http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/index.cfm?forumid=1 FuseTalk Enterprise Edition http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=242 2008-10-15T16:26:41 -05.00 Jim Kendrall 1 Event - Writing All-Day Seminar: Going Freelance
Date: 10/18/2008 ?Starts: 8:30 AM - Ends: 5:00 PM
Johns Hopkins University Master of Arts in Writing Program and American Independent Writers Present
Going Freelance: An All-Day Seminar
Sautrday, October 18, 2008, 8:30a.m - 5:00p.m.
Featured Panels:
Freelance Fundamentals - Expert and experienced advice on rate-setting, accounting, record-keeping, legal issues, tax basics, and other nuts and bolts of successful freelancing.
Finding Work in Commercial Writing - Some of the most lucrative feelancing in the Washington-Baltimore area involved annual reports, media releases, marketing materials, and other writing-for-hire work. this session describes how to network and find the opportunities.
It's Time to Publish - Learn about venues that publish creative writing. Hear tips on Targeting your work and writing query and cover letters.
Blogging and Your Writing Career - Examine how blog writing differs from other types of writing, how to make money from a blog, and how to use a blog as a pathway to more prestigious writing work.
THIS EVENT IS FREE TO JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY WRITING PROGRAM STUDENTS
Location: Johns Hopkins University?Washington DC Center (Bernstein-Offit Building)?Lower Level Conference Hall?1717 Massachusetts Ave. NW, (directions and map)?Washington, DC 20036

Event - Writing Faculty Reading and Reception
Date: 10/24/2008 ?Starts: 6:15 PM
The MA in Writing program presents a Faculty Reading and Reception.
Readers include Tim Wendel, whose historical novel, Red Rain, will be released this fall; Cathy Alter, author of Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex and Starting Over; and poet Elizabeth Cooper. Reception begins at 6;15, followed by a 8 p.m. reading
Location: Johns Hopkins University?Washington DC Center?,1717 Massachusetts Ave. NW?Washington, DC 20036?Red Line metro to Dupont Circle. ?Exit on south metro exit and walk east on Massachusetts Ave. for one and a half blocks. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=125 2007-01-25T11:05:13 -05.00 Eugene Chay 17
The AAP's website advises you to take the Baltimore Beltway toward Towson and the directions continue from there.

Looking on Google maps, that seems to take you out of the way, somewhat. Google maps directs me to cut through downtown Baltimore, by the Inner Harbor area.

Anyone have any suggestions? ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=119 2007-01-04T14:06:55 -05.00 Jerri Bell 4 Coriolanus, King Lear, Richard III, and The Tempest. Ed isn't going to require any particular edition, but recommends the Everyman series, edited by the guest lecturer.

Also -- it may be my imagination, but it looks like the day of the week for Mark's Novel Workshop may have moved from Tuesday to Thursday. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=115 2006-12-18T10:42:50 -05.00 Jerri Bell 3
It wasn't so much the books Margaret had us read -- though she never recommends anything "bad!" -- as the way she encouraged us to look at them for what we might use in our own work. The variety of novels we read offered all sorts of possibilities for taking technique a step farther than the Fiction Techniques course (which I also had with Margaret). Some of the "extra" reading that we did suggested ways to go farther still. And the focus on the novel rather than the short story was especially helpful. Short story techniques will only take one so far with a novel!

As a result of the work we did in the class, and especially as a result of the way in which Margaret had us look at things, I've figured out how to get my own novel past Chapter Two. This had been a real concern, since Mark will be expecting a few other chapters in workshop next semester!!!! I've also settled on some very cool things to try out. Maybe they'll work, maybe they won't. But I expect to have fun trying.

I'm all charged up and ready to start writing again. Um, does anybody have any suggestions on how to squeeze more writing time out of a 24-hour day??? ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=93 2006-09-27T07:58:39 -05.00 Mark Farrington 9
Courses at Homewood
Contemporary American Writers
Fiction Workshop
Sentence Power
Screenwriting

Courses in DC
Fiction Techniques
Contemporary American Writers
Fiction Workshop
Writing the Novel Workshop
Novel Form, Style, Structure
Shakespeare

The Shakespeare course will be taught by Ed Perlman, and will take advantage of all the activities going on around the city in commemoration of Shakespeare. Ed will also teach Sentence Power in Baltimore. I'll be teaching Writing the Novel Workshop and Novel Form, Style, Structure. Marc Lapadula will teach Screenwriting, probably on a Saturday. Instructors for other courses haven't been finalized. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=68 2006-08-31T10:12:24 -05.00 Jerri Bell 10
I was surprised and pleased at the new perspectives that many of my classmates (and of course the instructors!) offered on the novel chapters I turned in. I didn't agree with everything, but even the comments with which I didn't agree suggested that I hadn't been getting something across effectively. I did toss the comments and critiques afterwards, simply because I didn't want to carry those stacks of paper back from Florence -- but only after retyping a summary of them into my PDA to reconsider when I finally get over being sick of those two chapters and can start to work on revisions.

I was also very disturbed by some things that I saw in the margins of the Florence workshops.

I'd like to throw out some questions:

- What "works" for you in a workshop?
- What makes a workshop ineffective or unhelpful for you?
- What is ideal "workshop etiquette?"
- Do you have any tips/techniques for getting the most benefit out of a workshop?

Note: PLEASE keep this discussion at the theoretical level -- e.g., "It's helpful to me when fellow students/my instructors...," "I find it unhelpful when fellow students/my instructors...," and "My ideal 'workshop etiquette rules' include...."

Posts that get personal, such as "Mark Farrington should be drawn and quartered because he said that my story wasn't fit to wallpaper an outhouse" or "Mary Stojak called me a functional illiterate after reading my novel chapter" (not that you would ever call anyone but me or Cyndi functionally illiterate, right, Mary?) will be deleted by the moderators. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=57 2006-08-18T14:03:04 -05.00 Eileen Anderson 9
Do you know what the general lag time is between when a professor submits their book list and when it gets uploaded to the bookstore online? Margaret said she submitted hers about a week ago for Heritage, and it isn't online yet. Just wondering when I can expect to see it. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=36 2006-06-30T16:04:55 -05.00 Richard Patrick 14 http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=15&threadid=24 2006-05-16T12:05:49 -05.00 Jerri Bell 8
Is it a good idea to use all the workshops to create material for the thesis (e.g., a group of related short stories, or chapters of the same novel)? Or is that overplanning? Maybe it's better to use two workshops to go where the spirit moves you, and the third to build on material from one of the previous two workshops prior to thesis?

My first workshop will be in Florence this summer. I've turned in two novel chapters, and think I might like to use the novel as a thesis project. But I'm also having fun with a group of short stories that are sort of related to one another through characters and setting. I wrote two as part of my application, a new one in Fiction Techniques and another new one in Contemporary American Writers, and got ideas in Sentence Power for two others that have yet to be written. With revision, I could probably bundle them up thematically. That seems like fun, too.

Thoughts, anyone? I'd love to hear what folks who are further along in the program, or alumni, think about the relationship between workshops and thesis. ]]>