Writer's Block: Where in Your Head is it Really???

Some of us struggle with where to begin or how to continue making progress with what turns out not to be as simple as it should be: slinging words along a page in a meaningful progression. We're adults, we see movies, we read books, we know what makes something good or great, and there are no gates around the masters built to shut the rest of us out. Anyone with a pen/pencil paper or a computer (you can use them free at libraries!), is faced with the truth that it is only that which is within us that prevents us from writing, from pouring forth what we feel, observations on what others feel; the Great Stifler is our own. Sigh. In her article: "Writer's Block: Is It All in Your Head?", Leslie What tackles this thorny subject with understanding, insight, and -- Hugh Sigh of Relief! -- Possible solutions and recommended reading. Whereas not much research has been done this topic, she has unearthed and compiled enough of it that many of us who have suffered with this affliction may be inspired to take courage and sally forth to the realm of the written word with more confidence.

LA Times Festival of Books Writing Seminars

For the very first time in the Festival’s history, six intensive 2-hour writing seminars are being offered featuring worldwide renowned writers in an intimate setting – only 50 seats per seminar!

• Tickets will be open to the general public when the Festival program is published in the Sunday, April 20^th edition of the Los Angeles Times.
• Tickets cost $100 per seminar.
• Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.ticketmaster.com/artist/1209582/ or at select Ticketmaster locations, including Ritmo Latino, Beverly Center and select Macy’s locations. Only 50 seats are available! Tickets are not available over the phone.

Ron Carlson

Saturday, April 26^th, 11:00am – 1:00pm

Title: The Short Story: Surviving the Draft

Celebrated author Ron Carlson will lead this 2-hour seminar with a lecture including samples of fiction from his work and others that illustrate the craft of fiction writing and the way forward into the darkness. His primary focus will be on the short story and will talk about the entire process: idea to draft, with all notes in between focusing on surviving the draft. A Q & A session will be incorporated towards the end of the seminar.

Novelist and short story writer Ron Carlson has received citations in Best American Short Stories twelve times since 1984. His work has appeared in a variety of publications including Harper’s and GQ. He is the author of two story collections, “Plan B for the Middle Class” and “The News of the World”, and three novels, the most recent of which, “Five Skies” is his first adult novel in more than 20 years. Ron currently teaches at University of California, Irvine.

Thomas Curwen

Saturday, April 26^th, 1:30pm – 3:30pm

Title: Bring on the Lions: Writing the Non-fiction Narrative from the Inside Out

Human beings are hard-wired for narratives. We fall effortless into the spell of a good story, and there is no greater game than capturing a portrait of life that keeps readers hanging on until the bitter end. Yet the road to writing a successful narrative is dark and perilous. It is also both an art and science. It begins with sound reporting and a love of language. It combines strategic pacing with a jazzman's sense of rhythm. You must be a strong writer, a good editor -- and finally, you must love what you're doing. In this seminar, Thomas Curwen will have an extended conversation about the writing and pleasure of a good story. So bring pen and paper, and be ready to write, talk and discuss the meaning of this wonderfully foolhardy endeavor.

Thomas Curwen is an editor at large for the Los Angeles Times. He has a master's degree in Creative Writing from USC and was a recipient of a 1991 Academy of American Poets prize. In 2002, he received a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for mental health journalism.

A. Scott Berg

Title: Biography: Telling Lives

Saturday, April 26^th, 4:00pm – 6:00pm

A. Scott Berg will conduct a two-hour seminar on Life Writing in its various incarnations--including “objective” biography, autobiography, psychobiography, memoirs, and diaries. Part lecture, part question-and-answer period, the class will examine some of the elements that go into the writing of life stories--selecting a topic, primary research, interviews, secondary research, organizing and analyzing material, writing and rewriting techniques.

A. Scott Berg is a renowned biographer of "Max Perkins: Editor of Genius," for which he received the National Book Award, "Goldwyn: A Biography”, which bestowed upon him a Guggenheim Fellowship, and "Lindbergh”, for which he was awarded 1999's Pulitzer Prize for biography. His most recent book is a memoir of a legendary star Katharine Hepburn, called, "Kate Remembered." He is currently working on a biography of Woodrow Wilson.

Jane Smiley

Sunday, April 27^th, 10:00am – 12:00pm

Title: Write a Novel in Two Hours!

Or not! What is a novel? How do you write one? Novelist Jane Smiley will use material from her book, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel”, to illustrate some of the ways an aspiring writer might approach his or her own ambition to write a novel. Lecture, Q and A, and discussion will be interspersed throughout the two hours. Seminar participants may read the two chapters in Thirteen Ways entitled "A Novel of Your Own, part 1" and "A Novel of Your Own, part 2", but advanced preparation is not essential.

Jane Smiley is one of the most beloved novelists and author of more than ten works of fiction. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, and in 2001 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2006. Her latest novel is “Ten Days in the Hills”. Smiley lives in Northern California.

Robert Pinsky

Sunday, April 27^th, 12:30pm – 2:30pm

Title: Listening to Words: The Vocality of Poetry

Robert Pinsky will lead this 2 hour seminar by concentrating on the physical materials of poetry: the sounds of vowels and consonants arranged to make words and sentences. As when someone is noodling at a piano or shooting baskets or playing with paints or whittling, the physical material sometimes draws out ideas and feelings. The group will view some of the Favorite Poem Project videos from the DVD included with an Invitation to Poetry. A Q & A session will be incorporated towards the end of the seminar.

