17830--I Know What I Did This Summer

I hate going so long between making fresh blog entries.

And yet, here we are.  The writing goes well; targeting September to release the next THEOBROMA book.  The following installments should come along faster, but it's turning out to be much longer than I'd thought it would be.  Still, I enjoy the work.

Not that the work cares, but we're in it together all the same.

That reminds me of my other working partner: weights.
This summer, I've shifted some of my considerable inertia toward exercising more.  That has involved elevating my moderate maintenance level activities to workouts geared toward increasing strength and stamina while simultaneously burning fat.  It's weights one day, body weight exercises the next, plus martial arts and walking every day.  Like writing, I workout without other people.  I think that's probably for the best.  I keep odd hours and I don't stroke egos.

Weights don't care about your ego.

Stopwatches don't care about your ego.

I don't care about your ego.

Performance is what matters to me, whether that's producing quality writing or lifting more weight.  Energy and will united to make changes happen.  Better, stronger, faster are the goals.  That's a strategy that intentionally lacks an endgame.  It's using that inertia to keep on moving, continuing that personal journey of self-improvement.

On the downside, I'm having to push to eat a lot more and, as I stubbornly refuse to join another gym, I'm going to have to invest in more weights.  C'est la vie.  Onward and upward, keeping the fires burning hot.

17578--Are You Responsible?

I say you are.  In fact, if you're reading this, I know you are.


I wanted to make a note to mark today, because after a couple of hundred plus posts since April of 2011 this is the first day that this site has received over a thousand views in a day.  I think I'd personally prefer that the short stories and chapter samplings from my novels were the major draw, but it's mix of those and my ramblings (I guess we can call them articles or just blog posts).  That's fine.  I'm not so picky as to turn away readers.

You probably know this already, but writers love readers.  Tell your friends.  My door's always open.

Yes, I attribute the responsibility, at least in part, to you for coming here to read.  I'm going to write whether people show up or not and I'm not forcing anyone to come look at it.  You chose to come here and love what you read (hey, it's my hypothetical--go with it) and then tell the world about it through retweets and shares and whatever, so the hundreds of thousands of visits that have taken place over the years and continue relentlessly around the clock (go with it) are on you.

Thanks for stopping in, even if it's just to see whether or not I've lost my mind yet.

I'm going to get back to plotting and scheming and stringing words together.

Don't live wanting.  Don't die wondering.

17557-- Winter is Coming

Don't tell me you're the only one who didn't know.

I know I see a lot of things ahead of others, but I usually try not to be the spoiler guy.  At this point, I felt it was safe to say something.

I'm not sure, but I think it may have been because of the changing weather.  I had a dream.  It was one of those vivid and unusual dreams that stood out...for whatever reasons dreams stand out.

Well, I suppose that the reasons already cited should make it clear enough: vivid and unusual.  This one had a lot to do with water.  I don't usually spend much of my waking time or dreamtime around water, so watery dreams tend to stand out.  There was nothing supernatural about it either.

The situation I seemed to find myself in was that of being a covert military intelligence operative.  I had infiltrated a Russian command with a partner and we were preparing to implement our exit strategy, which involved an underwater swim through icy water.  See?  There was a winter connection.  At least that's my speculation.  It was a dream.  Who knows?  For all I know, it could've had something to do with the dream I had about the Georgian spy eight months ago.

These things need to come with notes or some kind of map.  Half the time I feel like I'm tuning into the middle of a movie.  Must be what quantum leaping is like.

It's good pay for sleeping.  If it were less interesting, I'd probably fight it more.  Lord knows I probably don't need to spend any more time awake than I do already.  Still, it gives me time to write and connect those dots.

17535--Fleeting Time

It has been nearly two months since I last unleashed something new on this site. 

To my regular and even irregular visitors, I offer my apologies.  With my mind awash in writing (Child of Fire and Blood, Part 4, primarily), I had no idea so much time had passed so swiftly.  I may have to consider the possibility that my attachment to the temporal component of our continuum.  Is consciousness an independent variable allowing not only a variance in the perception of time passage, but alterations in one's physical relationship with time?  Well, the Nobel Prize committee is going to have to wait.  Before I go proclaiming myself a time lord, I've got writing to do.

See?  I haven't abandoned you.  I just get sucked into tangents.  It isn't that I didn't think about you at all, just that I've been busy.  During that time, though, I did also think of many things to write and share.  I'd share more bits from my books since some of you tell me you're enjoying them tremendously, but I don't want to spoil your fun in unraveling mysteries or watching them bloom in the course of a story.

I realize I'm my own marketing department, but I make a point of steering in the opposite direction of a Hollywood film trailer.  That is to say, I neither summarize a given story nor put my funniest jokes into the preview.  Those gems you earn by strapping yourself into your seat and diving into the story.  When you're willing to do that, you deserve more than a rehash of any preview.  Hell, there are times I consider being intentionally misleading just so you can be truly surprised.

hmmmmm...Now that I've put that into words, I'm pretty sure I've already done that.

You're welcome.

You can thank me later.

17491--Guesswork and Bloodletting

The assassins had failed again.

I was in ICU, enduring incorrect meal orders, bouts of tedious questioning about how I was feeling (often including the assurance that I had been in great health before whatever they'd done to me during my toe repair surgery), breathing exercises and blood draws.

"No, I came here to get my broken toes fixed," I said, "not for symptoms of respiratory problems that I didn't have before the anesthesia procedure I asked not to be done."

Let's see, broke toes Tuesday night, surgery Wednesday evening, awake again Thursday, so it was Thursday when the orthopedist showed up in my ICU room.  I liked him.  He was an entertaining mix and usually managed to find a smile.

"Hey, you were one hundred percent right," he told me.  "I heard about what happened after the surgery.  We should not have put you under."

Did he know how to bring an apology, or what?  Granted, not so hard when you're not to blame, but still a great apology.

"I'm sorry you're having trouble," he said, "but on the bright side, our part went great.  How do your toes feel?"

For the toes, hey, no problem.  There was no pain, no tingling, no numbness, and no discoloration.  There was (and at this writing remain) a long steel pin extending from beyond the tip through to the base of each toe (the little piggy that had roast beef and the little piggy that had none;  weeweewee is fine), but no pain.  Based on people's poorly hidden reactions, I'm going to assume it's supposed to hurt.  I'm quite content with not having that part of the experience.  I'm not sure If that costs me experience points in this game, but I'm sure I took that into consideration when I created the character and I'm not going to start second-guessing myself this far into things.

