Picture this.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” is a century-old slogan claiming that an image can capture the true essence of a message, story, or moment better than any language can. From an etymological standpoint, even with the many word combinations that can be used, formulating sentences that speak so closely to what we really mean, sometimes our descriptions can still fall short.

I know personally as a reader, I want to draw out imagery and a visceral experience from the narrative, transporting me to a specific time or place. But as a writer, I know the feat which is taking simple black words to white paper, and trying to craft a literary exposition; writing that is both stimulating and aesthetic and fresh. After all, as writers we are competing with other forms of art, and now also digital media, to hold our audiences captive. Films, television, music, graphic design, even the culinary industry, have more of an active immediacy for their audience than literature does.

  So, what can we do to bring our writing to that next step—from one or two dimensional, to multi-dimensional? How can we possibly translate the tangible, physical world into a creative outlet and artifact where the imagination rules supreme?

Authors like Jessica Anthony, have found ways of incorporating other artistic mediums by collaborating with graphic artist Rodrigo Corral, to create the multimedia novel Chopsticks.  And in Jonathan Saffron Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer used visual aids to tell the story of Oskar Schell, his endearing nine-year-old protagonist. Another fine example is the epistolary and illustrative story of, Griffin & Sabine.

But what about those of us who are not artistically adept or don’t have an artistically-inclined friend at our disposal; the writers who have to actually rely on their grasp of English (or first language) to bring their perspectives of the world in which we live, to light (or to life).

Here are a couple of ways I have found visual aids useful in my writing:

Photography- It can be as simplistic as using the camera on your phone to snap images you can write from later. Whether it is a person on the subway (of course be discreet about it, so you don’t come off as a creep)– a character that stands out to you, or something as basic as the colors found in a field or the alignment of windows in a building, shooting photos of everyday life will make you more aware of the finer details around you, help you to amass a visual inventory, and in turn, provide you with more nitty-gritty to write about.

Pinterest- There are all kinds of Apps out there now to assist people in organizing their image files. Tumblr and Pinterest are a couple of market leaders. Pinterest is a virtual clipboard that allows people to share personal and publically accessed photos in neat little categories and collages. Many of my internet savvy friends, who also write, utilize this site to inspire them. Say, if they are working on a scene about a farm (and won’t be making a trip to a farm anytime in the near future), they will go on Pinterest instead and put together all the images of farm life they can find, and then refer to their collection every time they need to add a believable element that grounds the scene that is unfolding.

Youtube- This online resource is great for tutorials– How-to’s. I have used this site for everything from writing about how glass is made, to how to fly fish. I am definitely a writer who believes that experiencing something firsthand is the best way to write about anything, but we don’t always have the opportunity or time to line up a lesson, seek out an expert, or jump in with our own feet. Youtube can fill in the gaps where more information is needed. Obviously, use your discretion and make sure it is a reliable and relevant resource.

Mapping- Faculty mentor, Mark Sundeen, facilitated a workshop on Star Island this past summer, on memory mapping. With crayons and colored pencils, he had us draw places that stood out in our minds as important to our characters. The instructions for this exercise were taken a variety of different ways by the students—basically we got creative. However, we unanimously agreed that just by sketching the spaces and places that occupied our thoughts, no matter how rudimentary this was done, gave us more orientation in our writing and also it made it easier to explain to others what these settings were like.

Having knowledge about a subject is one of the most essential pieces of being a writer. Knowledge can be retained through many facets, and the more understanding one has, the better they are at communicating their information in writing and verbalization. Having an interdisciplinary approach to the art of writing, can broaden this retention of knowledge, and also help convey to a wider range of readers, just what you are trying to say.

Related article:  Do pictures add to a writer’s vision? http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/may/23/imagesinbooks

By Sarah E. Caouette

www.livingframes.blogspot.com

Remembering Jack Scovil

Jack Scovil, Literary Agent and founding member of the SNHU MFA Advisory Board.

I was introduced to Jack Scovil in 1993, when he became my second agent. In turn I introduced Jack to what he liked to call, with that bemused smile, his “New Hampshire Colony,” including MFA Director, Diane Les Becquets; MFA faculty member Merle Drown; and several of our students Jack took on as clients. He was one of four founding advisory board members of the SNHU low-residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. From his first residency to his last he always asked to see the student evaluations so he could improve his own workshops and meetings with students and see as well how we might all improve the residency experience.

