Why I Haven’t Been Blogging #1: I got married.
So I have a handful of legitimate reasons why I’ve been away from the blog for the last three months. I’ll post short retrospective posts over the next few weeks, but today’s is about the biggie…
Kelly and Nate june twenty-eight two-thousand eight
It all rhymes.
What can I say about it, really? It was nothing less than the most brilliant day of my life. Kelly and I have made each other better, stronger people the past two and a half years. We’ve been there when we were at our most triumphant and our most vulnerable. Most importantly, we had that “spark,” and it’s continued to burn bright for us.
Our ceremony was near-perfect, with pretty much everything falling into place. As for the reception, if I was to give anyone advice for their wedding reception I’d tell them 1.) write up a brief list of all the events you want to happen and in what order and 2.) delegate, delegate, delegate. That said, it was a lot of fun with great food (hors d’ouerves style), great music, and loads of friends and family. The only major bummer? Kelly and I worked with a dance instructor for six weeks to create a fully original dance. Our song is “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney and we danced to that… and then “Yeah” by Usher. It was five spectacular minutes that blew everyone away… and we forgot to videotape it. I don’t have the heart to tell our dance instructor; I can barely contain my own disappointment as it is!
Anyway, our wedding is probably the number one reason I haven’t been blogging much in the last three months. I think there’s something in the whole wedding process for me in terms of writing; I’ll post my thoughts about that here, as well asa more thorough breakdown of the wedding day.
Stay tuned for more brief posts detailing what’s been keeping me busy these days, including the thesis reading, graduation, camp, a promotion, and what’s happening this week - our honeymoon and my shows at the San Francisco Improv Festival and Santa Cruz Improv Festival.
-nm
Technorati Tags: wedding advice, improv festival, maybe i’m amazed
How does one get back into blogging?
By doing it.
Quite the no-brainer, eh?
In April, I found myself swept up into such a busy frenzy that blogging fell so far off my radar screen it crashed to the floor like a neglected cup of cold coffee meeting with an elbow. In other words, I stopped doing it completely. I certainly meant to get back into it but as I’ve quoted Steven Pressfield writing about writing, “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.” That’s something I wanted to do and well, dear reader, there were plenty of distractions that bogged me down (those distractions are for another post.
So despite all of that, or in direct cause of it, here I am, getting back into the swing of things. Hopefully, I still have your subscription. Looking ahead, I have plenty of news from the past few months to fill you in on plus I hope to blog during two upcoming improv performance road trips. Let’s take a journey together and see where we end up.
-nm
Technorati Tags: improv, blogging, writing habit
Your Friday Recommendation #21
Today’s recommendation is a recommendation we made five days short of a year ago that deserves to be repeated, a podcast on storytelling tips by Ira Glass, host of National Public Radio’s This American Life.
The podcast is meant for one entering the radio and/or vidcast world, but the message Glass has speaks to writers and performers, too. For the young writer or improvisers afraid of failing and thus, afraid of putting their work out there, Glass proposes you embrace the simple truth that you will fail over and over as part of the creative process. His main point is that one cannot gain experience if one doesn’t put something terrible out there, and this process all leads to truly wonderful work. How many bad stories must a writer write before they hit upon a solid one? How many bad scenes must an improviser be in before they have a solid set? There’s no definitive answer, but be sure it’s in the “more than a few” range.
Glass, too, is self-disparaging and points out the disappointing nuances of an old program while telling what he’s able to learn from such a foray into bad radio. Young writers and improvisers take note - a seasoned professional in his artistic field not only admits to failing but also to learning something from said failure. It gives one hope, doesn’t it?
Take a look and apply what you’ve learned.
-nm
Technorati Tags: podcast recommendation, Ira Glass, storytelling tips
So where have I been?…
I’ve been a lot of places since posts on this blog dried up.
The last month has seen me wrap up the MFA program, walk at graduation, finish up one job, get promoted at another, finish a plethora of wedding details, wrap up the big end-of-the-year stuff at my jobs, and of course, a full week of being in bed sick as a dog. “Sick as a dog” feels a little cliche, so let’s go with sick as a sea lion after a shark attack. Actually, that’s a little morbid. How about, sick as a squid. Not that they get sick, but I think squids are awesome.
In a nutshell, dear reader, life caught up with me.
Over the next week, I plan to retro-actively toss up blog posts for missed moments like Your Monday Prompts and Your Friday Recommendations, plus other bits of reflection here and there (particularly about graduation, wrapping up workshop, and a few surprises, t00, like the announcement of my promotion at work). Look for a post that details all of the new posts soon, as well as future entries, of course.
Thanks for your patience, reading, and subcription.
-nm
Technorati Tags: life caught up with me, retro-active blog, blog update
I graduated.
Today I can officially add this to my bio:
“Nathan Melcher earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University - Mankato. He feels pretty good about it.”
Huzzah!
