Thanks to anyone who comes to check us out after so much dead time! Even though the blog hasn't been updated lately, we are still meeting ever Tuesday at 6pm after English Club.
Last week, I gave everyone the following prompt: write a poem or a short piece of prose based on one of your recent Facebook statuses or Twitter updates. If you tend to post more song lyrics than slices-of-life, please skip those. If you don't have an account on either site (!!!), try using that of a celebrity for inspiration. Bring this piece with you (and the post that you used, if you like) on Tuesday, February 1st. Yes, that is tomorrow. No need to make copies; we will read them aloud and have some informal critique.
What's coming up:
- On February 15th, English Club will be having a Valentine's Day party starting at 5 pm. We will be doing a Valentine exchange, in the best elementary school tradition, and if you would like to participate, you should come to Club on either the 1st or the 8th so you can make your construction paper mailbox. We will also being drawing up a list of everyone exchanging Valentines, so you know who to make them out to. Not to be outdone, I figure Writers' Bloc will also plan a little celebration, and I'll try to put that prompt up by next week.
- Honors alum Carly Sachs will be doing a reading on March 8th in conjunction with the Wick Poetry Center. We are looking at scheduling a short workshop on March 7th for a small group of interested students. It will start at 5 pm, as things stand, and I will be bringing this up at the meeting tomorrow in order to begin making more concrete plans.
- We are thinking of setting the date for the writing conference on April 9th.
- Thunderduck approachth.
As you can see, there is lots to do in the very near future! Get involved and get writing!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Monday, November 16, 2009
Random November Info
So, hopeful all of us are surviving our Novembers, and occasionally finding some time to sit down and write a bit (or more than a bit in some cases). I just wanted to do a quick post with the website that Varley O’Connor suggested for finding venues for writing:
www.newpages.com
I would also suggest checking out various genre organizations. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have information about legitimate venues for their genres at:
http://www.sfwa.org/
That’s it for now. I still have Marybeth’s list of places for Creative Non-Fiction venues and I will try to post some of those tonight or tomorrow.
Write!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
A Challenge!
Just a quick note here. More updates to follow, I promise.
We have a challenge for the Writer’s Bloc next week: Write something you would not normally write. It can be short, a couple paragraphs or a poem, but use a tone, theme, character that is as out of your normal writing comfort zone as possible.
If you usually write rhymed poetry, go unrhymed. Switch out your concreteness for the abstract or vice-versa. Never written about the undead? Give it a shot. No happy endings? Now is the time. Have fun with it.
Work on your November goals.
Write and continue awesome!
Friday, October 9, 2009
Reminders, More Speakers and November Madness
We are going to have people sign up for spots for the Crash Course in Play Writing Workshop. We will have a sign up sheet posted in the Undergraduate Office (where we met). We will hopefully have a more specific itinerary for that Workshop soon.
Next week Club English will have a visitor coming to talk about applying to grad school; I think most of our members are also part of Club English, but just in case…
On October 27th, during the regular meeting time, Professor O’Connor and Professor Seguin will be coming to talk to us about publishing. Both of them are published authors.
We are starting to compile a list of places that accept submissions for various kinds of prose and poetry. Keep looking around, and bring any new venues you find to the meeting. Right now it looks like we will be producing a digital and a hardcopy version of this.
For the next meeting, please bring any new places that accept submissions! We will be doing another writing exercise, and hopefully brain storming about November projects. See you all next Tuesday! Thanks to everyone who keeps showing up!
Coming soon: publication listings and the results of exquiste corpse.
Write!
Next week Club English will have a visitor coming to talk about applying to grad school; I think most of our members are also part of Club English, but just in case…
On October 27th, during the regular meeting time, Professor O’Connor and Professor Seguin will be coming to talk to us about publishing. Both of them are published authors.
We are starting to compile a list of places that accept submissions for various kinds of prose and poetry. Keep looking around, and bring any new venues you find to the meeting. Right now it looks like we will be producing a digital and a hardcopy version of this.
For the next meeting, please bring any new places that accept submissions! We will be doing another writing exercise, and hopefully brain storming about November projects. See you all next Tuesday! Thanks to everyone who keeps showing up!
Coming soon: publication listings and the results of exquiste corpse.
Write!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Speakers, Playwriting, Submissions
We are going to be having some speakers in the next few weeks. Hopefully an advertising professional, a script writer (separate from our playwriting workshop), a published author and professor and high school English teachers (in conjunction with Club English). Below is partly a recap, partly new. Check out the next two paragraphs for what is going on next week, and the fourth down for writing contest. Down at the very end is a secret :) ...
Thanks to everyone who showed up last meeting and double to anyone who read poetry! For the next meeting (October 6th, 6pm in 204 Satterfield) I am hoping to do some writing exercises, so that we start producing some new material. If you want to bring something you have already written, please make it short (twitter fiction, weird tales, six word stories, poetry, etc…).
For this meeting and the next one (October 13th, same time, same place) we will also be discussing places to publish, so start looking now for venues that publish whatever it is you write. If you are having trouble take a look at the Writer’s Market (a large book found in the library).
Nanoism (a site that publishes twitter fiction) is taking submissions for serials (five twitter fictions, that each stand alone, but also form a coherent story). Nanoism publishes at professional rates and they take all genres. It is a great place to test the water - my rejection letter was very nice :)
Here is the site with rules for serials.
And here is the site (again) for anyone who just wants to take a look.
We are also planning a CRASH WORKSHOP IN PLAYWRITING. This is for people who do not normally write plays. It is meant to be an introduction, so if it is a new genre to you, come and explore it! (yes, I know that is corny, but hopefully you get the idea). For anyone who already does write plays, come and help the rest of us! This Workshop will be on November 7th (a Saturday) on the 4th floor of the library in the Writing Commons from 10am-1pm. Please shoot me an email if you are interested -- the gentleman who is going to run this workshop is excited about it, so I would like to give him an idea of how many people will be there. (or, it would be nice if there were people there). So far I have one response.
