News & Changes in 2018 for Prose Writers

Dear Prose Writers
Firstly, Happy New Year! and I hope you have managed to do some writing over the holidays. In 2018 there will be some changes to the Prose class at the Fremantle Arts Centre. As you are aware usually the classes run all year each Friday fortnight, however this year there will be 3 terms - breaking at the start of each school holidays (April, July, Sep/Oct) This is due mainly to the FAC not providing a room and also as your tutor I will be travelling during these two periods, so far April & July school holidays.
I am only covering the first half of the year at the moment, so the following changes are up to Friday 29th June, 2018 (end of school term).  Critique group - please read below re our monthly get-together.

Prose Classes
Friday 9th & 23rd February with Helen Hagemann
Friday 9th & 23rd March with Helen Hagemann
Friday 6th April with Helen Hagemann - end of term

--------------------- o ------------------- School Holiday Break

Friday 4th May with Mags Webster TBC
Friday 18th May with Helen Hagemann

Friday 1st June with Helen Hagemann
     "     15th June with Helen Hagemann
     "     29th June with Helen Hagemann  - end of term

-------------------- o ------------------ -- School Holiday Break


Critique Group - to meet once a month.
Friday 9th February, 9th March, 6th April & 1st June with Helen Hagemann
Please Note: Critiquers are free to meet on Friday 4th May at the FAC and also during the school holidays at the Hubbles Cafe, which should be booked with the owner. 
Cheers, Helen Hagemann

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Readings of Your Work: Final for 2017!

Final Prose Class for the Year with Helen Hagemann on Friday, 1st December @ 1pm. We will have two hours of  "READINGS OF YOUR WORK" with a coffee break in between. Please bring along your favourite piece to read for approximately 5 - 8 minutes. This is very good practice, as well as having others hear your work! Any member who has prose poetry, vignettes, flash fiction, script, memoir, children's story, a novel on the go, or some non-fiction are very welcome to join us. The cost for this "readings" session is $10 - to cover the cost of room rental. I hope you can join us!

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Shifts in POV: J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy"

Workshop: Shifts in POV with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 17th November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy". Writing exercises will look at shifts in POV from chapter to chapter and within a single chapter.  For those writing short stories this will also be a challenge.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

 


On The Casual Vacancy

For two years, the working title of the novel was Responsible, until Rowling picked up Charles Arnold-Baker's work on local government, Local Council Administration, whilst looking something up and came across the term "casual vacancy." The New Yorker questioned Rowling's original choice of title, and she remarked "This is a book about responsibility. In the minor sense—how responsible we are for our own personal happiness, and where we find ourselves in life—but in the macro sense also, of course: how responsible we are for the poor, the disadvantaged, other people’s misery."

One of the novel's major themes is politics. The Guardian referred to The Casual Vacancy as a "parable of national politics", with Rowling saying, "I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society. We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?" Rowling was also critical of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition that had led since the general election in 2010 saying, "There has been a horribly familiar change of atmosphere [since the 2010 election], it feels to me a lot like it did in the early 90s, where there's been a bit of redistribution of benefits and suddenly lone-parent families are that little bit worse off. But it's not a 'little bit' when you're in that situation. Even a tenner a week can make such a vast, vast difference. So, yeah, it does feel familiar. Though I started writing this five years ago when we didn't have a coalition government, so it's become maybe more relevant as I've written." Rowling went on to say that Britain held a "phenomenally snobby society", and described the middle class as "pretentious" and "funny". 
^{Reference - Wikipedia}

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The Bechdel Test: Friday, 3rd November with Helen Hagemann

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Workshop: The Bechdel Test with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 3rd November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Virginia Woolf's short story "The Widow and the Parrot: a true story." The Bechdel Test now a benchmark in movies is also a testament to the influence Virginia Woolf still has on not just literature, but all modern art forms, and is living proof that her ideas live on even decades after her passing.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

The Bechdel test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. About half of all films meet these requirements, according to user-edited databases and the media industry press. The test is used as an indicator for the active presence of women in films and other fiction, and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction.

