13 Comments
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Hannah Larson's avatar

Awhh thank you for the shout out James!!!!!! Makes me feel connected to NYC even though I’m away for a bit with family. Sending love!!! And so proud of you for putting this event & learning from it, a win!

JAMES Q's avatar

Of course! Thank you Hannah! Hope you’re enjoying spending time with fam and hopefully see you in nyc soon 🙏

Jake Rudolph's avatar

Two people is a party!

Matto's avatar

Thanks for the blast!

Really love what you're doing here with leveling up other writers. It feels there are only a handful writing events that are seriously focused on writing. It's probably harder to do than a social meetup.

Btw, I recently found a similar exercise that's a little slower where you try to imitate the structure of a sentence you like. Tougher than it sounds, so less good for a warmup, but makes feel the burn in your writing muscles.

JAMES Q's avatar

My pleasure! And thanks Matt!

Serious writing events are definitely a smaller audience than more social social meetups for sure.

Interesting exercise btw. When you say imitate the structure of a sentence you like, do you mean imitating the grammatical structure? Or something else?

Matto's avatar

Grammar is a part of it I believe, but shape and flow is the bigger part of it.

For example, starting with a model:

Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.

We can produce:

Stars twinkled on pieces of broken shells and on ruined sand castles in the sea-drenched sand of the beach that stretched miles, endless miles, its many shells strewn on it by high- crested waves.

Or:

I sat on velvet grass and under spreading blue leaves in the light-yellow atmosphere of a planet that orbited, slowly, steadily, its six moons clinging close like newborn children.

These are from the book Sentence Composing for College by D. Killgallon btw.

nikhil's avatar

thanks for the shout out, king!

JAMES Q's avatar

Thank you for writing such a great piece!

kayla uleah evans's avatar

I am genuinely mad i missed this, but i do remember thinking — “Ugh, worst case I can just do this exercise by myself at home”. I wonder if any others thought the same.

JAMES Q's avatar

Interesting. The event description made it sound like we’d be copying the entire time.

But we learned and tried a few copywork techniques then discussed takeaway and observations after. To be fair, I originally planned on just copying for an hour, but then last second changed the format to make it more engaging.

So totally fair if others thought the same as you did.

Akhilesh Pillalamarri's avatar

I recently joined the OTWC and I hope you keep on doing a variety of reading and writing events! Looking forward to joining one someday!

JAMES Q's avatar

Thanks Akhilesh! Hopefully see you at one soon!