Category Archives: Writing

Student Writing and Games

Gamasutra is asking for student writing

As part of its expanding video game student-related coverage, which will be featured on the Gamasutra education homepage, the editors of Gamasutra are looking for new features written for and about video game educators and students.

Some of the topics that we are particularly looking for in order to expand the student section of Gamasutra include:

– A ‘Day In The Life’ article, chronicling a typical day in the existence of a video game student or educator, in a similar style to recent articles in the main Gamasutra feature area. We are particularly keen to run these regularly.

– Postmortems of student games, describing the ‘What Went Right’ and ‘What Went Wrong’ of creating them.

– Soapbox-style opinion articles that are specifically related to game education or student-related concepts.

– Instructional articles on the best ways to teach game development with regard to teaching or tool approach (preferably presented as a comparative search, rather than promoting one particular institution.)

Kafka and the Critics

Many of the readers of this weblog know that I am huge fan of Franz Kafka. I’m also a huge fan of Milan Kundera partly because of the way he writes about Kafka and Musil. Thanks to Daniel Green’s link to a review of Roberto Calasso’s, I shall be purshasing K.

I’ve always avoided most writing about Kafka. I just don’t find a lot of literary criticism interesting in the first place. Because of this, I don’t know if I would make much of a graduate-level professor (but I do remember many of my own professors, themselves critics, confessing to their own disdain for overt politics and the influece of certain criticism on their personal enjoyment and excitement for whatever they read). I don’t really need anybody writing to me about what’s wrong with Kafka’s Ks, his novels, Kafka himself, Max Brod, Milton, or any other author, and I hope that Calasso’s reading doesn’t prove out as apologia.

What I like is interesting and insightful writing about writing as thought and play in whatever form. Is Kafka an excellent novelist? I have no idea. Do Kafka’s novels make me sit back and go wow? Yup. Just like Marquez. Just like Alice Munro. Wow is not a litcrit term, though.

A few Congratulations

Here’s a link to June Noble’s story recently published in Vitality Magazine. In the article she details a powerful struggle against Lupus. June is a member of the Narratives group and an all around good kid. We value her contributions and have enjoyed her in class. A snip

As if on rebound from withdrawal, I awoke one morning and noticed a large red mark on one cheek. Assuming it was from sleeping on that side, I thought no more about it, but by the time I arrived at work there was a matching redness on the other cheek. The dreaded butterfly mask of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus had suddenly appeared. The mystery of my red nose was solved and the mystery of my illness was finally becoming clear.

In addition, Patrice Hamilton’s short film The Long Weekend will be among the showings at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. TLW was hard work for lots of good people and the product is a real gem. The date is November 12th at 2PM at Village East Cinemas.

Narratives and Scope

Here’s to Susan, Jim, Joanne, James, John, Josh, Kasandra, and Jason, quickly becoming group Fellows. I thank them most heartily.

It was about air and the things we see, hear, and smell through it and because of it. The evening was complex. Facade with the screen covered made for different experience minus the elegant expressions, and the sound design of HL2 is just astounding. The details matter. How the air sounds in a hall or how a voice diminishes with distance and the sound of glass against concrete. I keep learning how hard it is to write the effect, to catch the dust and the protuberances. It’s an exciting challenge.

And here Susan Gibb examines one of the great spatial descriptions of death here.

Rich Spaces

Spinning, Susan Gibb’s, is a rich and energetic space. I particularly enjoy when she digs into the stuff on her shelf. She puts up a great quote from Garcia Marquez then goes after it.

This post here, in a different context, is serious writing. Better days, yes.

The Long Weekend

Just got back from the first public showing of The Long Weekend, a short film by our own Tunxis English professor Patrice Hamilton. It was a fantastic party, with music, food, a big crowd, and an excellent set of introductions and presentations. The more I watch the film the more I like it.

Congratulations Patrice!

Joe Writer and the Publishing Game

Josh Radke and I have been going on about issues in publishing and the markets, a topic we will be talking about at our upcoming Narrative’s meeting. The conversation has looked like this:

I agree that assigning blame doesn’t help anyone involved. I thought the problem was the Agents. Having read that thread (http://www.sfreader.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1313), it’s clear to me that the problem is largely Ingram and their almost monopoly.

..I don’t know if I can agree that people are reading more. At least in my generation (and those that are following), many of us are much more interested in the quick fix of a movie or game for their entertainment than in finding a good book. I can’t say I blame them. When that thread states that the majority of new fiction out there is saturated with politics and multiculturalism, they’re right–at least by perception. That comment I posted to your blog comes into play here on the grounds that readers under 30 are tainted by the the fiction we were force-fed in school. We think that it is a representation of what is on the bookshelves, and so many don’t even bother to try and find thee diamonds in the rough. If there were more Dan Browns and Harry Turtledoves allowed in school curriculums, schools might make some headway. And many others just simply don’t have the time in this labour-intensive, corporate society.

..More people are writing? You bet, and I suspect that this trend is probably tied to self-publishing and the internet. And the more people that write and think they can be published, the more we hear about rejection letters and scams and the impossibility of getting published. However, I don’t think the issue is Joe Writer getting rejected because there is no room at the inn. It’s that Joe Writer is getting rejected without being given a chance because he’s being compared to Dan Brown or James Lee Burke or Robert Jordan. And Joe Writer realizing after more rejections that he can’t be Joe Writer is he wants to be published and on a shelf at a major bookstore. Because apparently the only book-types that are worth promoting are the ones that are proven and politically correct. I’m sure you’ve noticed the amount of “trials of a young wizard” books that are popping up everywhere. This same trend is dominating a movie industry where there is no such this as an “original screenplay”.

Writers aren’t suposed to have the impression they have to pattern themselves after a successful authour or story. And literature isn’t something that is meant to be clones or grown in a winter greenhouse. By telling writers this is what they have to do, writing becomes a science and not an art.. and writing as a science is betrayal of the art of the worst kind.

As I see it at the moment, the solution is the continued success of small presses and their distributors. Small presses are still willing to take a gamble on new writers. Independent bookstores like to promote local authours, and consequentially, local authours find it easier to get a booksigning with an indy bookstore. Self-publishing also figures into this equation. And this kind of grassroots action is how all successful “revolutions” start.

My arguments about the state of publishing in the United States may be flawed, but I don’t really see a question of altruism or public service in publishing; nor do I see why Joe Writer would need to write derivatively in order to see himself in print. I see the main job of “publishing” concerns as that of “selling” books not “publishing” them. In the markets, print books are a commodity that must be sold not just published, since publishing doesn’t necessarily “imply” money changing hands but it does necessitate a “reader,” whereas “book stores” need to stay in business somehow. Somehow the question comes to a basic issue of fairness toward authors. But to do “houses” owe Joe Writer a hearing? My conclusion is “no.” Joe Writer,who’s a guy with an unpublished novel, needs to find some way to get his book to a reading public but if he wants to “sell” his novel he needs to play the market game. That’s my opinion.

But the original issue came from this focused question by Josh: “Are books and literary reading becoming obsolete?”

My answer is absolutely not. As far as I know, people are still interested in reading poetry, fiction, and all kinds of things from the diversity of presses out there. But another way of risking a question is to ask how reading habits are changing such that when we ask “Are people still reading” we negociate what we mean by “reading” in this sense.

A lot of what I’ve written here is off the top of my head and is in no way intended as factual or even valid as inference. But I think that a lot of this has to do with what we mean when we ask Joe Churchgoer if he’s religious and he says, “Sure am. In fact I have a devil worship meeting tonight. Would you like to join me?”