Friday, April 8, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Week 7
Hi all,
for Week 7's nature writing, the extra stuff beyond the reader is basically just to read the four pages from the Weldon essay, which recently won a national nature writing prize. there are two extracts from the 11 pages, so don't worry that it isn't consecutive. you can hear an interview with Weldon here.
if you can either bring in the in-class writing you did (Tuesday) or the ten minutes' worth of homework on either a place you've been completely alone or in a crowd, that would be good for discussion.
for the pitches - I hope we'll get through everyone but depending on time we may split it between weeks 7 and 8. You do NOT need a piece of writing. the pitch is the very short description of your piece you give to an editor to see if they are willing to take it for their publication. you need to cover:
- a one sentence description ("adventure piece about a disastrous climb of Mt Everest")
- the target audience ("will appeal to people who've dreamed of climbing Everest", or more prosaically, a piece on national dishes of India might appeal to middle aged cook-at-home types)
- two publications you think might take it (say a specialist climbing magazine and a more general magazine like the Weekend Australian - the Indian piece might for instance go into Gourmet Traveller and/or Epicure/a newspaper travel section)
- the themes (not the topic) - in the case of Into Thin Air, personal responsibility, the question of whether commercial climbing has gone too far. this can cover the tone of the piece too: investigative, humorous, personal, interview-based.
- length (number of words)
- supplementary elements (images, graphics, breakout boxes (say a list of deaths on Everest in the past ten year, or prices and services offered by climbing companies)
and an "it's like" pitch; what articles in that publication it resembles, writers whose style you are trying to emulate, a wider debate you feel the piece buys into.
these are all things you need to have in a successful magazine pitch, in one form or another: they make it easier for the editor to picture the resulting piece, and to figure out how it will fit into the template of that particular publication. they also reassure the editor that you know their publication and will write to their style and audience.
if you end up not writing the piece you pitch, that's OK.
After the break we only have four more weeks; anyone who is ready to workshop a longer folio piece will be welcome to volunteer to distribute it in Week 8.
Jenny
for Week 7's nature writing, the extra stuff beyond the reader is basically just to read the four pages from the Weldon essay, which recently won a national nature writing prize. there are two extracts from the 11 pages, so don't worry that it isn't consecutive. you can hear an interview with Weldon here.
if you can either bring in the in-class writing you did (Tuesday) or the ten minutes' worth of homework on either a place you've been completely alone or in a crowd, that would be good for discussion.
for the pitches - I hope we'll get through everyone but depending on time we may split it between weeks 7 and 8. You do NOT need a piece of writing. the pitch is the very short description of your piece you give to an editor to see if they are willing to take it for their publication. you need to cover:
- a one sentence description ("adventure piece about a disastrous climb of Mt Everest")
- the target audience ("will appeal to people who've dreamed of climbing Everest", or more prosaically, a piece on national dishes of India might appeal to middle aged cook-at-home types)
- two publications you think might take it (say a specialist climbing magazine and a more general magazine like the Weekend Australian - the Indian piece might for instance go into Gourmet Traveller and/or Epicure/a newspaper travel section)
- the themes (not the topic) - in the case of Into Thin Air, personal responsibility, the question of whether commercial climbing has gone too far. this can cover the tone of the piece too: investigative, humorous, personal, interview-based.
- length (number of words)
- supplementary elements (images, graphics, breakout boxes (say a list of deaths on Everest in the past ten year, or prices and services offered by climbing companies)
and an "it's like" pitch; what articles in that publication it resembles, writers whose style you are trying to emulate, a wider debate you feel the piece buys into.
these are all things you need to have in a successful magazine pitch, in one form or another: they make it easier for the editor to picture the resulting piece, and to figure out how it will fit into the template of that particular publication. they also reassure the editor that you know their publication and will write to their style and audience.
if you end up not writing the piece you pitch, that's OK.
After the break we only have four more weeks; anyone who is ready to workshop a longer folio piece will be welcome to volunteer to distribute it in Week 8.
Jenny
Monday, April 4, 2011
Wednesday piece one
hi all,
Michael's piece for workshopping below; Rebecca's is pending...
all formatting strangenesses are blamed on the uni email system...
Jenny
By
Michael Berthelsen.
On Tuesday we
drove to Cowes in Zach’s Subaru listening to music and smoking out the window.
There were thirteen of us and we had been looking forward to this week for
months. There were nine cars, two storeys of house, ten beds, two ounces of
grass and fifteen tabs of acid between us. On Wednesday we’d sparkle.
Tuesday had been
hot but Wednesday was hotter. I remember waking up and looking through my
window across the street. It was eleven in the morning and the tin roof of the
house opposite ours resembled a barbeque hot plate. It caused the air
immediately above it to shimmer like so many horizons on so many rural highways
baked by so many hot summer days. The air inside the house clung to our skin
due to the combined effect of humidity and residual particles of spray-on
sunscreen still wafting through the hallways and rooms. The floor was no better
– its pine boarding sticky with the previous night’s party-jizz; a concoction
of beer, goon, fruit juice, Jack Daniels
and Coke. People had gone down to the
shops to buy breakfast and were now arriving back at the house. Murph was
sitting on the balcony with smoke trailing from the cigarette in his right
hand.
