Wednesday, July 30, 2008

THE ORSON SCOTT CARD WRITERS' BOOT CAMP: DAY THREE


I got up at 8:00 and by 9:00 I was rehashing my outline and going over my research material one more time. I started on my story at 9:30. I was aiming for the 5:00 deadline, but wasn’t sure if I could pull it off in time. My story was growing the more I messed with it.

It was slow-going at first, but all the prep-work paid off. I felt like I knew the characters pretty well and I had some goodies from my research to mix in. After about fifteen minutes trudging into the first page, it took off.

I wrote non-stop (literally non-stop) from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It wasn’t until about 4:00 I realized that lunch had gone by. It was intense and it was fun. I went to the business room, printed it off. It was 36 pages long, double-spaced, just short of 8,000 words. I enjoyed writing it and it might very well get blasted tomorrow like my other stuff, but I still enjoyed doing it. I don’t think I’ve worked that long of a stretch ever before in my life—not even during crunch time for the Hyland plays. I’m not saying my story is good. I’m just saying it was fun to write.

I picked up copies of the two stories already turned in to read ahead for the discussions beginning the next day.

By the way, my story is called “Myriads,” and it’s about a guy named Harris who travels to South America to look up an old friend and gets caught up in the investigation of an infection that has affected a nearby village.

I’m going to stop writing now.

3 comments:

Brent said...

This boot camp sounds great, Bret. I'm sure that you want it to go on forever. It has to be fun to be able to let your creativity pour out with no interruptions or distractions (other than earthquakes).

It sounds like he is a good teacher, too: affirming, but honest. Criticism on creative works is easier to take when it is actually constructive. I had to go through a lot of that in my design classes at OC. At first I was probably a little too sensitive, but then I got to where I only saw the benefits. That's when I actually began to enjoy it because my pieces always improved after being dissected.

Do you feel like sharing some of what he commented on in regard to Imp?

I'm curious to hear about how the World Premiere of Myriads went...

Mark Phillips said...

Yeah, I'm with Brent. Not only am I curious how the premiere went, but I want to read it too!

drummerboy said...

I'm excited about all the stuff I heard through Julie at Kamp, as well as what I'm reading here. (I kind of 'subbed' as Julie's brother at Kamp). Looking forward to your return so I can hear more and we can plan our Elitch's date.