The Writing University Podcast

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Episode 58: Sarah Saffian -- The Politics of Writing About Loved Ones Jul 21, 2014

Show notes

A novelist has it easy—his characters, sprung from his imagination, don’t talk back when they’re not happy with the way they’re depicted on the page. But what if your character is your ex-husband, your twin brother, your mother? Are familial loyalty and literary integrity necessarily at odds? How can we most effectively navigate this touchy terrain, to maintain our real-life relationships without compromising the stories we need to tell? In this lecture/ discussion, we’ll grapple with such prickly issues as: the possibility of multiple “truths”; altering identifying characteristics; inviting loved ones into your writing process (or not); the pros and cons of allowing relatives to read your manuscript, and how much to revise per their comments, if at all; determining if what could hurt others truly advances the story. Whether you’re in the midst of a memoir project or are just contemplating one and scared off by this very conflict, let’s explore forms of expression that we can stand behind both as authors and as brothers/ daughters/friends.

Episode 57: Joyelle McSweeney—Contemporary Gothic(s) Jul 17, 2014

Show notes

In an age of technophilic positivism typified by the TED-talk, the smartphone, and the MOOC, why do we still need a shadowy, cobwebby, grave-y form like the Gothic? What darker truths about contemporary life—economic, environmental, political, bodily—can the Gothic mode bring up to the surface? This talk will look at the way authors from around the globe—Korea, Mexico, Chile, Sweden, and the US—make use of Gothic forms and tropes to make literary conventions split apart like the House of Usher and bring other bodies, truths and vistas rushing into view.

Episode 56: Éireann Lorsung -- ‘Productivity’ and ‘Failure’ for Writers Jul 16, 2014

Show notes

Over and over I hear my students, my peers, and my own interior voice talk about failure as writers. Often this is linked to an idea of ‘productivity’, and in particular to a perception of others as ‘more productive’. As publication online increases the speed at which writing can appear in public, the distance between writing as a process and writing as a product closes. Consequently, the concept of productivity is measured more and more in terms of visible, finished objects, muddling the relation of publication to the act/process of writing. I’ll question the usefulness of these ideas—failure and productivity—for writing, and suggest ways of reframing our writing processes to accommodate work that ‘fails’ or is not visibly ‘productive’. In addition to talking about how what seems like ‘failure’ is an integral part of making writing that’s worthwhile, I’ll offer strategies and concepts—the multiple, the telescope—that help me keep writing despite unhappiness with my work or the feeling that others are ‘better writers’ (meaning ‘more productive’) than I am.

Episode 55: Hope Edelman -- The Story Behind Your Story Jul 10, 2014

Show notes

When we write narrative, both sides of our brains ideally work together: the left brain controls linear thinking, logic, and language skills, and the right brain creates context and inserts emotion. This Eleventh Hour Lecture will emphasize the importance of using both sides of the brain when writing fiction and nonfiction, to push beyond an episodic recounting of events into territory that reveals your story's deeper truths. Nonfiction author Hope Edelman will give you with tips for identifying universal themes and archetypes in your stories, and methods for articulating them to readers.

Episode 54: Kate Aspengren -- Who Are These People and Who Invited Them? Jul 09, 2014

Show notes

Sometimes when we look at what we’ve written we realize we’ve created characters who are basically all some version of ourselves. It’s like multiple clones of the writer only with different haircuts. Or we find that we have a group of wonderful, quirky characters but that our protagonist is dry and uninteresting, exactly the kind of person you’d dread getting stuck next to at a dinner party. In this session we’ll talk about some of the problems inherent in constructing character and some of the strategies that are useful in crafting characters who are unique and real and three-dimensional.

Episode 53: Nancy K. Barry -- The Sixth “W” in Nonfiction Writing and Research Jul 08, 2014

Show notes

From its beginning in the 1960s, literary journalism and its writers typically acknowledged their contextual debt to the traditional questions journalists ask about the five “W's”—the who, what, where, when and why that lie at the heart of any good reportage. The difference for creative nonfiction writers lies in their ability to create a narrative arc that describes how those 5 “W’s” come into focus, which means that virtually any memoir or nonfiction work becomes a type of quest story. This lecture will describe why and how nonfiction writers should always be on the lookout in the midst of their quest for the mysterious sixth “W”—what it is and why it matters.

Episode 52: Carolyn Lieberg -- Write What You Know: The Scary Truism That Haunts Writers Jul 07, 2014

Show notes

What you know is the here and now and past of your own life, your own family, your own travels and some things about your friends. What you don’t know is everything else, which is a lot. What exactly are we to make of those oft-tossed words: “Write what you know.” They can feel like a stop sign, but let’s look behind them.

Episode 51: Faculty Reading: Sabrina Orah Mark, Michael Martone, Beau O'Reilly, Robin Hemley, Elizabeth McCracken Jun 27, 2014

Show notes

Sabrina Orah Mark, Michael Martone, Beau O'Reilly, Robin Hemley, Elizabeth McCracken

Episode 50: Mary Allen -- Harnessing Time: The Key to Writing Jun 26, 2014

Show notes

One of the biggest challenges, and imperatives, of writing is finding the time—making time—to sit down and do it. It’s something like that moment in the movie Field of Dreams, where a mysterious voice says to Kevin Costner, If you build it they will come. Except that in the case of writing, ‘building it’ means not creating a ballpark to attract ghostly baseball giants, but creating a little window of time in which to write. We can’t make the writing come to us, but if we make a space for it in our day, it will inevitably show up. And if we don’t make space for it, writing definitely won’t come. Mary Allen will share her experiences and struggles with finding time to write, and will pass along the workable solutions she’s arrived at over the years.

Episode 49: Talk Pretty, Talk Turkey—Just, You Know, Talk To Me Jun 25, 2014

Show notes

“Find your voice”—the most natural thing a writer should do, right? Somewhere inside me is my voice! Yet, the search tends to proceed like a grail quest, only trickier, because ‘voice’ pops up everywhere on the page, appearing now in the style, now in the sound, now in the stance, now in the details. So, is it the bedrock DNA of great writing, or a will-o-the-wisp? Should we follow the fiction writer Sylvia Watanabe’s advice, “Don’t try to find your voice; write a story”? In this Eleventh Hour session we’ll try to un-confuse an elusive all-inclusive concept, and we’ll start by looking at what ‘voice’ means to poets and what it does and doesn’t mean to fiction writers. Bring paper, we’ll be experimenting with a few exercises!

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