hands-on & theory experience

2005-04-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

Butterfly Effect Writing : words as art redefining destiny
This workshop explores ways writers create/shape change

the story of butterfly effect

"Edward Lorenz first analyzed the effect in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences. According to the paper, "One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever." Later speeches and papers by Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly, possibly inspired by the 1952 Ray Bradbury short story "A Sound of Thunder".

In that story, a time traveller accidentally steps on a butterfly in the distant past, causing broad changes in the present. A common description of the effect says that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas months later. A version from Car Talk is that "A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa, and the sink backs up in your garage."
--from Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia

Description
This workshop introduces the concepts AND practice of "Butterfly Effect Writing" (my own theory of writing based on the concept in physics and my work with Native Americans for the past 2 decades), exploring the ways and why of creating stories, poems, experimental work which all become a vehicle to shift perceptions of self/other/the world.

We will also explore the works of writers (all genres) who have impacted society/human psyche thus developing a sense about how our own work creates change--within us and within our world.

That is, here we will explore:
-- the mundane influences
how we as writers/artists present varied realities which may
create change in the way a reader experiences life (i.e.
creation of characters in a novel or imagery in poems); how our
writing/art can become a catalyst for the reader to shift
his/her own life.
-- the butterfly effect
what our work does to our own sense of what is possible in life
AND simultaneously creates the atmosphere for change
within the reader/audience; how we write to heal/re-vision life

In this way we discover how our writings/stories/art create an atmosphere for change that is not definable, yet inevitable.

This includes how to infuse our readers with that same sense of "mystic" experience some artists/writers encounter when creating our work. While remembering that we cannot have any attachment to the exact outcome of this sharing (butterfly effect).

We will together unearth ways that writing as art moves us beyond our own unique view of the world into other spheres of existence. In this way we discover how destiny can be released from being "set" in linear time and become re-written...all through our writing lives.

Details
All genres are welcome.

Writing assignments prior to attending the workshop are suggested.

Extensive reading list, some required reading before attending is useful,
including: Coming to Writing and other Essays, by Helene Cixous, The Wave in the Mind: Talks & Essays on the Writer, Reader & the Imagination by Ursula Le Quin, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, The Woman at Ottawi Crossing by Frank Waters, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gumbutas, "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury.

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antoinette nora claypoole

All People are One

Butterfly Effect Writing Workshop

hands-on & theory experience