The Writers Studio at SCAD

Faced with the arrival of spring break and the trend of warmer weather here in Atlanta, I’ve noticed that students tend to fall into one of two camps:

1. Those who want to use their break to sleep, see movies, or travel, and
2. Those who can’t wait to crack open a good book.

If you fall into the second camp, then you may be interested in checking out (literally) the following books from the ACA Library of SCAD or Jen Library:

• Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
Ms. Prose guides us effortlessly through the process of critical (I much prefer the term “artful”) reading and the craft of forming a finely tuned phrase.

• Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott
For those of you who attended last year’s artist book symposium, this one comes recommended by book artist and symposium speaker Julie Chen.

• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Those who are unable to indulge in a European vacation will enjoy escaping into Hemingway’s brief memoir of Paris in the 1920s. Marvel as our intrepid hero sips coffee and matches wits with Gertrude Stein, or simply enjoy the scenery.

• The Paris Review: Interviews
By reading, we can hold extended, one-sided talks with great authors who are long since gone. This particular collection of interviews allows readers to sit in on conversations with Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and many others. The gang’s all here. Get chatty with the greats!

Enjoy the break,

Jennifer, TWS ATL

As you’re probably already aware, come January, we’ll officially launch into the new decade. It’s 2010, and we’re ready for it.

Perhaps more important, it’s also a new quarter at SCAD, and it’s a great time to resolve to improve the work that we do and to put our best selves forward.

On that note, we at TWS thought it would be a good time to highlight some tech tools that may help give you a new outlook on writing (not to mention drawing, painting, studying, building, and all the other amazing things you guys do here).

Take these tech tools for a test drive. If you like them, add them to your writer’s toolbox. Even better, use them to create a writing project, then come see us in the Writers Studio.

Tech Tools for Writers, Artists and Readers

A.nnotate

If you’ve ever read a document online and wished you could mark or doodle all over it, this may be the tool for you. A.nnotate (yep, that’s the correct spelling!) is a free tool which lets you, well, annotate documents. So, mark up a draft. Write questions in the margins of a PDF. Save paper by reading and making notes online. Draw arrows and make circles. In short, do whatever it is you do when you read a paper document, but do it online. Intrigued? Here’s the link.

BrainFlips

Let’s face it, memorization isn’t most people’s favorite way to spend time. However, when given lemons, we at TWS make lemonade (or put them in our sweet tea). BrainFlips is one of many online flashcards sites, but from a design standpoint, it’s one of the strongest. The best thing about using online flashcards is you can harness the Power of the Internet to study virtually anywhere, at any time. The second best thing? You save time and paper. Not too shabby. Anyway, here’s the link.

As always, let us know what you think. It’s a new year, and we know you’re ready to knock this quarter out of the ballpark.

Jennifer, TWS ATL

People talk about writing novels all the time, but how many of us actually do it?

As it turns out, quite a few.

NaNoWriMo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month. Each year, writers all around the world keep their pens and pencils poised and ready for November, when they join a community of aspiring and practicing writers in writing their own novels.

From the NaNoWriMo website:

“Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

While “quantity over quality” isn’t the best way to approach finalized writing, it can be a very effective form of prewriting (freewriting). I’d encourage writers to take part in this activity if only to silence that internal voice we all have which nags No, that’s not good or I’m a terrible writer. By completing the writer’s equivalent of a marathon, you’ll be able to sit down in front of your finished novel and say to that internal critic Yes, I did that.