I really felt like most of my inability to take a deep breath was more connected to the irritated feeling in my throat.  It was less like a sore throat and more akin to sprinting in cold weather.  Trying to breathe deeply would set off coughing after a couple of seconds.  If that was due to the double intubation, it should heal, right.  Of course, I was also coughing up bloody phlegm.  No, I hadn't been doing that before.  Someone actually asked me about how I normally dealt with these symptoms I was--Hey!  Stop.  Wearing a white coat doesn't make you smart.  I don't normally deal with any of these things or have a primary care provider because I normally feel freaking awesome.  I pay attention to what I eat, drink more than a gallon of water a day, exercise daily, and don't have to listen to doctors who make me feel worse than when I came to see them for a simple mechanical fix.

This patient's humors are out of balance!  Time for another bloodletting!

There were a few bright spots to my stay in the hospital, with doctors, nurses, nurse assistants and even volunteers among them.  There were also idiots who, sadly, probably don't know who they are because they failed to register either my sarcasm or my blunt honesty.

Saturday, my oxygen saturation maintaining at an acceptable level with supplemental oxygen, I was moved from ICU to a normal patient room.  I was still being given antibiotics, a blood thinner, and not enough food.  The hospital's idea of a normal diet was something I really wanted to use some of my free time to discuss with whoever was in charge of nutrition for the place.  It consisted of far too many carbohydrates and not enough protein and so many things that I just wasn't going to eat.

The attending anesthesiologist came for a visit a few hours after I'd gotten to my new room.  She claimed to be sympathetic, but also maintained that she would make the same decisions again.  She also expressed one theory that I might have experienced a negative pressure pulmonary embolism, something that was known to occur in higher mass patients.  I failed to see the logic in insisting on a procedure that was a known risk for a patient because of his body type when another options was available and requested.  We failed to reach a point of agreement.

Sunday, I stopped using the supplemental oxygen.  My tongue was still half-numb, which I found as bizarre as the fact that over two weeks later it still hasn't fully recovered all sensation.  Regardless, I was and remain very dedicated to deep breathing.  Blame it on all the years of martial arts training.  It meant enduring a lot of coughing, but I was forcing more breath after each coughing fit so I persisted.  I think I mentioned lots of free time, so I was back to notebook scribblings interrupted by bouts of exercise.  I received a visit from another orthopedic doctor.  I'd seen different people from orthopedics every day.  This one seemed nervous.  His voice was shaky and so was his handshake.  The nurse and I decided he must've been one of the eight men who'd had to wrestle me after surgery.

My vital sign readings had gotten back to normal, for me, and there were rumors I might be discharged.  Hooray!  There was also talk of a chest CT scan.  Much of Sunday was  spent waiting on word of which event was going to happen.  The scan won out and happened late that afternoon.  *sigh*  Chest X-rays before and after I was awake hadn't shown them anything conclusive, the doctor claiming that there was too much muscle to see through well, but that he didn't see anything of concern.

From the CT scan, they decided that I'd been left with a pulmonary embolism, blood clotting in each lung.  I'd progressed to exclusively dry coughs, no blood, but the next step in the plan then was to be blood thinning therapy, dissolving the clots over the course of several months.  That was also going to mean ongoing doctor visits for monitoring to make sure that my blood to poison ratio was kept at an appropriate level.  To begin the process, it was also going to mean keeping me in the hospital where they could monitor me until they managed to achieve the desired level before releasing me back into the wild.  That resulted in another week in the hospital, feeling well but trapped, futile pokings by people hunting for blood vessels, and a doctor who learned to deliver updates with an apology and on the run.

Nice guy, but he liked to stay out of arm's reach.

Now, home again and being mindful of my skewered toes, I've begun dealing with the inefficiencies and stupid questions of a primary care physician and waiting on lab work.  I've yet to encounter any part of all this that's made me unhappy about having as little interaction with the medical profession as possible over the years, nor to make me think I won't resume that practice ASAP.  It always seems to come back to bloodletting, doesn't it?  The trappings have gotten prettier over the last seven hundred years, but a hospital's still a gilded cage at best and there's still so much guessing going on in there.  I'm waiting for somebody to come at me with stone knives and bear skins, realizing that my theory about a voodoo doll likeness of me out there somewhere with sharp pains in its foot may not be so far fetched.

There's no place like home.

17488--Avoid Waking Up with a Crowd Around You

"Shattered" was the word they kept using. 

Left: Fragmented and askew / Right: Steel pins added

The toes I thought I'd dislocated and probably broken, X-ray images showed to be shattered.  They still didn't hurt.  Straighten them out, splint them, and I'd be on my way.  That was my plan.  It had a simplicity I liked and I trusted my body, as usual, to heal the damage I'd done to it.  The doctors had something more complicated in mind.

Their plan involved pins.  They wanted to insert long, steel pins into my toes.  My smiling orthopedist apparently had a secondary specialty in witch doctoring.

"Oh, you need surgery," they said.  "We need to set the bones properly and insert pins to hold the toes straight.  Plus, you've broken the skin, so we need to open that wound and disinfect it."

Twelve hours and suddenly somebody's concerned that I had been bleeding.  At this point, my priorities were pushing food and water back to the top spot and toe yanking was starting to sound pretty good again.

"Oh, no, you were right not to yank them," the orthopedist said.  "That would've been bad."

That from the medical professional whose first impulse had been to grab my toes and start trying to move them.  That part was something I knew would happen and that, when it did, it would be an orthopedist doing it.  When I called him on it, he laughed like he'd been caught in the cookie jar.

"We're going to get you scheduled for surgery right away," he said.

"Well, can we just do a local anesthetic?" I asked.  "Numb it, fix it, and I can be out of here?"

"We'll probably do a general anesthesia and just put you out."

"I don't mind being awake," I said.  "Just do a local and we can be done that much faster and I can be on my way."

"Well, you'll have to talk with the anesthesiologist about that," the orthopedist said.  "Have you had problems with anesthesia or surgery before?"

"No, I just think it would speed things along to not have to put me under and wake me up," I explained.  "One less complication."

"You'll see the anesthesia team before surgery," the doctor said.  "Talk with them about it during prep."

"Oh, I will."

From the emergency department examining room, I was taken to a patient room to await my turn on the day's surgical schedule.  It was becoming late afternoon and nurses would bring up food and water a few more times, then tell me it was good that I hadn't had anything.  My stomach remained unconvinced, but stomachs are like that.  In lieu of sustenance, I continued a steady regimen of vital sign checks and the quiz about my name and birthday.  Yes, I only have one name.  No, it wasn't the day for cake.  Mmmmm...cake.

Appropriately gowned and finally transported to OR prep, I had a chance to talk with an anesthesiologist about staying awake.  Now, they're all about keeping you alive while you're asleep.  My desire to remain conscious was taken as an odd choice to be stubborn about.

I suppose as a resident, her response of "I'll need to get my attending," didn't come as much of a surprise.  When both doctors came in, we did our dance again, but the attending was much more insistent that general anesthesia was the only viable path because of the very involved procedure I was about to undergo.  For my part, I just needed to stay still.  Honestly, with just a local, the comfy bed, and nothing else to do, I'd probably have dozed off on my own.

