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2010 Program Calendar Subject to change.
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January
19
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Magnus Torén:
Director, Henry Miller Library, Big Sur.
Magnus Torén
is an expert on Miller’s life and writings, and has been the
Library Director at the Henry Miller Library since 1993. He
is largely responsible for creating the vital cultural, literary,
artistic and educational resources and programs that currently characterize
this well known coastal institution. Magnus holds a skipper's license
and he spent the years between 1977 and 1984 (and 1994-95), delivering
yachts across 5 of the seven oceans of the world. He made landfall
in Big Sur where he, his wife Mary Lu, and their son Stefan very
near Henry Miller’s previous residence.
Magnus will share anecdotes from Miller's years
living and writing in Big Sur and his colorful early life as a writer
in Brooklyn and Paris. Toren will discuss Miller’s motivation as
a writer, his approach to writing, and why he was successful despite
himself. There will also be some talk about Henry Miller’s attitudes
and writing about sex. Henry Miller wrote many books including
The Tropic of Cancer, The Tropic of Capricorn
and Big Sur and The Oranges of Hieronymus
Bosch.
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February
16
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Alec Murdock:
The Ins and Outs of Story Structure
While admittedly nervous speaking to the small
but attentive crowd at our February meeting, actor, newscaster,
writer and CCW member Alec Murdock quickly hit his stride and treated
those present to an evening of solid story structure know-how. Within
the context of screenwriting, Mr. Murdock stressed that in Hollywood
today more than ever the story is king, and the script, while not
treated as such, is still the key. But is it really? Much of the
work on a successful screenplay is done by “script doctors”
who begin with a purchased screenplay and hammer it into a workable,
actor and director-ready script. According to Alec, this work focusses
almost exclusively on the story’s structure.
Alec Murdock, a New York City native,
received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts. He earned
a living as an actor in Los Angeles for the better part of 30 years,
in numerous TV episodes and features, and dozens of commercials,
voiceovers and industrials. He also spent several years as a news
anchor, writer and producer for a radio station and cable channel
in West Los Angeles, and an NBC affiliate in Montana. Now a writer
and journalist living in Pacific Grove with his wife Kim, Alec has
completed several screenplays, optioned two of them, and is working
on his first novel. Alec joined the Central Coast Writers branch
of CWC this year.
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March
16
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Dr.
Andrei Aleinikov: Wake Up Your Writing
Genius - More about
our 5-minute book!
Dr. Aleinikov shared
his high-energy vision to help us learn some practical tools for
developing MegaCreativity, and how to apply these tools to our writing.
Once we were sitting up and paying attention, Dr. Aleinikov introduced
several methods and techniques that are proved to help stir a sleeping
creative genius.
How to start? Begin with the right frame of mind and “avoid
every NO!” By eliminating this often automatic negative response,
we can begin to exercise our creativity. To further stimulate our
creative juices, Dr. Aleinikov introduced us to the process of “Building
Metaphors”. Using metaphor stimulates new and creative thought
about relationships and can be a serious nudge to a sleeping inner
genius. The technique, referred to as “noun of noun”,
is simple. Begin by thinking of concrete nouns - actual “things”.
One example could be a locomotive. Now think of an abstract noun
- a more nebulous “thing”, creativity itself, for instance.
Put the concrete with the abstract and begin to release your own
creative genius.
The evening concluded with a four-minute exercise in which audience
members wrote about “writing”, using three such on-the-spot
metaphors in doing so. The twenty-five or so unique “chapters”
were collected and will be compiled into a book that Dr. Aleinikov
hopes to have printed and published in 14 hours! Something tells
me the book is already done as this is being written. A “Locomotive
of Creativity”. There is no more apt metaphor for our March
speaker. Thank you Andrei!
A Russian native who is now a U.S. citizen, Dr. Aleinikov's poetry
was first published at the age of 11, and as an adult he has had
successful careers in education, the military, and science. In Russia
he completed two dissertations and had over 40 academic works published.
He came to America and was appointed a Professor at Troy University
in Alabama, where he originated the Genius Education Methodology,
a methodology of training people to expand their ability to think
creatively. His book, MegaCreativity: Five Steps
to Thinking Like a Genius was published and released internationally,
and in Asia, the book became a best seller. One of his books, Making
the Impossible Possible was written and published in 16 hours,
to set a Guinness World Record. He has written 120 books and articles,
and has been published in 8 languages in 13 countries.
Dr. Aleinikov moved to Monterey in 2006 and now works for the Defense
Language Institute (DLI) developing Russian language curriculum.
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April
20
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 Becky
Levine: Building
Effective Critique Groups. South Bay CWC member, Becky
Levine, shared her insights into maintaining good critique groups
for writers. A freelance editor with over ten years experience
editing fiction and nonfiction manuscripts, she currently writes
an editing-tips column for the South Bay CWC newsletter, "WritersTalk."