-nm
Technorati Tags: MFA, creative writing, mankato
Expectations for a writing workshop
My aforementioned short story gets reviewed in fiction workshop tonight and I thought I’d take you on a backstage tour of my brain so you know my mentality going into the workshop…
“I hope my peers in the workshop like my story, and I’m going to be okay if they don’t.”
Audience is at the forefront of my mind in most all of my creative endeavors. I write to entertain and I read to entertain, so I hope my readers are entertained. This doesn’t often come up in a workshop situation, however. The best workshops are less about writing peers like and more about how peers interpret the writing works. This is where written comments on the manuscript pages and verbal comments during break come in handy.
But let’s say they don’t like it. Be prepared to accept that. Not every story is for everybody, no matter how well written (I enjoy T.C. Boyle, but there are long stretches of The Tortilla Curtain that do not entertain me). Your story will find its audience, but consider what this first audience thinks of it so you can adjust it as needed (or not, if you don’t respect them, though you should respect your peers if only at least a little bit).
“I hope my short story works, and I hope my peers are able to tell me if it doesn’t.”
I try to use craft choice to enhance my writing, and I hope my work shows. As a young writer, however, it doesn’t always show, so I have to hope there’s enough to entice my readers. If my choices aren’t working, or the piece would be enhanced by other choices, my hope is my peers tell me so and give positive suggestions on how to do so. Basically, try to write well and if you don’t, have people interested in your continued improvement.
Your craft choices may end up heavy-handed or on the other hand, far too subtle. Decide which choices are best for the story, not which ones are the most impressive. Remember, your peers are studying the same skill set of craft choices you are, so it’s worth listening to what they have to say.
“I hope I walk away from the workshop experience excited, and I absolutely know I will.”
Whether a story gets eviscerated in workshop or published in Tin House, the writer should feel excited about their product. I put a lot of work into my writing, and the writing that excites me is the writing I enjoy giving my time and effort. If you aren’t excited about what you’re writing, why bring it to workshop? How can you expect anyone else to get excited about it?
This is a lesson in marrying humility with self-confidence. If you’re too confident, it becomes vanity and you won’t listen to anyone about your writing. And if you’re too humble, you’ll take every single suggestion thrown your way even if it ends up being detrimental to the story. Rather than those two directions, let them combine as excitement and let that fuel you in a workshop.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to take my own advice tonight. I’m pretty excited about this story, and my last point will be the most important for me to follow, particularly if it doesn’t work for this audience. I’ll let you know the specific workshop results tomorrow, dear reader.
-nm
Technorati Tags: writing workshop, workshop mentality, fiction workshop, story eviscerated
Your Monday Prompt #25
Write about a character who is affected by the weather. Perhaps it makes them feel a certain way or remember a particular memory. The weather may possibly prevent or enable them to do an activity or job. Maybe the weather is extreme enough to impact their chances of survival, like something out of a Jack London story. This is an opportunity to explore setting and environment as boons to your story and link them directly to your character. You may try placing a character you’ve already worked with into a weather-related environment and see how they react.
Please give this exercise fifteen minutes of your time. Write it up and see what happens.
-nm
Technorati Tags: writing exercise, writing prompt, surprise yourself
Your Friday Recommendation #16
Last Friday night during my thesis reading Q & A, someone asked me what scripts or screenwriters taught me a lot about screenwriting. I listed a few screenwriters I enjoy (Scott Frank is a genius, David Mamet is precision incarnate, and John August seems to be having genuine fun with the craft), plus what movies I’d been watching during my writing process. Given my thesis was a science fiction adventure comedy, yes I watched The Incredibles and Star Wars a few times, but there were three films in particular I watched for specific reasons:
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Cop Land, and The Guns of Navarone. Today I’d like to recommend the final film in that trio…
If you want to learn how to write about an ensemble of characters which balances both their relationships and their mission, this is a film to watch over and over. Captain Mallory (Gregory Peck) is hand-picked by Major Roy Franklin (Tony Quayle) to lead a six-man group to assault a German artillery battery of giant cannons holding a battalion of British soldiers hostage. They’re joined by Colonel Andrea Stavros (Anthony Quinn), a rogue filled with hate for Mallory and Corporal Miller (David Niven) who has no love of war or death. These four men plus two others sneak onto a Mediterranean island and attempt to knock out the guns.
As an ensemble, the six characters work well together. They each have a specific role to play in their team and relate to each other in specific ways based on both their personality and rank. This is what makes this 1961 film work (and what left it nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, as far as I’m concerned). The characters’ personalities are at the very heart of how they go about the mission and how they help or hinder each other. One could say the two other men I didn’t mention by name are able to blend into the background more than the other four, but that could be as simple as star power. That said, I’m not sure their stories are as compelling as the others, but that is the nature of ensemble, isn’t it? Some characters rise to prominence while others round out the cast in their own necessary ways?