They wheeled me into the OR and the ortho guys decided that my heavyweight status made me a great candidate for doing surgery right on the transport bed rather than having to move me before and after.  Like I said, comfy bed, so no argument from me.  The logic seemed sound and we engaged in witty banter and trivia quizzing until...Well, until whatever the anesthesia team did to put me to sleep.  Apparently, it also interfered with short-term to long-term memory transfer.  I have no recollection of the anesthesia being started.

My first recollection of new memories began the next morning through the cloying fog of half-sleep.  I'd been lashed to the bed.  The railings felt different.  I couldn't really open my eyes, but it was a different bed.  I had a hazy memory of a prior dream about being a superhero doing the man dance with a gang of villains.  There was a tube in my mouth and throat.  It was irritating so I tried to bite through it while working on breaking my restraints.  When I felt somebody come near enough, I grabbed his wrist.  The communication process had begun.

There was some blather about asking me if I knew where I was and remaining calm as becoming agitated again might result in keeping the breathing tube in longer.  I guess I'd been strapped to the bed for a reason.  I was also told I had to stop trying to chew through the tube.  So many rules that would've been unnecessary if they'd just removed the tube.  I let the first nurse go and got the next pair to understand that I wanted something with which to write.  That bit of communication seemed a lot harder than it should've been.  They weren't impressing me.

Going unheeded once more, I was told that they were waiting for doctors to arrive on rounds to make the decision to remove the breathing tube.  That was as irritating as the tube itself.  The story I was given was that I was uncooperative with the nose mask, so I was intubated (a breathing tube was stuck down my throat).  While the orthopedic surgery went well (the fix I came for), extubating (removing the damned tube) and reawakening did not.  Bloody phlegm came out with the tube and my oxygen saturation level was dropping.  They said they also tried to wake me during this, but whether that was before or after removing the tube wasn't made clear.  Whatever the sequence, in my sleep, I fought whoever was around me.  Ultimately, this became eight guys struggling to hold me down while I was re-sedated and re-intubated.  At least that made the vague memory of my superhero dream make sense.  And why I'd been strapped to the bed.

Waking up in ICU wasn't part of the plan.  Awake, though, I was able to convince the docs to remove the tube.  Then, I was able to get back to answering the endless cycle of tedious questions and finding my way back to taking deep breaths again.  Still, the question of what had gone wrong lingered.  I wasn't supposed to feel worse than when I'd arrived and more than a day had gone by without food, water or writing.  All that needed correction.  Priorities.

NEXT: Guesswork and Bloodletting

17485--Back in Action

Or How I Spent My Impromptu Summer Vacation.  I've been away for a bit.  To say the least, far longer than I wished to be.  That part's over now and, back at my keyboard once again, I can share a little.

Growing up on copious amounts of heroic fiction, long ago added "avoid being strapped to a lab table" to my guidelines in life.  Who needs that sort of headache?  No one.  That's who.  Still, medical captivity can descend with blinding swiftness.

I didn't see it coming any more than I did the fall.  Just after 11 on a Tuesday night, I meandered from my lair to take the dog out.  He likes it, I prefer that he does certain things outside, and hanging out with him keeps me from acting like a hermit.  Routine became less smooth upon my return to seclusion.  So I took a fall.  Big deal.  I've fallen before.  I'm not perfect, after all, though blessedly resilient.  As usual, I felt undamaged as I picked myself up and laughed about my momentary clumsiness.  Part of life.  This time, though, I noticed something a little different: a couple of my toes were...askew.  That explained the metal *clink* I'd heard.  My bare foot had managed to kick one of my dumbbells as I passed from vertical to horizontal.  Between being distracted and my own curious pain tolerance, I didn't realize I'd made contact.

"Well, Hell," I said, "that's not right.  I probably need to get those checked out."

There was no pain so I was still mostly annoyed, but the logical part of my brain was being pretty persuasive.  It even managed to talk me out of yanking and straightening the maligned digits myself.  Bother.  Off to the ER.  So much for a night of writing punctuated by other interruptions of activity.

Thus began the latest of my rare interactions with medical practitioners.  This toe mishap seemed like something that needed to be dropped in their laps.  Though I resigned myself to this and the ensuing tedium, even with the emergency room visit exceeding all reasonable expectations of duration, those first twelve hours of waiting would soon be fond memories.  My dip in the maddening waters of surreality was only beginning.

NEXT: Avoid Waking up with a Crowd Around You

17307--There May Be Questions After the Main Event

"What did the author mean by that?"

What a popular question that was way back in school.  It seemed almost a mandatory counterpart to whatever other questions editors packed into our English textbooks.  You'd ponder it in silence, trying to remain motionless while waiting for the teacher to pick someone.  Hopefully, someone who wasn't you.  Well, whoever ended up doing the talking, the answer was usually shot down as "Wrong!", followed by the teacher explaining what the accepted interpretation of whatever the poem or prose was.

That's right, crush all that youthful fervor and enthusiasm.  Close off any avenues of insightful analysis.  "Wait!  How do you know that's wrong?" you asked.  "What if the author actually meant something different than what you said?  Did he leave a note?"

"Well, of course not," the teacher explained, "but the answer's right here in my book, so that's what it means."

Maybe you enjoyed a similar scenario during your formal education years.  Maybe it would've been nice if more dead writers had left notes behind about the works they didn't know would be up for academic discourse long after their deaths.  That's why I find it annoying when people try to reinterpret the "intentions" of the crafters of the Constitution as though what was written was unclear.  Those people knew they were writing something of significance, so they left notes.  Leave it to a bunch of politicians to try to rewrite facts to serve their own ends.  Forgive me.  I digress.

One friend of mine went through a unit in an English class focusing on Robert Heinlein.  When the students were tested, the final question asked why Heinlein had written a specific novel.  One girl answered "For the money."  You've probably guessed that this was not the sort of answer the teacher was looking for.  The girl was not only given no credit for the answer, but was challenged by the teacher to explain why she thought that would be an acceptable answer.  To her credit, she was able to justify her response by telling the teacher that she gave that answer she did on the test because when she had asked her Uncle Bob about it, that was the answer he had given.  Teacher humbled.  Full points on the test.  Still, before butting heads with Heinlein's niece, that teacher stood as just one more perpetuator of the reality that people are misquoted and misunderstood easily enough even when they're alive.  This is just as true for things that are written (as I've noticed from some of my book reviews), no matter how clear they may have seemed to you when writing them.

I suppose this is why there are suicide notes and wills.  Certainly, if you can be misunderstood in life, your intentions can be reinterpreted once you're dead.  Stringing together a few informative sentences could save long hours of arguments.

