Encouragement Does Not Equal Support (an IWSG post)

We have a very supportive household. Mostly, it's my wife's doing. She's the one that instituted it, at any rate, but I think it all came out of a discussion we had years ago about the lack of support I had when I was growing up and the abundance of support she had. So, back then, I couldn't really see the importance of support because I'd never had it.

We'll skip over the parts where I wasn't allowed to play sports or learn a musical instrument and go straight to high school. During my junior year, I talked a buddy into learning some Abbott and Costello skits with me for some thing or other we had to do at school. Initially, it was just "Who's on First?" but, we were so good, we got asked to perform at some function or other and did that, too. Which led to other performances and learning other skits (including my favorite, "Costello's Farm"). We had quite a number of performances during our junior and senior years. And my parents didn't come to a single one.

During college, I was in a drama group and we frequently performed in the area, and my parents never came to any of those performances, either. In fact, the only performances my parents ever came to were when the youth choir at my church sang at church because, well, they were already there and, actually, they often missed those, too.

So... We, my wife and I, made an actual decision, a conscious decision, to support our kids in their endeavors. Even when it's not easy. Even when giving them a little "Break a leg!"-do-a-great-job encouragement would be so much easier. So that means we go to things. We go to lots of things. We go to softball practices and softball games. We go to accordion lessons and accordion performances. We go to choir concerts. We go to plays and musicals. We go to improv shows. We spend money on tickets to a lot of these things. We make the effort to show our kids we're there for them, supporting them (and the organizations they're with), even when we'd rather say, "Okay, that's enough. We hope you do a great job tonight, but we're staying home." And trust me, when you have a week like this one where you're only home one night of the whole week because there are performances and games every other night, it can be tempting to skip the support and just go for the easy dose of encouragement.

And that's the thing: Encouragement is easy. It's the support that's hard to do.

Encouragement is nothing more than patting someone on the back and saying "good luck." It really doesn't take anything to do. There's no real effort involved. Now, don't get me wrong; encouragement can be nice: It feels good, but, really, it's completely insubstantial. It doesn't do anything real.

Support requires an effort. To put it in another context, support is more than just wishing fellow authors "best of luck" with their releases. Support is more than just cover reveals and blog hops. Support is more than just adding someone's book to your "to read" list on goodreads.

Actual support is buying the books of your author friends. And, sure, I get that not everyone can buy every book by every person just like we don't go to every performance of the same show (but we do go to at least one performance from each show); most of us just don't have the money for that. But I make an effort to pick up at least a "book" or two a month from someone I know (even if I know that I'm not going to have time to read it soon) and, really, with so many people using the $0.99 price point, it's hard to legitimately say you can't afford it (skip one Starbucks latte a month, and you can support three or four different authors!).

Actual support is reading the books that you've picked up from your friends. This is kind of a big one for me, right now, because I've been being tired for a while now of seeing on the blogs of indie authors the constant chatter about traditionally published books like Divergent and The Hunger Games. When you're an indie author but can only ever talk about traditionally published books -- and not just books but best sellers -- it really sends a wrong message. It's an unintentional message, but it's there all the same, and that message is "only traditionally published books are worth talking about." I make an effort to always have at least one indie book that I'm reading. [In fact, I just ordered a Kindle (my first portable device) to facilitate, specifically, reading indie books, because I haven't had time lately to do that while sitting at my computer.]

Actual support is, after having read someone's indie release, leaving a review. A real review. Not just a "yea! I loved this!" (which I've actually seen left when it's apparent the person didn't read the book at all (my favorite being "I went to high school with this guy and he wrote this book. It's good. You should read it."))
Just to say it, I review every book I read. I believe in supporting the authors.

This stuff has been bothering me for a while, the fact that there is kind of this constant talk about how "supportive" the blogging community is when what it actually is is encouraging. The blogging community is great at encouragement. There's no lack of "good luck!"s to be found. But actual support has proven to be few and far between. Since this is a "support" group, I thought I'd mention that encouragement does not equal support.

What We Can Learn From the Great Comic Storytellers

Comedians were a big part of my childhood. My cousin, the one that ate ketchup, introduced me to a lot of them at an early age. I'm not talking modern stand up comics, either. No, I'm talking classic comedians here like Abbott and Costello, Jerry Clower, and Bill Cosby. Okay, so my cousin really only introduced me to Jerry Clower, but that's significant for reasons I'll get to momentarily.

