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.

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.

16606--Writing our Wrongs

It feels wrong not to write -- forget about "How do writers do it?"  How does everyone else not? 

Realize that I'm not talking about some small thing here.  The written word is the very structure upon which we hang our complex thoughts and communicate them to each other.  While human culture may precede structured writing, history doesn't.  History is made of writing, every letter an atom.  Molecules of complex ideas are brought to clarity through the power of written words.

I know, a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, but there's little chance that every person viewing the picture is going to have the same thousand words come to mind.  If that had been a truly successful system, we'd still be sketching hieroglyphs to each other and comic books (aka graphic novels) wouldn't need letterers.  This blog would just be a bunch of pictures.  Can you imagine trying to craft a complicated legal deal into a contract composed entirely from images?

The written word is such an integral component of our lives and culture that I think we would do well to increase writing as a focus in education.  The benefits of training young minds in not just abstract thought or linear thought or the use of imagination or researching information, but also in organizing all those things into a coherence that can then be communicated to others could be so immense as to be unquantifiable.



Quantifying things is the realm of math.  I enjoy math.  I respect math.  It's what our brains use to understand the universe.  Writing is what we use to explain what we've learned to each other and to understand ourselves.  Despite the danger of unleashing endless hordes of pretentiously self-absorbed wordsmiths upon the Earth, imagine the impact alone of living in a society where more people chose their words carefully, thinking before speaking.  Imagine people taught from youth to be mindful, examining the world and themselves, doing more than crashing about on a lifetime quest for food and pleasure. 

Even a bad writer is making an effort, taking measure of their successes and shortcomings.  With practice and guidance, probing the darkest reaches of the soul with such confrontations as to yield any manner of improvement.  It sounds like going where the pain is and poking at it.  I suppose it is.  I still call it personal development. 

After a couple of generations of mindful, thoughtful people working to actively raise more of the same, there might be a lot less dark to find prowling in those corners and corridors.  Working the brain creates the potential for a better brain and better performance.  Who couldn't use a better brain? 

The written word allows our thoughts to transcend time and space with clarity and depth.  We've been gifted, thus, with the power to communicate with those we may never meet.  With it rests our hope that some future explorers won't sift through the dirt and rubble of our remains and have to piece together speculations about what use we made of pizza cutters, wii-motes and ten thousand other modern oddities that have come to populate our world.  It means there's hope that someone might even make sense of Beanie Babies, Justin Bieber and YouTube videos one day.

16457--A Brain Cell's Worth

My wife doesn't usually like to watch Jeopardy! with me.  She definitely doesn't pick Trivial Pursuit for family game nights, assuming it a foregone conclusion that I'll win.  I attribute it to being one of the benefits of being a writer: we accumulate a plethora of...selectively useful information.

She recently found a use for this that made her very happy: using me to help her win at online Jeopardy! and other such games.  Hey, I'll take it.

This Halloween she was lamenting having no idea where to find bits of last year's costume (sexy witch) that she hadn't seen in so long and if only...That's when I found myself walking to a particular cabinet and rummaging about in the back of it to pull out the things she needed.  Her face lit up as I pictured this lone brain cell sitting with this bit of otherwise useless information and being prodded by some other brain cell that was paying more attention ("Hey, don't you know where that is?  That's your thing, right?"  "Huh?  Oh, yeah!  Hey, I know this one!).

For an additional reward, when I drove her to work the next morning, she insisted I go inside with her to the cafeteria to partake in a custom-made omelette from their omelette chef (yeah, rough life).  I had to get it to go, but it was a change from cooking my own at home.  She assured me it was so good that I was going to have to eat it while driving.

Back in the car, though, I kept getting green lights.  Of course.  When I finally did get a red, it was at a corner with a homeless guy selling those homeless newspapers for a dollar.  "Sorry, can't buy a paper.  I'm busy eating."  Mmmm...brain cells rewarded for good work.  Happy brain cells.

Did I feel guilty?  Some people might, but not me.  The brain cells from that department were retasked for math processing, historical and comic book information years ago.  Besides, how guilty could someone feel with omelette-induced endorphins on the move?  If only they'd had some pancakes, too.  *sigh*

16357--Work Softer

What's he talking about this time?  Creative process, I suppose.  Creating something, whatever the medium, usually takes some considerable measure of time and effort.  Less frequently than most of us would like does the confluence of elements occur to push us from the beginning of producing a work through to its completion without stopping.  Honestly, if that sort of thing did happen more often, there'd be a lot more creative types noted for being isolated lunatics misunderstood by the rest of the world.