The pacing is from a different era, and for as much as I love old movies and this movie in particular, I find myself consistently bored with a twenty-five minute stretch of the film. A half-hour into the film, a scene involving a boat landing during stormy weather and subsequently climbing a mountain serve to develop three important relationships for Mallory: his mutual respect for Major Franklin, his mutual animosity for Corporal Miller, and rising tension between him and Stavros. We learn a little bit more about their plan, how Miller feels about the whole mess, and how Stavros plans to Kill Mallory someday, even seeing Stavros have an opportunity to do so. Finally, we see Franklin’s wounding and how it affects the group.
Pretty important plot points, yes? Absolutely, but the pacing kills the film here - they take fooooor-eeeeeh-vuuuuuhr! The film is 2.5 hours long and these scenes total twenty-five minute stretch only a half-hour into the film. In short, it takes a story based on getting a job done in a time crunch and slows it to a halt. The film has a patient pace altogether, so it doesn’t surprise me these scenes take such a big chunk of the film, but still, the pace leaves me fast-forwarding to the Nazi sharpshooter shoot-out that follows.
But let’s not dwell on the detractions. Peck is amazing. Quinn is even better. The story format sets the classic standard of gathering a ragtag crew for one final job. The pace is easy to follow and the stakes - both personal and outward - are high so the audience becomes invested. I’ve not read the novel (I hear it’s quite different) or its sequel and film adaptation, Force 10 From Navarone (a Harrison Ford box-office blunder), but I may have to give them a try.
This is one of those classic movies I watched as a young boy with my father on Saturday afternoons. My father was great at explaining plot twists and character relationships. This memory and a decent first DVD release kept the film spinning in my computer while writing my ensemble-cast sci-fi adventure screenplay thesis. Only through digging for photos for this post did I find out there’s a special edition 2-disc DVD set, so I may have to pick that up.
Any thoughts on this film, dear reader? Any ideas on what it can teach us about writing and story?
-nm
Technorati Tags: guns of navarone, movie recommendation, gregory peck, butcher of barcelona
Thesis reading follow-up
My Creative Writing MFA thesis reading was on Friday night and it was a proud evening for me. Jon Surdo read from his thriller-horror screenplay, Rat Trap, first and I went second reading from my science fiction adventure-comedy screenplay, Earthlings.
Jon and I each presented our work in our own way. Both of us displayed our pages on a document camera, and Jon had seven readers sit to either side of the projector screen and read the characters as he read the scene direction. As for me, I went ahead with my solo read, putting the pages on the document camera while also displaying eight illustrations on the computer. I’ve been a reader for three of my peers this semester and enjoy the ensemble process, but ultimately I decided to challenge myself to the solo experience and it went well. I provided voices for all of the different characters and when I ran out of voices I stole voices (thank you, Peter Lorre). I read it with as much enthusiasm and excitement as I felt the material was supposed to convey on-screen, speeding through space battles with intensity. As for the illustrations, they were done in pencil, then inked with my trusty Zebra Zeb-Roller 2000 0.7mm Liquid Black Ink Pen with the Rubberized Grip, then colored in grayscale on the computer. Those illustrations make up the very end of my thesis and will be bound along with the writing.
We had a crowd of approximately fifty in attendance and they were an excellent audience. They asked good questions, listened intently, laughed at all the right spots and a few more that surprised me, plus were genuinely interested to know what happened in my script beyond the portion I read, act one. The fiancée made the drive down and my parents surprised me by my mother driving up for the event. I knew my father was coming (he’s a few hours closer right now, having taken a new job in a new city while mom prepares their house to sell), but she completely surprised me. After the reading we went to Blue Bricks and had a fun time with friends. My ride home saw me with a pretty big smirk on my face.
Earlier that afternoon, I printed four copies of my thesis on fancy-schmancy (that should really be a brand name) 100% cotton paper with a watermark, got final adviser signatures, and turned them in to the office of graduate studies. I came close to crying. An emotional weight has been lifted, one which has consumed so much of my time and energy over the last three years, especially in these last few months but especiaspecially (that should be a new adjective) in the last few weeks. That’s already started, with funding approved tonight for my promotion at work (perhaps tomorrow’s blog, dear reader) and a new outlook on how / what / when to write. Things are looking up. :)
Except for my taxes. I’m getting enough back to go to the movies. By myself.
-nm
Technorati Tags: thesis reading, creative writing mfa, document camera, screenplay thesis, trading places movie quote
Your Monday Prompt #24
Write about accomplishment. A character finishes an important milestone, a team pulls together to win a competition, good triumphs over evil, etc. Let the accomplishment and circumstances of the event be the dressing - focus on the emotions of the character(s) in terms of what the accomplishment means to them, their reflection on their journey, and where they believe they will go from there. Remember, it’s about the journey, not the destination.
Give this exercise fifteen minutes of your time. Write it up and see what happens.
-nm
Technorati Tags: writing prompt, writing exercise, surprise yourself
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About
Brought together by mutual interest in creative arts and web development, Minnesota duo Barry Hess and Nathan Melcher founded Scrawlers.com in 2006. Scrawlers marries creativity with a web-based outlet for aspiring writers and The Scrawl blog seeks to add fuel your creative fire.
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