Reaching back again to school days, I used to practice silence during writing critiques by reminding myself that stories published for the world to see would go out devoid of any individual opportunities for questions and answers.  Likewise, any feedback I received wouldn't be conversational either.  Now, of course, 21st century technology has changed that.  I can unleash explanations for any curiosities my stories may hold just as easily as people can ask for them.  We live in a time of open communication availability.


And beyond!

From what we're told, with the impending arrival of ubiquitous nanotechnology, advanced supercomputing, sophisticated cybernetics and The Singularity, future Elvis may not only not have to leave the building, but may become a part of it.  What your body becomes may be a matter of personal choice, but as long as your consciousness is perpetuated (albeit with technological aid), answers to your intentions can continue to come straight from you.  If that doesn't sound overly appealing, don't sweat it.  I doubt you'll be limited to sitting parked as a voice in a box running a simulation of thinking deep thoughts.  In fact, with all that you think therefore you are translated from organic into a sporty, synthetic neural network, you should be able to continue telling stories, seeing sights, and generally baffling the wits out of people for years to come.

17298--Three-ring Circus, One-man Show

I think I've mentioned this before: you can plan all you like, but you never know what'll unfold while writing until you're writing.

You plan things and then they change.  Not everything.  If that were the case, what writer would ever be able to plan anything?  Things change, though.  I've never labeled myself as either an architect or a gardener; a planner or a seat-of-the-pantser.

I don't believe in writer's block.  I do believe that if you're a writer who starts writing, you're going to end up going somewhere just as surely as if you were driving a car.  The car doesn't care whether you've planned a trip or not.

The general's plans seldom survive the battlefield.

This came up for me again while figuring out a scene and then writing the scene.  It sounds simple that way, but what happened was more like acting to me.  Or maybe directing.  Maybe both.  I found myself playing out the scene in my head, according to my notes.  I was figuring out where the characters were and what action was taking place.  While getting into the characters heads and letting get into their heads so I could get detailed on their movements and dialogue, one of them changed the crowd scene.  In that moment, the protagonist started talking with bystanders in the crowd scene.  It's something that wasn't supposed to happen and resulted in an impact that created ripples upon ripples.

Don't sweat it.  I'm not talking about impending tsunamis rising off the coast.  It just means extra work for me and a bit more depth for the story.  These are not bad things.  This is just the sort of thing that you should probably expect when you turn your brain into a forum for multiple personalities.  Getting into your work, just as when readers lose themselves in stories, you allow your imagination to take an active role in its development and open yourself to the possibility of surprises.  That's when you've arrived at what people describe as the characters writing themselves.  It's really still you, but you're playing all the parts in the puppet show.  At least you've given them something specific to talk about.  It's not a disorder if you're in control of it.

For some people, it's group therapy.  For others, it's a playdate with some imaginary friends.  How the story is told and how much of it ends up on the pages is all for you to decide.  Your writing is whatever you decide it is to you.  If you can't, don't worry--there's always somebody out there who'll be happy to slap labels on you and whatever you do.  When you're creating it, though, however you get yourself from start to finish, make sure it serves you-- whether exercise, entertainment or something else-- as whatever you need it to be.

17278--Your Inner Workings Are Showing

Sometimes fantasy and our shared reality intersect.

We're quick to tout that sort of thing when science fiction paints the blueprint for science's advances or becomes an intelligent platform for social commentary.  Usually, what we define as fantasy is composed of elements not readily or likely to be duplicated without selective changes to physics.  Those considerations are all part of the ride those adventures promise when we open the portal to other times and places.

That said, there are some things I can do without.  Political correctness is something I consider a needless corruptive influence.  I do not feel that the addition of black Vulcans to Star Trek was warranted by the lore nor a choice that improved Star Trek: Voyager.  I've never been a fan of anachronistically shoving social enlightenment into the spotlight of a medieval historical adventure, for example, just to make an excuse for throwing a female warrior into the action.  Pure fantasy, set in fictional, non-historical worlds, seems to handle that sort of thing better.  You'll find female warriors there without the baggage of a civil rights movement.  They just exist.  It's accepted and the story moves on.  Likewise, there have been female warriors and even gladiatrixes in history.  You may know about them if you went looking for them.  You may not know about them.  They didn't come with sweeping social movements.  They just were, like many of their male counterparts, and then they were gone.  The story moved along.

Tolkien's Middle Earth is supposed to be a version of Earth long ago.  Do I find it odd that all the humans are white?  Considering the world it's supposed to be, yes.  Considering the source of the fiction, I do not.  Has the homogenized view affected my enjoyment of the work or its adaptations?  No.  Skin color and cultural representations aren't big factors in Tolkien's work and not weighing upon the mind of the audience.  I will never petition for any kind of multi-ethnic representation in such work.  It'd be ridiculous.  If you want a melting pot, there's always Conan and Howard's Hyborean Age.  If you want an un-melting pot, check out Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, and watch as a series whose overarching storylines heavily involve genetic engineering gradually winnow diversity into a monochromatic central cast.  In the least subtle maneuvers of the show, the mysterious and purple Trance Gemini was not only rendered tailless, but tags out of the show to swap places with a white, future version of herself.  Maybe the make-up was irritating, but odd storywise.

Conversely, I find it a little bothersome that most of the non-white humans in the very popular products of Georges Lucas and Martin seem to be tied into slavery.  For Lucas, it's hidden under stormtrooper helmets, but all those clones of Jango Fett constitute a slave race that was created to fight a war.  For Martin, it's the Unsullied, a similarly dehumanized group of slave warriors.  Maybe it's important to their storylines that these groups be slaves, but is it also necessary that the otherwise barely represented non-white humans be slaves?  Is it a subtle racism.  Is it overt?  Is it something I'd rather not have leaking into fantasy?  There's enough here and certainly not something I went looking for in escapist fare.  Such choices would seem to be rather like a poker tell.  Or a big neon sign, flashing, "Look at how I see things!"

I suppose what got me started on this was a video game.  It was an otherwise ordinary one, fantasy world with real-time resource management that's become very popular.  Not much different from StarCraft, really, except that instead of humans and aliens, it gives humans and dwarves, elves, orcs and dark elves.  Whichever group you're running as the storyline proceeds, you send workers to gather resources.  In StarCraft, it's drones.  In this game, they're workers.  Oh, unless you're using dark elves.  Dark elf workers are labeled as slaves.  *sigh*  Seriously?  I was having a perfectly fine writing break, playing a little fantasy game, then you had to make me ask, "Why are the dark elf workers slaves?"  I know, some of you may not understand, but it just messes up the game for me by being jarred with the "Racism's still alive" hammer.

There are a lot of crayons in the box.  When the devil creeps into specific details, it says a lot about the artist.  Remember Aladdin?  Not the derivative versions, but the original.  In the Tales of the Arabian Nights, he was Chinese.  Why?  Because his tale was set in China.  The story goes out of its way, though, to make mention that there are also "evil Jews" at the marketplace.  Was that important to the story?  No, neither then nor now.  Hmmm...sounds like some cultural bias.

