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Authors to bare their souls and share their tricks
By Robie Liscomb
Writing is not a big spectator sport, despite the Monty Python sketch where crowds cheer Thomas Hardy as he pens the beginning of The Return of the Native. (There’s a distinct absence of applause as I finish this sentence.)
However, observing expert authors as they research, (re)organize, (re)draft and revise—deploying all the tricks of their profession—can be a rich and engaging learning experience.
That will be amply demonstrated on Saturday, Jan. 26, as five UVic profs and a local journalist fire up their laptops and give the on- and off-campus public an insider’s perspective on the process as they weave their webs of words.
The event, dubbed WHIPS (Write Here in Plain Sight), will take place simultaneously at UVic and Dalhousie University, where WHIPS was first presented, with great success, last March.
Here at UVic, Dr. Yvonne Coady (computer science), a columnist from the Times Colonist, Lansdowne Professor Wolff-Michael Roth (curriculum and instruction), Drs. Lisa Surridge and Mary Leighton (English) and Dr. Holly Tuokko (psychology, aging) will write in public for three hours, projecting their texts on a large screen as they write, narrating their process and answering questions from any and all observers.
They will tackle a wide variety of writing projects. Surridge and Leighton, for example, will demonstrate how they collaborate on their book manuscript on 19th-century illustrated serial fiction. And Roth will work on a research article in progress, showing that what are usually thought of as three processes—analyzing, writing, and learning (making sense)—are simply different expressions of one and the same process.
WHIPS at UVic is being organized by the Writing Centre, the Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Student Transition Centre.
“WHIPS represents a different way of learning about writing and exemplifies how teaching and research can be integrated in graduate education,” says Associate Dean of Graduate Studies Gweneth Doane. “It will offer an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students to get a view into a range of writing processes and also offers the community a window into the work and contributions of some of the many wonderfully talented faculty at UVic.”
WHIPS will take place Jan. 26 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Strong C103, 118, 122, 126, 128 and 130. And by the way, you can find a transcript of the Monty Python sketch at http://www.wepsite.de/novel%20writing.htm.
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