Prompts for November 3, 2012

Prompts for November 3, 2012

Essay (Non-Fiction):
1. What does it mean to be a “writer in community”? What is a “community”? How is “community” relent to the “solitary life of an artist”? Does an artist or their work/working process necessarily have to be “solitary”? What are some means of improving the “community of the artist” and helping to bring “the solitary life of an artist” into a “community”?
2. What does it mean to be “an artist within a 'culture'”? Do each “cultures” relegate certain forms or social restrictions/codes of appearance/codes of action and acceptable form upon an artist? What are your “cultures” and what are the rules associated with them? How do these “cultures” limit your freedom of expression, and how do they enhance it? If they are limiting, how might you work to break out of that creative hindrance? If they are liberating, how might you share that freedom of expression, or helpful mode of inspiration or creative insight with another person/”culture”/the community at large?
   
3. What does it mean to be an “artist” to you? What are your modes of expression, and how do they help you become a “better person” through “bettering” your artistry?

Getting Ideas:

1. Write a short-story involving one of your characters. Use this as an opportunity to tell your reading something new about this character, something you won't necessarily be using in your work. It can be a serious event, action/adventure oriented, or a funny moment in the life of the character. The short-story should tell us something we don't know about the character, and help us to see more of the true nature of this person.
   
2. What are the most important values to your character(s), and do any of these values represent aspects of yourself or people you know or have encountered, or are they merely aspects created for a fictional work and have no relationship to yourself or people you know i.e. do they represent something within all of us, or are they a clear perversion/diversion of the scope of human capacities of emotion?
   
   Following from http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/

Essay (Fiction):

I. You find yourself in front of seven identical doors. A voice from above tells you:

“These seven doors lead to seven places:

Narnia, Neverland, Wonderland, Hogwarts, Camelot, Middle Earth, and Westeros.”

Which door do you go through?

Why that door? What happens?

II. Fairy Tale Therapy:

Think of a fairy tale character who experiences something traumatic. Years later, have that character discuss the traumatic events of their fairy tale with their therapist, explaining how it changed their life and perception of reality.

III. What if... Shakespeare lived now... and was in the army...

Story (Fiction):

1. Tell this story: “It's not wise to let someone like that know your name.”
2. What would you do differently if you got to do yesterday over again? or What would you do differently if you got to do last week over again?
3. He pointed me toward the opening in the tree. “I'm sure you'll be pleased. It's surprisingly large once you're inside.” Finish this story.
4. She gasped with excitement and shouted over the noise of the helicopter: “The islands in the sky are real!” Finish this story.
5. Retell the story of a Disney movie with one change: The Princess is now a hipster.
6. Tell this story: There were fourteen potions on the shelf. Their labels were all missing. She knew one of them was what she needed. She frantically glanced back over her shoulder. There wasn't enough time to figure out which was which. She grabbed the closest one and chugged it, hoping desperately she'd picked the right potion...
   
   Make sure you establish the situation, introduce a narrator, and organize the story in a way that unfolds naturally while using dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events. Provide a sense of closure at the end.
   
   Common Core: Writing Anchor Standard 3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

7. Tell this story: She was sure this was where he had disappeared.
8. Tell this story: As their ship pulled up beside the island, they could clearly see that it was inhabited.

Discussion for Group

So it's NanoWrimo time! And that means there are usually write-ins and events around the city. So the topic is how do we incorporate it. We can discuss this online and in person. But yes I'd like to hear everyones thoughts on this

1. Should we advertise our group through NaNoWriMo forums and other events so that we can have new members? The idea is to continue the group.

Note: If you are advertising it elsewhere, I suggest not posting my address publically online. You may share my email indu.shanmugam@gmail.com, to anyone so that I can connect and give it to them or you may bring a friend. The idea is not to have my address in open.

2. Robin suggested to meet at Ava just for the month of November because there is a Beaverton write-in held there at 10 am on Saturdays. So instead of having our separate group that's open to nanos, we can join them and hopefully invite them to our writing salon after Nano. (This weekend the place is my house though)

3. anything else?

Cheers.

Indu

Where to meet this Saturday? (Oct 20th)

I won't be in town this Saturday and still not sure if I can skype in. Please discuss where you'd like to meet.

