Barrett Bowlin

I thoroughly enjoyed the reading presented and facilitated by Barrett Bowlin. His book, Ghosts Caught on Film, was very clever from the segment he read to us. I also really like the fact that the book’s publication date was not even a year ago, it feels fresh and current. I was very inspired by the fact that he pulls so much inspiration from science. It is not like anything I have really read before and it’s interesting to see the way his mind works in regard to writing and his other passions. Like the last visiting author, Benjamin Garcia, there were similarities in relation to the scientific and medical themes. They both studied science and I find it very fascinating that his career turned around after he did so much schooling. Something he wrote that I will be sure to use in the future is creating character maps. I like how he said that he doesn’t always use every little detail but he crafts it to get a vibe and better understanding of the characters he is writing about. Additionally, I think it is very interesting to write characters in fiction that are based on real people you know, which he did with his wife. He put a very large spin on the character his wife inspired, but he just used her as the foundation of something deeper and complex. I would really like to try his method of writing by doing it in solitude with no one else and after consuming a fair amount of caffeine. I think it would increase my productivity. Last semester, I went to a reading by Gina Nutt and she said something very similar about writing about your obsessions. Bowlin said that having frustration or anger also helps since you have a lot of emotion within. Previously in my head science as an overarching theme felt very non-fiction, researched, and fact-based so I admire how he can use something that can be so rigid and make a fiction story from it. Something that struck me as surprising was the speed and intensity with which he read. It felt frantic and exciting which is most likely not the way I would’ve read it if I had the book in front of me. I think it shows the fast-paced career in medicine and helping people. He was also very expressive with his body language. He would often snap and move his hands around which gave the story animation and liveliness. Barrett Bowlin was open about his experiences prior to his life as a writer and I enjoy hearing the backstory of what the authors do before they start their work. His tiered organization with the categories of writing samples was something I want to try in the future. I like how he always strived for his work to be published but accepts and acknowledges that most of his work will just be kept hidden. The analogy of them being called “orphans” was just as creative as it was humorous, and it acts as a means for personification. All in all, I found his reading to be inspiring and I learned a lot about his writing process as well as his personal life.