On Saturday, one of my film professors held a “Writer’s Block” party at his house. He holds these get-togethers at least three or so times a semester and invites writers, filmmakers and artists (basically anyone with a creative bent) from all over Oklahoma to come to the parties. In short, these are well-structured networking opportunities.

At the beginning of the evening, my professor stopped all individual conversations and had everyone introduce themselves to the group and talk about what projects they are working on. As new people arrived, we would repeat the process. We also would take moments to show some of the group members’ short films and read excerpts from their books or poetry, etc.

It was fascinating, getting to meet so many different people with such different backgrounds and passions.

For example, there was one particularly entertaining writer there who had just gotten his book picked up by a publisher. The book is called Hobo-sapiens, and it’s a memoir of the two decades of his life that he spent riding the rails as a hobo. He read us the rough draft for the back cover of his book, and the last sentence read, “Not many people can say they went from Yale to rail and from hunk to monk.” If the book is anything like the back cover, it should be an entertaining read. It also sounds like it might be a sort of self-help book. I’d be curious to read it when it hits the shelves.

[Note: This same fellow also spends his summers driving tour buses in an Alaskan State Park for $25 an hour… now that’s the life.]

I also met a woman who teaches both a film class and a television/broadcasting class at one of the local high schools here in Norman. I had no idea there were film classes in the high school, or I definitely would have tried to volunteer there earlier. As it is, I got her contact information and I am going to try to come to the high school for an hour a week and talk with her kids about the film program at OU and also critique their projects if they’d like me to. It sounds like so much fun!

I am also kicking around the idea of getting the Student Film Production Club to start a sort of after-school program with the high school kids where we would work on writing and creating quality short films. The only problem with this idea is that it would really require a car (something I am sadly without) or the free time of other people (which is hard to come by).