Angela led this very creative writing seminar.
Started with guessing estimates of writing 4,000 - 6,000 words in pages - 11 pages - @ 10 pt / 1.5 sp.
It's a pragmatic approach - add illustrations, biography, etc, but gives a feel for the project.
Writing exercises, a few minutes to scribble:
Metaphors
Car
I am a car, a classic toy car. Dinky, if you will. Probably crafted in some golden toytown age of Janet and John, with proper materials and colours that don't exist any more - tin green, sky blue.
Cake
I am a cake I once saw in a children's book, about to be devoured by friendly, hungry bears. I am an impossible construction, all layers of fun.
House
I am a secret house with hidden passageways, open to those who seek. I build myself over years and centuries.
Holiday
Seagulls in an unfeasible seaside, like a Poirot set.
Working with metaphors - generating ideas.
New ways to describe artworks, etc.
Transposing Style
Dear John / Limerick
You once were a wonderful lover
But now you're a bore and a bother
It never was true
It's not me, it's you
I'm leaving you now for your brother
Livening up language.
Writing for different purposes.
Adapt different styles - flexibility.
Venn diagrams - planning writing - including/excluding subjects.
MA/PhD
moving image - history artists bibliography novels music composers gavin bryars sibelius phase music abstract minimalism painters archive barthes elkins lost found photograph philosophy making sontag ideas culture science
Gives clarity of not dealing with some aspects - having a space for them.
Could actually cut out confusing things - rearrange.
Repeat Venn diagram at different points.
Use for small details of a project.
Structure - Hooks and Pegs
13th March 2014
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Structure - Hooks and Pegs.
Hierarchy - key ideas, images
Vertical view
Birdseye view
Mindmap
Key idea
Phase music/video
Supporting ideas
My idea of / use / aim
Minimalism - Gavin Bryars, John Cage, Steve Reich
Women musicians
What is: definitions
Moving image artists, phase-like work - examples?
Key idea
Video projection
Supporting ideas
Screen, projection
More extreme examples
Artists
My take
Subverting screen - Flexibility, Subtelty
Sense of space creation
Philosophy of curation, etc
Date, keep and repeat these at different times.
Rather than what do I already know about it - what comes to mind.
Where does this idea come from
This helps me unpacking ideas much more!
Phase - 60 words
Repetition and repeating, like a loop and yet it cycles and spirals. It's actually different, it gradually becomes less the same, until it shows you every shade of it.
Familiar, each time sounding a little different, and the noises are music. Each frame a new shadow, not like before, but it draws you in to thinking this familiar, place sounds new, looks tonal.
Dividing up word count.
Aid / strategy
Keep in mind structure rather than massive word count to edit.
Build up notes to explain writing- contain.
Introduction - a context - set up what will say
Current position - theories
Current work - saying what not dealing with, showing limits of research
Explain why taking an approach
A rationale, where coming from
Why chose themes and ideas
Sense of the critique - let people know motivations
Signpost for reader
Relational aesthetics
Relational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud. Bourriaud defined the approach as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space."The artist can be more accurately viewed as the "catalyst" in relational art, rather than being at the centre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_art
Intention
What do you want to do when you write.
For reader - offer:
intrigue justify seduce digress guide delight
Get rigorous with this
Style, intention → purpose
Agenda →
Sometimes what we are naturally drawn to does not fit purpose - have to discipline to purpose, and not seduce self with writing.
Metaphor
Writing - journey / dinner party - approaches
Helps to own the writing
Writer's voice
Joanne Harris
Carol Shields - both very skilled in changing entire book retrospectively just at the end, subtlety
John Buchan - straightforward, exciting
James Elkins
Roland Barthes - both personable thinking of art concepts
Amy Tan - relating worlds together
Daphne Du Maurier - skilled.
Reveals how would like to write - aspirational
Strategy - write in their voice / own voice
I picked up a piece of paper
The letter had been
Roland Barthesesque:
When I look at this photograph now, I am again that little girl, sun in her eyes, squinting at the box camera my father is holding. He makes me wait for a moment, holding me in that time. Then the world was a big place, as big as my child's book of knowledge, and time was forever. Now that moment in time, suspended forever in my smile, is far away in an untouchable past.
Abstract
Perhaps the abstract is always like the far end of a sculpture, the dark side of the moon. We think we know, but we are imagining. Further, we are imagining as sculpture or moon which has no shape or form. A colour we invent in between purple and green. the feeling of creamy cloud. the abstract is a passageway into the unfamiliar through the vaguely familiar.
Flowing informed identity voice
Personality communicating ideas.
Reading / rewriting
Quotation - has to make a contribution - related.
Writing by hand - quality of thinking, speed and flexibility.
Writing for artists, writing your art.
Reflection
This was a remarkable and enjoyable workshop, and one to revisit many times. There are very useful exercises about focussing upon various thoughts and points, expanding and unpacking them. It's a method of discovering what is really within thoughts, giving them a form, and a language.
