Month: September 2015

A lot of ideas surging through my head these days, so I am taking ten minutes just to jot a few things down.

1. On a ‘superhuman’ level I am starting to truly appreciate Lebron James’ choice to return to Ohio and be the face of that state. It didn’t really click for me until the Ohio State game when players would score and strike a ‘Lebron pose’. Quickly then I came to realize that the dude is having an impact on that entire state in a way that could not have happened in Miami-Wade County or New York or anywhere else he’d considered playing. Lebron is Cleveland.
2. Super-exciting sports night finds us witnessing the return of regular season football and, far more importantly, Serena Williams effecting to move one step closer to a Grand Slam. Williams would be the first female player to do so in quite some time and the feat would lock her in for hall of fame status. She cleared her most difficult hurdle yet on Tuesday when she took down her big sister in a match that had to lead to bragging rights at family dinner night. This also means that Venus won’t be hoisting a trophy at all, since the Williams sisters won’t be competing for the doubles championship this time around.
3. On some level I have lost control of my external identity. I suspect I lost control quite some time ago, but only in the wake of my recent divorce and the subsequent reinforcement of negative perceptions through a series of unfortunate lies and assumptions have I truly seen what people think. As a result I know that not a whole lot of people in this world actually know me or care to know me. The preference, it seems, is to maintain the stereotype of me because that is comfortable in one way or another. It explains a lot of behaviors at least. I no longer have to question why people act or think a certain way, because one drink at the rumor well fills me up with their perceptions. I’m kind of at the point of not caring to a point–personally or professionally. At some point I have to accept that my actions are speaking for themselves, and it is my responsibility to act and speak in such a way as not to promote further rumor and misperception. I can evoke such clearness through concise use of language and controlled interaction.
4. I’m excited about the school year moving forward but less so about the kids’ sports year moving forward. I created a sports situation with a lot of overlap between sports, which demands that I find a way to get kids to different places at the same time. I haven’t quite figured out how to make that happen. I am going to need help.

This is on the verge of becoming a straight up writing blog.

I am not really surprised by the development. My life is largely about writing right now and I am moving towards a life that is mostly centered around producing quality fiction. As I blog I’m listening to John Truby speak about the story to Film Courage. I’ve been a fanboy of his since reading The Anatomy of Story. I considered making parts of it canon for my screenplay writing class, but opted to go building block mode and focus on genre and storyform with this 100 level class. Now, these students expect to produce some legitimate screenplays this semester. I am going to go to the mat to see that they develop something that will get them there, but expecting a completed screenplay is counterproductive.

I expect to cultivate effort and a sense of the writer’s life.

This is a bit of a co-dependent effort. Their success is my success and all… The more I allow myself to lock into that writing life and being successful in that fashion, the better I become as a writer and a teacher and really as a more complete person.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The one thing that constantly surprises me in life is bold absurdity. I mean when someone calmly suggests something outlandish and makes it seem like what is being suggested is truly legitimate–practically a layup. Part of it is the delivery; a subtle presence that makes you seem the fool for not agreeing. Part of it is the sheer boldness of the request. When things are foreign it can be difficult to know how to react. Couple this with that smooth delivery and you might get snookered. I’ve learned to take a beat and think everything through.

As I compose this my students are spending 10 minutes answering some key questions to develop their novels:

• Where does your story begin?
• When does your character change? How? Why? How close is that to the beginning?
• What is the most important change your character must make? Why? How and when does this happen?
• Who is the person/thing standing in their way?

I use these as an introduction to plot and dramatic through line, slowly introducing the writers to the idea of what matters most in storytelling. I think that as a writer the teaching of this stuff helps me to fully realize the writing life. Once upon a time I thought that life was mainly about experiencing and writing, but I think teaching has a valuable role in the life. I believe that teaching exposes you to writings greatest moments and faults all writ large in the eyes of the students. By being a teacher you consciously accept the role of question answerer, therefore you have to know a fair amount about the craft and about how to live that life in order to send that information to the eager.

In short, teaching keeps you honest.

So I ask these questions and give them ten minutes to figure out what it is they are trying to say in the story. This is after spending two weeks talking about the characters, so that they recognize that there is no story without a character, and furthermore there is no story without a character that needs to change for one reason or another. That transformation is the story. That is what I try to get to the root of when we open a new semester of story making.

As I write this I am reflecting on the end of several stories. The seasons of four of my shows came to a conclusion over the last few weeks with the last of them, The Strain, closing soon. This being the year of sci-fi I’ve been treated to a number of stories that deal with this idea of What If.. and expose the protagonist to the need to change and allow us to watch this develop over a series of short stories/conflicts/episodes leading us to the end of the season and the major dramatic change set up from day one. Most shows slip up. It is hard to maintain that thread over 10-22 episodes. This is why I believe many shows fail. Some don’t. The pacing and storytelling enhance the character growth tremendously. The Walking Dead is a prime example where by the latest season we can see how far Rick has come.

More on this later… ten minutes gone means I have to teach.

This could be goodbye.

