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Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:32

#GiveATalk | How to Become a Writer

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Look only at Mr. killian's face. Decide faces are important. Write a villanelle about pores struggle. Write a sonnet. Count the syllables. 910 1113. Decide to experiment with fiction. Here you don't have to count syllables. Write a short story about an elderly man and rowan who accidentally shoot each other in the head. The result of an inexplicable malfunction of a shotgun which appears mysteriously in their living room one night. Give it to Mr. killian as your final project when you get it back

#giveatalk #shortstory #writing #writingadvice #authorinterview #askafailure

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@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:27

Story pt 2

They seem to all have one face, giant and blank as a vandalized clock. Someone with a beard booms out no, this is Creative Writing. Say oh, right. As if perhaps you knew all along. Look down at your schedule, wonder how the h*** you ended up here. The computer apparently has made an error. You start to get up to leave and then don't. The lines at the registrar this week are huge. Perhaps you should stick with this mistake
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:32

Story pt 3

You spend too much time slouched and demoralized. Your boyfriend suggests bicycling. Your roommate suggests a new boyfriend. You are said to be self mutilating and losing weight. But you continue writing. The only happiness you have is writing something new in the middle of the night. armpits damp, heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief, fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know you are a genius. Understand what you must do. Switch majors
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Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:52

Story pt 4

You can find no words at undergraduate cocktail parties. People say oh, you write. What do you write about your roommate who has consumed too much wine, too little cheese and no crackers at all. Blurts oh my God, she always writes about her dumb boyfriend. Later on in life you will learn that writers are merely open, helpless texts with no real understanding of what they have written and therefore must have believe anything and everything that is said of them
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:20

End of story!

People look at it in a vaguely troubled sort of way and say I'll bet becoming a writer was always a fantasy of yours, wasn't it? Your lips dried a salt. Say that of all the fantasies possible in the world, you can't imagine being a writer, even making the top 20. Tell them you were going to be a child psychology major. I bet they always sigh. You'd be great with kids. Scowl fiercely. Tell them you're a walking blade
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 4:02

Why I read this story

I know for me, I obviously started writing, and I'm sure I've shared this here before at a young age, but not with the intention of becoming a writer, but just because I loved stories so much and I've always loved language, and reading was always a place of refuge for me as a kid. So I came back to it again and again. When I first decided to go to school as a first generation student, writing didn't even occur to me as something to do
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:42

You are a writer.

I mean, that's what a lot of this is about. And I think that's also the gift of writing or the compulsion to write is that it takes us to places within ourselves and also within the world and often with each other that we maybe wouldn't have dared to approach or chosen the adventure of if it wasn't for writing. Thank you so much for listening. You are a writer because you write
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 0:26

@Taw2

So great to hear from you. Thank you so much for the reply. And yeah, if you take a look at some of the author interviews I've been doing and take a listen actually there's so many amazing responses from many of these debut authors and seasoned authors with different kinds of writing advice and about the process. I have found them so enriching and helpful as a writer and I hope you do too. Happy writing
@bowie
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 0:38

@marklesserart

I absolutely loved hearing about your creative history. It's such a reminder to me that exploration and trying new things across the arts is so essential. And it's really interesting to me in my own experience to see how my different creative inclinations I maybe don't fully understand them at the time that I'm doing them or drawn to them. But stepping back, I always am able to see a little more clearly how they influence one another and are sort of in conversation with each other
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