Freddy Words

I put this list of working definitions together for the brand spankin’ new memoir group.  I was surprised to have such a hard time tracking down explanations of these terms, so these are an amalgam of my own knowledge and what I have been able to find. Feel free to discuss these in the comments!

NON-FICTION

1. CREATIVE NON-FICTION (CNF) is non-fiction which uses the literary devices of fiction to tell a story. According to Wikipedia, CNF is “a genre of writing truth which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft.” Examples of CNF include memoir, autobiography, personal essay, travel writing, biography, and literary journalism.

The journal Creative Non-Fiction explains that the term “‘creative nonfiction’ precisely describes what the form is all about. The word ‘creative’ refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.”

Links:
- A good description of the genre of CNF
- More detail on CNF
- An interesting essay on CNF

2. A MEMOIR is a thematic slice of the writer’s life. An AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a chronological description of the writer’s entire life. Both are sub-categories of “creative non-fiction.” Again, from Wikipedia: “While an autobiography typically focuses on the ‘life and times’ of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions.”

Links:
- More information on memoir

FICTION

3. An AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL is “a novel based on the life of the author. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author does not ask the reader to expect the text to fulfill the ‘autobiographical pact.’ Names and locations are often changed and events are recreated to make them more dramatic but the story still bears a close resemblance to that of the author’s life. While the events of the author’s life are recounted, there is no pretense of exact truth. Events may be exaggerated or altered for artistic or thematic purposes.” (Source: Wikipedia.)

Examples of autobiographical novels can be found here. Autobiographical novels need not follow the form of non-fiction autobiographies; these should read as fiction novels, but be enhanced by the fact that the story is based on the author’s life (usually the protagonist is modeled on the author and the events in the book resemble ones in the author’s life).

I could not find any useful links to further explain an autobiographical novel or autobiographical fiction. This is the best link I found.

Once you have your head around those working definitions, you could move on to reading these articles (which might further confuse you and/or enhance your understanding of the terms and genres):

1. “An Interview With Creative Nonfiction Writer Phillip Lopate”

Choice quotes:

“The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind… I’m arguing more for reflective nonfiction where thinking and the play of consciousness is the main actor.”

I like his thoughts on the writing process: “It is very much like working with a lump of clay. You’re trying to form it into a statuette. Will it fall over, or will it stand? If at least you complete the process, you complete the arc, then you know that you pulled it off on the simplest technical level. Then you have to try to make it better. You go over and over, revising, and then you come to the point where you say, ‘I’m done.’”

2. “An Interview With Writer Robin Romm”

Choice quote:

“Q: Your relationships with your father and boyfriend play a central part in this memoir. How did you navigate the tricky business of writing honestly, yet remaining respectful of those relationships?
A: This was a giant task. I was angry with my mother for dying and I was angry with the people in my life who couldn’t help me. Which was everyone. How do you express this rage without compromising love? I wrote and rewrote these two men, searching for a way to make anger respectful. I guess I settled on critiquing myself rather than them. That’s how I managed the complexity.”

(Notes by Addison, just posted by me.)

There were 7 people at this meeting, including one new member.

Garter snakes give live birth- courtesy of Jeannie’s job at the natural history museum circa. ‘03

NaNo Activities
Online write-ins: every Sunday- last year’s were successful and included people from the states
Also a public write-in: every week
Opening Party: Friday October 30th
Freddy Words party and write-in: Halloween
The retreat-  First weekend Sunday, November 8th
writerly’s house- Second weekend
Closing party in December

Freddy Words and NaNo: “Pretty incestuous by now” -writerly

At the end of NaNo put your novel away for a few months and then read it straight through. After you’re done make a decision. Either a) it’s junk and you throw it out, or b) it’s half junk but worth editing and/or rewriting. Both options allow you to learn a lot through the process of just writing.

Justin- looking for credible, meaningful feedback. Writes short fiction. Justin, Jarod, and Mary are going to try to edit each others work as a group, similar to writerly and Jeannie.

http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute: unanimously considered hilarious

August retreat- approved for Saturday evening. Probably the 8th. Second choice Sunday the 9th in the day. Must pay ahead of time.

Mary- “I’m a cat”

Memoir meetings- writerly would like to do writing prompts for memoirs a few times before the workshop in September. The first meeting will be Tuesday, the 23rd of this month at Trinitea’s from 7-9 PM .

Woman’s festival: August 22nd. Planning on having a Freddy Words table. We need to brainstorm ideas and come up with a plan. Have ideas for next meeting.

The next meeting will be Saturday July 4th after a birthday party at Jeannie’s. It will be a quick meeting at writerly’s place. Afterwards will be a Settlers of Catan party.

There is interest in doing writing assignments again. Kayltyn has sent out an assignment to the newsgroup. Do for next meeting if you like.