It ends up acting like a toxic spill, making me wonder about subtle racism in other places.  I see previews for CW's upcoming "Star-crossed" show, for example, and I notice that their idea of aliens is white kids with tattoos.  They're going to have to do more than that to give them a hard time fitting in, I figure.  A kid from the Middle East would have a harder time dating in America's middle class gene pool.

These are things that usually don't trouble my mind or cloud my writing.  I'm not a fan of hatred or stupidity.  Racism certainly isn't my "go to" when I look for motivators.  Greed, lust, envy...the classics are the ones I start with.  Racism is pretty low on my list and has to be rather visible before I make the accusation.  Just ask any of my friends and acquaintances.  Most of them are human.  They may feel differently about all this stuff than I, but that's OK.  They're friends, not clones.  Everybody's taste buds are a little different, so are the ways in which one's mind receives words and pictures and ideas.  That's what being subjective is about.

Every creation, yours or someone else's, may teach you something about yourself.

17273--I Have Dreams

Yes, I have dreams.

That is to say, I don't have one, singular dream.  I have some where I'll find myself in a place that I've dreamt being before, but not very often.  I get to travel and meet lots of different people, some I'm supposed to know in the dream context and others not at all.  Do you ever have the parts of people who're supposed to be strangers being played by people you know?  That's when you know your subconscious isn't skimping on a production.  Speaking of which, yes, they're always in color.  It always seems odd when people even ask about that.

Of course, it's also safe to say that I don't dream as much as I might were I to sleep more.  I don't have a problem sleeping.  I rather enjoy it.  I also enjoy being awake and learned a long time ago, that I have no problem functioning on very little sleep.  My brain, in the spirit of the program, gets me into dreaming sleep with astonishing quickness.  Some times, this can happen in just a few minutes and I'll find I've had surprisingly vivid and detailed dreams inside just thirty minutes of sleep.  I know  "normal" sleep is supposed require hours to get you to REM states, but I'm seldom asleep that long.  The brain learns shortcuts and I imagine the meditation helps.

Hosting the dragons...

Occasionally, my brain gets insistent.  I don't know if it's actually tired or just wants extra time to sleep, dream, and process.  When I "get the message", I'll intentionally get with the program, turn off the light, stretch out and doze.  I try to play nice with my subconscious and not begrudge it the time.  It gives me great dreams that can reach levels of glorious weirdness.  I love those.  Some of them are hilarious.  At least they seem hilarious, so I roll with it.  Let's face it, they're still dreams.  It's not like I'm going to understand all of them once I'm awake.  Take away the bits you can.  Make notes.  You know, if there are words that work.  At all.

I hadn't thought about it before, but that makes dreamwalking sound like a much cooler superpower than it ever had before.  Not only can you travel lucidly through dreams, but they actually make sense to you.  OK, still not my first choice, but I can see it in a more respectable light now.

Speaking of respectability, what's the story on sex dreams?  Do you have them?  I can't lay claim to any great experience with them.  (HA!  "Lay.")  To some, it may seem like a waste of the holodeck reservation time, but my brain seems to have other priorities.  More interesting than sex?  Alright, you've got my attention.  The last time there was even a hint of there being something of a sexual nature pending, the girl (no one I know, though in the dream I was supposed to) turned out to be a replicant.  So, of course, more notes.

I never have nightmares.  I know some people who claim to have little else.  I imagine this is one of the reasons I have a positive relationship with the whole thing.  What's not to enjoy when I never get the creepy, scary, let-me-turn-the-light-on stuff?  I do get hunted in some dreams as part of some adventure story.  Obviously, I'll make notes about the ones that make sense.  Some of the visits seem a bit weightier than others, coming from people I  know are dead or dragons.  Sure, they say they're just coming to talk and there are those that come across as exceedingly personable.  There are others, though, and I'm sure they know who they are, whose idea of "let's chat" more closely resembles "I'm going to hunt you down, meat."

Out in the hinterlands of the faerie realm, the Dreaming waits with all the malleability that an infinity of imagination can muster.  The subconscious knows the language out there, so the better its relationship with your conscious mind the better your chances of keeping track of which way is left.  In the situations when my metamorphic acquaintances come knocking, I engage in whatever level of evasiveness seems appropriate to the sense of menace.  And I enjoy the experience, because...dragon!  I mean, how cool is that?  I know, it sounds like it should be called a nightmare, but it isn't scary.  Have I not consorted with gods and heroes?  Have I not clashed with godslayers and traversed dimensions?  Damn right I have.  I welcome a good dragon visit as much as any flying dream whether Neverland is involved or not.  Ooh, I love flying.

Either way, you know...notes.

17267--Gifted

Jason liked school. 

At least, he liked the idea of school.  That there were other kids to play with had its ups and downs.  He didn't fit in with all of them, but that was OK.  He had a few friends and that was more than enough.  They were all older than he was but that wasn't something they had figured out.  He was big for his age and more than smart enough to do the classwork.  That helped him blend, which was a blessing.  He would've been an obvious misfit in elementary school and probably wouldn't have found much more acceptance in a university no matter how advanced his brain was.  Socialization was what he lacked.  That took time with others and they definitely had the advantage there.  Success required experience and adaptability more than thought.  The others had been schoolmates for years, going through interactions they had come to know as normal.  In more ways than one, he was the new kid.

He enjoyed learning, though.  As much time as he could manage was typically devoted to reading, writing, drawing or tinkering.  There always seemed to be some insistence on making sure he slept and ate, dealt with chores or simply went outside to play, but that just pushed him to make the most of the time he had left.  Still, that left him few new encounters in academic classwork.  Anything the teacher provided to read, for example, he had long ago memorized.  When he asked for additional books, he was actually discouraged from trying to get ahead.  So much for the idea of a learning environment.  It had been a nice theory, though.

The teacher said it would be an interesting exercise.  He was a little skeptical, but Miss Oliver had a personality like a sunny day and a pretty smile so he liked her more than enough to keep an open mind.  Besides, it was the best way to learn.

"Though a few of you may have experience with another language," Miss Oliver said as he tried not to get distracted with a mental count of languages he had learned, "or remember learning to read and write English, most of you don't.  So to refresh your minds on the awkwardness of trying something new, I want you to copy the paragraph on the board using your non-dominant hand."

"Non what?" Michael asked.  He excelled at not being one of the brightest in the class.

"If you're left-handed, use your right," the teacher explained.  "Most of you are right-handed, so you'll use your left."

That gave him pause.  He was ambidextrous.

"Whichever hand you usually write with," the teacher went on as she walked slowly around the room, "use the other one for this."

