I’m co-hosting a writing podcast with Jason Quinn Malott called The Laboratory. We are giving each other monthly writing prompts and then seeing what comes of them. I never studied creative writing formally, so the show gives me a chance to have conversations about process, creativity, blocks, culture, etc. that I haven’t been able to have in the past.
After doing a few episodes, I thought it would be interesting to catalog our references from the shows. It’s a way of following our train of thought.
Our first episode dealt with Jason’s desire to work with experimental techniques, particularly to prepare for a larger work he has planned. That was the practicality of the show. Within that, we discussed the problems of experimentation, our own writing influences, and then who influenced our influences.
Our first prompt dealt with cut-up and blackout techniques. You can read the results at the link above. If you are interested, in episode two we discuss the full process of our cut-ups and use of multiple source texts.
I should mention that this is a podcast within a podcast. The Laboratory is part of Jason’s Outrider Podcast.
Here’s the catalog from episode one of The Laboratory:
Jenn Zukowski / Kazuo Ishiguro / Ursula K. Le Guin / Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone / Woody Allen / John Updike / Philip Roth / Jonathan Franzen / The Hobbit / Theodore Roethke / Robert Frost / Emily Dickinson / Lewis Carroll / Laura Mullen / William Faulkner / “A Rose for Emily” / The Evolution of Shadows / Ghoulanoids / Laura Hawley / The Egyptian Book of the Dead / Samuel Beckett / Derek Ballard / Ron Cobb / Semiotic Standards for Alien (1979) / Son of the White Mare (1981) / Eyvind Earle / Sleeping Beauty (1959) / My Life: Eyvind Earle (2000) / Alejandro Jodorowsky / Joseph Campbell / Beowulf / Ray Harryhausen / Brothers Quay / Jan Svankmajer / King Kong (1933) / El Topo (1970) / Holy Mountain (1973) / He-Man and the Masters of the Universe / Walt Whitman / “Street of Crocodiles” (1986) / “Street of Crocodiles” / Bruno Schulz / Robert Walser / Franz Kafka / “The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer” (1984) / The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) / “Jabberwocky” / Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Edgar Allan Poe / Rudolf II / Giuseppe Arcimboldo / Vertumnus (1591) / Fire (1566) / James Joyce / Marcel Proust / “Whoroscope” / Rene Descartes / David Cronenberg / Look Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) / Sidney Poitier / Sideways (2004) / The Coen Brothers / Guillermo Del Toro / The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film / Walter Murch / Michael Ondaatje / John Berger / The English Patient (1996) / Apocalypse Now (1979) / Touch of Evil (1958) / Lynn Sloan / Jorge Luis Borges / Ernest Hemingway / Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. / Isaac Asimov / Italo Calvino / If on a winter’s night a traveler / Ulysses / Microscripts / Philip K. Dick / Stanislaw Lem / Solaris / A Perfect Vacuum / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Blade Runner (1982) / Gertrude Stein / Robert Coover / Spanking the Maid / Fifty Shades of Grey / John Barth / Donald Barthelme / Thomas Bernhard / W.G. Sebald / Jack Kerouac / On the Road / William Burroughs / Junky / Queer / Naked Lunch / On the Road (2012) / Kristen Stewart / Salman Rushdie / Julio Cortazar / Hopscotch / Finnegans Wake / Giordano Bruno / Giambattista Vico / Street Trash (1987) / Waiting for Godot / Richard Baxter / “Directions for a Peaceful Death” / GI Joe / Karl Marx / Emmanuelle / Anais Nin / Tropic of Cancer / Little Billboards / Brion Gysin
Stephen McClurg 