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
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
16310--So, you wrote a story. Who cares?
If you're going to take the time and use the energy to string words together coherently, you should have a good reason for spilling them out of your head in the first place. I would think you're either trying to take some of the workload off your memory or communicate something to others. When I write here or produce some bit of fiction, it's with the expectation that what I write will be read by others. With that in mind, I make the effort to write things that will be of some interest to other people.
When you're writing a work of fiction, it's likely going to be populated with characters who move your story along from point-to-point. Those characters can't be mindless mules schlepping the tale on their backs. They have to seem as real and interesting as anyone that every reader knows, with lives and purpose all their own. Dress them up, furnish the living room and slap some paint on their walls. When the readers are able to empathize with these characters, they will take an interest in them and care about what happens to them. I was never turned off more quickly about feeling for a character I was reading as at the moment I saw that she didn't care about what was happening to her in her own story. In what had been a story that was holding my interest, the protagonist was suddenly composing a to-do list while being raped. I asked myself, "If she doesn't care what's happening to her, why should I?" I closed the book and never went back.
As a corollary to this, fiction writers who are building their own worlds (and we should know who we are) must build them with rules. Sure, part of the fun of a magical or superscience world is that things can happen there that don't happen in the world we happen to live in every day. Despite that, it still needs to have some degree of structure. The reader will come to your work with an expectation of consistency. To put the corollary simply, "If anything can happen, who cares what does?"
On some level, my feelings about this are a bit strong. Years ago, back when I used to read comic books, I took an afternoon to study a multitude of the industry's stock and trade characters: heroes and villains. This resulted in my making a list of all the characters whose special abilities made sense and a list of those whose didn't. From that point on, I had a more deeply defined respect for the well-crafted characters and wished only for the demise of the stupid ones that had been created only for convenience. Give your characters the time and attention they deserve. Give them their depth and flesh. You'll end up with something you and your readers are happier with.
Oh, if you were in the right movie theater for the right showing of "X-Men 3: The Last Stand", yes, that was me cheering when Cyclops (Scott Summers) was killed. As a character, he's a bit dull. He has a cool superpower, but it's a stupid mutant power. Unleashing devastating beams of concussive force from the eyes manifesting as a mutation in a single generation is ridiculous. He might as well have sprouted big, white bird wings when he hit puberty. Genetically, it lacks about as much sense. Now you know.
I'm going to go grumble to myself some more about stupid comic book characters, but I'd love to hear about any that you'd like to grumble about.
Are there any characters who push your buttons by not being all they could be?
Thursday, June 2, 2011
16306--A Fire of Unknown Origin...
Another life lesson already? Really? We're going to ease into it and it will all lead to writing. Trust me. "You just had to say it."
That's what they say up on the screen. One character says some fate-tempting line like "How much worse can it get?" or "At least it isn't...", thus inviting some ironically appropriate doom to come crashing down upon them. Another character of course says, "You just had to say it."
Me? I just had to take a poke at Underdog and ended up in the hospital myself. C'est la vie. I just couldn't resist. Anyway, I didn't think it was anything serious. It just seemed to be a minor infection that was causing a swelling in one of my sublingual salivary glands. You know, those funny little flaps under your tongue. Like most of the things in our bodies, we can usually ignore them quite easily until something irritates them. Mine was swollen and didn't seem to be squirting saliva anymore. OK, so blocked and swollen. I noticed that it got worse when I would eat. OK, so more saliva building up in there because production increases for food. Simple, except that that made it go from mildly uncomfortable to very painful. As a result, I decided to put off eating for a while to give the swelling a chance to abate completely. Unfortunately, after eighteen hours without food, the gland was only giving me more pain and my stomach was no longer in agreement with my plan.
The Emergency Department of Vanderbilt University Medical Center doesn't top my list of places to spend an evening. That's not to say I have anything ill to speak of it or its staff. It's obviously a great place to be if you need to be there, but I'd rather not have the need. Anyway, after a few hours in the general waiting area (a suitable place for writing, at least), I was finally moved to an exam room where I could continue waiting in private. Soon, I was seen by two nurses, a resident physician and her attending physician, none of whom had ever seen my increasingly painful condition before. As the senior medical professional present, the attending decided to pull out his iphone and take a picture. That sound, modern thinking allowed him to seek consultation without having to parade still more people through my new waiting area.