Kaytlyn- “Mugglenet that shit”

Seven people attended our June 6 meeting, including one new member.

WRITING RETREAT (Sunday, November 8th)

The writing retreat is all set up for November. We have 11 FW members who have said they’d like to go, which should cover the cost of renting the building. We’ll ask for payment from FW members by early September so that we can cancel the retreat if it looks like the basic cost is not going to be covered.We will ask everyone else to pay by early November before the retreat. Since right now it looks like we should be able to cover our basic cost, we decided to offer a cheaper rate for post-secondary students. Any additional monies will be donated to NaNoWriMo (first to go toward the expenses of the local group, then donated to the NaNo main office).

We have people set up to organize activities, a potluck and snacks, and the carpool. The fee will be $20 per person for the day ($10 students), plus bringing one potluck contribution and one snack for the group.

NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH (November)

We brainstormed about NaNoWriMo. Members offered to poster various parts of the city and help out in other ways. Writerly is accepting donations for NaNo prizes starting now — if you have any books, notepads, pens, kitchen timers, post-it notes, or anything that would make a nice prize, contact writerly at writerwithoutborders@gmail.com to arrange to drop them off. If we get enough notebooks (we’re aiming for 20), we won’t have to buy any. We will have goodie bags this year (YAY!).

There was also a lot of goofing around, but since it was two weeks ago now, the details now escape me. Rest assured, much merriment was had.

BONUS: DIALOGUE WORKSHOP

The dialogue workshop the next day was a success. We had 9 Freddy Words members plus two new people join us. We started with a discussion in Triniteas, where Jarod offered many tips on how to write good dialogue, and then we moved to Officer’s Square. We brought a sample of our writing which we read out loud like a script, with someone reading each character, so we could see what dialogue worked and didn’t work. We all learned a lot and had a lot of fun. Thanks for leading the workshop, Jarod!

The next Freddy Words meeting is June 16th at 7 p.m.

Eleven people attended the dialogue workshop today at Trinitea’s/Officer’s Square. I think that it went very well, but one thing that I didn’t get to talk about was this list of exercises I found, mostly because I thought it would be really uncomfortable for everyone to sit in silence and listen to me read it all off word-for-word. Instead, I’ll post the link here for anyone who’s interested.

http://www.poewar.com/12-exercises-for-improving-dialogue/

Thanks for coming, everyone.

Six, or possibly seven, of us attended the May 19, 2009 meeting. Six or seven of us and a ridiculous amount of food.

We plan to continue meeting throughout the summer, since those of us at the meeting were interested in doing so, and also to have two online write-ins a month this summer.

The next Freddy Words meeting is Saturday, June 6, from 1:00-3:00 p.m.

Our dialogue workshop will be held Sunday, June 7, from 1:00-5:00 p.m. If you are attending, please bring a writing sample featuring dialogue, approximately 1 1/2 pages double-spaced, for people to read out loud. You will need to bring enough copies for everyone, so that’s probably about twelve. I am supposed to bring highlighters, so if I show up without them, you have permission to chide me.

A memoir-writing workshop is tentatively planned for Labour Day weekend.

We are considering organizing a day-long writing retreat the first weekend in November. It would be at a cottage in New Maryland, and would cost about $30 per person, plus food and snacks to share, potluck-style. (People seemed to like the potluck option better than everyone bringing their own meal.) There would be much writing, word wars, and maybe an activity or two. It would be geared toward NaNoWriMo participants, although Freddy Words members who aren’t doing NaNo but are interested in the retreat would be welcome, too. There are no firm plans yet because we don’t know if enough people will be interested.

Jarod will be responsible for adding events to the website calendar, so make sure you notify him about all Freddy Words events that are planned. Jarod suggested that one person should take care of this and then actually offered to be that person. Go, Jarod!

Other topics discussed included future social events, lesbian rat sex (note: this is not related to the future social events), Alternative Lifestyle Ken doll, 50,000 words about Addison’s neck, disturbing fanfic, the previous night’s online write-in, and the mysterious workings of BattleJesus. Oh, and Star Trek. Always Star Trek.

Furthermore, as a direct result of this meeting, we learned what happens when you leave a Ziploc bag of Gummi Bears in a car all day when it is 32°C out. They meld with the bag to form a blob of gel, is what happens.

Since notes haven’t been posted for meetings lately (what’s up with that?) I thought I’d go through my own notes and post some decisions that we made about upcoming events, etc, so that we can stay on track.

- Our Freddy Words-only dialogue workshop is Sunday, June 7 from 1-5 p.m. Email writerwithoutborders@gmail.com to RSVP. We have 5 RSVPs and 7 spots left!

- There will be a Freddy Words-only memoir workshop on labour day weekend in September. Let me know if you want to go but the weekend is bad for you.

