Defamiliarization refers to a writer’s taking an everyday object that we all recognize and, with a wave of his or her authorial magic wand, rendering that same object weirdly unfamiliar to us—strange even. Presto change-o, our perspective shifts and we see the object in a new way. A pretty neat magic trick, if you ask us. The word defamiliarization was coined by the early 20th-century Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky in his essay “Art as Technique.” He argued that...
Get Published With Confidence: Essential Writing Advice If you are a writer studying at the Studio, you know I’ve been promising a resource list to help ease your way toward submitting your work. It’s here, at last, and I must thank Joseph from Studio III, because he pulled it all together for me. Many balk at submitting, due to the fear. IE: You might believe your work is not good enough yet, or you have a terror of rejection. But submitting, ironically, is a terrific way to get...
The Best Online Writing Workshops at Blackbird Studio for Writers Welcome to Blackbird and specifically, to this site for Flight School Lit Lessons which is a series of posts from the Best Online Writing Workshops offered here at Blackbird, largely by the teachers, but also by the students with something to offer and share that they’ve learned and put into practice in their own writing. Comments are welcome and appreciated (though vetted too). NOTE: If you are a student who would like to...
