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Brian Kiteley's one of the most interesting guys you'll ever meet. He's lived all over the world; he's got bizarre yet dramatic stories; he's a philospher's son; he's a tenured professor; he's a bourbon sipper; he's not an attention seeker; he's low on ego and high on intellectual and humanistic curiosity. He's one of those people whose words of wisdom play in my head when I need them, which is to say: He's great.
I've been practicing summarizing events lately. Here are a few things that stand out about Kiteley's Buzz this past weekend (thanks to all who came out on a particularly lovely Saturday afternoon):
- Some of the most interesting writing comes out of fairly random exercises--happy accidents, as it were. These accidents might be stumbled upon by each of us, or can perhaps be contrived by someone (Kiteley, in this new book or his last one) who's designed them for us.
- Most of what we must do as writers is try to distract ourselves from the impossibility of our task, especially in early drafts.
- If your material comes from something personal and the personal is, for some reason, not something you can face right now, don't hesitate to simply follow something you can face at the moment that's equally personal. (His example was that he thought of writing about his father, but didn't want to delve so much into philosophy; he wrote about his grandfather instead.)
- Don't tell realistic stories in philosophy.
- The color red can cause hallucinations.
- There's so much more. Anyone's free to add!
We do have a podcast that we'll be adding to the site asap! Thanks again to Brian Kiteley and all who attended his event this past weekend.
