Elements of Style: How You Write What You Write: Creative Writing Workshop with Jennifer Landretti
orionmagazine.org – Thursday November 14, 2024
Style, one could say, is how you write what you write. It’s the discrete way that any sort of writing unites the most common elements of the craft: word choice, sentence structure, the organization and order of whatever the writer is expressing. While an evocative style tempts us to imitation, the results are rarely anything more than a self-conscious study on the path to developing our own authentic style. All accomplished styles seem to hide their gifts in the open. They are bewitchingly sly— “insincere” Oscar Wilde would say—often multivalent, always with an eye toward what they’ve left out. Skillful stylists such as Elizabeth Strout, Mary Oliver, or Wendell Berry seem to produce without effort the singular way that a story, poem, or essay should unfold, while the voices that grace their pages—that of a character or narrator—seem to materialize in our imaginations as a complete person with spiritual heft, a thriving sensibility, arrested there in art and shimmering for as long as the words exist. At its finest, style is a sort of gestalt of soul.
So, how do we understand and craft our own styles? We’ll explore that question. We’ll do so by working primarily with the personal essay while dipping periodically into poetry. We’ll examine the effects of word choice and sentence structure, as well as consider some of the organizational strategies that essayists use. Always, we’ll keep alive the question of style: What’s yours? How so? Why so? We’ll sample a range of writers, from Joan Didion and Elizabeth Bishop to Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, and Patricia Hampl, distinguished stylists all. Rather than map out a set curriculum, I’ll use a more organic approach: beyond the first couple of classes, I’ll adapt the course to the direction that class members seem most interested in going. Whatever direction we do go, we’ll undertake a variety of eye-opening, generative exercises and, I hope, enjoy several lively discussions, each centered on a particular aspect of style. This course is open to writers of all skill levels.
Duration: This online course meets from January 12th – March 2nd over eight consecutive Sundays from 6-8 pm ET (5-7 CT, 4-6 MT, 3-5 PT).
Application window: November 1-15
New Writing North announces winter programme
atvtoday.co.uk – Thursday November 14, 2024
New Writing North has announced its winter programme, featuring a range of opportunities for aspiring and emerging writers across the region…
The Newcastle-based charity supports the development of professional skills for writers in the north, as well as encouraging writing and reading for pleasure and wellbeing. This winter sees an array of career development opportunities for emerging creatives, including paid work placements in publishing and professional industry workshops.
Anna Disley, Executive Director of Programme and Impact at New Writing North:
“This winter, there’s a chance for emerging creatives to kick-start, explore or develop careers with our far-ranging programme of workshops, courses, awards, and work placements. Our mission is to practically support and nurture talent from across our communities, and remove barriers to transformative creative opportunities. Thanks to our partners and supporters, there are a number of bursaries for career-making prospects on offer too.”
New Media Writing Prize open for entries
bournemouth.ac.uk – Thursday November 14, 2024
The 2024/5 New Media Writing Prize is now open for entries, with cash prizes for the best in interactive digital narrative, literature, and journalism.
The NMWP is seeking original works of “born-digital” storytelling (fiction or non-fiction): works created on digital devices, for digital devices. These include hypertexts, participatory films, i-documentaries, Twine stories, transmedia novels, and more.
The competition is free to enter. The main prize of £1000 is sponsored by if:book, with £500 prizes for best journalism (sponsor: FIPP media) and a “people’s choice” category (sponsor: Wonderbox Digital). Winner of the student prize will win a year’s membership from sponsor Writers Online.
In 2023-24 we also introduced a NEW prize category, sponsored by the associated NMWP Unconference: the Interactive Digital Narrative for Social Good award, celebrating creative works that endeavour to improve the world around us, our communities, our wellbeing, and our future generations. The winner of this prize will also receive £500.
IALA to Host a Virtual Panel on ‘The Business of Writing’
asbarez.com – Thursday November 14, 2024
The International Armenian Literary Alliance will host “The Business of Writing,” a free and virtual panel discussion with literary agents and editors Arevik Ashkharoyan, Aram Mrjoian and Patricia Mulcahy. The event will take place on Zoom on November 23 at 9 a.m. Pacific | 12:00 p.m. Eastern | 9:00 p.m. Armenia Time.
Ashkharoyan will discuss the process of submitting, accepting and rejecting work as well as speculate about publishing trends. Mrjoian and Mulcahy will explain what authors should consider before submitting work to a publisher, the most common mistakes authors make when pitching or submitting their work, and how they approach the craft of editing. The overall purpose of this panel is to provide insight about publication success from the perspective of experienced agents and editors.
The panel discussion, to be moderated by IALA board member J.P. Der Boghossian, will be followed by a brief Q&A session to offer Armenian writers an opportunity to ask questions to the panelists. A recording of the event will later be available on IALA’s YouTube channel. Register for the event online.