Well, she had him there.  Even though he was ambidextrous, he didn't use his left hand much for writing.  English was made to be written right-handed.  He had watched lefties write, always doing that awkward thing where they held their hand at a weird angle so they didn't drag the hand across the paper and smear everything.

For him, though, signing his name gave him the solution.  Back when he had first tried it, he just relaxed and wrote his name, Jason Odysseus Book.  It was such an easy part of writing that most people got to where they didn't have to think about it.  Really, he just wanted to see how the penmanship was to see how much work it needed.  What he found, instead, though, was that using his left hand, just letting it go as automatically as one would with the right, meant that it wrote from right to left.  It made sense: opposite half of the brain, it wrote in the opposite direction.  Left or right, he realized, they both move out from the center.  That might be--

"Oh my goodness!" Miss Oliver gasped.  She'd gotten behind him while he wasn't paying attention.  She was patrolling the room, inspecting the clumsy output of everyone's efforts.  "Jason, you're a mirror-writer," she labeled him, her slender index finger trailing across his paper as she scanned his reverse script.

"What?" he responded.  "That's a thing?" he asked, but realized she was already walking off.  Fine, Jason decided.  I'll research it on my own.  And I'll have to make note of the date.  It's not a superpower, but middle school actually threw me a surprise.

17253--Spectrum of Ethics

Equilibrium (Balance) is a natural state in our universe.

It exists between Bright and Dark, Order and Chaos.  What we call "good" and "evil" are extreme symptoms on the spectrum of being unbalanced.  Being completely self-serving can be as spiritually unhealthy as being completely self-sacrificing can be physically unhealthy.  See how that complementary thing works?  Good.  Now, what does it mean for your antagonists and protagonists?

Superman and certain other superheroes can get away more altruism than most because of their powers.  For most mere mortals, though, not taking care of yourself comes with great consequences.  A hero can only donate so much blood and flesh, block so many bullets and knife blades, and chase societies enemies for only a finite amount of time without some rest and a bite to eat.  No, all the food can't go to the starving children.  You have to take care of yourself to a certain degree to be able to continue making sacrifices for others.

Sliding to the other end of the spectrum, kicking puppies and eating orphans will damage the spirit and erode the villainous from within.  Vampires lose their reflections and we could go through a litany of specific vile figures whose dark indulgences have guided their withered souls far from the light, but I'd be naming politicians and supervillains all day.  Their cost is more than just white hair and disfigurement, it's the essence of their humanity itself.  Each destructive choice takes its toll on the villain as well as the victim.  At the extreme, what remains will be either a figure of unfeeling cruelty or utter madness with neither maintaining more than a parasitic or predatory connection to mankind.  And we're back to Congress again.

Let me get to that divergence another time.  The point is that when you develop your characters, there's a lot of middle ground available between Paragon of Virtue and Embodiment of Malevolence.  I'm sure you've heard it before, but many of the most interesting characters are going to be found occupying those middle grounds.  In the course of going through a story, they may even change positions on the spectrum.  It doesn't have to be a change from one end to the other.  The Grinch managed to pull that one off, but not everyone can do it as convincingly.  What's important is that the audience gets to learn more about them by the end than was known at the beginning.

If you're feeling generous, you might even let your character in on it.
 

17250--Minding What Matters

Another issue of contention: grammar and spelling.

How important is it to write correctly in dealings with others?  Some argue that proper grammar use is following the dodo into the annals of history.  I say, if you’re going to take the time to write it down, do it right.  This isn’t just about not being perceived as an idiot or someone who doesn’t care, because we’re not supposed to concern ourselves so much with what others think of us, right?  This is about caring enough about your own efforts to do what you do correctly and how what you’re doing (in this case, attempting to communicate to others) will be utterly pointless if done wrong.

You know that old saying that “almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”?  Notice how nobody ever substitutes “spelling” or “grammar” for an example?  There’s a reason for that.

It would be difficult for me to overstate the impact of being able to communicate information between people without limits of time or distance.  If the Roman empire had invented the printing press, the dark ages might have been avoided.  You may be the best engineer breathing, but how are your works and processes going to be explained to those who don’t share your sharp analytical mind?  You might be a great mechanic who can never pass on your techniques so a hiring company is going to have to settle for someone less talented to write their technical manual.  The job will go to that other applicant whose resume doesn’t show a reckless disregard for the use of to, too, and two; that applicant who seems to give a rat’s ass about properly using you’re, your, then, than, further, farther, their, there, they’re, were, we’re, where and how to spell the tricky technical terms correctly.  Your resume will probably go in the trash.  Maybe, if you’re very lucky, you could end up working for that other applicant who you’ll realize isn’t as smart as you, but somehow got “your” job.  Since you refuse to see the value of those other skills, though, you may never acknowledge the real reasons why things worked out the way they did.  Bitter much?

With the ready availability of education we have, someone who chooses to be unable to communicate effectively in his native language (only you know whether or not that applies to you) comes off as lazy at best.  In a world where many people have to walk miles for possibly clean water, we have educational options at our fingertips that others dream of yet so many choose to bypass.  How many tyrants would've thanked ten gods for a people who didn't crave knowledge or who could not read?  There's a thought that diminishes sympathy for those who argue against people willing to travel from distant lands, learn the language and fill the jobs.  How many of those who scoff at language skills will be able to read this, though?

17231--Erotica: afterglow

Free expression is important to me. When it comes to words, images and music, I continue to stand by the opinion that if you don’t like them, don’t look or listen. Not liking them, though doesn’t give you the right to suppress someone else’s expression. One of the things I don’t like at present is Amazon’s current book listing procedure that makes a writer’s work subject to special scrutiny by the company’s personnel. Much like the motion picture rating process, there are parts of the system that remain mysterious to those of us attempting to use it. In this case, it means creators must pass the scrutiny of unknown eyes that have the capacity to literally judge books by their covers and reclassify them based upon image or title no matter what the writer has to say about the content. It means that self publishing writers are left without key controls over the marketing disposition of their own creations.

In theory, this seemingly subtle form of censorship can place a book on a virtual shelf where a writer never intended it to be. Having your deeply religious work end up labeled as philosophy or self-help and your scholarly documentary placed as a children’s book may not seem like much to someone who’s not a writer, but it’s a few exponential steps beyond any of those arguments you ever had with your parents those times when they were being arbitrarily unfair about anything you wanted to do. Fighting with Amazon personnel over it as an adult will leave you feeling about as impotent.