I’ve been plagued with a series of conversations that begin with, ‘Didn’t you see my post on Facebook?’ I didn’t see the post and normally don’t because I don’t look at Facebook practically at all anymore. There is a certain level of responsibility that the Facebook brings that I don’t want. On some level you’re supposed to be checking out your friends lives through the medium. On a separate level people follow your face page and make judgements about who you are based largely on what you post and what people post on your page.

I remain aware of none of it. I thought about going to my page and seeing what is written there, but why go down that rabbit hole. Yeah, I recognize that this blog propagates there, and removing Facebook removes the opportunity for many to see the blog, but the question of the page remains: What does it say about me and what responsibility do I have to do more than what I’m already doing on Facebook–which is nothing.

As I move forward with my life and consider the changes I need to make to be a better me, I have to think hard on the ties I cut and the responsibilities I shed. I want to trim the fat both literally and figuratively on the things in life that really don’t matter or contribute in a valuable way. Maybe I start with Facebook. Maybe I figure out that social media on the whole is a time suck that makes one accountable for information that they’d rather not be accountable for…

Maybe that is ten minutes.

I having a tough time stringing together a coherent argument today. I’ve been thinking about a lot of different happenings, such as the work Neal Stephenson is doing on Hieroglyphs, the questions raised by Paolo Bacigalupi’s Water Knife, and my own limited role in the science fiction community.

A lot of this goes back to earlier conversations about not knowing what my next big ‘ambition’ would be. I spoke far too much about the fact that I had the wife, kids, white picket fence… basically the American dream at some level, yet was deeply unsatisfied by that experience. It sounded at the time like a mid-life crisis. A thousand posts later I blew up my marriage and it sounded even more like a mid-life crisis. The more I reflect on what has been happening both in my private and professional life, the more I recognize that it wasn’t a mid-life crisis at all.

It turns out I don’t subscribe to the so-called American dream. The family issues are largely unrelated to the other stuff, but separating from that specific situation put me in a state of mind to ask myself what I want, which led to me recognizing that I have never wanted those standard things I was supposed to. Yes, I appreciate the house and the stucco fence, but it is not what drives me. When I was directed towards ASU’s Project Hieroglyph, I realized at once that it was exactly what I’d been trying to do all along.

Hieroglyph marries science fiction with scientific speculation to forma  relationship in which what is being written is not only reflecting on the role of science in society, but pushing it and doing so in a way that positively impacts the community. In other words, it isn’t just about telling cool stories, it is about telling stories that matter.

So, when I think about what I want to do and be and leave as a lasting impression of my life, I want to tell stories that trigger the imagination of others in a way that compels them to act–be it to research, consider, to create, or just to rationalize their own role in the world and ultimately their purpose.

Big goals indeed.

So, I finally had a chance to recap the MTV Video Music Awards and by that I mean recap my lack of understanding of the modern video music industry. Maybe I am that old. Miley Cyrus in an Atelier Versace outfit that looks like the 5th Element made love with Thunderdome is just wrong. Not because she’s too young or any of that standard crap. No, I hate it because she’s straight up not sexy enough to pull it off.

Miley Cyrus looks like a Raggedy Ann doll done up in a bunch of different outfits–badly. Supposedly, the entire gamut of looks are ‘her’ but I think what all of it reveals is that there is no ‘her’ and in that no personality in her sound or stage presence. She is trying hard to be someone who is noticed and over the top and it doesn’t feel genuine. Cnn said it best when they called her the ‘garish avatar of the American id.‘

This is my real argument: Music doesn’t feel genuine in the MTV realm. From Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood to Drakes, well, anything that he creates. The music seems false and prepared. There are several genuine artists on the music scene coming out with something genuine to say–even if what is real to them sounds poppy to the world (See: Call me maybe). The music scene has lost a lot of its authenticity and thus its credibility.

This is why Kanye can run for president. If we are willing to continually follow along with a series of songs and artists who, for all intents and purposes, are as vapid as an average K-pop band, we might have a generation just brazen enough to elect that dude.

Lost in all this is the efforts by Nicki Minaj to address an attack by Cyrus that basically amounted to being belittled as an ‘Angry Black Chick’. So, what did her response wind up doing? Making her seem more like an angry black chick, of course. Instead it should have reconfirmed the flagging identity of the MTV viewer and this incumbent sense of American slippage back into a period of time where we just don’t get it.

We were on the verge of something big–between civil rights for all and finding our purpose on the world stage. One glance at MTV and I’m starting to think that all that was illusion and we are still chasing that next popular pretty face.

 

One of the great things about teaching is research. I stand on the shoulders of giants for everything I teach. I look at the work that came before me, using some of it and discarding what does not fit into the theme and methodology I am trying to teach. I say this from across a mess of textbooks, reading guides, and speciality information books stacked in piles based on the specific course they enhance. I think that’s the thing I’ve learned. There are three pillars of teaching–not the two I originally thought existed.