Before I got too comfortable, another nurse brought me a pill to alleviate my pain and, a little later, another nurse had me move to a new exam room. That one had a TV. I found something worthwhile on the Science Channel just before the oral surgeon arrived. He, too, was mystified, but curious. As with the others, we talked about my diet and health and medical history and what on Earth could possibly be going on in my mouth. He left to go talk with other people about tests and scans. By the time he returned, he agreed with me: something must be blocking my salivary gland. The best course of action seemed to be to attempt to drain the swollen gland to see if any source of infection could be found. He would use a syringe first and, if necessary, proceed to cut it open. "Fine," I said. "Numb it and do what you need to do."
Now, all this has been set-up for the point of this rambling. What? Yeah, I know, but bear with me and I'll get us through this as quickly as possible.
Probing with the syringe yielded nothing and, to really enhance the experience, he tried that before numbing the tissue. Oh, boy. Moving on to the surgical portion of the evening (this was two hours since the first exam room), we moved to a third exam room (no TV in the last one). He proceeded to numb everything under my tongue and start cutting. Accompanying the suction tube, he also wrestled several latex-clad fingers into my mouth and then a couple of other metal tools. Finally, after minutes of bloody struggle, his eyes lit up with astonishment and then a smile. "Wow. You are gonna be glad we found this," he told me. Rare and odd and something he'd never seen happen before, he showed me a bloody stone that he assumed was composed (like kidney or gallstones) of calcium that had worked its way into my mouth. I should hear the lab results next week. Still, he marveled at the fat little thing, measuring 23mm, that had apparently tried to come out through my salivary gland. Naturally, he and the resident from earlier (she'd returned to check on me) both pulled out their phones for this new photo-op. There were two new nurses who came in for a look. One ran off for a specimen jar. Such a fuss.
Now, on to the point of all this (Finally!) writing. As noted, the staff and I chatted. At one point, a pair of doctors went wide-eyed and slack-jawed before asking me if I was still in school or perhaps a nutritionist. I told them I was merely well-read. Later, the attentive resident also asked, "Wow, are you a nurse or a doctor or a PhD? You really seem to know your anatomy." Had they all really been thrown off so much by a little intelligent conversation?
I laughed politely and told her, "I'm a writer. I study a lot of things."
That seemed to lessen her puzzlement a bit, freeing her to turn and go. Like other "professionals", doctors seem to have a hard time grasping that people outside of their elite club also have the capacity to handle their secret language and guarded knowledge. They got theirs through study and practice. No one is born to it. If you find yourself interested in something, take the time to learn about it. Study and, if appropriate, practice.
Writing is the same: it is learned through study and practice. Though steeped in wonder and mystery for many, including doctors apparently, it is a craft that can be taught and learned. Dedication and focus can bring improvement. I started with reading and, with my imagination sufficiently sparked to activity, started writing. It began with cobbling together ideas and eventually building those into stories. Some I liked, others I felt needed polish. Some of them needed a lot of polish. There were classes in college, even leading to a technical major being coupled with a non-technical (creative writing) minor. I've found myself plotting and planning to great delight as delightful elements emerged to be eagerly fitted into place. I've also found myself flying by the seat of my pants and making things up as I went along. Both methods have their place and neither is perfect. If they were, no one would ever have to do rewrites. What would we writers do with all that free time then?
That's what they say up on the screen. One character says some fate-tempting line like "How much worse can it get?" or "At least it isn't...", thus inviting some ironically appropriate doom to come crashing down upon them. Another character of course says, "You just had to say it."
Me? I just had to take a poke at Underdog and ended up in the hospital myself. C'est la vie. I just couldn't resist. Anyway, I didn't think it was anything serious. It just seemed to be a minor infection that was causing a swelling in one of my sublingual salivary glands. You know, those funny little flaps under your tongue. Like most of the things in our bodies, we can usually ignore them quite easily until something irritates them. Mine was swollen and didn't seem to be squirting saliva anymore. OK, so blocked and swollen. I noticed that it got worse when I would eat. OK, so more saliva building up in there because production increases for food. Simple, except that that made it go from mildly uncomfortable to very painful. As a result, I decided to put off eating for a while to give the swelling a chance to abate completely. Unfortunately, after eighteen hours without food, the gland was only giving me more pain and my stomach was no longer in agreement with my plan.