What seems to be the most extreme result of this is that Amazon has the power to relegate a book to the obscurity of a virtual pornography closet if it is deemed that any element of it is too dangerously adult unless it is changed. Again, to some it may not sound like much, but if you’ve been told by some government clerk that the carefully crafted name you’ve bestowed upon your love child (in honor of your beloved grandparents) has to be changed to something the clerk likes, you’re going to be upset. You could decide to stay with your original decision, but when it comes to a book that obscure placement can have a tremendous impact. Suppose that it had been decided that “Moby Dick” could only have been sold in adult bookstores because of its title because…come on, we know what that title means. No, it doesn’t matter what you say the story is about, just look at that title. Seriously? You want high school students reading porn? Now, imagine that “The Scarlet Letter” or “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” had been released under the name “Whore”. How many people would’ve found it on the shelf of the adult bookstores it was hidden in because they were the only places that could carry it? Should some disinterested functionary have had the power to change their titles to “A Small Town Scandal” because it sounded less offensive?

In the realm of independent publishing supposedly governed by free expression, the correct answer is “No.”

If you’re writing, take heed, because the righteousness of your fight is going to matter less than you’d like. Unfortunately, the reality of it all comes down to this: whether you’re pouring your heart into a tragic chronicle of a prostitute’s life on the streets or a passionate virgin’s sexual awakening, don’t name it “Whore”. Sure, you know it’s a biography or a romance or a literary adventure or even a religious redemption, but you may not like how it ends.

Sorry for the spoiler.

**************
How did this get started?  Where do pop culture and politics meet in scandal?  Why don't I watch MTV anymore?
For those answers, the prelude to this post (Erotica: Foreplay) can be read along with video of the historic controversy over at Tears of Crimson where my friend Michelle Hughes weaves her wicked writings about vampires, virgins, and strong men who don't spend a lot of money on shirts.

17201--Getting Things Straight

"I'm here to fight for truth, justice, and the American way." ~ Superman

Takes you right back to December of 1978, doesn't it?  Well, alright, I'll concede that not everyone drawn to reading this was necessarily around for the theatrical release of Superman: The Movie.  Certainly, though, you've seen it by now.  The film was well made, making it remain fun to watch.  At the same time, though, there were real world issues that spilled over into shaping the finished product.

The producers and the director didn't get along.  Some of the details strayed from comic book continuity, even though some of the film's elements have since been adapted into the comics.  One of the problems that came up, though, is one that continues to rear its ugly head and I'd like to help bridge the communication gap that apparently exists.

Back then, it was a time that the comic book world has come to refer to as Pre-Crisis.  One of the notable hallmarks of that era was the Man of Steel's incalculable Kryptonian power.  With virtually unlimited power available to him, Superman would usually find a way to achieve any task he felt he needed to accomplish.  As a product of his incredible power level, he had figured out how to penetrate the time barrier so that he could move backward and forward through the time stream freely.  Now, two of the requirements of this continuum-rending feat were 1) that he fly faster than light speed (he could do that back then) and 2) he had to incorporate a specifically calculated turn into his flight path (easily determined with his super-intellect) that basically resulted in his flying in circles.  Now, one of the dynamics that even Superman needed to respect was aerodynamics.  For the sake of the environment and those dependent upon it, he took his hyper-speed, time barrier breaking flights out of the atmosphere.

So, where does that leave us?  Near the re-write that became part of the film's climax and had Superman fly back in time about fifteen minutes to save Lois Lane from being crushed to death.  Ignoring the time travel rules that would've prevented this sort of convenient story-tampering in the comics of the day (the film did, so...), let's just focus on what we're here for: perception.  What the film creators did in the confines of their work was basically fine.  What seems to have been received by large numbers of viewers is the idea that Superman "turned the Earth backward" to save the day.  Granted, Pre-Crisis Superman had been known to push planets around when the need arose, but the physical realities of such a feat would be far more catastrophic than the quake Lex Luthor triggered.  Superman came to help us.  He would not and did not turn the Earth backward.

What so many people seem almost unwilling to wrap their minds around is that Superman was flying through time, first back and then forward as he was targeting a specific moment.  To him and the audience, the world appeared to spin backward and the damage seemed to reverse itself.  When he dropped back into normal time, everything would've resumed happening as it had on first viewing.  I can understand the convenience for Supes, flying around the world so he could watch to see the event he was looking for, but it was apparently confusing for those unfamiliar with such things.  Clarification is long overdue.  You can thank me later.

That this major point of the film has been so misunderstood by so many makes me feel that the creators didn't run it past test viewers to make sure they were getting across what they intended.  It seems that a little extra writing to help everyone understand what was going on would've helped.  An alternative might've been to use the path that would later be traveled in the Smallville TV series and have our favorite caped farm boy coerce a chronal second chance out of Jor-El's Fortress of Solitude techno-presence.  Finding themselves rushed by the clash of the executives and uncertain as to how well the movie would even be received, I don't suppose I can fault them for not making that leap.

If you're a writer, though, heed this.  Take the time to come out of your Batcave or your Fortress of Solitude or wherever it is you write and let some other eyes see your work.  Let some other minds form opinions about what you've crafted.  That's how you can be sure of the reception of what was born in and has only had to exist in the labyrinthine twists of your own coffee-fueled, gin-soaked brain and whatever world it has cobbled together.  You wrote the thing.  Of course you get it.  Your job, that of any writer, is to make your conceptions understandable to others.  With developed skill, you'll grow past being ham-fisted about it and learn to make your audience "get it" in whatever way you want.

Now, for those of you who are really really interested in this, follow along.  The time travel fix used in the film wouldn't have worked with the Pre-Crisis time travel rules because they were designed to prevent just that sort of thing.  Just as Quantum Leap would later reverse, tethering the traveler to effectiveness within his lifespan, DC's rules dictated that the traveler was completely unable to affect things at any point in the time stream in which he already existed.  Following those rules, movie Superman could've gone back in time, but only to watch as helplessly as Ebeneezer Scrooge being dragged around the continuum by tormenting spirits.  So, while he was saving California, he's also come back in time and become a spectral observer so...he can watch Lois die.  Psychological trauma and the humility of humanizing limitations conveniently wrapped into a single package that happens to look like a blood-soaked crushed car.

What was completely ignored was what they did give us: fifteen minutes of two supermen.  While time traveling Superman stood around chatting with Jimmy and a time paradox Lois and...no quake, original Superman was flying around doing all the hero work ignorant to the fact that he was minutes away from jaunting back through time for the conversation his time paradox self was simultaneously having with a time paradox Lois... She still has to die, you see, to spur him to go back in time...Great Gallifrey!  They've shoved Lois into a blue police box and turned her into Schroedinger's Cat! 

Yeah, the Smallville solution definitely would've been the way to go.

17199--Can You Handle the Truth?

It's a simple enough question and the answer can be character-revealing.  Better still, it can also be character-developing.

