Author Archives: Stefen Styrsky
A Writing Prompt
Recently I’ve been thinking about how the arts – writing, painting, photography, music – inspire each other, not just in like fields, but also across genres. The idea was prompted when I watched the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut. In the documentary there … Continue reading
Bad Hair Day – Free Writing
It’s raining here in DC. Has been for two weeks. I was caught in a shower and afterwards realized that I treated the event with a lot more annoyance than it warranted. So I did some free writing about the … Continue reading
The Panic in Needle Park
While reading a book have you ever wondered: how would this style translate to film? Not the story’s events or a character’s appearance. The actual style, the tone of the writing. Visually, how would a director replicate Bellow’s exuberance, Cheever’s … Continue reading
On Rejection
A writer submitting work for publication is a writer experiencing rejection. This is simply a truth of the literary world. I’m sure there are those lucky and talented writers whose earliest work was snapped up by some journal, editor or … Continue reading
Happy Birthday, Frank O’Hara!
March 27th is the birthday of a favorite poet of mine, Frank O’Hara. Little known today, perhaps because he was killed in a car accident in 1966 at the age of forty, O’Hara was a leading figure in the New … Continue reading
A Writing Prompt
Writing prompts are little imagination-jogs (aka kicks in the literary pants) meant to get a writer, well, actually writing. They’re most often employed to overcome that notorious phenomenon known as writer’s block, the wall of trepidation the blank page seems … Continue reading
Rebecca
As part of my self-education in film, I’m slowly working through Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre. Some of his early, lesser-known movies (lesser known to me at least) have been quite fun: The 39 Steps, Lifeboat, The Foreign Correspondent. Despite the era’s … Continue reading
Stefen Styrsky 