Welcome to my message board.
New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.
New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.
Comments
Hood Tracy’s daddy does well in his recovery. Continue to stay safe at work.
Today my big plans are scrubbing the bathroom and laundry. Woo-hoo. Such fun.
- Laundry
- Mowed front and back lawn (back lawn had serious COVID-grass)
- Vacuumed (OK, the robot did that, but we had to move everything to make a clear path)
- Work on a book review
- Work on novel revisions
All in all, a productive but exhausting day.Right now, I am watching David Sedaris' Masterclass. He is so interesting. But he brings the mom out in me. And he's older than me. I just want to protect him. Punch people in the face for him.
What I love about him, and what he says to us as learners (and this applies whether you write or not) say yes to things. He says we are so busy saying no, we miss out on some really great experiences and people.
Of course he says you say no to common sense bad things, but he tells us that he says yes to a lot of things because he is truly interested in people and moments. That's refreshing. He's a quirky intelligent man and if you went to a signing, he would ask you some off the wall question to see where that would take him as a person. Love that.
You aren't just some necessary parasite getting a book signed to promote his work. He wants to get a glimpse of you. And you may show up in his work.
In this time of loneliness, I am not alone now. I will be pal-ing around with David Sedaris and Margaret Atwood and Jake Shimabukuro and Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Lynch and Jodie Foster and David Mamet and Martin Scorsese and Shonda Rhimes and Thomas Keller and Billy Collins (because I hate poetry in general) and and and and and... I'm even going to watch Spike Lee's Masterclass because he drives me nuts, and I want to understand him better and possibly understand myself better.
I am very tickled.
I like to camp, but I'm also terrified and won't sleep at all until the sun starts rising. I saw a movie in the 70s about campers that scared me: I am pretty sure it's one of those movies my parents saw at the drive in. They would show a family movie at dusk, and then the kids were supposed to sleep while they showed an adult movie, but I never did. I saw some scary stuff. This was one.
Another day of scraping and sanding spray foam insulation off windows, the fun never ends🙄....
@Out of Order, how is your mom doing these days?
I have watched Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris, Margaret Atwood and now Joyce Carol Oates. All of them are very different but full of information -- fascinating.
You may think, you can't possibly be doing these classes this quickly because they are like a semester of college. How I do them, I watch every instructor all the way through the first time. I don't stop to do lessons or assignments. I just want to listen to them smoothly with no breaks all the way from start to finish.
I copy out their workbooks which can be quite thick. Neil's and Margaret's workbooks were close to 100 pages each, Joyce's sixty something pages and David's around 35ish?
And because they are all writers, watching them before finishing one class is beneficial actually. For me anyway. I take all this information and put it into my assignments no matter whose class it is.
Once I finish an author, I go back and watch each lesson again while doing the assignments. Reading the workbook. I stick with one author while doing the work. I take my time and focus. I'm almost finished with Neil's class with two watch throughs and all assignments completed.
I'm just finishing up with the intitial watching of Joyce's class and hers ends with an actual workshopping experience using a couple stories with two of her students. It is so great to see this. She is matter of fact, praising the good things and honestly telling what is or isn't working in a student's story (which these students so generously shared and participated). She isn't brutal or mean, just suggestions. Dissecting everything about it -- characters, word choices, scenarios, pieces of writing -- I would love for someone who really knew what they were doing to tell me this stuff. So lucky! These students are so lucky!
I wish Stephen King would do a Masterclass. And I'm tired of the, well he did, read On Writing. No, this is really different. Stream of consciousness as he is talking to the camera, talking to the "students" would be a huge gift. And, while Steve has his set ways of doing things that may never change, you can't tell me he hasn't learned a thing or two between the publishing of On Writing and today. You know he has because he's different today. Every cell in his body has been renewed from that time when On Writing came out and those cells have picked up new information, dammit. He isn't stagnant. He is evolving as he ages and there are new insights and wisdom to share.
Do a Masterclass Steve.
A piece brought to a workshop can be bad, but with input from the participants, can grow into something. There is potential. Again, a generous successful author mentoring.
One of the workshop students makes the comment that a well known thing in workshop is "Write a dream, lose a reader."
Do you think that's true? It seems I've read a lot of books where people dream, but I can't remember if they lost me or not. Maybe in unskilled hands that is true.