A useful aspect of writing is editorial feedback.  To most people, this is also known as constructive criticism.  Some of it can be more constructive than others.  The importance of it, though, is that it can tell a writer how his work is being perceived by readers.  The writer may, or at least should, know what he intended to convey.  The best feedback will let him know how near he came to the intended target and provide a guide for closing the gap to it.  Critiques and reviews aren't just about blowing sunshine up a writer's ass, delightful as that may be.  They've become public signposts telling other readers whether or not to read a work based on what someone else got from it or failed to get from it.

Whatever you take from someone else's review, you're a third party in a two-party conversation that should be happening with the goal of helping a creator hone his skills.

I've had teachers who were very dedicated to this process, one who was bad at it and another who I'm pretty sure was ready to retire and seemed to have given up on it altogether.  That last one was back in an English class.  She had taken to insisting that we read books of our choosing, writing reports on them, then turning them in only to never see them again.  When we asked about getting the reports back, she would say something to stall and go on with class.  One of my classmates decided to join her in her game.  He told me that he was certain she wasn't doing anything with the papers we turned in and was merely making up grades.  What we wanted and needed, though, was honest feedback.

To test the point, when next she asked for him to turn in his reports, he claimed he already had.  She debated his claim because she had no mark in her grade book to record that he'd turned in his reports.  He countered by insisting that he had placed the reports on her desk.  Her desk was very messy.

She looked upon it with an expression of hopelessness.  It was very, very messy.

"Well, alright," she said, making a mark in her ledger.

Class moved onward and he never heard any more from her about it.  None of us did.  We received no feedback on our work and our potential opportunity for growth was thus squandered.  I can't prove any connection and I suppose it'd be a statistical anomaly were there a connection to be made, but the guy I didn't name above went on to shoot his immediate family a few years later, murdering his mother in the process.  Sure, odds are it's unrelated, but why take the chance?  If you have the opportunity to help someone grow and improve, make that difference.

The truth may sting, but it can also help.

17194--A Must Have

As a citizen of modern society, there are certain skills you should possess as a part of your repertoire.  If you're a writer, there are some specific overlaps that should be included.  My focus is on just one, but that one is so important that I'm using it even now.  That's right, touch typing.

For most, the ubiquitous presence of computers that has developed over the last few decades should be motivation enough to learn it if you haven't already.  Even if you're transitioning to finger swiping or electronic pens or optical control, learn it.  You may be anticipating the advent of effective neural feedback or thought control, but learn it anyway.  One of the great things touch typing teaches you is how to read and type simultaneously.  The aid this brings to your ability to split focus effectively is invaluable.  Even though I learned to type many years ago, to this day, I'm usually aware enough of what my fingers are doing that even if I make a typo, I'm aware of it when it's happening and can catch it immediately.

If you're not everybody else and happen to be a writer, the ability to touch type will be a boost to your speed and efficiency that you should not disregard.  Not only will it help you with the aforementioned splitting of focus, but allow you shift focus more smoothly.  All this will help you with not only writing, but rewriting.  Yay!  Not to brag, but spelling errors are rare finds in my edits and I never use spell check.  Typing proficiency lets you think about what those fingers are doing without having to watch them every second.

As a child, typing was one of the skills my mom always reminded me to learn.  She made a lot of money in college typing people's papers for them, so she figured I could at least benefit by not paying someone else to type for me.  Even if I wrote everything out with a pen, I wouldn't want to have someone else type for me (which admittedly means I'm stuck with doing my own typing no matter how successful I become at selling novels) because there are a lot of great things that come to me in the process of typing.  It's part of my creative process, apparently, that my imagination keeps on developing while I'm writing.  That may have been inevitable or it may have been because I used to write science fiction chapters on the fly in typing class, then turn them in as English homework in the following period.  Bonus: rapid critique feedback.

For those among you who also find yourself developing ideas while typing, there are probably also many of you who end up with the tone of your output changing from your original intent.  Again, this is just another reason you should be typing.  If you haven't already, make it a part of your creative process.  I won't deny that there's one particular brand of pen I enjoy the feel of writing with (so I buy many of them), but learn to type.  It's not a party trick.  We've taken ourselves to a point where it's practically ridiculous not to have it as a basic computer skill.

Get to it.

17066--Cheap Fun with Children

I've been told many times that night court is some of the best free entertainment in town.  Admittedly, I've dragged myself down to the audience benches more than once to get giggles watching the judge and a parade of police try to bring forth coherence from the drunk and disorderly.

Now, for those of us blessed (for lack of brutal honesty) with children, another amusing diversion is to push them to work their brains when they have little interest in doing so.  Oh, such a fuss.  Hey, they need to earn their keep.  Entertaining you is the least they can do in your honor.

There are lots of ways to get those brain juices pumping and you may already have your favorites.  What I propose here is to engage their critical processes to productive end.  Whether using stories they're reading or movies they're seeing, get your brood to show off what they've got by articulating what they do and don't like about the work.  Add to that by having them go into detail about specific elements that do or do not serve the story well.  Push their imaginations by having them share anything they might have done to improve the story.

There are many things you can do with that, taking it from directed conversation, to an organized game, to full-on home schooling if you like.  The important thing is that you have fun with it.  Oh, and get those brains active, too.

17009--Got Heart?

Heart, it's what's for dinner.  No, seriously, it's just something that's been on my mind.  It sounds like a strange place for a heart, but it's far from the worst.

Is it too bluntly stating the obvious to point out that stories with heart are the ones that touch our hearts the most?  Maybe.  Is that like using the word to define the word?  Should that be disallowed?

Whatever you won't allow me to call it, the way you reach into your audience's mind to tug at those heartstrings can make the difference between a well-told story and one that falls flat or repels.  Whether straightforward words, subtle metaphor or flowered imagery, the narrative you offer will set a particular tone.  Showing that which you would communicate through a character's dialogue and actions can open or close accessibility faster than paragraphs of prose.  Too light a touch will yield an emotionless product that no one will care about and may not even finish when readers find they can't connect with the characters.

This sort of complaint has often been made by people who decry science fiction and adventure fiction as being unappealing.  For some of those people, I have seen this dilemma remedied by adding the right amount of heart to the mix.  Getting this balance right has been a boon to publishing and film as certainly as getting it wrong has been their bane.  Getting it wrong can be the result of too much emotion as certainly as too little.

I suppose it can be blamed on pandering to the times, but I think Shakespeare missed the mark with Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice".  Rather than just giving a portrayal of an "evil jew" as was apparently expected, his usually quick wit should have provided a heartfelt twist.  Where Shylock had been bitter and raging for justice, he could finally have taken his pound of flesh in the form of Antonio's heart, allowing him to keep it but insisting that he use it to extend his "Christian" love to the Jewish people. 

Instead, all we get is anger and bitterness coming at us in such an unrelenting fashion that it really hurts the story as a whole.  The court scene repels when it could have uplifted and redeemed.  How?  Heart.

You knew that.  What else have I been going on about after all?  Do your best.  It's not always easy, but it is worth the effort.