Vauhini Vara Doesn’t Know How She Does It
TG: You wrote the stories in This is Salvaged over several years. At what point did you start to see them as a collection?
VV: I’ve written a lot of stories over the years, and not all of them made it into this collection—and, you’re right, the ones that did make it in are stories I’ve revised over a really long time, in some cases, for 10 or 15 years each. I think over time I started seeing commonalities in the subject matter of my stories: loss; yearning for connection; spirituality and religion; as in my novel, capitalism. At one point I drew a grid, with these themes along the top row and a list of several of my stories in the left-hand column, to make sense of how these themes showed up and progressed. And a sense of an arc started to emerge, a kind of subtle progression of these themes that I could draw out if I assembled the stories in a certain order. So I tried.
***
TG: I was struck by the diversity of narrative techniques in this collection. How do you decide on the combination of narrative techniques with particular characters, events, and experiences?
VV: As with the first question, this is mysterious, for me, too! Each of these options—character backgrounds, narrative perspective, tense—comes with pros and cons, for sure, but as with a piece of writing ending up as a story or a novel, it’s hard for me to pin down how exactly I decided to take a given approach. While a first-person or close third-person narration written in past tense implies that the main character has some distance on the events at hand—that is, can reflect on them, with some time having passed—a present-tense approach lacks that kind of sense of perspective. And I’m sure that’s why some of my stories involving main characters who are children, for example, are written in the present tense. But that didn’t occur to me till now.
What Are Antagonistic Proxies? And How Can They Help Your Story?
‘I learned to lower the threshold’: Karl Ove Knausgaard on his process, passions and life after My Struggle (from The Guardian)
As half the world surely knows by now, he began work on My Struggle, which was published in six volumes between 2009 and 2011, as a means of overcoming writer’s block: “When I first started writing, I was incredibly self-conscious and self-critical. I somehow published two novels, but then I had five years of not being able to write. I had a set of pages that were just beginnings, beginnings, beginnings. With My Struggle, I learned to lower the threshold; to accept whatever comes; to continue and not to throw away anything; and to do it every day.” The process, he insists, isn’t any different even now, for all that his most recent books are fiction, with multiple narrative voices: “The writing is the same; you just put yourself in a different place. There are so many things I’m interested in.”
Audible's Emerging Playwrights Fund:
In 2017, Audible launched a theater initiative, intended to radically increase access to exceptional plays and performances. A core pillar of the initiative is the Emerging Playwrights Fund, a program that invests in and nurtures self-identifying emerging playwrights, some of our most inventive, delightful, and provocative storytellers. Through the Fund, Audible aims to connect extraordinary performers with remarkable original work, amplifying new voices and harnessing the power and potential of audio to reach millions of listeners.
The Fund specifically supports the creation of original dramatic work, written with audio in mind, but theatrical in spirit.
Audible is dedicated to commissioning, developing, and producing work that reflects the diversity of our members and our world. To accomplish this, Audible is committed to granting at least 50% of emerging playwright commissions to artists of color and women
***
Eligibility
Any applicant over the age of 18 may submit a Script. Employees or independent contractors, or immediate family members (spouses, domestic partners, parents, grandparents, siblings, children, and grandchildren) or those living in the same household of employees or independent contractors of Audible Inc., Amazon or any entity involved in any aspect of the Theater Fund may not submit a Script for consideration, unless it is determined by Audible in its sole discretion in accordance with Audible’s then current policies and procedures that no conflict of interest exists in connection with accepting the relevant submission for consideration.
Timeline
Submissions are accepted year-round. Due to the number of Scripts that Audible receives, Audible will only consider one Script at a time from each applicant and will not consider resubmissions, including those that have been significantly revised. The Audible team evaluates submissions on a rolling basis, and applicants will be notified regarding the status of their submissions via email. Thanks in advance for your patience while we process your Script; our typical response time is 6-8 months.
I have been listening to old radio shows for most of my life, off and on, so the idea of a radio play interests me. That George Orwell wrote two (well, that's my recollection of how many I read while in prison), makes the idea even more interesting For me, something to do in the future, but what about you?
American Literary Review Awards
Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in the Spring online issue of the American Literary Review will be given for a poem, a short story, and an essay.
Whether you’re a big-name writer, rising star, or undiscovered gem, we’re interested in incredible stories. We’re accepting submissions from diverse voices for existing unpublished stories to be adapted and published in our format.
How to Write an Effective Book Proposal | Live Write Thrive
Short Stories As The Basis To An Award-Winning Author Career With Alan Baxter
The Seven Most Common Manuscript Submission Mistakes
sch 10/1
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment