#ted bishop

..."was a very fugitive dye, so fugitive indeed that it would seem that the greatest usefulness of the pen might be for persons who have reasons for wishing their writing to fade out rather quickly."

More filming, and this time, we get to learn that Kevin’s brilliant line was improvised. 

Ted did something really cool this episode. We got to see the entire fight scene via his Instagram. 

This is from blocking the scene. 

We have KJ and Sandy waiting for instructions. 

Catriona directing the scene.

Tara making sure they stay on script.

Shamus seeing how he wants to frame the shot which also plays into the blocking. 

I finished “Riding with Rilke, reflections on Motorcycles and Books” by Ted Bishop today. We have recently read “American Rambler” in RFB, which was a book-length essay about a man’s hike from Washington D.C. to New York City, where along the way the author reflected on American history and current politics. So, when I ran across “Riding with Rilke” at Half-Price Books, I was open to another travelogue essay/reflection. 

“Riding with Rilke” is structured around the author’s solo motorcycle trip from Edmonton to Austin, then back again. Along the way he talks about motorcycles, mainly Ducati and BMW, learning to ride, the landscape, and writers, mainly Modernist. For me, it started off with too much talk about motorcycles and the difference in small design elements make toward the performance and ride of the bike. But then I have no background in this, so it makes sense that I would not be as interested. Once he starts his reflections on books with a section on Virginia Woolf, I shifted gears and began to enjoy the book better. Bishop is a Modernist scholar, and much of his talk on books revolves around doing archival work at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. 

HOW THE BANFF CENTRE CHANGED HIS LIFE, WHY YOU NEED TO LEARN TO WRITE PROPOSALS, HOW TO BE FAIR TO YOUR REAL-LIFE SOURCES, AND WHAT TO WRITE AFTER YOUR HIT LISTEN/DOWNLOAD In 2014, Ted Bishop did the surprising: he wrote a book about ink, and it became a success. The book fits into a genre sometimes called commodity biographies which investigate how human needs produced a product to solve problems, and the problems and opportunities that product eventually created for its creators and humanity. That story is the story of writing itself, of course, so it’s no wonder that Bishop, an English professor at the University of Alberta, would take it on. If there’s a stereotype of what an English professor is, Bishop isn’t it. With his facial features, beard, and slight stature, he looks very much like young George Lucas, although his hair is grey. Bishop’s previous book, Riding with Rilke, was a Best Book choice of the Globe & Mail, CBC, and Playboy about the amazing people he met during his own motorcycle odysseys across North America that ended with a 160 km/h wipe-out and a back broken in two places. He lived, walked again, and wrote The Social Life of Ink. I sat down with Ted Bishop on February 02, 2015 at the University of Alberta’s Humanities Centre to ask him about the craft of long-form nonfiction. Along the way, we discussed:

Why he so values the world-renowned Banff Centre for the Arts, with artist residencies that give writers space, time, meals, and as a beautiful a setting as any place on the planet

Why writers need to learn how to write proposals, and condense 30 pages of writing into 3 paragraphs

Why long form writing is like hiking in the rain for eight hours before you can get into dry clothes,

How to render real people as great characters, without turning them into caricatures, and

How to decide what to write and what not to write after you’ve written a hit book.

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