Preceding the evening’s presentation, general announcements were made as follows:
- If you haven’t already joined the association e-mail list, please do so at screenwriterssb@gmail.com
- The Connection: Creative Writing Workshops for Young Writers will be held at the Central and Goleta libraries. Please contact Janice Rorick, Program Coordinator or Marcia Meier, Creative Director for details.
- Saturday, September 18 – Patrick Horton, The Story Coach, will be conducting a seminar entitled “Giving Characters Voice” in Studio City at the cost of $15.
- Fred Klein will host Literary Gumbo, a half hour interview show about writing and publishing. Future shows will include many local writers as guests. The show can be viewed on the Internet and Cox cable Channel 17.
ng the announcements, Laure-Anne and Kurt, published authors and editors, addressed the crowd and invited attendees to weigh in on a wide variety of subjects, including why writers write, where the writing world is headed and how technology will affect that path. As writers, what is our responsibility? To bear witness. What is it that makes you a writer? What is the emotion that makes you unable to remain quiet on your subject matter? Storytelling is our way of making noise before we croak.
Every story has been told, every love poem has been written. But nobody has ever been you. That’s the ground you’re standing on. You’d better really love what you’re doing if you’re a writer. You’ll be ignored, rejected and chances are you probably won’t make a lot of money.
Fundamentally, screenwriting is telling a story through imagery. It’s about the people, texture, fabric, passion for detail, curiosity.
The world is more of a visual culture now. It’s all about sound bytes. Everything is quicker, briefer. But people still just want to be heard, as has been the case throug
hout time. There’s still a passion, fervor and an electricity in using language to communicate. The world is finding different avenues to do it with the advance of technology: rapping, tweeting, texting. No matter what direction technology takes, we will never get away from storytelling. The universe is made up of stories. Some say it is made up of atoms and molecules. But none of us have ever seen those things. We only know about them because of stories.
When movies came along, it was said that it was the end of radio; but it wasn’t. When television came along, it was said it was the end of the movies; but it wasn’t. There are some things that computers and digital books can’t give you. Don’t think that books are going to disappear. Bad books may disappear, but good books, literature, will survive, as it has over time.
In closing, the authors mentioned that they’d never heard a writer say, “If only I’d been a bookkeeper.” Something to chew on as the presentation wound down and the writers that had gathered scattered into the night…
Respectfully submitted by Danielle Greene, Association Secretary
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