It’s kind of like writer’s block. After teaching one class, two workshops, preparing a third workshop and getting a final draft of my writing book off to the publisher this week, I’m sick to death of the sound of my own voice – in a class or on the page. I have blog block. The Sunday deadline for this post looms up and I’m wondering what to write about. I started with that nineteen year old Harvard student who got a half million dollar book deal and is accused of plagiarism, but after spending so much energy a few months ago being mad at James Frey, I just couldn’t get into it. (Click on the title to continue reading …)
The Writing Life
The Writing Life
team teaching storytelling
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 4 Comments
For hours last week I worked on my half of the workshop that Billy Mernit and I taught Saturday at UCLA Extension about core elements of storytelling in film and fiction. We’d had at least five long meetings about it, a zillion emails back and forth, and lots of:
What were we thinking of? This is way too much work. This is a huge project. This is about a hundred quotes from novels and God knows how many film clips, and it’s really a ten week course at the very least and how are we going to teach it in six hours etc. etc.
On Saturday morning over 50 students showed up for the workshop and Billy and I began the intricate dance of team teaching two different genres of storytelling. (To continue reading, click on the title above.)
The Writing Life
the writer’s roller coaster
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 1 Comment
This morning I got an e-mail from a student who’s in the middle of writing an amazing memoir, wonderfully written, gripping subject etc. She wrote me that she’d just discovered that a book on the same subject had been published and wondered if she should give up on hers. I wrote back : Keep going! There are thousands of books out there on the same subject. There’s nothing new under the sun, just different takes on the same stuff. She replied: “I guess I am tormented, still, by the thought of why bother when there is so much out there that is so fantastic. The little voices who whisper that memoirs are ridiculous, etc. etc. I guess I’ll have to put my head down and ….” (click on the title to read the rest)
The Writing Life
tiny rooms and no life style
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
The fact is that it’s lonely to write. Like Norman Mailer says, you don’t have a life style, you just sit in a little room and write. The rest of the world is out there acting like adults, wearing real clothes, making real money, hanging out with co-workers. Writing is about hanging around the house in your sweats, eating odd little snacks heated up in the microwave, talking to your cats/dog/the walls and checking your e-mail every other minute to feel connected to the real world even if it’s just electronically.
To continue reading this article and read this week’s Writing To Do, click on “Tiny Rooms” and you’ll be taken to the complete article.
