What makes life worth living?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi examines what makes life worth living, and speaks of his journey in this great TED presentation.

It’s all about finding a practice, to allow you to achieve flow state. Writing works.

Boot-Camp Ex 19 – Why We Need Things.

The psychologist and philosopher who coined the concept of “flow state”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, wrote an article about the human love of stuff.

“It goes without saying that one consequence of our evolution as cultural beings has been an increasing dependence on objects for survival and comfort. Compared wtih the hunter-gatherers, described by Marshall Sahlins, who were horrified by the idea of having to accept gifts because it meant having to carry one more blanket or kettle along on their nomadic journeys, we are slowly being buried under towering mounds of artifacts. Recently, it has been calculated that every American will own more than four hundred electronic appliances during his or her lifetime. (Massimini, 1989)

This proliferation of artifacts would not be a problem were it not for the fact that objects compete with humans for scarce resources in the same ecosystem. Forests are being destroyed to provide lumber, wood and pulp; metal and oil are consumed to build and propel vehicles. The potential energy contained in our environment is dissipated as we convert it into objects, which rapidly become obsolete; thus we accelerate the processes of entropy that degrade the planet.”

In short, we are defined by our shit. 

All that we own, owns us, in some form. All the treasures our characters surround themselves with, covet, seek out, reveals what they value, what they seek, the way they want to be perceived…

For boot-camp creative writing exercise 19, tell us about the stuff that reveals and defines a character – the item that they double back into the house to grab after the evacuation order is issued… the totem they tuck under their daughter’s pillow to ward off the monsters that wake her each night… the secrets tucked into a shoebox in the top of the wardrobe that even their husband doesn’t know of…  The thing that reveals them…

i am the walrus. i want your paragraphs.

Check out The Walrus’ Summer Fiction issue, featuring stories by (Whistler Writers Festival guests)  Joseph Boyden, Lee Henderson, as well as Rivka Galchen and Stephen Marche.  (Marche’s science fiction piece, The Crow Procedure, is spectacular, spooky, sublime.)

The celebration of ‘genre’ fiction run the gamut of fiction, western, romance and sci-fi, but neglected horror. To make amends, The Walrus online offers improvised and hand-written horror stories from three of the authors.

Be inspired. Sign on for the Walrus’ Guilty Pleasures Writing Contest.

Win a prize package from Fairmont Hotels & Resorts or the Walrus, and have your work published at walrusmagazine.com.

To enter, write the first paragraph of a novel in one of the following genres:

Science Fiction, Romance, Western, Ghost Story/Gothic.

Your challenge: to make that paragraph the most gripping, titillating, and action-packed read of the summer.

Send your submission to guiltypleasures@walrusmagazine.com by July 31.

Go Deep with the 3rd Whistler Writer-in-Residence

David Lynch might have located all manner of spookiness in the woods…   But for Thoreau, that’s where you go if you want to live deliberately. 

This fall, if you want to write deliberately, and take your work to another level, the woods of Whistler is your ground-zero. Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds will hunker down in Alta Lake Station House in Whistler this September, as the 3rd and 4th writers-in-residence to be hosted by the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. 

With 25 books between them, ranging from creative non-fiction to short stories to novels, the couple bring a wealth of writing know-how to Whistler  to the benefit of 20 writers who will have the opportunity to work with one of them over the month of September.

Writers interested in taking part in the residency program need to register online at www.theviciouscircle.ca.  A short synopsis of the work to be developed during the residency, plus a manuscript of no more than 20 double spaced pages, is due August 10, to enable Grady or Simonds to review the work in advance of the workshops. 

Residency participants will receive four one-on-one sessions with Grady or Simonds throughout September to develop their manuscript, and will also be able to attend several group lectures on various aspects of the craft of writing. With only 20 spots available, and the residency costing just $250, places are expected to fill quickly.

Whistler Writers Fest is on facebook

Put a face to the 2009 Festival… We’re on facebook.

It’s true that now the CIA can track all our activities… but so can our friends. Check out breaking news and who’s gonna be there Sept 11-13 2009.

Boot-Camp Exercise 18 – Rediscover the Fable

Remember the fable? It starred several critters and finished with a message that didn’t seem like brainwashing at the time, but somehow, we’re still programmed to believe that slow and steady wins the race.