Jack got his start at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency—notorious for getting famous authors big money and for hard-nosed practices in a ruthless business. Studying literature at Utah and Stanford Universities, Jack was going to be a teacher, but he found teaching “absolutely exhausting” and headed out from his home state Utah to the Big Apple in an old car and something like $100 dollars in his pocket. Looking for any kind of work, he found an ad in the Times for a “manuscript reader” at the Meredith Agency, applied, got hired, and rose rapidly to become Editorial Director of Meredith. It was at Meredith that Jack began representing major authors—Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan, Morris West, Margaret Truman, Arthur C. Clarke, and Thomas Fleming, among them. After Scott Meredith passed away from a heart attack, Jack started his own agency in 1992, Scovil Chichak Galen (now Scovil Galen Ghosh), with colleagues he trusted; he brought many of his top authors along into his new agency.

Jack was one of a kind among New York agents: absolutely loyal to the authors he chose whether they were making him money or not, a man without an arrogant bone in his body, a rare human being who seemed to be without ego. He never talked about himself, his life, or his accomplishments unless you pried the information out of him. This selfless attribute was part of Jack’s loyalty; he gave you faith in your work and talent even when others seemed to lose faith or you lost faith in yourself. Over the years he became my friend as we met and worked together on manuscripts or on the MFA, or during my visits to New York.  Those who knew and worked with Jack will miss him, even more than they probably ever thought they would now that he is indeed no longer part of our work and our lives.

—Bob Begiebing, Founding Director, MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction

Road Trip: AWP ’12

Graduate Assistant Jason Korolenko takes to the road on another adventure.

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs will hold the 2012 edition of their annual conference in Chicago (the city I was born in, sometime between twenty and eighty years ago—a girl never tells her age, and neither do I), from the 29th of February until March 3. This will be the first year I’ve attended the conference, and I feel lucky to do so as a representative of the SNHU MFA program.

With over 550 presses and publishers showing off their goods, it’s like spending four days browsing the nation’s largest bookstore. And with more than 400 literary events to choose from, my only regret is that I can’t clone myself and attend every reading, panel, Q &A, and signing session. As it is, I foresee very little sleep in my immediate future.

Our own Katherine Towler, author of the highly acclaimed “Snow Island” trilogy, will be chairing a panel on Friday, as well as doing a book signing on Saturday. And another SNHU MFA faculty member, Jessica Anthony (whose groundbreaking multimedia novel Chopsticks was released in early February), will be interviewing this year’s keynote speaker, Margaret Atwood.

As for this book nerd, I’m looking forward to chewing off Irvine Welsh’s ear (figuratively, of course, even though this is a literary conference). Welsh, as you may know, is the Scottish author of “Trainspotting” and its sequel “Porno,” and I’ll do my best to hold my inner fanboy in check if I get a chance to meet the guy. But having heard him speak before, it might be a good idea to hire a translator to decipher his accent, or at least purchase an English to Scottish English language guide.

Of course, much of my time will be spent happily manning the SNHU MFA table, where I’ll be preaching the gospel about our program and even giving away a few signed books. So if you find yourself at the Hilton Chicago & Palmer House Hilton for AWP, stop by our table and say hello.

Jason Korolenko
MFA Graduate Assistant, 2011-12

Best-Selling Author Gregory Maguire Visits SNHU

by Jason Korolenko, MFA candidate 2012

Author Gregory Maguire onstage at SNHU.

On February 8, 2012, a witch crossed the stage in SNHU’s Walker Auditorium. Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the first in his best-selling series of novels based on the secret history behind characters from The Wizard of Oz, not only spoke, but performed. For near on two hours, Mr. Maguire enchanted the audience with tales from his childhood, lessons on writing, and one-man playacting.

Born into a family where the written word was held in great regard (so much so that four of Maguire’s six siblings are currently professional writers), Gregory found himself creating stories at four years old. Between the ages of four and eighteen, in fact, Maguire had written over two-hundred stories, none of which were school assignments. They were simply for his own enjoyment, his own amusement, his need to create.

Maguire’s father was an established journalist who carried a typewriter under his arm wherever he went. So, from a very young age, Gregory and his siblings had the impression that writing was something important, something to be taken seriously, something to be respected and revered. And growing up in a household with no television, no radio, no movies, the children were forced to rely on their own imaginations for entertainment.

Their own imaginations, and books.

Books, for Maguire, represented “. . . a way to be alone, and a way not to be alone.” And though he wrote and read voraciously, each year he looked forward to the one night when his father would relent and allow the family to watch television, that one night when they would gather for The Wizard of Oz. And in between these yearly viewings, as obsessed with the story as he was, young Gregory would cast his siblings and friends in backyard recreations. Before long, Maguire was changing the tale here and there, adding scenes and character histories, soon realizing that, in his words, “I owned the story, too.”

Thus, the seeds of Wicked–a sort of alternate history for Dorothy and the land of Oz–were sown at that young age.