When we arrived there
was no furniture for the balcony. Our solution was a piece of improvisation
which would come to encapsulate the ensuing day. Most tables have four legs and
sport flower-filled vases as their centrepiece. Ours was different; our table
didn’t have four legs and its centrepiece was yellow stained bong filled with
stagnant brown water. Our table wasn’t even a table. It was an ironing board.
Around our centrepiece was a
Manhattan skyline of empty and half empty beer bottles. The board’s floral
cover was marked with streaks of cigarette ash. Perched front and centre
closest to Murph over one of the cover’s most elaborate floral illustrations
was an ashtray shaped like a pair of breasts which came to be known as The Titties.
And coming up to The Titties’ rim was a lake of cigarette
butts and Metcard roaches. The
ultimate Fuck Off to domestication.
This
piece is the beginning of what I intend to submit as part of my folio for end
of semester assessment. It is my own take on a true crime style of writing,
documenting a trip my mates and I made to Phillip Island during the summer
holidays. It will ultimately recount the day we took LSD and take a reflective
stance on what I perceive to be the artificiality of taking acid. The names in
the story are all pseudonyms, and the timeline of events has been collapsed to
accommodate the word constraints which bind the assessment of this subject.
Michael's piece for workshopping below; Rebecca's is pending...
all formatting strangenesses are blamed on the uni email system...
Jenny
By
Michael Berthelsen.
On Tuesday we
drove to Cowes in Zach’s Subaru listening to music and smoking out the window.
There were thirteen of us and we had been looking forward to this week for
months. There were nine cars, two storeys of house, ten beds, two ounces of
grass and fifteen tabs of acid between us. On Wednesday we’d sparkle.
Tuesday had been
hot but Wednesday was hotter. I remember waking up and looking through my
window across the street. It was eleven in the morning and the tin roof of the
house opposite ours resembled a barbeque hot plate. It caused the air
immediately above it to shimmer like so many horizons on so many rural highways
baked by so many hot summer days. The air inside the house clung to our skin
due to the combined effect of humidity and residual particles of spray-on
sunscreen still wafting through the hallways and rooms. The floor was no better
– its pine boarding sticky with the previous night’s party-jizz; a concoction
of beer, goon, fruit juice, Jack Daniels
and Coke. People had gone down to the
shops to buy breakfast and were now arriving back at the house. Murph was
sitting on the balcony with smoke trailing from the cigarette in his right
hand.
When we arrived there
was no furniture for the balcony. Our solution was a piece of improvisation
which would come to encapsulate the ensuing day. Most tables have four legs and
sport flower-filled vases as their centrepiece. Ours was different; our table
didn’t have four legs and its centrepiece was yellow stained bong filled with
stagnant brown water. Our table wasn’t even a table. It was an ironing board.
Around our centrepiece was a
Manhattan skyline of empty and half empty beer bottles. The board’s floral
cover was marked with streaks of cigarette ash. Perched front and centre
closest to Murph over one of the cover’s most elaborate floral illustrations
was an ashtray shaped like a pair of breasts which came to be known as The Titties.
And coming up to The Titties’ rim was a lake of cigarette
butts and Metcard roaches. The
ultimate Fuck Off to domestication.
This
piece is the beginning of what I intend to submit as part of my folio for end
of semester assessment. It is my own take on a true crime style of writing,
documenting a trip my mates and I made to Phillip Island during the summer
holidays. It will ultimately recount the day we took LSD and take a reflective
stance on what I perceive to be the artificiality of taking acid. The names in
the story are all pseudonyms, and the timeline of events has been collapsed to
accommodate the word constraints which bind the assessment of this subject.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
workshopping for Wednesday
Dear all,
we're just having some small technical issues with the workshopping students getting material to me. please do check back say Monday night/Tuesday morning and it should be here.
for further reference, if you send me material, it needs to be body text in the email, or an older version of Word (not docx)
thanks,
Jenny
we're just having some small technical issues with the workshopping students getting material to me. please do check back say Monday night/Tuesday morning and it should be here.
for further reference, if you send me material, it needs to be body text in the email, or an older version of Word (not docx)
thanks,
Jenny
workshopping for Wednesday
Dear all,
we're just having some small technical issues with the workshopping students getting material to me. please do check back say Monday night/Tuesday morning and it should be here.
for further reference, if you send me material, it needs to be body text in the email, or an older version of Word (not docx)
thanks,
Jenny
we're just having some small technical issues with the workshopping students getting material to me. please do check back say Monday night/Tuesday morning and it should be here.
for further reference, if you send me material, it needs to be body text in the email, or an older version of Word (not docx)
thanks,
Jenny
workshopping for Wednesday
Dear all,
we're just having some small technical issues with the workshopping students getting material to me. please do check back say Monday night/Tuesday morning and it should be here.
for further reference, if you send me material, it needs to be body text in the email, or an older version of Word (not docx)
thanks,
Jenny
we're just having some small technical issues with the workshopping students getting material to me. please do check back say Monday night/Tuesday morning and it should be here.
for further reference, if you send me material, it needs to be body text in the email, or an older version of Word (not docx)
thanks,
Jenny
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