By SAMANTHA MCGUIRE, Staff Reporter
Inspiration will be sought out on Friday as writing marathoners race their pens across paper and their minds against boundaries.
The English department at Northwestern Oklahoma State University is hosting a writing marathon in downtown Alva on Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Graceful Arts Gallery.
Students from the college, high school and middle school are welcome to join, as well as community members and school faculty. The event is free, all that is needed to bring is something to write with and something to write on.
The event will kick off at 10 a.m. at the Graceful Arts Gallery. Groups will be formed, and then it is off to writing around town. Groups are advised to find some place that inspires them, write for 10 minutes, read their favorite writings to each other and then move on to a new location.
People may come and go from the event as they please. At 1 p.m. writing will end and people will gather in the Graceful Arts Gallery to share their work with one another.
While the writing marathon is a relatively new idea to Alva, having just held their first marathon last spring, it has been around in other cities for much longer.
New Orleans, Louisiana, was the location of the first writing marathon in 1994. The idea was first introduced by Natalie Goldberg in her book “Writing Down the Bones.” The idea was put into action by Richard Louth, director of the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project.
Kathryn Lane’s ideas were sparked for Alva’s writing marathon from New Orleans’s writing marathon. Lane is an assistant professor of English and a chair of the English, foreign language and humanities department.
Lane estimated she has attended about 20 writing marathons in her lifetime. In her experience she found that she tends to shift genres throughout the day.
“We get a variety of genres,” Lane said. “I have people that primarily write poetry who decide to try nonfiction. I have people who primarily write fiction who decide they want to try poetry. The great thing about the marathon is that you write in 10 minute increments. You can try new things, and if it’s not working you can change.”
Many people are wary of reading their own work to a group, but Lane said, by the end of the day people are so proud of pieces they have written, and have gotten so comfortable with their groups that they are excited to share their work.
Besides the obvious academic advantages a writing marathon provides, it also has other perks. One of those perks would be building a sense of community.
“A great thing about the writing marathon is that it works for any age group, as long as they are literate and able to write,” Lane said. “It really builds community. Alva is so community focused that it seemed like it would go well.”
Writing for some people is a chore. Something that they dislike doing, and Lane as a professor of English, sees many students who view writing in a negative light. She decided a writing marathon in Alva might help students enjoy writing.
“The marathon had worked in transforming people’s perceptions of writing in other locations, so I decided to try it here,” Lane said.
“It’s fun to write whatever strikes your fancy,” Lane said.