Robert Pinsky, an American poet and former Poet Laureate of the United States, is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently, “Gulf Music: Poems”. He received the 1997 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee for “The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996”. He is also the author of several prose titles, including “The Sounds of Poetry”, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Stephen J. Cannell

Sunday, April 27^th, 3:00pm – 5:00pm

Title: Television, Film and Bestselling Novels

Stephen J. Cannell will lecture on how to adapt a novel to the screen. He will talk about modifying and condensing material without compromising its creative content, how to interface with the marketplace and get your work seen, as well as tips on construction when writing novels, screenplays and for television. A Q & A session will be incorporated towards the end of the seminar.

Stephen J. Cannell is the bestselling author of numerous novels, including the critically acclaimed Shane Scully series, which includes his latest installment, “Three Shirt Deal”. He is one of television's most prolific writers, having created or co-created more than 40 shows, including The A-Team and 21 Jump Street. Cannell has received multiple awards including the Marlow Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Writers of America and the WGA Paddy Chaefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement.

For more information on the Festival of Books Writing Seminars, please contact Elizabeth Samson at xcxesamson@tribune.com or go to www.latimesfestivalofbooks.com

The Great American Poetry Show ~

The Great American Poetry Show is a hardbound serial anthology open year-round to submissions of poems in English on any subject and in any style, length and number. The editors are asking us to send them "a lot of poems," and such a generous invitation should not go unnoticed. Each contributor will receive one copy of the volume in which his/her poems appears. Volume 2 is scheduled to appear in 2008, if they receive enough good poems (about 120). If they don't, they will hold publication until they do. You may send submissions via email to info(at)tgaps.net, or via regular mail to:

The Great American Poetry Show
P.O. Box 69506
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Write to Win!

For a $5 reading/entry fee, Writer's Journal: The Complete Writer's Magazine, will give you the chance to win $150, publication in their magazine, and: starter phrases! This short-story contest is a great opportunity for those of you who want to write, but don't know what to write about! Postmark deadlines and starter phrases are:

• April 20, 2008 ~ They both stared at ...
• June 20, 2008 ~ The cellar was open, but ...
• August 20, 2008 ~ Those ungrateful ...
• October 20, 2008 ~ Twenty minutes later ...

Maximum word count is 1500 words, entries must begin with the starter phrase, but it may be dialogue, that's your choice. Please go to their website for the rest of the contest guidelines.

What? Me Worry?

Yes, Alfred E. Newman and MAD Magazine are still alive, kicking, and looking to expand their pool of freelance comedy writers. If you have a twisted sense of humor, a peculiar way of looking at the world, or are particularly eager to express your immature, strange, or just plain silly side, they want to see your stuff! They are looking for:

• Material for The Fundalini Pages
• Comic Strips
• Hard-Hitting Satire/Cutting-Edge Yuks
• Media Parody
• Utter Silliness
• MAD 20 Features

Send them a paragraph or two explaining the premise of your article, with 3 or 4 examples of how you would carry it through. They strongly advise checking out the MAD Magazine of today, not the one we grew up with (although that helps!) They pay top rates: $500 per MAD page (for new contributors), on acceptance. Pieces that are less than a page are pro-rated accordingly.
Please go to their website for the rest of their submission guidelines.

For the Birds ~

LBJ is not only an acronym for "Little Brown Job," (used by birders to describe those difficult-to-identify species, such as many sparrows); it is also the name of an upcoming literary magazine. The LBJ is a uniquely literary venue, publishing creative non-fiction, fiction, poetry, narrative scholarship, and literary journalism of the feathered variety. The inaugural issue will be out this June, for which they are not only accepting submissions, but are also announcing prizes of $300 for the best previously unpublished poetry and prose. You may submit only one contest entry per genre. For poetry, each entry may include up to 5 poems; for prose, submit only 1 piece of no more than 20 double-space single-sided pages. The reading fee for the contest is $10 for one category, $15 for both. The deadline for both contest entries and submissions is May 15, 2008, and all contest entries will be considered for publication.
They are also looking for visual art, as well as cutting edge stories about birds, their habitats, and the people around them! So if you are into birding (bird-brained?) or know anyone who is, please go to The LBJ website for further details and the addresses (snail and email) of where to send your work.

Book Works - Experimental Prose Fiction Needed

Semina -- "where the novel has a nervous breakdown", published by Book Works in London is looking for artists and writers interested in experimental prose fiction, drawing inspiration from art as much as it does from literature. Think of the ways in which time and space died yesterday, how acceleration exceeds accumulation, the dead city and the perpetual twilight of technology: Georges Bataille, Henri Michaux, Alexander Trocchi, William Burroughs, Ann Quin, Clarence Cooper Jr, Claude Cahun etc. Above all weâ•˙re looking for artists and writers willing to take risks with their prose and who demonstrate total disregard for the conventions that structure received ideas about fiction.

Semina takes its inspiration from a series of nine loose-leaf magazines issued by Californian beat artist Wallace Berman in the 1950s and 1960s. The series is commissioned and edited by artist and writer Stewart Home. The series will publish nine books, six of which will be selected from open submission, two commissioned by the editor, with Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie by Stewart Home the final title in the series.

The selection from open submissions will be made by Stewart Home and Book Works. The series is designed by Fraser Muggeridge studio.

Deadline for applications is 30 May 2008.

Contact gavin@bookworks.org.uk or visit our website for more information http://www.bookworks.org.uk

Forthcoming in the Semina series:

• No. 1 Index by Bridget Penney (2008)
• No. 2 One Break, A Thousand Blows! by Maxi Kim
• (2008)
• No. 3 Bubble Entendre by Mark Waugh (2009)
• No. 9 Blood Rites of the Bourgeoise by Stewart Home (2010)