Oliver Malcolm launches eponymous publishing transformation agency
thebookseller.com – Wednesday November 13, 2024
Ex-Hodder & Stoughton managing director Oliver Malcolm has launched his own consultancy, Oliver Malcolm Publishing Transformation.
Designed to empower publishers, agents and authors, the consultancy “aims to help navigate the rapidly changing world of publishing” and includes free support for neurodiverse individuals.
The announcement follows news of Malcolm’s departure from Hodder & Stoughton after two years as managing director.
National writing competition for sixth form students open now
girton.cam.ac.uk – Monday November 11, 2024
Girton College’s annual Humanities Writing Competition is now open for submissions.
The competition is an opportunity for students in Year 12 (or equivalent) to research and write beyond the curriculum, using one or more of five selected objects from Girton’s on-site museum, the Lawrence Room Museum as their focus. Essays or creative responses (such as dramatic monologues, short stories, or poems) are equally welcome.
Focusing on Girton’s museum collection in the Lawrence Room, the Humanities Writing Competition aims to use ancient objects as a starting point for thinking across curricular divides – about the varieties of human experience that these survivals from the past can embody and reflect and the trains of thought they can set off.
Hachette Employees Protest New Conservative Imprint
publishersweekly.com – Monday November 11, 2024
A group of employees at Hachette Book Group have penned a letter to management condemning the announced launch of a new conservative imprint, Basic Liberty, and hiring of Thomas Spence, former president and publisher of Regnery, to helm it.
On November 7, two days after the presidential election, HBG and Hachette UK CEO David Shelley announced that the Basic Books Group would be adding to its portfolio the Basic Liberty imprint, described as "a new conservative imprint that will publish serious works of cultural, social, and political analysis by conservative writers of original thought." He also announced that Spence—currently a visiting fellow at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation—had been hired to lead the imprint as executive editor.
Spence worked at Regnery for more than 11 years, and led the company for nearly four years after the retirement of longtime president and publisher Marji Ross in 2019. Earlier this year, following Skyhorse’s acquisition of Regnery in late 2023, he joined the Heritage Foundation as a senior advisor.
New Literary Agent Listing: Kait Lee Feldmann
firstwriter.com – Monday November 11, 2024
I represent illustrators and illustrator-authors who are primarily interested in working on picture books and graphic novels. We’d be a good match if you enjoy wholesome chaos. Let’s make books for the kids who get in trouble for their imagination, the next generation of mad scientists, supervillains, and witches at the end of the street.
First Person: My journey to writing a children’s book
algonquintimes.com – Sunday November 10, 2024
Over seven days, I put my dream of writing a book for kids into motion. The adventure taught me I can do more than I ever thought I could
“No, Auntie! Don’t go!” Kavaiah’s sweet voice stops me just as I’m about to step out the door. She tugs at my hand, holding tight to a new book I bought her, I Am Born to Be Awesome by Mechal Renee Roe. “Just read the book one more time, Auntie, PLEASE!” she begs, her eyes wide. How can I not be compelled to stay?
I smile, settle back onto the couch, and she jumps into my lap, eagerly flipping the book open to the first page. Kavaiah is full of energy when we read. She acts out each line, her four-year-old voice rising and falling with each word, making faces and gestures, soaking in every picture and phrase like it’s her first time hearing them.
I start, “I love the stars,” and she shouts, “I love racing cars!” Then we both chime in, “I am born to be awesome!” She takes her time turning each page, determined to slow me down if I go too fast. With every line, she finds something that resonates, whether it’s her love for bath time or playing in the park. She’s not just listening; she’s living each rhyme, seeing herself in the words and pictures. Each time we reach “I am born to be awesome,” she beams, and I feel it too. Her high-pitched voice makes my heart melt.
I never imagined that enrolling in Algonquin College’s journalism program would lead me to begin to write a children’s book. When the opportunity to write a personal narrative arose, I thought, why not take it further? Why not challenge myself to write a children’s book in seven days? I naively thought it wouldn’t be too hard, after all, it’s a children’s book. How complicated could it be?
Well, as it turns out, it was more challenging than I anticipated.
On the benefits of working slowly
thecreativeindependent.com – Thursday November 7, 2024
Caoilinn Hughes discusses writing as a process of discovery, being a monotasker, and the importance of wisdom in producing good work.
You’ve had a very international life. You grew up in Ireland, where you studied literature and drama. You subsequently lived in New Zealand, where you earned a PhD in English literature, and in the Netherlands, among other countries. Could you describe your path to becoming a writer?
I was always writing, even when I was a kid, aged nine, ten. As a teenager, I wrote a lot of poems, as that’s really what I read. I read poetry and plays, because I was a very slow reader. It felt like a very intimate interaction. There’s all this blank space around the work, and it seemed to invite a direct conversation between the author and the reader. An activity, rather than something that you receive passively.
I went to the North of Ireland to study at Queen’s University Belfast, partly because I didn’t have the grades to go to college in the Republic. And also, a lot of the poets I was reading were from the North, so it felt fated to go there.
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