The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: Pedro Picasso on April 07, 2005, 05:25:43 am
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A friend of mine finished a screenplay about a year ago, and he's starting to work on a new one. He wanted to join a local writers' group, but couldn't find any that didn't seem to be filled with talentless egotists. I don't know if such a thing exists. Anyway, it got me to thinking. If I started a writers' group, who would I invite? I was surrounded by creative people in college, but they were mostly actors. Few of them wrote even then. Now I'm just surrounded by computer people.
You all are cultured, intelligent, creative, and good with words. (Well, most of you. I'm developing an internet-grudge against Doomglobe.) Who here writes? What have your written? Fiction or non-fiction. Prose, poetry, or dialogue. Slink, I'm looking in your direction.
I'm writing a full length version of a short play I wrote previously. It's a Pygmalion story about an artificial intelligence. I've yet to write something this long that I'm proud of, but I'm hoping this will be the first.
I've also been contacted by an old friend who might be interested in producing a short play of mine named Baby Samantha. It's an abstract comedy where a Star Trek-like crew pilots an infant. One is in charge of drinking milk, another produces gas, while two more flail the arms and legs. It's silly.
It's not that I dislike Doomglobe. Far from it. It's that vulture eye of his.
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I write a lot of things, really, although I'm far from prolific. Right now a lot of my output is in the form of, God help us, Religion papers, but at least it's keeping me writing and breaking me of my semicolon addictions. Otherwise... well, I do short humor pieces for our college magazine, and I do attempt fiction ever so often. That, and I've been tempted to write a poem about the baggage claim, but that's extensively tangential.
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Well, apart from the screenplay I wrote (and watched the prelim version of last weekend - about to start on the soundtrack) I am trying to come up with ideas for two more. Not much time free at the moment.
I'm also working on a novel, slowly, about a jazz musician and the end of the world. I've been told it's quite Murukami-esque, though at the same time it has enough cyberpunk styling to it and whatnot.
It's just finding the time at the moment, but things ought to start being less hectic.
I gave up on poetry a good few years back when it stopped going anywhere. Like I say, at the moment it's just trying to cmoe up with a couple mroe screenplays that will work, as I have a director waiting for them and all.
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A shitty blog (http://horsmanistan.blogspot.com/).
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I'm writing murder mysteries. I am doing it seriously, like sending letters out to agents, several of whom have asked to see samples (although of course this means nothing other than that I write a good query letter). But also doing it for mental health reasons, one of which is, so I have a legitimate reason to have imaginary friends in my head.
I was surrounded by writers even longer ago, in, like, high school. Now, not. But one of those people is still my friend, and she grew up to be a newspaper editor. So she has been reading and editing my stuff and is the one who nagged me to actually start writing to agents. I assumed she was a professional and knew what she was talking about, so I did it.
I have never been attracted to the idea of a writers' group. One of the appeals for me of possibly making money by writing is, to get away from the interpersonal problems of every job I've ever had. Writing is the only job I can think of where only the final product matters, not whether people like you or whether you are part of the right clique/ current fashionable theory/etc. Seems like a writers' group made up of a bunch of strangers would just bring all of those same problems into the job of writing. But maybe I'm just afraid of criticism or whatever. I dunno.
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Do technical papers count? Right now I'm working on an article on electrochemical deposition of cerium dioxide, and all of my writing in recent years is of that variety.
I'm probably the least creative person aroound here, and haven't written anything non-science for a long time. Good on all of you creative types...
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Right now I'm attempting to write a script for a short animation a friend and I are working on. I'm not really a writer, more of a reader, but I really want to get the script written so we can start working on creating the storyboards and concept pieces. It's the first real creative piece I've attempted to write, and right now I've come up against the proverbial wall and don't know how to continue so I've put it aside for a little bit.
So, more acurately, currently I'm writing code for a light manager script. Here's hoping I get struck by some mad awesome inspiration soon so I can finish that script!
