10 Minute Rule

I’ve been consuming audiobooks at a frenetic pace. Used to be that I only listened to audiobooks on the road. They’d get me through long road trips. I’d pop one on to and from work. Lately I listen to them all the time. If I’m working in the garage, audiobook. If I’m laying in bed, audiobook. Some nights I am up till near dawn listening. I do not count this as a bad thing. In order to write well one must read well and often. I’m not reading with my eyes so much as my ears anymore, but I am reading nonetheless.

I read everything on the audio. It started out with trash novels–W.E.B Griffen thrillers and pulp detective works. From there my desires exploded outwards experimentally. I started listening because of readers. I moved from Dick Hill to Will Wheaton and Kate Mulgrew. I picked up King and Khosseni. I explored self-help. I read documentary news. I did everything I felt I would not do on paper in audio form and I grew as a reader from it. I also grew as a writer.

There was a period of imitation that is common to all writers. Whenever I heard a new style I tried it on; attempted to absorb it into my own system like Super Amazo. That is what helps build me up as a writer. I learn about what I am not in the hopes of refining what I am. All of that is possible soley through the efforts of reading more, and thus learning more.

To wind down means to relax after stress or exertion. I’m in the wind down now after a long semester. I say wind down, because I am still working. I am still grading. I am still scrambling to buy gifts and figure out places and poses to put this silly elf in for the next few days. Still, it is a wind down and it is exactly what I have been needing.

So, what is reset? That means I get to the end of the wind down and then attack reality with renewed energy. It is the reboot that computers undergo to reset errors and refresh memory. It is exactly what I need 

The words are trickling out slower and slower, as though there is a jam in the creative tubes. This is closer to the truth than I like admitting. I absolutely need this. I need the rest and the reboot. I need to get it going full power on the other side.

Football is a strange and exciting sport. I plan to devote three entire days at some point in the next few months in order to reflecting and creating a comprehensive offensive understanding of football based on personal experience as a player and a coach. In other words, I’m going to design an offensive philosophy for myself as a coach. It needs to be done in order to be a coach in the fall, and I plan to do that.

There are a few teams who are on the cutting edge of offensive philosophy and a few others who do a few classic and basic things well. The cutting edge are the ones that, once you figure it out, you can beat. The classic ones are the ones that seem to have more of a basic ability to stretch the field against any defense. In a sense it becomes about teams based on players vs. teams based on concept. KC is a team based on concept that requires particular players and when they lost Kareem Hunt it impacted what they could do from a balance perspective. Other teams have similar issues either in the plus or minus column. The Cowboys are reliant on a dynamic mid range to deep threat, so they solved their issue with Cooper. The Rams and Chargers need a fast and hard hitting back to open up the pass game, which is why injury impacted both teams. The Vikings… don’t actually have a philosophy yet. They were predicated on a smart QB, but lacking that they’re struggling. The team didn’t recognize that or maybe they did and fired the OC as a result. 

This is not the kind of week when I am predicting games, but the kind when I am predicting trends. The Cowboys have what they need and have clearly hit a stride, but they are not the kind of team that will be able to sustain the impact of teams having very good film on them. I don’t think they win many more games this season. I say that with the Giants in mind. Their last game of the season will be a major tilt, and I truly believe the winner will be the NFC East Champion.

I sort of wish it was Waiver Wednesday, because I do not really have a ton to say about anything. In truth I don’t even have enough to populate a list of some thoughts. So you get babble. 

The one thing I find myself thinking about fairly consistently is the sorry state of moving pictures. While I have seen a resurgence of cleverly written books I have seen a dearth of widescreen movies that attract my attention. This is to the point where we are having second thoughts about what our xmas movie will be. All signs still point to The Mortal Engines, but that is the frontrunner of a very thin field. 

There are not a lot of great movies right now. I don’t know if this is because the Oscar period is over or more likely because of some financial shift affecting what kind of movies are released. The films are not that good. I could not even decide on a decent one for Halloween. Eventually Avengers: Endgame will roll out and that will be it for that series as well.

The following is ten minutes of me drafting a yet untitled story. 

Chevy’s grandmother used to talk about rain the way sports fans talk about the great season their team had once upon a time. She loved the rain. She would run outside in whatever she was wearing and stand under the grey sky, pellets of water smacking her skin and rolling into the loose dust where they became mud and muck and then groundwater. She would laugh then and talk about how Arizona wasn’t built for rain; about how they would close roads and sometimes schools because the water came all at once and it filled the streets to the point where nobody knew what to do with it. That was all before the Ghost Dance.

People thought the dance just changed the power dynamic in the southwest, but it did more than that. When the early winter rains filled the skies the ground soaked it all up greedily. When spring finally broke and the moonsoons followed the ground soaked that up as well. Then something peculiar started to happen. The rain didn’t lie in the gutters or pool in washouts waiting for the morning sun to suck it back up into the sky. It took root, holding fast to the earth and soaking through and making the ground fertile again. Grass and brush grew where previously there was only rock and tumbleweed. In the valley of 10,000 horses life flourished.

No one knew it was magic at first. The effect seemed to be even across the deserts of Arizona. By the first summer after the grow many of the places where life had tried to resume were reclaimed by the heat and the dust. Only pockets of habitable earth survived that first summer. These were the lands least affected by shadow. It was thousands of acres and at the edges of the growth it seemed die off quite suddenly, as though you could trace a line around where the earth was fertile and reveal where it was not. His grandmother called those places Rainshadows. They were often the patches of land closest to the mountains and she warned him about those places. She warned that the areas where life did flourish drew their spark from the places where the water fell the least.

