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Aram Saroyan
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Turan does Sundance
MPW lecturer and Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan recently returned from his annual pilgrimage to the Sundance Film Festival. How many times has he attended? "More than 15," he says. "I'm actually afraid to count."
In those years, the festival, which is intended to showcase American independent film, has seen many changes.
"It's gotten enormously bigger," he says, estimating attendance at 50,000 — "which is a huge, huge number for what is a small Utah skiing town. Also there are a lot more people who come for the party atmosphere and not to see the films and there's a lot more celebrity involvement. None of this was there when the festival started."
But Turan has lost none of his passion for the festival or for the films he finds there.
"Someone said to me that the films the people talk about on the way to Sundance are never the films they're talking about when they leave," he says. "One of the energizing things is what you find when you're there. There's guaranteed to be something that will make me happy to be at the festival, but I never know what it is ahead of time."
For Turan, a typical day at Sundance includes getting up early, and then hustling to make every moment count. "The first screenings start at 8:30 a.m. and some films screen as late as midnight. Most of my day is spent going to and from films, and interviewing people and writing.
"It's been exciting to see films that debut at Sundance go into the real world and have an impact. Like 'Little Miss Sunshine,' or 'Once,' last year. Nobody was talking about 'Once,' but it made a big impact at the festival and it ended up doing very well."
After 15-plus years, Turan's enthusiasm for the Sundance mission continues.
"The driving force of the festival is still young people coming with their first film. That's still very exciting."
Mark Evanier brings the funny to MPW
"My whole life I've just been writing silly stuff," says well-known comedy writer Mark Evanier. "That was just my natural bent. I was inspired by all sorts of great comedians and comedy writers and comic-book writers."
Now, as the freshly minted instructor teaching MPW 915: Writing Humor: Literary and Dramatic, it's Evanier's turn to inspire students to be funny.
"I don't think you teach people how to write funny. You teach them how to find their funny," he says. "How to ruthlessly self-edit. A lot of what I'm teaching is about that need to cut loose that which will not get a laugh. I try to get students to understand the kind of thing I learned writing for standup comedians: understanding why something is funny, and what didn't work, and rhythms and patterns of material that suggest what's funny."
Evanier knows about funny. The Los Angeles native's life story is filled with memorable encounters starring legendary comedians such as Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, Bob Newhart, Jerry Lewis, and Sid Caesar. And he has been practicing what he preaches since making his first sale in 1969 at age 18 when he dropped in on a magazine with some humor pieces and left with a check for $800 — which was four times what his father was making. Since then, his career has taken him from "Welcome Back Kotter" to "Garfield" and everywhere in between, writing variety shows, cartoons, sitcoms, books, comic-books, and more. He also writes one of the most visible pop-culture blogs on the internet, the widely popular newsfromme.com, where students can find incisive analysis of comedy classics like this one.
Evanier, who says he's impressed with his MPW students, says that the lessons learned in writing humor are broadly applicable.
"One of the things I'm trying to emphasize is that learning to write funny is learning how to approach anything you do, even dramatic writing," he says. "It's important to have that connection with an audience, to have your tools sharpened."
Faculty roster
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I credit Noel Riley Fitch with being not only an excellent role model whose methodology greatly influenced my own college-level teaching, but also as the driving force behind my being a published author of hundreds of magazine, newspaper, and wire service articles since graduating from the USC MPW Program. |
| –Marc Yablonka (MPW '90) |
Madelyn Cain
Nan Cohen
Mark Evanier
Syd Field
Janet Fitch
Judith Freeman
Amy Gerstler
Coleman Hough
Dinah Lenney (Mills)
Gerald Locklin
M.G. Lord
Shelly Lowenkopf
Christopher Meeks
Brighde Mullins
Gina Nahai
Holly Prado Northup
Teresa O'Neill
Barbara Pawley
Gabrielle Pina
Tristine Rainer
John Rechy
Aram Saroyan
David Scott Milton
Jason Squire
Sid Stebel
Kenneth Turan
Ehrich Van Lowe
Rita Williams
Lee Wochner
Emeritus Faculty
Shelley Berman
Faculty writing tips
Spring 2007 Literary Marketplace: Write with the market (and marketing) in mind
Aram Saroyan: Tapping the rhythm of life for your writing
Janet Fitch: On the process of writing
Spring 2007 Literary Marketplace: Write with the market (and marketing) in mind
Write with passion — and with the marketplace in mind.
That was the consensus advice of panelists at MPW's Spring 2007: "The Literary Marketplace: Roadmap to Success."
The panel, comprised of agents, publishers, and other book cognoscenti, made the point that in today's arena, book writers need to be self-marketers.
