Now Playing: John Mayer
Topic: Writing Outings
Saturday 6:12pm 16Sept06
Went to the International Reading Series at harbourfront on Wednesday. It was the faculty and students from Humber College School for Writers program that I did in 2003.
Here are the notes that I wrote from that evening:
Wayson Choy
When we face a black page we're all equal.
M. G. Vassanji
he talked about being poor and not growing up with books in the house. He would go to the book store and try to read a book chapter by chapter until the owner kicked him out.
He read a piece that he wrote about writing, some of it was tongue in cheek ... a writer makes friends of the gossip and back biter. A writer has no life outside of writing. As a writer you think that you are the perfect subject for a novel. A writer should keep writing when 10 teachers tell you that you haven't a hope in hell.
Paul Quarrington
said being a writer is indicative of an unhealthy psyche. A writer hides behind a veil of lies.
A writer has a pocket of obsessions.
He talked about the first two writing assignments that he gives in his class. The first one is to think of the perfect lover and to describe that person. He gives the room 25 mins or so to do this. The second assignment he asks the room to take the same lover and give him or her a tragedy. He gives them 4 mins to do this. He says that because they only have 4 mins they pull certain ideas out quickly and those ideas are their pocket of obsessions. That tends to be what a writer is obsessed with. Writers tend to write about what they are obsessed with.
What do you really want to write about?
What are you afraid to write about?
Kim Moritsugu
She discussed how she had done every writing program in Toronto for several years and every writing instructor told her that she wasn't any good. When she got Paul Quarrington as her instructor he told her that her writing was okay. She took that as a positive and did the correspondence program with Paul and ultimately published her first novel.
Francine Prose
said that writing was justification for all your bad traits such as eavesdropping, betraying your family etc.
EY
