D. A. Hosek

Tag: enid shomer

  • Final Residency—Days 7 & 8

    Day 7 The morning opened with Rick Chase’s seminar. He began with a bit of “buddhist” meditation. I use quotes and lowercase since I’m not entirely sure if that’s how he views it, although the mindfulness of it does seem very much in that vein. He expanded from this into some poetic writing exercises. Our…

  • Residency day 6

    Our morning seminar was Jason Ockert on writing idiosyncratic characters. How does one go about moving a reader? Balance between writing familiar and  distinctive. That which is relatable and that which is somehow unfamiliar. Who cares about idiosyncratic characters? For Ockert it’s rudimentary. He has a terrible memory: the great thing about literature is the stuff…

  • Residency day 4

    The morning seminar was John Capouya talking about ways that as writers of fiction or narrative non-fiction we can employ some of the techniques of screenwriting. There’s a lot to be said for the highly formalized structures that screenwriters apply from the “save the cat” approach to making the protagonist sympathetic to the audience to…

  • Residency day 6

    It’s beginning to feel like the time is coming to an end. We began today with Tibor Fischer who talked primarily about the pre-Richardson/Fielding novel, with some examples from The Satyricon, Callirhoe, The Unfortunate Traveller and Amadis of Gaul which is apparently a bit of a pre-occupation for him. We had workshop in the morning and then…

  • Residency day 5

    The midpoint of the residency. The morning was designated as a reading/writing period & I took advantage of that to get a fair amount of work done in the morning. The first activity of the day was “synthesis” which turned out to be a sort of free-wheeling discussion of the residency, one which I hope…