So writers work in bits at a time.  Sometimes we work in large bits and sometimes in small ones.  We plot and plan and ponder, squeezing blood and sweat onto the pages.  Some might say we even scheme.  OK, that was me.  I've noticed on many occasions that writers would make ideal criminal masterminds.  In fact, I heard that the federal government had started hiring writers to conceive terrorist plots so Homeland Security would have a better chance to be as prepared as possible against whatever may come at us.

Whether we're writing fiction or not, we find our processes.  We stare at notepads or computer screens or blank walls or out windows.  We think and feel and we write.  We think of images to describe, lines of dialogue that inspire  and we press onward toward the finish.  Of course, I've also heard that some writers dawdle, procrastinate, doodle and find all manner of other things to distract them from their work.  I'm not pointing any fingers.  I'm sure you know who you are.  You probably just need a break, a little time away from your official workspace.  So you go do some chores around the house or go out for some shopping or a movie, time with friends and family.  For some people, that's all that's needed to come back refreshed and ready to write more.  Some need time asleep, perchance even to dream, to really recharge the creative drive.

Some of us find we're almost never done with writing.  We might step away from the formal setting, but almost everywhere we go and whatever we do we find that some part of our brains are still working, churning ideas to the surface for us to scribble into our handy notepads.  We'll catch an overheard bit of random conversation, or spy a couple in heated discussion and reach for the notepad before we even realize we were doing it.  Then, while you think you're occupied with something else entirely, BOOM!  The innovative solution to sticky plot thread drops in your lap and brings a complex layer of nuance that you hadn't even realized was there all along!  And feel that adrenaline surge as you become aware that your busy subconscious is even more brilliant than you thought it was, plotting behind your back the whole time.  Good thing it's on your side.

Too often it isn't about pushing.  We push for a deadline.  We push through physical or mental weariness.  We push and push ourselves to work harder.  Yet why are we pushing?  We're pushing because there's resistance.  We push and create more resistance.  That can't be good.  We espouse the value of hard work, but also remind ourselves that working smarter is more effective than working harder.  So what can I tell you?  Don't force it.  Step away. Get a little distance.  Breathe.  Work softer.

Is there a method that works best for your own personal madness?  Does isolation and perserverance serve you better than taking a breather?  Is there something else that gets you where you're going?

16313--Firing on all cylinders...

     What do you mean there are people who can recite the digits of pi out to thousands of decimal places?  Who has that kind of free time?  Worse, what about the roomful of people who sat around to observe?  They were so impressed by the feat that they felt compelled to watch?  Alright, I don't know their reasoning.

     What I'm thinking, though, is that if you're impressed by some feat of memory or calculation, innovation or creative thinking, you should strive to accomplish your own.  Those people who put on a show of remembering and reciting something they heard thirty years ago, while playing eight simultaneous chess games and solving calculus problems in their head aren't freaks.  They're simply focused and practiced at performing particular skills.

     Did you know that homo sapiens is the weakest mammal in the world?  I'm not saying you couldn't overpower your kid's gerbil.  What I mean is that we have the lowest muscle to mass ratio of the mammal world.  So how have we been able to push all the other critters around for so long?  The answer is the same as I tell my kid when he asks for a new computer.  "You've got that thing on top of your neck."

     Yeah, I'm talking to you.  You've read this far so don't try to deny it.  You have a brain and we both know it.  The biggest, baddest supercomputers still take up huge rooms and run on megawatts of power just to be able to perform at a fraction of the capacity of that thing on top of your neck.  With its 100 billion neurons and quadrillion synapses, your brain is estimated to have potential processing power equivalent to 100 petaflops (10¹⁵ floating point operations/second).  That’s a lot.  On top of that, it's portable, self-cooling and runs on about 20 watts of power.  Your body is its robot slave.

     Your brain is as big and bad as you want it to be.  With focus and application, you can do those things you always wanted to do.  If not, you're not using the equipment right.  Be creative.  Go write that book you've been putting off writing.  I'm not saying it won't be hard.  That's where the practice part comes in, because after you write you'll be rewriting.  That's OK, though.  Work is the price of excellence.  Don't get stressed chasing perfection.  That's the mirage in the distance.  Leave it out there for the next sucker.

     Instead of stringing together a bunch of numbers in repetition of an infinitely long bunch of digits that's already been figured out, you're going to use your personal organic supercomputer to arrange twenty-six letters into a unique pattern one million letters long that will be so amazing people will voluntarily read it again.  They might even go see the movie version.  No matter what Hollywood does to it, it has to be better than the movie version of pi.  What were those guys thinking?  Talk about not using the equipment right.

     Any questions?

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