- We’re thinking of having a travel writing workshop at some point. Let me know if you have any ideas for it, or know someone who could lead it.

- We’re changing the date of our King’s Landing trip to a Saturday in late July. Let me know if you have a preference for dates.

- Looks like I’ll be having a Canada Day party of some kind. You’re all invited!

- We also have more social events planned: a BBQ on the North Side, and a Mario Party evening. Someone also suggested karaoke at a bar, perhaps Gordie’s Pub. Those of you who are hosting/organizing - decide on dates and add them to the calendar!

- We decided that the mailing list will only be for active Freddy Words members. (Active can mean having attended one meeting, or active with us online, but that we know you and you participate in some way.)

That’s all I have in my notes. Please comment if you have action items from your own notes (or memory) that you want to add.

Ten people were in attendance for this St. Paddy’s Day meeting. We very much had a party atmosphere, with green drinks and green food (including green wine and greenish popcorn!).

We asked if everyone at the meeting was on the mailing list (our main way of communicating and planning meetings), and a few people still weren’t. They have since joined and are receiving mailings, though, so hopefully all active members are now on the mailing list!

We discussed the last editing workshop in depth. We agreed that the feedback we got from “speed editing” was very helpful. It was really interesting to get 10 different people to edit the same two pages - some feedback was contradictory and thus confusing, but most was very useful - it was clear when everyone agreed a change was needed, but also it was interesting to see when some people disliked a scene or phrase and other people loved it.

Everyone was very eager to do speed editing again, and soon, so our next meeting (April 4) will be an in-house Freddy Words-only speed editing afternoon. People were also really excited about holding more workshops in general. We brainstormed a number of topics (see below). We decided on a date for the Dialogue workshop (June 7), which will be led by Raine and a partner. There is also a live storytelling workshop being planned by Susan that will happen sometime in May.

At this point, some people had to leave, but the rest of us stayed to read a piece of our writing. Mostly people read their writing sample from the editing workshop, often with the revisions already incorporated. It was neat to see what people changed and left the same, and all the pieces were definitely strengthened by the exercise!

The next meeting is this Saturday, April 4 at 1 p.m. Please email freddywords@gmail.com to RSVP.

***
Our brainstormed ideas for future workshops:

- Action
- Horror/Suspense
- Scifi/Paranormal/Speculative Fiction
- Getting Published
- Poetry: how to write it better
- Poetry: different types
- Publishing Poetry
- Memoir/Creative Non-Fiction
- Young Adult Fiction
- Brainstorming/Developing a plot before writing
- The above topics with guest speakers
***

Meeting notes for Feb. 17

No notes were posted for our Feb. 17 meeting, so here’s a brief recap from my own notes: Ten people attended our first meeting at Triniteas for an informal poetry reading. We each stood up at our table and read a poem - either by us or someone else. It was a neat experience, and Triniteas was a great venue, so we will have to do this again at some point!

We decided to join the Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick. Ten people committed to paying $5 each to join; however one person had to back out for personal reasons, so we still need a final contribution of $5, preferably from someone who hasn’t contributed yet. Please email freddywords@gmail.com if you haven’t yet contributed so we can make arrangements. Thank you!

This meeting inspired me to start up our Freddy Words poetry group again. See the calendar for dates!

Hello. It is Friday, and by Sunday the 15th at 1pm I am supposed to have a poster ready for the editing workshop.  Susan, can you contact me about that this evening, I am sleeping until at least 6pm, but then I want to go out and grab a bristol board at the dollar store, and anything else creative I might not already have…

I need to know content/format/color preferences/style  to whip it up!

ttyl

Sass

Ha!  You are stuck with my version of the meeting notes!

There were six people in attendance and some yummy cookies and garlic fingers!

Upcoming events:

• March 15 - Editing woorkshop Doodles 1-5pm  Please try to be there 15 min early for attendance.
• March 17 - Meeting!  Read the stuff you edited.
• March 20 - Post editing party! Bring drinks and snacks! 7pm!  Contact me for location
• March 22 - Online Write In

February’s Online Write In was considered a success.   People were energized in their writting

Writerly brought in some publications of note. Nonymous is a new magazine available at Westminster Books and Renu Boutique.  They are looking for submissions.  Breadcrumb Scabs is a free online magazine.

Odd Sundays, a poetry reading series, will be meeting March 15 at Molly’s.

The “Write a really long sentence” excercise had some excellent results.

We also decided to write a collaborative novel.  Everyone will be responsible for one chapter.  Due tuesday, the character studies.

Susan

I have started my rough draft of the really long sentence, and I am having a lot of fun writing it.  I am keeping my topic a secret for now, it will be revealed at the meeting, so I hope I can make it.

Is anyone else making progress at the really long sentence?