Day 214

214/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Today was the first day of Word Farm. 
Word Farm is a screenwriter's workshop that takes over your life for a weekend. This year I got to organize it, along with my friends Kira and Tracy. It was stressful trying to figure everything out, but we got a great group of writers to teach the classes and I was stoked after the first day. 


Cheri Steinkellner, who has had a very successful career working on some classic shows, brought all of these postcards in for her workshop. She didn't explain anything and just let the students pick one. I picked the one with the show girls in the center. My second favorite was definitely Michael's, which had what looks like a proud used car salesman posing in front of animal heads. From there Cheri had us analyze the cards, figure out who the people in them were and how they got there, and finally had us pull a narrative out of it. It was an AWESOME workshop, everyone was into it, and most people came away with a story for a feature that they felt good about. 


It was amazing how quickly it happened too, the workshop only lasted about 2 hours. I think the key thing was that the idea was coming from an external source. With no personal attachment, it was easy to throw away parts of the story that weren't right and rework them, which is something that becomes a lot harder when the idea comes from within. It was a good lesson and it was definitely something I needed to learn. 


Cheri finished off by telling the class about her husband Bill who collects these postcards. He's been using them as inspiration for postcard-length stories for some time now, which eventually led him to publish a book and a blog. It's a really cool idea, I'm almost tempted to try something similar after I finish this 365. 


Overall, the first day of Word Farm was a success. I feel inspired to write again, which is nice because I was afraid I might be losing that drive. Hopefully tomorrow is just as awesome!