McSweeney’s has spent the past decade breathing new life into the oldest form of storytelling. Last year, issue 28 was dedicated entirely to the fable.

Let’s revive it. Boot-Camp Ex 18 invites you to get fabulous with the fabula… Your main character is an animal. What happens next?

Oodles of opportunities for writers

Making headlines in the Pique this week: writing contests, writing residencies, writing retreats. What are you waiting for?  Didn’t Chekhov teach you anything?

Books We Love – Francine Prose on Reading Like a Writer

There is a connection between writing and reading… didja realise? It’s why the Whistler Writers Festival morphed into the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, even though it’s program remains anchored heavily on craft-development and writing workshops. It’s probably why other Festivals, including the Sunshine Coast of Written Arts and the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival are pitched more towards readers, of whom there are more, than writers…

The correlation is strong and invigorated in Francine Prose’s 2006 book, Reading Like A Writer, which we happily found in the stacks of the Squamish Library.

Most writers, she says, learn to write by reading. They learn to love books, by reading. They are seduced by the shimmer and power of stories, by reading. 

Did they learn to write from writer’s workshops and MFA programs, she asks, a longtime writing instructor herself…

Which brings us back to the quote that launched this website, one year ago, from John Gardner, a curmudgeonly writer and teacher, who wrote that the first value of a writer’s workshop is that it makes the  writer feel not only abnormal, but virtuous. “In a writers’ community, nearly all the talk is about writing. Even if you don’t agree with most of what is said, you come to take for granted that no other talk is quite so important… Talk about writing is exciting. It fills you with nervous energy, makes you want to leave the party and go home and write. And it’s the sheer act of writing, more than anything else, that makes a writer.”  

And perhaps, it’s the art of reading, that teaches one much of what one needs to know about how to do it right.

What the hell are we doing with our time?

“By the time (Anton) Chekhov died of tuberculosis at the age of 44, he had written, in addition to his plays, approximately six hundred short stories. He was also a medical doctor. He supervised the construction of clinics and schools, he was active in the Moscow Art Theatre, he married the famous actress Olga Knipper, he visited the infamous prison on Sakhalin Island and wrote a book about that. Once, when someone asked him his method of composition, Chekhov picked up an ashtray.
‘This is my method of composition,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I will write a story called “The Ashtray.”‘”
(from Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer)

2009 Whistler Readers and Writers Festival line-up announced

What’s new for the 2009 Whistler Writers Festival?

1. We’re eight years old.

2. It’s gonna be the biggest gathering of word-nerds Whistler has ever seen.

3. We’re moving to Creekside!

4. The Writer in Residence programming is DOUBLING, with guest writers Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds bunking down on the lake.

5. Hot off the press books include Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean, Claire Mulligan’s The Reckoning of Boston Jim, Lee Henderson’s The Man Game, and Whistler’s own Sara Leach with Jake Reynolds: Chicken or Eagle?

6. We’re getting violent. Well, not really. But if the pen is mightier than the sword, then a gathering of word-nerds is actually more warrior-like than one might think. And we’ll be slinging sentences, ink and poetry like it’s going out of style at the first ever Haiku Idol.

7. It’s batter up with the Pitching Mound.  Magazine writers get their moment in the sun, when 5 of Canada’s leading magazine editors,  James Little from Explore magazine, Leslie Anthony from Skier magazine, Sandro Grison from Color magazine, Matt O’Grady from BC Business magazine and Charlene Rooke from Western Living magazine, field pitches from aspiring contributors.

8. Free steak knives for everyone who signs on by June 1.

(Apologies to those who missed the free steak knives. But as a a special offer, we can entice you with FREE PARKING, a rare and precious thing in the pre-Olympic Whistler.)

All this and more! Check out the full program at www.theviciouscircle.ca

If God was on Twitter

OMG, have I read anything funnier this year? From Jamie Quatro at McSweeney’s, comes:

GOD TEXTS THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

BY JAMIE QUATRO

- – - -

1. no1 b4 me. srsly. 

2. dnt wrshp pix/idols

3. no omg’s

4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r) 

5. pos ok – ur m&d r cool

6. dnt kill ppl 

7. :-X only w/ m8

8. dnt steal

9. dnt lie re: bf

10. dnt ogle ur bf’s m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.
M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl. 

ttyl, JHWH. 

ps. wwjd?