The Emergency Department of Vanderbilt University Medical Center doesn't top my list of places to spend an evening. That's not to say I have anything ill to speak of it or its staff. It's obviously a great place to be if you need to be there, but I'd rather not have the need. Anyway, after a few hours in the general waiting area (a suitable place for writing, at least), I was finally moved to an exam room where I could continue waiting in private. Soon, I was seen by two nurses, a resident physician and her attending physician, none of whom had ever seen my increasingly painful condition before. As the senior medical professional present, the attending decided to pull out his iphone and take a picture. That sound, modern thinking allowed him to seek consultation without having to parade still more people through my new waiting area.
Before I got too comfortable, another nurse brought me a pill to alleviate my pain and, a little later, another nurse had me move to a new exam room. That one had a TV. I found something worthwhile on the Science Channel just before the oral surgeon arrived. He, too, was mystified, but curious. As with the others, we talked about my diet and health and medical history and what on Earth could possibly be going on in my mouth. He left to go talk with other people about tests and scans. By the time he returned, he agreed with me: something must be blocking my salivary gland. The best course of action seemed to be to attempt to drain the swollen gland to see if any source of infection could be found. He would use a syringe first and, if necessary, proceed to cut it open. "Fine," I said. "Numb it and do what you need to do."
Now, all this has been set-up for the point of this rambling. What? Yeah, I know, but bear with me and I'll get us through this as quickly as possible.
Probing with the syringe yielded nothing and, to really enhance the experience, he tried that before numbing the tissue. Oh, boy. Moving on to the surgical portion of the evening (this was two hours since the first exam room), we moved to a third exam room (no TV in the last one). He proceeded to numb everything under my tongue and start cutting. Accompanying the suction tube, he also wrestled several latex-clad fingers into my mouth and then a couple of other metal tools. Finally, after minutes of bloody struggle, his eyes lit up with astonishment and then a smile. "Wow. You are gonna be glad we found this," he told me. Rare and odd and something he'd never seen happen before, he showed me a bloody stone that he assumed was composed (like kidney or gallstones) of calcium that had worked its way into my mouth. I should hear the lab results next week. Still, he marveled at the fat little thing, measuring 23mm, that had apparently tried to come out through my salivary gland. Naturally, he and the resident from earlier (she'd returned to check on me) both pulled out their phones for this new photo-op. There were two new nurses who came in for a look. One ran off for a specimen jar. Such a fuss.
Now, on to the point of all this (Finally!) writing. As noted, the staff and I chatted. At one point, a pair of doctors went wide-eyed and slack-jawed before asking me if I was still in school or perhaps a nutritionist. I told them I was merely well-read. Later, the attentive resident also asked, "Wow, are you a nurse or a doctor or a PhD? You really seem to know your anatomy." Had they all really been thrown off so much by a little intelligent conversation?
I laughed politely and told her, "I'm a writer. I study a lot of things."
That seemed to lessen her puzzlement a bit, freeing her to turn and go. Like other "professionals", doctors seem to have a hard time grasping that people outside of their elite club also have the capacity to handle their secret language and guarded knowledge. They got theirs through study and practice. No one is born to it. If you find yourself interested in something, take the time to learn about it. Study and, if appropriate, practice.
Writing is the same: it is learned through study and practice. Though steeped in wonder and mystery for many, including doctors apparently, it is a craft that can be taught and learned. Dedication and focus can bring improvement. I started with reading and, with my imagination sufficiently sparked to activity, started writing. It began with cobbling together ideas and eventually building those into stories. Some I liked, others I felt needed polish. Some of them needed a lot of polish. There were classes in college, even leading to a technical major being coupled with a non-technical (creative writing) minor. I've found myself plotting and planning to great delight as delightful elements emerged to be eagerly fitted into place. I've also found myself flying by the seat of my pants and making things up as I went along. Both methods have their place and neither is perfect. If they were, no one would ever have to do rewrites. What would we writers do with all that free time then?
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