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Writing-Related Presentations & Short Workshops for College Age/
Graduate/Post-Graduate Students in Creative Writing, Journalism, &
English |
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A Freelance Life: which 60 hours of the
week do you want to work? |
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According to an Author’s Guild survey, only 6% of all American writers
make their living solely from writing. Crescent Dragonwagon is one of
this 6% --- and not at the John Grisham level, either. Personal,
anecdotal, this talk mingles autobiography with the real how-to of
living the life (and making a living living the life) of a
freelancer. How do you combine passion and professionalism? What happens
when you have “income events” rather than an income per se? Where do
self-discipline, self-motivation, and scheduling come in --- and what
about creativity? Can you really follow your bliss --- and will it make
at least an occasional stop at the bank? Is being attracted to multiple
genres (as CD herself is) helpful or a hindrance? |
| From her
childhood as the daughter of Hollywood biographer Maurice Zolotow (now
the answer to the Trivial Pursuit question “Who was Marilyn Monroe’s
first biographer?”) and Charlotte Zolotow, a writer-editor (children’s
book writer and HarperCollins children’s book publisher emeritus), to
her own first publication at sixteen, to her marriage to writer-artist
Ned Shank, Dragonwagon traces an adventurous life lived through and with
books and those who write them … to say nothing of writing for
publications ranging from Cosmopolitan to The New York Times
Book Review. Meet poets, artists, playwrights, novelists, children’s
book authors, and magazine writers and editors. Discover why Julia Child
took a writing workshop with CD, learn why CD has the unique distinction
of having fixed cornbread for both a U.S. President and titled royalty,
how she came to co-found the mid-South’s first writers’ colony, and what
it’s like to be on the Today Show. This talk, rousing, funny, and
ever-changing, will inspire, surprise, and sober anyone considering a
career in journalism or literature. |
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
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1 hour to 1½ hour
talk |
45-minuteto 1
hour talk, with 15 to 30 minutes for
Q-&-A. |
Under- and
post-graduates in journalism, creative writing, and (because of the
children’s book portion) early childhood education students.
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Unspoken Intersection: Fearless Writing’s
Greatest Hits |
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writing --- whether fiction or non-fiction, short or long, investigative
reportage or poem, for adult or child --- requires certain ingredients.
The percentages vary with the genre, but they include craft
(learned, practiced skills); “gift” (the leap --- sometimes called flow,
inspiration, or the “Aha!” moment --- which takes one from “I don’t know
how to…” to “Oh! How did this get here?”); and some understanding
of the writing process itself. Their intersection is what makes the
difference between wanting to be a writer and writing, and between
writing and writing professionally. |
| Where, then, is
this intersection, and what is it? Frequently referred to in high-falutin’
terms, its opposite enshrined in the myth of “block”, the answer is
prosaic: habit. But simple as it is, making writing habitual is
neither easy or easily understood. As sculptor Jacques Lipschutz said of
self-discipline, habit is “a net that captures the mysterious forces of
creation”. But can habit and mystery coexist, let alone collaborate?
What do writerly habits look like? How does each writer find or develop
them? Which parts of habit are universal and which are a matter of
individual preference and wiggle room? What roles do anxiety, financial
pressure, time, and looming deadlines play in all this? And why does
doing something each writer professes to want to do --- write ---
sometimes seem so difficult? |
| Students will
find answers, as well as some very interesting questions, here. In some
ways a compressed version of portions of the weeklong intensive writing
workshop Dragonwagon developed over 20 years ago, Unspoken Intersection
drew on comments from Fearless Writing students about what the sessions
taught them, and how it changed their writing (sometimes their lives).
This talk offers a little of what the Fearless experience is like, but
assumes some previous knowledge and practice of the writing craft. |
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Length
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What’s Included;
further notes |
Audience |
| 1
hour to 1½ hour talk |
Short form:
45-minutes to 1 hour talk, with 15 to 30 minutes for Q-&-A. |
Under- and
post-graduates in journalism, creative writing, and (because of the
portion involving breaking up ways of entrenched thinking and
understanding the creative process) psychology students and those in
other fine arts disciplines: art, theater, dance, etc. |
| 3 hour workshop |
Workshop: 45-minute
talk, 15 minutes for Q-&-A. Group & individual writing. Break. More
writing. Participatory, interactive. |
Same as above. |
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©Dragon,
Pen & Inc. 2000-2007 :: Last Updated:
03/05/07 ::