Finally I hope that a few people got a submission into the national writing gallery. If not I think it is time we started talking about submissions, as well as our November projects. Hopefully the next two meetings will get us geared up for both.
The secret word is 'quixotic'.
Hope to see some of you in Cleveland tomorrow for the Gaiman talk and the rest of you on Tuesday. Remember: bring paper, pencil and publication research.
Write!
Thanks to everyone who showed up last meeting and double to anyone who read poetry! For the next meeting (October 6th, 6pm in 204 Satterfield) I am hoping to do some writing exercises, so that we start producing some new material. If you want to bring something you have already written, please make it short (twitter fiction, weird tales, six word stories, poetry, etc…).
For this meeting and the next one (October 13th, same time, same place) we will also be discussing places to publish, so start looking now for venues that publish whatever it is you write. If you are having trouble take a look at the Writer’s Market (a large book found in the library).
Nanoism (a site that publishes twitter fiction) is taking submissions for serials (five twitter fictions, that each stand alone, but also form a coherent story). Nanoism publishes at professional rates and they take all genres. It is a great place to test the water - my rejection letter was very nice :)
Here is the site with rules for serials.
And here is the site (again) for anyone who just wants to take a look.
We are also planning a CRASH WORKSHOP IN PLAYWRITING. This is for people who do not normally write plays. It is meant to be an introduction, so if it is a new genre to you, come and explore it! (yes, I know that is corny, but hopefully you get the idea). For anyone who already does write plays, come and help the rest of us! This Workshop will be on November 7th (a Saturday) on the 4th floor of the library in the Writing Commons from 10am-1pm. Please shoot me an email if you are interested -- the gentleman who is going to run this workshop is excited about it, so I would like to give him an idea of how many people will be there. (or, it would be nice if there were people there). So far I have one response.
Finally I hope that a few people got a submission into the national writing gallery. If not I think it is time we started talking about submissions, as well as our November projects. Hopefully the next two meetings will get us geared up for both.
The secret word is 'quixotic'.
Hope to see some of you in Cleveland tomorrow for the Gaiman talk and the rest of you on Tuesday. Remember: bring paper, pencil and publication research.
Write!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Poetry for you and me!
Our next meeting will be on September 29th at 6pm and we'll be focusing on poetry. Bring in one poem by a published writer that you especially like. Also, bring in a poem that you've written. It can be an older poem, if you don't feel like writing something new. If you'd like to write something this week, here are two different prompts:
- Write your poem with the aim of imitating an aspect of a published poem (hopefully the one you'll bring with you) that you particularly like. You can choose to imitate the structure, diction, rhyme scheme, subject matter, whatever you like. You can do either an indirect take off on the poem or a copy change.
- Write a poem that focuses on some aspect of popular culture. Movies, TV, celebrity culture, video games, magazines, genre or cult media, the Internet... seriously, anything. Here is an example: Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!] by Frank O'Hara. (There's no need to imitate this example, I just wanted to show you one direction this sort of thing could take.)
Some good websites for poetry are:
Poets.org
Plagiarist.com
Poetry 180
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment here or email either of us!
Also a reminder: if you are interested in seeing Neil Gaiman in Cleveland on October 4th at 2 pm, let either Hanna or myself know a.s.a.p.!
- Write your poem with the aim of imitating an aspect of a published poem (hopefully the one you'll bring with you) that you particularly like. You can choose to imitate the structure, diction, rhyme scheme, subject matter, whatever you like. You can do either an indirect take off on the poem or a copy change.
- Write a poem that focuses on some aspect of popular culture. Movies, TV, celebrity culture, video games, magazines, genre or cult media, the Internet... seriously, anything. Here is an example: Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!] by Frank O'Hara. (There's no need to imitate this example, I just wanted to show you one direction this sort of thing could take.)
Some good websites for poetry are:
Poets.org
Plagiarist.com
Poetry 180
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment here or email either of us!
Also a reminder: if you are interested in seeing Neil Gaiman in Cleveland on October 4th at 2 pm, let either Hanna or myself know a.s.a.p.!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Really Short Fiction Links
Okay, I hope everyone is excited for our first ever Writing Workshop (10:00 am on the 4th floor of the Library (the Writing Commons) on Saturday, September 19th). Bring food if you can. Bring writing (a short story, a chapter, 5-6 poems), and try to bring copies (around 10 should work). I’ll work on doing this through the department in the future. If you need me to print them send them to me by no later than Friday night; everyone should have my email.
Here are the links that I said I would put up:
Weird Tales – a magazine, which is sponsoring a very specific kind of short story: One minute Weird Tales. Look under latest videos on their home page.
Nanoed – A Twitter-zine (fiction up to 140 characters)
This one is their submissions page:
Thaumatrope – Another Twitter-zine (see above)
http://twitter.com/thaumatrope
Flash Fiction Online – Short stories of any genre in under 1,000 words
http://www.flashfictiononline.com
Brain Harvest – Weird Science Fiction and Fantasy in under 750 words.
http://www.brainharvestmag.com
For the next meeting, Tuesday September 22nd at 6:00 in Satterfield 204, bring a Twitter fiction (a short story in under 140 characters). Examples can be found at two of the links above. Takes some time to look around these sites. All except Weird Tales are fairly new venues, they all have their submission guidelines and all of them have very short fiction, so it won’t take too much time.
I am also going to include a link to the writing podcast I listen to. It’s done by three successful authors and while they write genre fiction, I think it could be very useful to everyone. Here is Writing Excuses:
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