CASTOR A Town Built on Stories, History, and the Undeniable, Elusive Truth Rachel Santee

Starting Out Modernity: The Emergence of Catharsis Creative Writing Inspirational Films and Written Works

Goals To write a full-length piece To better understand the art of storytelling To work in historical aspects

Process Brainstorming: Novel? Short story trilogy? 50 short stories? 100 short stories? Story Schedule

My Project A series of 75 short anecdotal stories that range from 1- 4 pages in length. Each story based off of a vintage photograph Although separate stories, they all come together to tell one entire story A southern town over the course of the past century

Antique Alley -- Monroe, Louisiana

Antique Gallery

Product Why “Castor”, Mississippi?

Product Why “Castor”, Mississippi? Why use pictures?

Product Why “Castor”, Mississippi? Why use pictures? Why the South?

Process Editing and Formatting

Publishing

Writing… and a ton of Reading!

Challenges Reading… and not reading. Writing… and not writing. Repetition of stories Foard’s amazing ability to lose photos The looming idea of editing The P word

Discoveries Novels are not the only way to tell a story Storytelling is innate part of being human I can in fact write and (self) publish a book I do not want to live in the South I do not want to pursue creative writing in college

The Aftermath Microsoft Word and I still are not on speaking terms. Foard is still recovering from my wrath when he lost photos I have not been able to enjoy a good piece of fiction without critiquing every sentence and picturing how I would have written it. After being published online as well in print, Castor has now been downloaded by over 400 people.

Acknowledgements The Academy Mark Foard My Family Wil Weiss Matt Aldredge Everyone who unknowingly supplied me with names (probably you) Dale Scott Ross School

Questions?

CASTOR A Town Built on Stories, History, and the Undeniable, Elusive Truth Rachel Santee