"Publishing is about commerce," said David Poindexter of MacAdam/Cage Publishing, a house that receives 6,000 submissions a year and publishes 40. The first question a publisher asks about nonfiction, he said, is, "What's the ready-made audience? What's the platform of the author?" He advised writers to be able to answer, "Why should people buy your book? How do you market yourself?"
Book reviews don't in and of themselves sell books, he cautioned, and book tours don't happen for first-time authors any more. Marketing and promotion by the author are important. (A point driven home by Susan Salter Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, who noted that she gets 200 books a week sent to her; clearly, not all can be reviewed.)
Jan Lindstrom Valerio, West Coast Regional Community Relations Director of Barnes & Noble, agreed that self-marketing is essential.
"Engage in guerrilla marketing," Valerio said. "Be willing to work on a very localized, small-scale level. Don't expect to waltz into the Barnes & Noble at The Grove. That's the Carnegie Hall of bookstore appearances. Get included in the 'Barnes & Noble Recommends' list."
She also advised calling other community relations directors at bookstores to set up book events. "And make sure your family and friends all show up."
Networking is also important, as Barbara Lowenstein of Lowenstein-Yost Associates, Inc. noted. "Go to well-regarded writers conferences to meet people" who can help you in your career, she said, specifically recommending Squaw Valley.
Panel consensus on what makes a good book:
- A great voice
- Memorable characters
- A story with heart: a good, strong narrative that resonates with the reader; a page-turner
And how to get there?
- Have an ideal reader in mind and have some wisdom to impart
- Start with your niche and build from there.
- Believe in yourself: "If you think you're bad, you might be good."
- Write because you want to. Then maybe you want it published.
Aram Saroyan: Tapping the rhythm of life for your writing
The best practical advice I ever received as a writer came from my father, William Saroyan. "If you want to write a novel," he told me when I was in my early 20s, "give yourself a daily, easily achievable goal — say, a page or two pages a day — and try to do the writing at around the same time each day."
Writing a certain amount each day, and doing the writing at a regular time, can be especially helpful when one works in the longer forms — a novel, a memoir, or a play. Both parts of the scenario are important: that one gives oneself a specific amount of writing to do, and that one writes that amount at approximately the same time each day.
By writing a certain amount, and not less or more, one implicitly acknowledges that one is inside an unfolding process, and the tendency to hurry it along, or to abandon it, is minimized. Hemingway said he tried to stop work each day when he knew what was going to happen next, and this is another way to keep things from stalling.
By writing at the same time each day, one engages an interior clock or computer, if you will, that keys in the time for writing so that it takes on the character of a less self-conscious process. In effect, the interior computer is engaged on a 24-hour cycle to generate the next installment at the approximate time it knows the writing will be done.
This mysterious process in effect allows the writer to work on the writing he will do next while going about the rest of the business of his day and night. For surely sleep, too, will play its role if one is working on an interior clock. The writing itself may take on the character of a meditation one practices each day. By ritualizing the process, and giving oneself a small and easily realizable goal, one allows the process itself to take over.
Janet Fitch: On process of writing
Her writing process is simple. "I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not," she says. "I never get inspired unless I'm already writing. I write every day, including weekends. For writers there are no weekends. It's just that your family is around, looking mournful, wondering when you're going to pay attention to them."
Her journalistic experience proved a vaccination against writer's block. "When I had the newspaper, I had to come up with 12 or 15 stories a week regardless of whether there was anything to write about. Someone would call me up and say, "My kid just caught a big fish, come over and take a picture of it." So you'd go take a picture of the fish and then interview the kid. What do you ask a kid who caught a big fish? What kind of bait were you using? Where'd you catch it? What time of day was it?" I learned you could always write. You just couldn't be too perfectionistic about it."
But the artistry of her work, the lines that take the reader's breath away, was hard-won. "I could always tell a story," she said, "but I needed to learn the poetics of the literary craft." She found her mentor in the poet and novelist Kate Braverman, under whom she learned to work until she found the right word, the right sound.
Poetry plays a great part in her writing of prose fiction. "I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language. Their startling originality is a challenge. I like Dylan Thomas, Eliot, Sexton. There are parts of White Oleander which use cadences of Pound--whatever you think of Pound, there's a specific music to him. I like Joseph Brodsky and the late Donald Rawley. A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words."
Apply to teach in MPW
The Program is fully staffed for the 2008-2009 academic year. Applications will be considered for possible openings in the 2009-2010 academic year.
An MFA or equivalent relevant graduate degree is required. Writers with publications in multiple genres with teaching experience desired.
Please submit a cover letter, application, cv, three (3) letters of recommendation, and copies of published work to:
MPW Faculty Search Committee
Master of Professional Writing Program
3501 Trousdale Parkway, Taper Hall of Humanities 355
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California 90089-0355
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