touchstones and books that remind me of where I've come from, and they whisper to me that I am ready, that I am a writer. And from there you can choose the limitless path of creativity.

• Why is a writing space important to you? 
• What do you need in that space?
• How does it make you feel? 
• How do you arrive in that space? (Pajamas, dressed to work, with coffee, with headphones on?)
• What were the most productive times in your space and why was that really productive?

Bonus thought: Write a detailed description of your perfect work space. And make sure the reader is left with very specific things that are the focus of that space. 

CLMOOC 2017 Make Cycle #1

Being a writer, the more visual, artistic elements of creation often come to me in different ways. When we start thinking about coloring pages and books, I started thinking how would I think of a coloring page for a novel or a story. 

Honestly, I wanted to make a coloring sheet for a character -- what they look like, motivation, and outcome. People could fill in their responses and have a visual sheet for a character. But once I started creating this - I started having an existential conversation with a would-be character. I am not sure how this turned into a kind of conversation but I made some interesting comments here about how I feel about creativity - writing, the process, and the muse. Not sure if this fits into the coloring page idea completely but it showed me some insight.

What I started to think about was how this sheet could hold a variety - perhaps limitless conversations. What happens when we place out subconscious on the page (in the shape of an outline) and ask it questions, give it reason, and converse? Perhaps it would shift a visual brain? Perhaps it would inspire someone to see interconnections? I want to color one of these and accent some of the elements that are important to me. I want to use this type of creation to show and bind a visuality to words, and the ownership of words to the visual.  Thanks for your time in looking this over to everyone in 2017 CLMOOC -- it is such an important place to consider the world.

Add On: Sometimes, after making something like this, I sit and think about it or have a conversation with someone and I find more to think about. While this image was meant to be a coloring page for a character -- based on the idea from Janet Burroway concerning conflict and desire, and then spiraling out to something else -- it would be interesting to take an essay or a chapter from a book and see how it would map out in a visual diagram. What would be the focus, what would be the elements that we need to know the most? And then how would we color this in? What significant details mean the most to make the scene work? And how does it work emotionally? I could see people using scales and meters to measure emotional investment. I could see readers taking pull quotes out and adding them to make impacts around their maps. 

One of the best books on literature and creativity that I've read and admire is Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi.

It is from that influence that it is easy to see how the imagination can be very specific and wonderfully complex, needing a place for maps and signs, way-points and directionals.

In a class of thirty students, taking one scene from a book and mapping them out will create thirty unique maps. Then we could compare them, and see what elements are common in them all (characters, setting, action), but more importantly, what beats, what moment, what words specifically changed the reader? That will be unique and different. We are constantly coloring our imaginations, we are constantly rediscovering a childhood memory (recoloring perhaps), and I am constantly trying to contribute to why books, writing, stories, and literature is important. (Maybe that's just me) The black and white outlines are the form, the frame, and the logic we need to speak to one another. The colors are the imagination, the turn of a phrase, and vision. Visually, I don't think I've thought about the craft of writing this way. I've spoken a lot about form and content -- but now perhaps there is a new dimension there. The beauty is that it brings into the discussion whether writers color in the lines or embrace the infinite possibilities that blur the human experience. 




Ron's Words: On Art and Writing by Kevin Hodgson

Trying to find a poem in there #CLMOOC colored layers pic.twitter.com/KbCewxhZ4f

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) July 12, 2017