I’ve always operated under the premise that teaching is about being able to reach an audience and help them understand material they struggle to understand and interpret on their own. The second pillar of responsibility there is to create conditions in which students can apply this newfound knowledge to real-life scenarios.

That leads us to the third pillar. Not only is it the responsibility of the instructor to stay current with the subject, but it is also the responsibility of the instructor to incorporate all types and styles of information about the subject matter into the curriculum. This is especially true of writing classes where there isn’t just one way to write a paper. On the other hand, there are so many ways to compose writing and to schedule and plan a writing life that you cannot explain everything over the course of a semester. Therefore it is important to pick and choose the materials to use and by that create an informational identity for yourself and your courses.

This helps to explain why people learn different stuff from different teachers of the same subject. Our informational identities are different. We teach what we know and what we continue to learn about.

It never fails. I get off to a pretty good start in the morning, working through some writing task or schoolwork and building up a head of steam for the day. I pause to take a break and reward myself for a job well done and then BOOM. I am done. I’m no longer in that productive headspace and I’m walking around trying to figure out what happened and where the fire went. The problem happens almost every day. I can finish a handful of tasks before the clip scrapes empty. The question is, how do I quickly reload?

I think I need to write a book. I think the book ought to have a handful of midday starters that, based on brain science, trigger the brain to reignite after a lull. For me the issue seems to be that the break takes me so completely out of the proper headspace that a map and a compass don’t do the trick to get me back to where I belong. Minecraft references not withstanding, it is important to have a grip on your headspace. Understanding the things that get you going and the things that pull you out is key to a productive day. Sometimes it can be the work environment itself that is not conducive to sucking you back into the zone. My office sucks. The one at home was pretty decent until the kitten invasion, and the one at work is anything but conducive to productive thought. So, yeah, maybe an office makeover helps. But who can afford that?

A more realistic approach, for me at least, seems to be the discovery of those triggers that put me in the proper mindset to function. Some people have a writing ritual they go through at the start of their process. I have no such thing but there are elements of buddhist meditation and key writings that could be strung together to form such a thing. That’s one option.

As we speak I’m trying the ten minute rule as an option to swing back into headspace. However, I’m already considering going down to the campus coffee shop post two minutes from now in order to quench my thirst.

The fact is, I don’t quite have the secrets to the mystery that is my own writing and working process. I often don’t have that thrust to get started. Eventually it just happens, but understanding how it happens seems to be key to replicating it and refining that process in the future. I’ll consider a future work in progress.

For now, I think it is time to lap up some coffee-like drink.

Some Thoughts:

1. The Brady suspension reversal is a big deal for the league. It means that the league doesn’t have final say in its own disciplinary affairs…
2. How come they didn’t go to bat for Adrien Peterson like that?

 

I’ve been teaching my students about socialization again, and I’ve been using the Hot-Crazy matrix as a tool for understanding how some people think and questioning why. I keep on expecting the matrix to piss people off–especially women who are, by the nature of the matrix, utterly demeaned and devalued. My expectations always fall short. In truth, the ladies laugh and say, ‘that’s true because I know someone who is hot and crazy and women are always crazy.’ When I follow up by asking if they themselves are crazy, the answer is always no.

Here’s what I’ve learned about the world from this: We always tend to act against our own self-interests if doing so makes us feel part of an in-crowd or aloof. We see it in politics when the ultra-poor appalachians are voting for the super rich republicans who want to release restrictions on businesses and cut the ‘welfare state’ services that the appalachians need to survive. I saw it with the Hot-crazy where all of the women in the class loved the video and laughed alongside the guys but never identified themselves as someone being discussed in the video.

I don’t have a clue what to do with this information. I know it is real and it is problematic overall, but I don’t know how to apply my understanding in any way that isn’t evil–i.e. me taking advantage of that situation to create my own empire.

I just wish we didn’t all work in stereotypes and existed in a realm where individuals were seen as such and not classified and grouped and tagged like so many sheep…

I was reminded by a student today that what we do in the classroom matters long beyond the reach of the classroom. It is an important reminder, because already I found myself becoming detached from the experiences of the composition classroom–not because I don’t love teaching those courses, but because the creative writing students so obviously want to be in that space and the others seem trapped there; required to live out their semester under my reluctant authority. Yet this isn’t true. The encouraging message came from a composition student and yet another pulled me aside earlier in the day to just say hi and let me know he was still around. So, I learned something: The energy and desire with which we approach a task translates to those receiving that task.

One of the things that make me the happiest is when students are successful and they light up and they act as though something they’ve learned has impact beyond the classroom. I’m not the best classroom teacher. I’m not necessarily the guy you want as your technical writing instructor. As a novelist I’m about creating a piece of writing that tells a story and does so in an engaging way. I can work you through the rules of syntax, but my heart lives in the ability to help you discover both voice and desire for the craft of writing. This combination lends itself well to the creative writing prefix, but often falls flat with composition where students are likely to have a history of stern, essay driven instruction. In truth, the discovery process drives my teaching vs. the structure of an essay. I want them to learn something and then discover the voice with which to share that something to an audience.