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I'm still working on the play I got the big-fat-ass-arts-grant for, and hope to finish it by the end of summer. It's been over 2 years in the making. The research is killer, and I don't like doing it - who would have thought that a story spanning from the 50's through to present would be so research heavy? I remember actually looking forward to going to the library at one point...
I've recently had what I'll call a "soft commission" to write a play for the theatre I work for. As far as the actually writing, plays start in my head and take a long time to end up on paper.
The journalism project I worked on last summer is still printing my articles in the paper up to twice a month ( I was very prolific and long in the tooth, so they plan on milking my material 'til the end of May). It's weird to see an interview I did almost a year ago in print now rather than back then.
I wrote the Rules of Conduct today for the student/actors of the production I'm currently working on: what it basically boils down to is "don't fuck around," but somehow it didn't seem right to tell the kids that, so three pages of forms instead.
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Side show, if your work is published, I think it's impolite of you not to share it with us.
Links please.
~Paul
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I wrote the Rules of Conduct today for the student/actors of the production I'm currently working on: what it basically boils down to is "don't fuck around," but somehow it didn't seem right to tell the kids that, so three pages of forms instead.
This is why the Bible is like 9,000 pages instead of just saying "don't be a dick"
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(Well, most of you. I'm developing an internet-grudge against Doomglobe.)
Can you SMELL what the rock is cookin'?!?!
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(Well, most of you. I'm developing an internet-grudge against Doomglobe.)
Can you SMELL what the rock is cookin'?!?!
Yup. It's Tomorrow Chicken!
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I used to write on this blog (http://catallarchy.net) under the name "Qiwi Lisolet".
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I used to belong to a writers' group that actually contained talented people (though they were all also insufferably pretentious or arrogant) but we've since gone our separate ways. It's been difficult for me because I try to write regularly but I am not particularly good at editing myself. I know it's not been explicitly proposed yet (I think?) but since people here it seems are actually at least semi-professional writers, it might be nice to trade some things around so that I can leech off your talent.
I used to write poetry but i stopped, now I'm writing short stories. I've actually only completed one (in the mad-scientist vain) and I've abandoned three or four since then, but now I am at work on a new one which is getting rather long and going in the direction I meant for it to go, surprisingly. I would love to have this read by people in exchange for reading things by people (it's about a young fellow who works in a supermarket and has disturbing lifelike nightmares, and the political serial killer who killed his mother).
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A business plan that might allow me to write for a living.
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Aug is getting out of the boat and staying out of the boat. I Like it!
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I wrote the Rules of Conduct today for the student/actors of the production I'm currently working on: what it basically boils down to is "don't fuck around," but somehow it didn't seem right to tell the kids that, so three pages of forms instead.
This is why the Bible is like 9,000 pages instead of just saying "don't be a dick"
Indeed. The play I'm working on right now is fully cast with youth-at-risk types, and so far my diatribe in regard to not fuck*ng around has been quite effective, perhaps because I used more concise language than the bible, and the punishment threatend due to misconduct is immediate and very clear - i.e. you are kicked out. Imagine instant biblical reactions like that - "Hey man, you totally stole my pen!" POOF! You're in hell. Then end.
Paul, here's the link to the paper that is currently printing my stuff http://www.grassrootsnews.mb.ca/ (http://www.grassrootsnews.mb.ca/) They have this super-slow loading archieve of past issues on PDF, and you'd have to look for articles by (deleted to prevent abduction by hobos)(eek, my real name spoken for the first time here). I did have articles in the last two issues, though like I wrote before, it's been so long since I wrote these articles that I don't remember if they're the boring ones or not. Also, the editor doesn't seem to have a basic grasp of English, so the articles are often hack jobs of the originals.
On a side note, several years ago I used to write an extremely popular dating column for on-line university magazine about the quest to lose my virginity. Sadly the site no longer exists, but I had an actual following and got fan mail, and of course lots of offers.