A day before my last workshop class period I find myself thinking about the space between good writing and exceptional fiction. The space is not terribly vast. It can be a particular turn of phrase, a unique plot point, even a cleverly structured interaction. More often than not it is character that spaces good fiction from exceptional. Character is the key to everything. Moreover, secondary characters are the most important thing. If Hermione and Ron were not exceptionally rendered then the Potter stories would’ve remained in the rejection heap from whence they came.

I’m serious about the Potter thing. That is the kind of story where most readers can find a richly imagined character they can identify with. On some level the characters are created in a way where they fit into common molds. Likewise, the houses are molded in a fashion to allow us to identify and segregate ourselves as our nature would warrant. 

The secret to story isn’t all that secret. Make us love the people and we will follow the words until the words entirely run out. 

Some Thoughts:

1. Excited to meet with the class one last time. Ought to be a good one.
2. The fact that NFL players wear helmets makes them seem so much more like Knights.

I’m the father to three boys–the oldest of which is a freshman in high school. The drama between the three is often so intense that it ends in fighting, tears, or both. The most recent drama surrounds video games. A new game, Super Smash Bros, came out yesterday and the boys have been fighting over who gets to play, who gets to pick maps, and every little point of the game. Here is what it actually boils down to:

Each of the boys want recognition. They grew up in a culture of youtubers being praised for their success and a culture of instant fame. They want to be seen as ‘the first to win’ or be heralded as the one who unlocked everything. In other words, they want to be top dog and in control. They each want the others to look at them as best. This is intensified by the separation in years and grades and relative positions on the food chain in their respective schools. This is further intensified by the competitive and sports-based culture I’ve bred into them since birth. 

How does this translate to the page, you ask? It all comes down to character motivation. I tend to borrow traits and dilemmas from the people I know in real life in order to develop fictional characters. The two race car drivers pushing against each other in order to be the one the owner notices is not far removed from two brothers fighting for supremacy. What works especially well in this instance is how much the boys are fixated on the newest thing. There is something to be said about fad and the importance of being on the crest of the wave — at least in their mind. That is a character trait/dilemma that works in any story. 

I spent a good amount of time today partaking in christmas cheer. I feel good about that. I feel about as good about what is to come in terms of writing. I am trying to get back into rhythm with the words. 10 minutes is nice, but it doesn’t define a writer’s life.

I also spent a bit of time in anger. I am working on letting go, but it is a hard thing to do. In truth I am filled with anger as I type this post. It is wasted energy. I believe I spend a great deal of time wasting energy on what basically amounts to bureaucracy and high school drama. None of it feeds my soul and, in fact, withers it.

This is a short blog, because these words are hard to get out.

As a teacher our success is often a reflection of the success of our students. When students who “aren’t supposed to make it” do well, it makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we are part of something larger, that we’ve done a good job, and above all else it makes us feel good for them. We become protective and want them to experience continued success. Unfortunately, students are not going to be successful in every environment or with every type of teacher. Unfortunately, once we start down that slope of belief, anything that stands in the way of our belief gets knocked over. That’s where we are now.

Here is the situation in a nutshell. A group of teachers rallied around a student with special needs. The student is smart and really has an opportunity to be successful. The student wound up in my class where the teaching environment did not suit the student’s style of learning or comfort zone in any way. My class is a learning community with myself and another teacher. The structure and temperament of the class was contrary to the expectations and comfort of the student. As a response the student consulted their circle of teachers and began to point to my partner and I as the problem or obstacle to learning.

People want to feel they way the want to feel about you. The worst part of that is confirmation bias, which is the psychological way in which we interpret (or exclude) information in order to reinforce our existing beliefs. The people involved in this story want to see the student be successful and anything viewed as an impediment to that by that student is bad. By deduction, I am bad. My partner and I are the problem–bad teachers who don’t facilitate student learning. Of course in the shark tank politics of community college some instructors, some want to see you as bad because of their own cliques or interests or what have you. This situation plays into that pre-existing situation.

Here’s the thing. I am good at what I do and only want to get better. I don’t want to be part of the politics or the cliques. I want to teach and impact student learning. I’ve gradually pulled away from social interaction on campus and this situation encourages me to do so even further.

Alright, we got 10 minutes to sort out a whole lot of stuff:

Let’s start with the Chiefs. They cut the #5 RB in the NFL and replaced him with… nothing, actually. This is a trend. You cut a guy who is great on the field (or don’t ever sign him) and then act like you didn’t need him in the first place. Sure, there was a great reason to cut the dude, but I am pretty sure he isn’t being replaced by the likes of a RB that was unemployed only days before the Chiefs played. No, they are just gonna take this one on the chin and it will likely ruin their chances of winning the AFC. 

Bills cut Benjamin. However, that seems like a good culture move. He was not vibing with the QB. He named some QB’s he thought he could roll with and maybe one of them is interested (Giants, anyone?). It isn’t like the Bills are going to the playoffs or anywhere else upwardly mobile for a few years. 

Speaking of upward mobility, the Redskins do not have it. They lost another QB. Did they run out and sign Kaepernick? nope. Politics? Given that they’re resting their hopes on Mark Sanchez, I would argue yes. However, they are a pro-set team and it might take too long to bring him up to speed. Then again, it might not… See, Colin replaced Smith in SF. So, the argument that he isn’t the kind of skill set that can follow a Smith offense is BS. The entire thing is BS. They’re just gonna run out the clock on his career because he is in a star position and he made a political statement. Sucks. Well, sucks for Washington, but I wanted them to lose anyways.

Go Giants!