The Laboratory #4 with Stephen McClurg

In this laboratory we have a guest sitting in, Eric Jenkins, erstwhile compatriot for our mostly dormant Eunioa Solstice endeavor. Eric helps us figure out which of the two exercises Stephen completed gets read, and it’s a winner called “Write Club” and that leads to me laughing like a maniac and later a lively discussion about young writers. We talk a bit about Gerard Genette, War and Peace, the need to finish things, what makes successful exercises, and the painful nature of open mic poetry readings in bars. 

You can see exercises and the instructions for the new exercise here: http://jquinnmalott.com/page7/index.html

Stephen McClurg teaches and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. After winning the National Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Contest, he spent a week writing haiku for the Washington Post‘s blog. In the past he has published articles, essays, reviews, short stories, poems, and comics in newspapers, journals online and otherwise, and appeared in the anthologies You Ain’t No Dancer and Voices from a Safe Harbor. He has written and composed music for award-winning short films, art installations, and dance.

Exercise #4

Write a scene in a setting that is likely to be quite familiar to your readers (supermarket, dormitory, classroom, movie theater, suburban house, etc.) but that is unfamiliar, strange, outlandish, or outrageous to the central character. Let us feel the strangeness through the character's eyes.

The Outrider Podcast is available on iTunes and Stitcher. You can also listen at my website (http://jquinnmalott.com/index.html).