Blood and Tears: How to write an impressive Author Bio (it's not how you think!)

Thought I'd follow up my "come meet an Academy award winner!" post with a debrief on how John Kassab, Sound Designer's talk was.

And it was AWESOME.

Though not an author by trade (he is currently writing a children's book, however) just like us, he is a creative person, and knows all too well the struggles involved in being one.

He told a lot of great stories, funny and inspiring and I thought I would share with you John's take on those impressive, accolade-filled bio's you find on successful people's sites - authors and otherwise.

But first! Here's John's:

John Kassab is a sound designer, re-recording mixer, installation artist, electronic musician and DJ from Melbourne, Australia.

In 2010, John embarked on a 3 month Winston Churchill Fellowship interviewing leading sound people in 8 cities across 4 continents. His fellowship report, 'The State of Post-Production Film Sound', has popped up in film school teaching packs around the world and sections have been translated into languages other than English. Later that year, he was also inducted into the prestigious Motion Picture Sound Editors in Los Angeles for his contribution to film sound.

John's recent sound work can be heard in the Academy Award Winning 'The Lost Thing' directed by Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhmann and Ariel Kleiman's 'Deeper Than Yesterday', which received the Kodak Award and Petit Rail d'Or at Cannes in 2010 and the International Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2011. Both films also received award recognition for their sound design and mix. 

His latest sound design and mix can be heard on Craig Irvin's 'Tethered', which just debuted at the Sydney Film Festival where it won the Dandy Award for best director.

Impressive, yes?

Of course, you won't have a bio as impressive as that unless you too are a multi-award winning, inductee who won a lucrative Fellowship and is studied at universities across the globe.

What John has to say about his impressive bio is this:

That snapshot of his achievements doesn't take into account the decade of heartache and rejection, the promising sounding meetings that nothing came of, the applications for jobs that didn't exist. The years on Centrelink (Government payments), where Centrelink pushed him to work in an abattoir, and his family pushed him to work in the family's Real Estate business.

The impressive bio doesn't take into account the times after he dropped out of his law degree in order to pursue his passion, sound design, and then watched his ex-classmates go to the Mercedes dealership to buy their first real car.

Behind the impressive author bio, was a lot of struggle and pain. But there was also passion and belief in himself that he could succeed.

And now he has.

So. How to write an impressive author bio? Believe in yourself. Keep doing the work, keep honing your craft. Take a chance on you.

And be rewarded.

Sarah

Free lunchtime talk in Melbourne: Academy Award Winning Sound Designer John Kassab!

For all you night owls and for those of you seeing this in the morning...this just in!

Melbourne peeps - TOMORROW (Today if you're reading this on Tuesday 9th August) you should pop over to NMIT, Yarra Bend Rd Fairfield, Victoria Australia to see John Kassab speak and hear all about sound design and working on Academy Award winning films.

Should be a great way to spend your lunch break. 
PL Speaker Series Kassab

See you there!

Sairz

Writing Students Geek Out to John Marsden

So...as you may recall I was pretty psyched for John Marsden to come and do his thang at Uni this week.

And then I had a job interview on the SAME DAY at THE SAME TIME. Can you believe that? I missed John Marsden! (But I got the job!)

But I have been informed that the writing and publishing students, even those not interested in YA literature geeked out and fan-girled at the mere presence of John Marsden. I thought I was the only one who was going to do that. But everyone grew up with his books when they were younger, and of course who in Australia DIDN'T see Tomorrow When the War Began last year?

Anyway, I may have missed it, but here are two recaps of the event for those who want to know.

http://publishinglab.net/john-marsden-at-the-publab/

http://musingsofrationality.tumblr.com/post/3918441254/john-marsden

For those who don't click through, John Marsden is not only a much-loved Australian author and educator, he ran camps for writers and teens who wanted to explore writing, and he even started his own school.

I love the below from Musings of Rationality, it just emphasizes the awesome of John and his crystal clear teaching style. Check it: John on how to write a vivid sentence.

"He enlightened us to what pertains to being a good writer opposed to a great writer. He spoke with wisdom and enthusiasm about the power of language; he workshopped a sentence for us.

This was a five minutes exercise where he explained to us the power of language & how it can transform something bland into something tantalising easily. He wrote the following sentence: 

We went to the beach. We had lunch. We went home.

From this sentence we were to identify the nouns.

We went to the beach. We had lunch. We went home.

Then with these nouns we were to substitute them with other more interesting nouns that befitted the sentence. This was the result:

We went to Bondi beach. We had a couple of burgers. We went Sam’s place.

Yes, the last sentence is not grammatically correct, however, we still had to identify the verbs within the sentence.

We went to Bondi beach. We had a couple of burgers. We went Sam’s place.

We did the same to the verbs as was done with the nouns.

We rode to Bondi beach. We grabbed a couple of burgers. We caught a bus to Sam’s place.

That is the completed sentence. A lot better than the initial product is it not? This exercise was used to demonstrate that an exuberant use of adverbs, adjectives are not always needed to create an eloquent piece."

Yup. It's that easy.

That's all I have for now. John Marsden, everybody.