Becky has been a judge at both East of Eden conferences, and she
writes book reviews for The Horn Book Guide. Becky is currently
working on her own adult mystery novel and several children's
stories. Visit
Becky's website.
Becky is author of The
Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide (Writer’s
Digest, 2010) ." She will discuss the many benefits of a
strong writing critique group, and how writers can create this
kind of group for themselves and will share techniques for finding
critique partners, running a meeting, and learning to give and
receive truly helpful critiques from which every writer can grow.
She will also describe the mutual respect necessary to a successful
critique group.
Becky engaged members and guests at the near-capacity
program and all took away valuable tools for surviving critique
groups. Thank you, Becky!
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May 18
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Kemble Scott started
writing fiction when he moved to San Francisco in 1997 and wanted
to capture the outrageous behavior he witnessed in his new neighborhood,
South of Market (SoMa). After writing dozens of these tales, he
created a home for them online by launching the e-zine SoMaLit,
SoMa Literary Review, with co-editor Jon Stuber. The site quickly
attracted the work of other emerging Bay Area writers and amassed
a readership of as many as two million hits per year. Scott
James writes a weekly column for The New York Times about
the San Francisco Bay Area. In the world of fiction, he writes
under the pen name Kemble Scott.
In May 2009 Kemble released his second novel, The
Sower. His decision to premiere the new novel as an exclusive
e-book received media coverage around the world when it became
the first novel sold by tech start-up Scribd.com. In August 2009
the first print edition became available when Numina Press published
The Sower in hardcover. For the print launch of The
Sower Kemble restricted in-store sales of the first editions
to independent bookstores, the longtime supporters of his work
who he called “the cultural curators” of the literary world. Visit
Kemble's Web site.
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June 15
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Maria
Garcia Teutsch will be the featured
speaker at the June meeting of the Central Coast Writers Club meeting
on Tuesday, June 15. Ms. Teutsch is a writer, editor, teacher and
the poetry judge for the CCW Writing Contest, and will speak on
the topic: What an Editor Wants to See from You (or, "How do
I get this overworked and often underpaid person to notice my work?")
The talk will address a range of issues related to submitting written
work for publication, from the perspective of an experienced writer
and editor.
Ms. Teutsch is a poet living in Santa Cruz, California.
She is an MFA candidate in poetry at New England College. She teaches
poetry and creative writing at Hartnell College in Salinas, where
she also serves as editor of the Homestead Review literary journal,
now in its 10th year of publication. In addition to the Homestead
Review, she serves as editor in chief of Ping-Pong journal of art
and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur.
She has been widely published in magazines such as Prairie Schooner,
The Southern Poetry Review, The Café Review, Two Review,
Otoliths and Leaf by Leaf. Her website is: http://mariateutsch.blogspot.com
The meeting will be held at the Casa Munras Hotel
in Monterey, and there will be a social and dinner hour from 5:30
- 6:30 pm, followed by club business and announcements until 7:00
pm. Ms. Teutsch will speak from 7:00- 8:00 pm. We hope to see you
there!
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July 20
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Lee Brady
made it easy for us at the Tuesday, July 20 meeting of the
Central Coast Writers. Lee boiled the way to "Add Drama to Your Fiction!" down to three steps: Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. "People create the drama", Lee told the full house, and dialogue brings that drama to life. That's why she loves being a playwright.
 Participation in Lee's exercise for the evening wasn't optional. She passed out 3x5 cards to everyone and instructed us all to write down three facts about, and wants of, a fictional character, a different character on each card. The cards were passed left and right and members and guests were then instruccted to create a dialogue between the characters depicted on the cards they now held. Many were read and the results were phenominal. Writer's block hurridly left the building and the creativity flowed. Lee's passion for her work flooded the room. Thank you, Lee!
Like many people in theatre, Lee wears several
hats including, actor, director, producer, and theatre critic. Writing
plays is her first love, and seeing them produced is her biggest
thrill. She currently teaches Creative Writing at Monterey Peninsula
College, and has taught Playwriting there for the past twenty-five
years. Lee lives and works in Pacific Grove and San Francisco, where
she has won awards for her plays, Home for the Wedding and Southern
Lights. She was pleased to have her work produced in a sold-out
production this past June at the Cherry Center for the Arts in Carmel.
Over the years she has won many awards for her plays, and has had
her works produced at numerous theaters locally, nationally and
internationally in Scotland and Costa Rica.
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Sunday
August 8th
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Our annual summer BBQ - A Literary Luau: CCW's annual picnic replaces our regular meeting in August. Click here for details and to RSVP. Thanks.
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 Special Date and Time
Saturday, 9/11
9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Casa Munras
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Peter Funt: Son of Candid Camera's Alan Funt. More information about this special program will be shown here when available.
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Tuesday, October 19
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Tudsday, November 16
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December
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Our annual Holiday Pot Luck Luncheon |
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Our
past speakers
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