This week, we heard from two A&L tutors (one past, one present) and were so inspired, we just couldn’t keep it to ourselves. Fred Mathelier (BFA FAV 2020), thank you so much for sending and letting us share your awesome mini-book review, and Derek Russell (BArch 2022), thank you for sending and letting us share a snapshot of your off-screen writing process (we sure do need more of that these days!).
Okay, here you go, everyone, spreading the writing love …
Hey! It's Fred!
For my birthday earlier this year, my grandmother slipped me a gift card to Barnes and Noble, which I used as an excuse to browse the shelves for a few hours.
This one cover jumped out to me, "Murder your Darlings," by Roy Peter Clark. Up til that moment I misquoted the phrase as "Kill your Babies," and although I understood the spirit of the phrase, Clark's 2021 writing guide has crystal clarified what I already understood.
The book is an aggregate of different writing guides that Clark draws from when writing and coaching others, familiar faces like Aristotle and Strunk and White have passages, but in between, I meet writers new to me, like Ursula K. LeGuin, and Arthur Quiller-Couch aka "Q" (the originator of the title phrase!). The cover quotes Mingon Fogarty's review on the cover; "A party popper of inspiration" she calls it. I agree wholeheartedly.
When Clark went over techniques for helping writers get unstuck in chapter 8, I knew I had to share this with you guys, and use that as an opportunity to say hello and ask how you were doing.
Missing A&L like crazy today,
Wishing well,
Fred
And here’s Derek’s wall full of writing, of which he notes: “Replicating and rearranging passages has worked out great to help see the work in its entirety.” (You can read Derek’s writing up close in v.1, right here.)
