Got Flare? Got fashion tales?

Flare magazine is celebrating 30 years – no mean feat of survival in today’s magazine publishing climate… and as part of their celebration, Flare is opening up the pages of the fashion bible to aspiring writers and fledgling journalists. 600 words on the most inspiring fashion moment of the past 30 years. Due May 10.

Flare suggests:  ”Perhaps it was Karl Lagerfeld and the house of Chanel, or Betsey Johnson’s runway cartwheels. Or did Molly Ringwald’s prom dress from Pretty In Pink give you pause, or possibly Vivienne Westwood’s wedding dress for SJP (that is, Carrie Bradshaw). It may have been the inspiration of Lady Diana or the new elegance of Michelle Obama.”

??

 

I’m dead curious to know what Whistler’s fashion high-points and trend-setting moments would be… I suspect Leslie Anthony sporting Rob Boyd as a tattoo might come close?

Loading the Last Chair – Chairlift Revue Winds Down the 14th TELUS World Ski & Snowboard Fest

The best thing about seasonal life is it makes you conscious of endings and beginnings, and there’s nothing like the thought “there’s only 2 weeks left” to revive a sagging momentum.

The worst thing about seasonal life is that sometimes the endings are just a long drawn-out anti-climatic whimper. The 10 day TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival works some audacious magic to ensure the end of winter happens with a bang… but 10 days of non-stop partying, skiing/riding, late nights and cultural overdoses can leave one mewling for mercy like a lost kitten.

The last hurrah for the Fest, strangely enough, is its most high-brow moment… though there’s nothing snooty about the Chairlift Revue. After all, chairlifts are the great equalisers. Billionaires join ripping 4 year olds join big-hearted bums… for 20 minutes of bonding.  That’s the premise GD Maxwell has exploited with his theatre project – galvanising a host of local scribblers to put pen to paper and whip up an airy scene or two.

Sunday’s show was a full house – launching the Chairlift Review into the realm occupied by other cultural juggernauts, the Olympus Pro Photographer Showdown and the 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown, both of which sold out 2 weeks in advance.

Congrats to Max, Heather Paul and her players, and those writers who embraced their inner puppet-master and discovered the joys of watching their words come to life in other people’s hands.

Boot-Camp Exercise 15 – sniffing out spring

Pull out your page from last week’s boot-camp. 

Once writing has had time to sit, it gets easier to see what’s stinky and rotten, what’s strong, what’s true and vulnerable…  It’s less close to you. It’s easier to work on.

Pull out your prose, and eliminate the purple bits. Edit out the modifiers. Modifiers are words that limit verbs and nouns… typically adverbs and adjectives.

And put back the ones you can’t live without.

Rewrite. Cull. Excise repetitive prose. Expand ideas that resonate somewhere in your gut.

McSweeney’s contributor Wells Tower on fiction versus non-fiction

I read the perfect explanation McSweeney’s for why I hide out writing non-fiction instead of finishing those abandoned short-stories that litter my notebook.

Cos’ fiction is harder.

In Issue 30 of McSweeney’s the “forge-ahead/throwback issue”, writer Wells Tower produces a story, Retreat, which is a reworking of a story of his, entitled Retreat, that McSweeney’s had published in issue 23.

Huh?

They let Tower explain it himself, in the frontspiece notes.

“One thing that was screwing me up was all the long-form nonfiction work I’d been doing. Nonfiction – even literary nonfiction – calls for tools and processes that are pretty much useless when it comes to making short stories. in metalworking, they have this term, “cold connection”, which is when you take two pieces of metal and a rivet. A few smart bashes, and you’ve got a bracelet with lots of nice bangles on it, and you’ve spared yourself the hot, tedious business of soldering and sweating joints. In a pinch, nonfiction can squeak by on cold connections. You go out and witness things, and if you’ve got at least a few compelling scenes, you can fuse them together with the cold rivets of journalistic writing – the transition, the fraudulent hardware of arc and angle.  Nine times out of ten, the reader won’t feel gypped, never mind that there’s no real heart thumping in the thorax of your tin man.

Fiction can’t be approached in such calculated fashion; at least I can’t approach it that way and feel good about myself in the morning. But I’d been given a firm deadline for the story, so I started cold-connecting a bunch of spare parts I had laying around.”

Wells confesses his sins. 

“One question a smart teacher of mine liked to ask in fiction workshops is, ‘Was this written in good faith?’ I took this to mean: did the writer make himself as vulnerable to the story’s possibilities as he wishes his readers to be? Or more simply put: does the writer believe in what he wrote?”

