The meeting this Tuesday (6/7, tomorrow as I write) will be devoted to topics related to craft.
As you may remember, a group of us met a couple of weeks ago to begin hammering out a more focused direction for R-SPEC, and we agreed that among th epeople there, we could get most solidly behind providing support for the craft of writing speculative literature. We're still working out exactly what that means, but we agreed on several features we'd like to have in our monthly meetings: - A period of time to talk about problems and techniques. We'll alternate pre-determined topics (such as world-building, plotting, character-logic, finding time to write, etc.) with open topics; since I haven't lined up someone to take the lead on a pre-defined topic yet for this month, our first will be an open topic. I'll look forward to hearing what's troubling you in your work (or keeping you from it). - What we're reading (or, as Craig DeLancey likes to put it, "the thieving section"). A lot of us get great [ahem /] inspiration from reading interesting work that presents new ideas or presents ideas in a new way. This month, I'll talk about China Mieville's latest, *Embassytown*, which I've characterized as space opera from the viewpoint of 'Shooting an Elephant'. - A chance to talk about what we're writing, and possibly read a short bit from one person's work. I haven't nailed down a volunteer for this yet for tomorrow, but we're looking to do this every month. Anyone interested in reading a short selection should please contact me; if we have multiple volunteers, we'll pick randomly. Other features we're planning to offer in future meetings: - A chance to bring a page of your own work for critique. We're shamelessly -- er -- 'borrowing' this from RACWI's "first pages" nights (with a nod toward Nick DiChario's novel workshop methodology). We won't do this every week, just a few times a year. I'll send more details about how we hope to make this work the month before we put it on the program. - Speakers, alternating between discussions about the craft or business of speculative fiction (or fiction in general), and trends in technology, science and society, to give us new ideas for our work. For August, Natishia LaPierre has agreed to talk about her experience editing for e-book publishers. I'm working on lining up future speakers to show us more cutting-edge VR and AR, and to demonstrate some cutting-edge *machinima *(movies shot in cyberspace). -- -- eric scoles | [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