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The Droste Effect: For your Writing

Workshop: The Droste Effect with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 20th October, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Delmore  Schwartz's short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities". Writing exercises will involve using the Droste Effect  to tell a particular story - of a story within a story, within a story, etc.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

The Droste effect (Dutch pronunciation: [drɔstə]), known in art as mise en abyme, is the effect of a picture appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear.^[1] The appearance is recursive: the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the picture, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration geometrically reduces the picture's size. It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system of instancing which is the cornerstone of fractal geometry.

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Prose @ Hubbles Yard Cafe

Prose @ Hubbles Yard Cafe with Helen Hagemann Friday, 6th October, 1pm-3pm. This is a critiquing workshop and the idea is to help writers who may have some flash fiction, a short story or novel/chapter opening that they would like others to comment on. All writers at different levels can participate and give brickbats and bouquets. (ie.constructive criticism). You can email Helen prior to class for distribution @ hagemann(dot)hele(at)gmail(dot)com or bring along on the day. 

Please note: Max 4 pages 1.5/2.0 spacing in Times New Roman font. Payment is optional as this is a school holiday class, but any amount is gratefully accepted for Helen's time.
Venue:   Hubbles Yard Cafe, 50 George Street, East Fremantle.
Meet for lunch at 12-12.30pm or order smaller meals /coffee at 1pm in the separate room that is provided.

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Looking @ Tom Cox with Helen Hagemann

Looking @ Tom Cox with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 22nd September, 1pm-3pm.  Whether published or not this workshop is about promoting yourself as a writer on all social media platforms. Published British author and social-media guru Tom Cox will be our focus as a template. 
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs in the Print Studio.

Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad

Cost:  OOTA $25  - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Tom Cox is one writer who uses all social media platforms to focus his writing, ie his books, his philosophy on life, family and nature. Mostly all of these areas are covered with his own personalised photographic record. His concerted efforts to self promote have gained him as many as 23.6K followers on Instagram, 69.3K on Twitter and 805,000 followers on Facebook (approx). Writing is not only about getting published or winning competitions but it is also about living as a writer and creating your own community, ie network. We can all do this now with the help of such mediums as Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Wordpress and Instagram. All these platforms link to one another and are beneficial in the promotion of your writing, and your life as a writer. Class to read various blog-posts by Tom Cox that highlight, how as a prolific writer, he attracts attention through humour, the environment in which he lives, his basic home philosophy, and also his love of his pet cats.  Writing exercises will cover the same areas as this author.


Cox is a Nottinghamshire-born British author, now based in Devon. He has published nine books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Good, The Bad & The Furry and Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain’s most inept golf professional, which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year award. Between 1999 and 2000 he was the chief Rock Critic for The Guardian newspaper and went on to write columns and features for many other newspapers and magazines, before quitting print journalism altogether in 2015 to write pieces exclusively for his voluntary subscription website. He also hosts a monthly show on the experimental radio station Soundart. His new book, 21st Century Yokel - “a nature book, but not quite like any you will have read before” which crowdfunded in a record-breaking seven hours[4] - will be published by Unbound in October. 2017

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Reflexive Writing: A workshop with Helen Hagemann

Workshop: Reflexive Writing
Friday 8th September, 2017.
Please note: Class will be held in the Print Studio.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

In reflexive (self‐reflective) writing, you couple personal experience with careful observation and/or critical thinking about an aspect of your experience. For example, you might write about how you developed as a thinker, writer, or researcher; or how a particular process or event unfolded for you. The key is that this writing engages you. As well as sharing insights with readers, reflexive writing is increasingly becoming “an important component of intellectual work”. In many cases, self‐reflection is a means of argumentation in which you use your experience to make a point about the importance of a particular event, process, or form of knowledge. (Reference: SFU.CA)

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Workshop: The Anti-Fairytale with Helen Hagemann

Workshop: The Anti-Fairytale with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 25th August, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Grimm's "The Fisherman and His Wife". Writing exercises will involve looking at the story in a modern context of turning it into "magic realism".
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however enquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

    An anti-fairytale, also called anti-tale, is a fairytale which, unlike an ordinary one, has a tragic, rather than a happy ending, with the antagonists winning and the protagonists losing at the end of the story. Whereas fairy tales paint a magical, utopian world, anti-fairy tales paint a dark world of nastiness and cruelty. Such stories incorporate horror, black comedy, mean-spirited practical jokes on innocent characters, sudden and often cruel plot twists, and biting satire. Examples of anti-fairy tales include "The Fisherman and His Wife" and "The Swineherd". The term is also used to refer to remakes of traditional "happy" fairy tales into "unhappy" ones. The Shrek film series, which parodies and satirises fairytales, includes several elements of anti-fairy tales such as the deaths of heroic characters and scatalogical humour.
  