- – - -

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/6/3quatro.html

Everything is political. Even food. Especially food.

In Azar Nafisi’s book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, she writes, “Everything is political.” Even sex, she argued. Who’s on top. Who’s on bottom.

Michael Pollan argues that food is political. In fact, it is primarily a political phenomenon. He told The Tyee that “It is the first time you can control what you take into your body, and the first time you can say no to your parents and assert your identity. So I think food and politics are very intertwined.”

What you choose to eat (and therefore, become), and what industries and business models you are thereby supporting, is also a huge political statement.

Action or inertia. It’s right there, on your dinner plate, and on your bedside table. Michael Pollan makes for good reading. Substantial. Worth checking out. Like all those lucky folk who saw him speak last weekend as the UBC Save the Farm fundraiser.

Pot Luck and Pajama Marketing Session, Monday June 15

Pajamas? Pyjamas? If you look to the stairwell, you will find bananas in them… Be they your preferred lounging attire, sleeping attire, or writing attire, PJs (from the Persian: “leg garment”) have inspired a DIY form of marketing that any aspiring writer should become  familiar with.

All the more reason to come out to the Vicious Circle’s Summer Potluck on Monday.  Meet other local writers, discover who makes the best spinach and artichoke dip. and enjoy a free session on pajama marketing, presented by Helen Gallagher.

Keeping a book alive today is the author’s responsibility, as the publishing industry promotes only their top authors. This session, based on Helen’s book: Release Your Writing: Book Publishing Your Way, includes dozens of practical strategies to give your book international exposure, most of which exist in the online world. (Thus, they are free or inexpensive, and things you can do in your p.j.’s at home.) 

This marketing topic includes “Making Sense of Social Networking,” helping
writers determine where to focus their attention. 

Dress code is casual. (Wear whatever “leg attire” you like.)  9327 Emerald Drive (second entrance to Emerald).

Pique tickles funny bones with Summer Writing Comp

Enough with the 4000 acre fires and the Lost Lake drownings… the Pique offers up a little bit of medicine, of which laughter is meant to be the best.  

Pique Newsmagazine is hosting the Summer of Funny, a humour-writing competition, with $400 in cash up for grabs for the top entries.

Send your stories, poems, scripts, long-format jokes or other humourous pieces to Pique Newsmagazine at andrew@piquenewsmagazine.com by Thursday, July 23.

Enter as many times as you like. Maximum length of 2,000 words per entry. Pique editorial staff will judge the entries and award prizes subjectively, with the maximum of $250 going to a single outstanding submission. The winning stories will be printed in the July 30th issue of Pique.

Let’s see how much wit is at large in Whistler…

Boot-Camp Exercise 17 – ‘Fessing up to our obsessions.

I asked Whistler writer, Rebecca Wood Barrett, how she knows if something has got the legs to make it all the way to a novel.

She said, “I think if an idea haunts you for a long time, it’s something worth exploring. Someone once said we don’t have to worry about finding our obsessions – they will find us! But recognising that “big idea” has a lot to do with faith, too.”

I’ve heard it said that you can analyse some writer’s works and see a recurring theme, an idea they keep revisiting and exploring, something that wouldn’t let them go… Stephen Spielberg, for instance, and the idea of the lost boy. Discovering your obsessions can lead to greatness.

How do you know what you’re obsessed with, though? What you keep circling back to?

For boot-camp exercise 17, take to the page with this task in mind. Write about something you didn’t like as a child… but that you do like now.

SFU offers one-day course on how to be in the business of being a writer

Writing alone isn’t enough to make you a writer.

A professional writer manages to stand at the intersection of culture, delivering the work to an audience. And that is a business.

On Saturday June 27, from 9:30 to 5pm, SFU The Writer’s Studio presents a day full of professional development workshops for writers, Going Public: Managing and Promoting your Writing Life.

For $150, participants can choose up to six workshops from a selection of 10 different topics on Taking Care of Yourself as a Writer, Copyright and Libel Law, Grant-Writing, Setting up a Website, Technologies for Self-Promotion, Applying to Writing Programs, Self-Publishing, Tips from Editors, how to shape and revise a manuscript, and how to pitch your project ideas.