The Vagabond Trust
Writers At Home In Migration

This is part two of an ongoing series of articles to help you start writing. This series will appear every Thursday.

Write about monks!

Last week we ended with you writing down an idea. This week, you’re going to start expanding on it.

There’s an old adage that you’ve probably heard before. Write what you know. Try not to take that too literally. You probably don’t want to set your story where you work, with all of your coworkers as your characters. Well, you might want to, but it’s probably not a good idea, because you’re bound to offend someone, and that’s just going to make your life more difficult.

There’s a lot of things that you know that you can write about. You know how people talk and interact with each other. You know that behave differently depending on who else is around, or where they are. You know that different people respond to challenges in different ways. You know what it’s like to experience a wide range of emotions, and why you’ve experienced them. This the stuff that you know that you want to use.

Let’s pull out your idea from last week. Maybe you’ve got an idea for a scene, or a couple of characters that you want to write about. Maybe you’ve got a setting that you’d like to write about, but no idea what the story is yet. What you need to do is to start developing the context for your story.

You need to figure out who your characters are, what’s going to happen to them, and how they are going to react to what’s happening. You don’t need to have all of the answers right away. Part of the fun of writing is that you get to figure some stuff out as you’re writing.

So there are two things that you can do with your idea at this point, now that you’ve started to ask yourself some questions about what’s going on. You can make an outline of what has to happen. Or, if you’re like me and don’t like to outline, you can just start writing. Pick a scene that you want to write, and start working out some details on the page. Introduce some characters and have them interact with each other.

Next week we’re going to talk about writing descriptions, and the ever important show don’t tell rule. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free post a comment on this site, or email me at mromard@gmail.com.

This is part one of an ongoing series of articles to help you start writing. This series should appear every Thursday.

This could be you!

If you’re not already writing, this can be a pretty intimidating idea.

Fortunately, it’s also a pretty simple idea. If you want to write, you need to write. It’s so basic that you wouldn’t think there is a need to say it, but many would-be writers need to be reminded of this. It’s very easy to get caught up in daydreaming about being a wildly successful, rich and famous author, or to talk yourself into believing that you don’t have time to write, or that you don’t have anything to write about. Or maybe you think that you don’t have the tools, the talent, or the training necessary to be a writer.

You’re wrong.
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Copies of the Mind Bloating anniversary revival are now available for FREE pickup at Backstreet Records and Westminster Books. Well, they have been for two weeks now, I just forgot to post a notice.

The zine is open for submissions on an ongoing basis. Issue #2 is only a few pages short of being filled, and will be on the way around the first of August.

Dreams of the special edition, VTZ (Vagabond Trust Zine) are still alive. If the other Vagabonds wish to see it happen by submitting to…

corenski@hotmail.com

Peace out y’all
- The Boxcor Breezer

Howdy NET!
The folks over on feathertale.com (the humour lit. site) have posted my poem If You Turned Into an Alien, How Would I know if You Still Love Me? this past Monday. Please check it out!

just had a milkshake
not one boy came to the yard
I must be aging

Hey there, you,

Since there’s been no action on the site this June, and perhaps because some of you may be struggling to kickstart some new material,  I thought I’d link you to a decent prompt site at Writers’ Digest.

Happy generatin’

Howdy NET,

The Vagabond Trust will participate in Poetpalooza, a fundraiser awesome poet Kathy Mac is organizing for the League of Canadian Poets.

It will be on Thursday May 13th in the study hall of Marion McCain Hall on Campus, starting at 8:00 pm. There’ll be a 5 piece jazz band, and sets by the Stand and Deliver Poetry Workshop, the WolfTree Writers, Squirrel
Talk, and The Trust
 
There is no cost, but as it is a fundraiser for a super-wealthy national poets organization, you might want to bring a couple bucks to throw in the guitar case.

For more info, click.

In June of 2000, I released issue #1 of a zine titled, “Mind Bloating (and everything along with it)”. It was an anthology zine, of young writers which ran till 2004, and published a total of 22 issues. This June, it is my intention to produce a ten year anniversary issue, Mind Bloating 2 (and everything ELSE along with it).

Keeping it simple. Classic cut and paste all the way, and a cover price of FREE. I have long lamented/mourned that zines were a dead art due to the rise of the internet. This is something I wish to curb, because despite all the ezines on the web, for me at least, nothing is the same as holding actual paper, assembled by caring, creative hands.

Will it be successful? Don’t know, don’t care. Even with a cover price of free, will anyone pick up a copy? Maybe not! The important thing is, I want to try, and am looking forward to the art project which zining is!

So, to my fellow Trust members, or anyone else who might read this, I am looking for submissions. Poetry, or a short story, or creative rant, a limit of 500 words, possibly 600. If possible, please try to lightly edit your own work. I will read everything myself, and consult the writer if there is an error. Deadline is June 1st-ish, but the sooner the better.

My thanks in advance to anyone who submits! Please forward submissions and any questions to; corenski@hotmail.com

Hey there,

A couple of young upstarts named Laura and Margot at St. Thomas have started a literary magazine called “stuart.” I am honored to be in the inaugural issue of this STU version of QWERTY with my long travel poem “Everything Is Coming Up Rose Blanche.”

The book launch is on Sunday, April 25, at 8 pm at the Garrison Ale House in Fred.

See you there, JT

English grammar and spelling are funny to me, because there isn’t just one set of rules that you’re supposed to follow, but rather a few suggested usages. Some people get really anal about how the English language is used. Sometimes I’m one of those people, but usually only with native speakers who don’t understand how they’re misusing the language. So I get bothered by people who have been speaking English for most of their lives but can’t differentiate between their, there and they’re, or who spell a lot as alot.

Now, before anyone calls me out for doing so in the title of this blog post, I’d like to note that it was intentional there. I want to share “The Alot is Better Than You at Everything” from the Hyperbole and a Half blog. This is a blog post in which the author is talking about having invented a creature called an alot to imagine every time someone types that word instead of a lot. It’s a coping mechanism for the author.

It’s worth noting that while I think this sort of thing is cute, and I have a similar grievance, I’m not so anal about English usage that I can’t accept changes to the language. It doesn’t bother me at all that people use u in place of you in text messages or on twitter. Likewise, it doesn’t bother me that gamers talk about pwning n00bs. I like that English is so adaptable and that it can evolve. I like that there are English language usages that I don’t always get right away, like Cockney rhyming slang. I’m pedantic, though, and I really prefer it when deviations from accepted usages are informed.