16th April 2014
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Angela's Workshop Notes
Writing Workshop
50/50 option
Contextual Study of 4000
– 6000 words
Explores a subject connected to your practical work that
brings a new depth of thinking to your area of study.
How many pages are 4000-6000 words?
Practical workshop
Metaphor
Write what you would be like if you were something else, e.g
a cheese, coffee, cat.
Cheese - crumbly, white, smelly, runny, expensive.
Coffee – large and milky, hot, small and black in an
espresso cup, with sugar, cream and whiskey.
Cat – fluffy, Siamese,
a witch’s black cat , a good mouser, fat and lazy, wearing boots.
Try two car, cake, house or holiday.
Transposing style
One thing in the style of another
A lonely hearts advert in the style of map directions.
A Dear John letter as a limerick.
Obituary as an alphabet.
Scientific experiment report as melodrama.
Something worth thinking about
When selecting what you want to
write about and the way you want to write, you should make sure you choose a
subject that will keep you interested, engaged and committed. Remember you will be carrying these ideas and
images around with your for a period of time. Imagine how you’ll feel spending
time with them regularly, sometimes daily.
Preparing to write –
each exercise is a slice in time. It’s useful to repeat them as you build up
your writing
Outline your
territory
Before you start writing you it is helpful to outline your
territory. Think about the areas and boundaries - what you will definitely include,
might include and what you will leave out. Think about the larger themes how do
these overlap.
Do this with a venn diagram or several lists or another visual
device.
Mark Rathmell’s blog Friends and Enemies
http://markrathmell.wordpress.com/postcards/pictuggre-5082/
Write a sentence that tells someone at an arts event what
your research is about.
Structure your ideas:
Writing needs hooks and pegs
What are the key triggers/starting places at the moment? What
pegs will you begin to hang your writing on? (A hierarchical view)
M.L.Swift’s blog post – a mind map about writing a blog post
about mind mapping. (A non-hierarchical bird’s eye view)
Get writing: Writing is like a muscle it responds well to
exercise.
Pencil or pen on paper
1. Take a peg and write 60 words on it. Active voice.
2. Take another peg and write 60 words on it. Active voice.
3. Take another peg and write 60 words on it. Active voice.
Loosely link the three pieces together so you have in 180
words in total.
Using these three pieces as your text write one or two sentences
as an outline conclusion and an outline title.
Structuring your
essay or dissertation
Think about your introduction, your 3 sections and your
conclusion as the beginning of a piece of writing.
Intention: What do
want to do when you write?
Compare Analyse
Contrast Unpick Synthesise
Inform
Seduce Delight
Entice
Analyse Simplify Encourage
Interest Lead
Link Relate
Interrogate
Define Introduce
Present
Describe
Signpost
Discuss
Announce Attack
Guide Digress Illustrate
Intrigue Please Reveal
Shock
Impress Outrage
Defend
Justify Examine
Explain Evaluate
Declaim
A dinner party or a walk through the woods?
Think about the experience you want
to offer.
Find a metaphor.
Whose voices do you admire?
Hemmingway or Collette? Will Self
or Jeannette Winterson?
Write down the writers you admire. What is it that engages you or makes
you want to read them?
With the above in mind review your
60 word pieces.
Feedback
Analyse their writing. What are
they doing?
Write about something you did today
in their voice.
Adopt that voice to write about
something more important.
Reading, writing and
rewriting is how you think, sharpen up your ideas and communicate more clearly.
Don’t rush at a piece of writing all at once, Build up your
writing bit by bit, it’s incremental. Remember writing is a craft, you will
rework most of what you write, cutting and pasting as you become clearer.
At the start – Flow and expansion
Think about a set up for writing. Explore
what materials and methods help you relax and let your thoughts flow.
Soft pencil, pen, lap top.
Plain paper, lined paper.
Single sided.
Spaces for notes, in margin.
Spaces or symbols for words that
you can’t think of.
Don’t worry about spelling.
Just make notes of references you
want to use, don’t spend a lot of time copying them out at this stage. Also you
can become attached to a reference and it can limit your exploration. Don’t fit
your writing around a reference.
Transpose on to lap top.
Make only a few changes.
Big line spaces and margins for
notes.
Print it out, read and make notes.
Rewrite incorporating your notes.
Review your quotes and references.
Near the end – Refinement.
Rereading to edit, read out loud, it may help to print it out.
Edit 1 Cut out waffle, tighten up parts that
are clumsy
Rewriting
Edit 2 Check grammar and spelling
Notice repeats of words and
use a thesaurus to find alternatives
Rewriting
Edit 3 Be objective, look out for
colloquialisms or tub-thumping
Refine your writing, where
do you need to be more clear or subtle?
Rewriting
Give it to someone else to read.
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