- Bagel shop that Chris mentioned

- Ava Roastaria (near the Beaverton library). Free wifi and a nice coffee shop  

- Or elsewhere. 

***********

Up ahead. 

The following Saturday, Oct 27th we can meet at my place at the usual time 10-12 pm. But then, there's a NaNoWriMo Kick off party from 2 - 4pm. 

If you have never participated in NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month). It's a writerly challenge of writing a novel during the month of November (at least 50,000 words). I tried to participate in this last year, but I quit in the middle because it was my last year of grad school and I was overwhelmed. Now that I graduated, I have no excuse :P...It was a lot of fun. There are many local write-ins all over the city. And it's a good way to meet other writers and people. I encourage you all to participate in it. 

There's a kick off party and here's the email  I got: 

What: Kickoff Party!
When: Saturday, October 27, 2012
Time: 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Multnomah County Central Library, U.S. Bank Room
See it in our regional forum and on our Google Calendar: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/regions/usa-oregon-portland
What to bring:
*A snack to share (enough for around 7-10 people; don’t try to bring enough for the whole crowd, you might injure your noveling hand!)
*A bowl or plate to serve your snack if it’s needed
*Your own drink and drinking vessel
What we’ll do:
This is when we get together for a breather during the pre-NaNo frenzy and meet each other, find new WriMo friends, reconnect with old WriMo buddies and gear up for another fabulous year of words. It’s also where we get stickers, plot ninjas, and maybe a new idea or two.
We’ll have a little bit of talking about the ins and outs and details of NaNo. We’ll take some time to introduce ourselves and entice everyone with hints about what we’re going to write. We’ll have a few talks, a lot of laughs, and munchies to give our hands something to do since we can’t write yet.
We have the room starting at 1:30, so if you want to come a bit early and help us move chairs and tables we won’t turn you away. And if you can stay a little past 4:30 to help us move the chairs and tables back where they started, that would be fabulous!
Hope to see you at the kickoff!

Writing Prompts for October 6th, 2012

Bad Mornings—Everybody has them; how do you handle them? On those mornings you have to get up and wrestle yourself out of bed, how do you—how does your character wrestle to get up and perform their daily toil?

. . .

Appearances—how important are appearances to you or your character? Does a first impression tell you everything you need to know? If not, what tells you about a person?

Optional: Tell a story about yourself/your character of choice that involves appearances (or how appearances can be deceiving).

. . .

Day in the life of: Using whatever format is preferable, tell a story about a typical (or not so typical) day in your life/the life of your character.

Optional: Tell multiple stories!

. . .

Following prompts swiped from writing.tumblr.com:

Write a letter to future students in a history class. Explain what it is like to live now.

What would you be interested in knowing if you were them? Daily routines? What houses are like? Food? School? You should consider how much they'll know about things you take for granted. Will they know what cars are? Will they have just heard of them without actually getting to experience them? Telephones? Malls? Books? Will some of these things be forgotten in a few hundred years? Make sure to explain anything that might be unknown to them.

. . .

“Never underestimate the lives of old men sitting on park benches.”

. . .

You are a leaf and fall is only a few weeks away. Explain how you feel about this.

. . .

Explain the difference between dressing like a rock star and dressing like a pop star.

. . .

You've been commissioned to write an accurate, thorough history of dragons by someone who believes they really existed. Make it up.

. . .

If you got one whole day of being immortal*, what would you do with it?

*being “immortal” means you cannot die or get hurt.

. . .

If you hear that someone has good style, how do you imagine they dress? IF you hear someone has good taste, what do you imagine they are in to? What would immediately tell you that someone you just met has style and tastes that your expect? How much does taste and style matter to you?

. . .

You have just discovered evidence [undeniable, 100% accurate] that everyone else is an alien. Describe your day tomorrow.

. . .

Planet for sale.

Humanity has decided to change planets and needs to sell Earth. You've been hired to put it on the market. How do you advertise it and what's the price tag? Make a flyer announcing the sale. If you'd like, make similar flyers for other planets in the solar system or a made up planet of your choice.

. . .

Follow Jesse Walker's Instructions:

“Someday this too will be the Old Weird America. Try to appreciate it now, like a time traveler.”