As a writer, Maguire insisted that storytellers must “follow the story that wants to be told.” We are our own worst enemies, in a sense, when we try too hard to plot or plan every little detail. In a closing Q & A session, he even visibly shuddered at an audience member’s mention of The Outline. “If you let it go,” he said, “your subconscious is always smarter than you are.”

And if you let your subconscious go, you can own any story. Just ask Gregory Maguire.

For more, visit “5 Wicked Tips” and  Gregory Maguire’s web site.

One Writer’s Coffee Connection

by Jason Korolenko, MFA Graduate Assistant 2011-12

Why do writers feel so connected to coffee houses? Is it the art of people watching, scouring faces and eavesdropping on conversations so we can add some revealing tic or detail to one of our characters? Is it the easy access to large amounts of caffeine? Free wi-fi so we can keep up-to-the-minute (read: stalkerish) tabs on our friends’ Facebook pages when we can’t think of anything to write?

Back home in New Hampshire, before the economy or Obama or the Kindle or poor management practices or the 99% or fatcat Republicans or whomever you blame killed it, Borders was my locale of choice. I’d pack up the Macbook, a thumb drive with The Collected Works of Jason Korolenko, hit up Taco Bell for some of the best worst faux Mexican food ever, then convene in the Borders café with a large Crème Caramel Javakula.

(In case you’re wondering, my typical caloric intake on those days was somewhere in the 4,000 range. Not kidding, I’ve counted.)

Naturally, I was not the only person toting a computer bag into the café. People fought over power outlets as if they were the last cans of green beans at Shaw’s during Armageddon. Those who lost the battles resigned to typing on dimmed screens to preserve battery life. I know you know this, because you’ve done it too.

Even here in Brazil, where only a tiny fraction of the population reads and even less write, Starbucks is the place to be if you want the world to view you as a Serious Writer. A new mall has recently opened up in my city, and in it a bookstore called Saraiva, which is the Brazilian version of Borders or B&N only smaller. Half of the store is lined with bookshelves, the other (more populated) half displays CDs, Blu-Rays, and computer equipment, all of which boast greater sales numbers than our little paper friends with words printed inside. Still, in the café upstairs, you’ll find writers brooding over their computer screens, rewarding themselves with a Facebook refresh every time they craft a particularly sweet sentence.

Perhaps, since writing is such solitary work, we simply need to be around real flesh and blood from time to time.

How to Make a Writer’s Pitch Kit

photo by Craig Childs

A pitch kit may be the last thing you think about during the first three semesters of your MFA. And then fourth semester is on your doorstep, accompanied by the irrefutable deadline for your book-length manuscript. While toiling away on your novel, memoir, essays or short stories, it is likely that the notion of promoting your work was just a distant possibility. Perhaps you even practiced an elevator pitch for the story line during residency or with a stunned but polite cashier at the office supply store after too many hours spent in writer’s isolation. At some point the pages will be at rest and you want to be prepared for the next stage: shopping the manuscript.

Here’s fourth semester student Wendie Leweck (spotlightpublicity@comcast.net) to the rescue. Wendie is the owner of  Spotlight Publicity, a comprehensive publicity firm which specializes in assisting authors, artists and entrepreneurs with media exposure. She offers the following check list for a pitch kit.

1. biography sheet
2. sample chapter
3. one-page synopsis
4. business card*

All pages should be typed in a conventional font (Times New Roman or Arial) and double-spaced. Use white or cream paper stock. Paginate the chapter pages. Assemble everything into a fresh presentation folder. The fancier ones come with a die-cut for your business card.

You and your manuscript are now good to go. Wishing you good shopping in the new universe of literary agents!

*A word on business cards — these do not have to cost a small fortune. Staples Office Supply recently ran a coupon special for 100 black-and-white business cards for *free*! For the cost of shipping only, Vista Print frequently promotes an order of 250 free business cards. This morning’s Google search for ‘coupons business cards’  produced 146,000,000 results in 0.25 seconds!

New program milestone: the SNHU MFA Newsletter!

Our newsletter banner.

We launched the MFA newsletter last week. I was particularly excited that our mail list is up to 120 alumni, current students, faculty, Advisory Board members, and campus staff. If you haven’t yet seen your edition of this inaugural issue of the monthly MFA news blast, please check your email’s spam folder and look for the subject line “Tim Woodward Signs Book Deal.”

There are some exciting success stories coming out of our community of MFA graduates. In fact, I’ve just started a new blog page  for them. If you have news to share, or are an alumnus and suspect we may have an out-of-use email address for you, please email: L(dot)Allen1(at)snhu(dot)edu.

–Lisa Allen, Administrative Director