So he sought atonement. And rewrote the story.

Boot-camp exercise 14 – sniffing out spring

To write well and deeply, we must be engaged… we must fully inhabit the particular corner of the world we are in.  Spring continues to summons us outside, as snow melts, trails and 6 months worth of dogshit and last year’s construction debris are revealed…

Boot-Camp exercise 14 is a call to experience place. Go somewhere. Settle in. Slow the breath. Start to pay attention. Experience the location.

Write down everything you notice.

Keep breathing.

Write the things you didn’t notice in the first place.

Check back – sight? sound? smell? touch? taste? Got them all covered? Fill in your blanks… (We all rely on our stronger senses, and let the scrawny ones atrophy.)

Out of your notes, create a paragraph or page of description.

Feeding the Seed course sprouts into Season 2 – Growing a Story

Having fed the seed of budding creative writers, the Vicious Circle (Whistler’s Writers Group) is now offering the blue square version of creative writing seminars, picking up where the first course left off. New attendees are also welcome. The course will run for six weeks beginning Thursday May 7, at the Whistler Public Library, and the cost will be $120.

The Blue Square program aims to open up new and challenging terrain for writers, teaching participants to recognise the germ of a good story and how to make it bloom.

Weekly lectures will cover topics including What is Story, and How is it Different from an Anecdote?; Building Blocks of Fiction: including Exposition, Narrative Summary, Scene (Dialogue and Action); Creating Characters; Advancing Plot; Deciding on Point of View and Tense; The Writer’s Voice; and Where and How to Publish your Story.

In-class exercises and feedback and revision will draw on the lecture topics over 6 weeks to develop one story, that, ultimately, will be ready to launch into the world. The final session, Wood Barrett will cover writing markets and where to publish the stories.

Wood Barrett is an honours graduate in Film Studies from Ryerson, and recently undertook her Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing at UBC. She is a published short story writer, an award-winning filmmaker, a television producer with Resort TV and winner of the 2008 Postcard Jam, or as she modestly says, “a bit of a genre-crosser.” She’s also delivered several workshops at previous Whistler Writers Festivals, including How to Pitch, and How to Write for Film.

To sign up for the course, which is offered for $120, go to www.theviciouscircle.ca.

Leading magazine editors to field story pitches at Whistler Writers Fest 2009

New for 2009, the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival presents The Pitching Mound. 

Ten budding magazine writers will get an exclusive audience with 5 Canadian magazine editors. Step up to the plate with this one-shot to go all-star and sell your best story ideas to explore, Color, Skier, BC Business and Western Living magazine, as James Little, Sandro Grison, Leslie Anthony, Matt O’Grady and Charlene Rooke slip on the catcher’s mitt and field the best pitches you can make. 

Watch and learn, or participate and potentially close the deal.

The Pitcher’s Mound is just one of 20 amazing sessions being programmed for the September 11-13 2009 Whistler Readers & Writers Festival. Watch this space for more news and announcements.

Boot-Camp Exercise 13 – go and write outside.

Walt Whitman wrote: Now I see the secret of making the best persons, it is to grow in the open air, and eat and sleep with the earth.

My dental hygienist and I were talking about the impact of stress on the human body – a suspicion of teeth-grinding started the conversation. 68 pairs of muscles above and below the mandible, capable of exerting thousands of poounds of pressure. We are incredible machines, and delicate organisms. Brown thumbs know that “stress” can kill a plant… and yet, our culture wears being stressed as a badge of honour.

Spring is the call to get outside, and reconnect with our vital energies, get the sap running. Grow in the open air, eat and sleep with the earth.

Boot-camp exercise 13 is less about substance and more about space. This week, take your notebook outside somewhere. Breathe in the spring air. And write for as long as you can. 3 pages minimum. Move the hand, move the breath.

Laisha Rosnau launches new book

A long-time friend of the Whistler Writers Festival, Laisha Rosnau (The Sudden Weight of Snow) is celebrating the launch of her new book of poetry, Lousy Explorers,  in Vancouver, at Heritage Hall (3102 Main Street) on Tuesday May 5 at 7:30pm.

Laisha is currently working on her third novel, having abandoned the second, and living in Prince George with her family. Rob Mclennan asks her 12 or 20 questions, and learns how much pureed fruit she wears on her pants, and that she eavesdrops on people for creative inspiration.

Laisha was a guest instructor at the Whistler Writers Festival in 2004 and 2006.

Doors open at 7:00pm. Refreshments will be served. Admission is free.