Decades from now when future people look back on this time, what will they think? What in particular will make this time old and weird? How can you appreciate it like a time traveler?

. . .

Tell this story: “There it was, as peaceful and mysterious as s/he remembered: The Rift. The place where it all began.”

Planning Ahead - Updated

This is the board for brainstorming and planning ahead our upcoming meetings.This is the tentative schedule. But of course we're all open to suggestions. The only thing to keep in mind is consistency and the purpose of our group.


Sept 29th - Indu's place from 10 am to noon

Oct 6th - Indu's place from 10 am to noon.
BTW, IPRC's Text Ball is at 7pm to 11pm. Sounds really fun but I unfortunately can't make it because work.

Oct 13th - Indu's place OR canceling the meeting for Wordstock. Wordstock is going on this weekend. I was wondering if you all are interested in going. We could cancel this meeting just for this week for wordstock.

Oct 20th - Indu won't be in town. I'll be at a work conference all day and can't skype. How about meeting at the bagel shop? (or alternative location) Use the comment section to discuss rather than a new thread.

Oct 27th - Indu's place. It's halloween so maybe a halloween theme. If we're having a special event such as a halloween creative event, may I suggest planning it ahead of time. 

Thinking Like a Kid

Indu and Chris: Let me know if  this is what you guys had in mind...and if it needs tweaking. :)

Thinking Like a Kid

by Kathryn Bennett*

Children are new to this world. Their voices are open, their bodies sprawl jointlessly, their brains are big and their bodies small. Their heads are disproportionately large. Perhaps that is why they dream a lot—they use their brains because their bodies have not caught up. Everything is new to them. Butterflies, air, sky, their own hand. It is all fascinating. Who knows what they will encounter next?

Children have more time on their hands than adults. They don’t have to go to work. Their work is to explore the universe. They are encouraged to play and write and dance. They come up with endless stories. I think adults lose this ability because we are eventually shut down by the world. We no longer get to wear hot pink culottes, polka dot bonnets, or sunglasses with Barbie dolls on them. It’s worse for boys, for even as children they are shut down when they want to dance ballet at open air music festivals or play with dolls.

We are all little kids at heart. But the world stops adoring us once we become adults. It is not enough that we just are. We are no longer cute and no one wants to hear us babble.   What has helped me to harness the lost skill of telling stories is having writing buddies. I love my writing group The Imago Inklings because we sit and write and share and talk. We encourage each other. I think it is important to write in community, to write for one another and not in isolation. I think it is important to find support for our playful side, to nurture the friends who are easy, and to try to be easier friends ourselves, to be less critical and more loving.  To say less and listen better. To create a safe place to create.

When our minds are off ourselves, we can most truly be ourselves.  Perhaps children, being so distracted by the newness of life, have their minds off themselves a little bit. Not that children aren’t selfish. They are. We are. But we can learn to be in awe again by participating in their awe of the world God created. It is, of course, fascinating and amazing. To meditate on creation, to take a walk in the sunshine, to notice how the autumn leaves cling to the trees or how the ordinary gravel crunches beneath our feet, is, perhaps, the first step back.

 *of the Imago Inklings Writing Group

 

Writing Prompts for September 8th, 2012

Writing Prompts for September 8th, 2012

Non-fiction Essay

Write a page from the book: Instructions For Overcoming A Tyrannical Government In The 21st Century.

OR you could write a page from the book: Instructions For Maintaining A Successful Dictatorship In The 21st Century.

[If you’re stuck writing a page, you could just make a list of potential chapter titles.]Fiction Essay

Write a newspaper article for a famous event in history.

. . .

The problem with being a time-traveling reporter is learning to control your impulse to change history.

Write a time-traveling reporter’s handbook for a newspaper of your choice.

Optional: Write a news article for a famous event in history or an interview with a famous person (in their time).

Fiction Story

Tell this story: One of the hardest parts about being a time-traveling history detective is finding somewhere to plug in your laptop, which meant they really didn’t have much time to finish recording their notes about what they had just witnessed.

Getting Ideas

Your story’s main antagonist has invited the hero and eir team to a coffee shop rendezvous. Describe the event. Describe the rendezvous (were it to hypothetically occur).