  "The Fisherman and His Wife" is a German fairytale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Its theme was used in The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, an 1833 poem by Aleksandr Pushkin. Virginia Woolf has her character Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse read a version of the story to her son, James. Günter Grass's 1977 novel, The Flounder, is loosely based on the fairy tale, as are Emanuele Luzzati's version, Punch and the Magic Fish, and Ursula LeGuin's novel The Lathe of Heaven.
It may be classified as an anti-fairy tale.
    Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a genre of narrative fiction and, more broadly, art (literature, painting, film, theatre, etc.) that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements.
     Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fairy_tale

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Workshop with Alice Nelson: 'Voicing the Void: Writing about difficult experiences'.

Workshop with Alice Nelson: Voicing the Void, Writing about Difficult Experiences. Friday 11th August 1-3.00pm at the Fremantle Arts Centre.
The theme around Alice's workshop is writing about difficult subjects (obviously not necessarily writing about trauma, but about topics, experiences and issues people may find it challenging to find a way to narrate). There will be some great texts to look at, a couple of exercises and encouragement to share your work.
Venue: FAC, Upstairs Room 2, No Booking Required
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad
Cost:  OOTA $25  - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Alice Nelson's first novel, The Last Sky, was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award and was shortlisted for the Australian Society of Authors’ Barbara Jefferis Award. She was named Best Young Australian Novelist of 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald’s national awards program. Alice works as a freelance journalist and teaches creative writing.

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Writing about Nature: incl. Peter Cowan's "The Red-Backed Spiders".

Writing about Nature with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 28th July, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Peter Cowan's "The Red-backed Spiders". This workshop will introduce ideas on how we can write about nature in our short stories. The "feel good" or "prissy" approach to nature is often boring for the reader. Therefore, we will look at Peter Cowan's short story that includes the perverse and a "threatening nature" that aids tension, plot and suspense.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, inquire about room at front desk.
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad
Cost:  OOTA $25  - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Peter Cowan is a quietly introspective writer, and consequently his intensity of vision and his scrupulous craftsmanship can easily be underrated. He has shown a particular talent for the short story or novella, in which he can focus on a single relationship and explore a single line of feeling. His stories, written in a spare, taut style, have as a recurring theme the relationship of a man and a woman seeking relief from their loneliness in sexual love. Cowan is intent upon an inner reality: his characters are seldom individualized very far; they seem almost anonymous, and the sensuous reality of the external world is only faintly felt. His imagination is compelled by a painful awareness of the feelings of loneliness and alienation that lie beneath the surface of commonplace lives; and in exploring this territory he has become, more than is generally recognized, a significant interpreter of Australian realities.

In his second collection, The Unploughed Land, he reprinted seven of his stories from Drift, along with six new stories, which represent a distinct advance in technique. These new stories include the much-anthologized "The Redbacked Spiders," a powerful story of a boy whose resentment at his brutal father leads to the man's death. The title story is an extended treatment of the pre-war country life about which he writes in his first volume. In its evocation of that life it is one of his finest pieces, and it marks the end of the first phase of his development.

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Prose Class at Hubbles Yard Cafe

Writing at Hubbles Yard Cafe with Helen Hagemann Friday, 14th July, 1pm-3pm. This workshop will introduce the critiquing group and how we go about helping one another with our writing. Writers can participate with constructive criticism and also bring along a piece of writing. The last hour of the class will be creative writing exercises. Payment is optional as this is a school holiday class with no room availability at the FAC.
Venue:   Hubbles Yard Cafe, 50 George Street, East Fremantle.
Please note: Some of us are meeting at 12pm for lunch. However, the class will be held in a separate room to the main cafe, so you can still order a coffee/ cake, etc.

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Syntax & The Sentence with Helen Hagemann

Syntax & the Sentence

Prose Class, 30^th June, 2017

This workshop will focus on breaking out of controlled syntax and sentence structure. Using Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, we will look at ways of unlocking the usual sentence structure of "subject/verb/object" and also ways of joining nouns with verbs to see what combinations we can come up with.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however enquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

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