I grew up watching Abbott and Costello on Saturday mornings. It seems to me that "Who's on First" has always been a part of my life. In fact, when I was in high school, I had partner that I used to perform A&C skits with. "Who's on First" was, of course, our big number, but we had several others as well. It was a lot of fun. But I digress...

My wife and I have been introducing our kids to some of these great comedians recently. Well, Abbott and Costello have always been a thing because "Who's on First" is kind of part of my vocabulary, and I own several collections of their movies. But they hadn't been incredibly interested in my attempts to work in Bill Cosby and others in the past. Something clicked a couple of weeks ago, though, over dinner. I think my wife and I were talking about "the curse," and my younger son started asking questions about it, so we started talking about Cosby, and one thing lead to another which lead to me digging out my VHS (yes, you read that rightly) copy of Bill Cosby: Himself.

[I was about the age of my younger son, 11, when I saw Himself for the first time. It was a Saturday morning, and I was the only one up, and I laughed so hard at the bit about the dentist that I woke up the entire house, and my mom came running downstairs because she thought I was dying or something.]

Despite the protests of my daughter, who wanted to watch Buffy, we spent the evening watching Himself, and all three of them were rolling... well, I was going to say by the end of it, but that's not precisely accurate, because all three of them were rolling well before we got to the dentist. They've been quoting Cosby and singing "Dad is great! Give us the chocolate cake!" ever since then.

All of that lead to this:

"Chicken Heart" is possibly my very favorite Cosby routine, but it's not really a reference you can make and expect anyone to understand. Except, now, my kids, who keep talking about spreading jello on the floor.

So we've been listening to all of these old story-telling comedians, and it's also the start of a new quarter at school, which always means some new kids in my creative writing class, so we always spend the first few class periods going over the plot arc

 or, as they like to call it, the plot roller coaster (because of my son and the fact that I draw it that way). Probably because of the timing of the two things, I realized how these great stories these comedians used to tell follow the plot arc. It wasn't just guys standing up telling jokes and one-liners.

Let's look at "Chicken Heart." In the first 20 seconds, Cosby sets us up with the exposition: "I'm seven years old [there's our protagonist], and I'm standing up in my crib [and there's our setting]." Also, there's our hook. Seven years old and in a crib? What? It's really quite brilliant. And, then, he expands the exposition while moving into the rising action: "My parents are going out, see." And he just keeps layering and layering on the suspense about what's going on: the invisible black snakes, sneaking out of the crib, the radio. The jello. All the way to the climax, which I'm not going to say, because you should just listen to it. And after all of that, he brings it back down with some falling action and a bit of denouement: "For two years, anyone that would pass by our house..." It's just great story telling.

If you've never heard of Jerry Clower, you should look into him. My cousin had some of his records, and we used to listen to them when I was a kid. Let me just say: it's hard to find this stuff these days. The clip I wanted to include here by Clower is his "Coon Huntin' Story," but I couldn't find the whole thing anywhere. Clower tends more to end on the punchline and skip the falling action and resolution, which is the case in  the clip I am including (ignore the video and just listen to him talk (also, ignore the music crap at the end (I told you, this stuff is hard to find. I had to take what I could get.)), but in the "Coon Huntin' Story," he gives us the whole plot arc, which is why I wanted that one, but I couldn't find part 2. At any rate, this is another of my favorites by Clower, so listen and pay attention to how he sets up the story.

I think this stuff played a much more significant role in the way I learned to tell stories than I realized before now. I mean, I started out, when I was a kid, repeating these stories. It was only later that I found my own, but, when I did find my own, I told them in the same manner as these guys.

Which is the point: I think we can all look at the story telling techniques of these great comedians and learn a lot from them. Things I think we often forget in our fast-paced, modern lives. Even things we're told are unimportant by publishers and television, because they just want us to get right to "it" and skip the set up. Don't skip the set up. That's what makes everything else interesting.

Now, if I've caused anyone to get caught up listening to any of these guys... well, I'm not really sorry.

More tabby things...

I'm here to announce another new tab!

But, first, some changes to the old tab. I sort of left off a very important book. It's kind of embarrassing that I left it off, but there are reasons. Not that I'm going to try and explain them. That would tell you too much about how my convoluted brain works, and you probably wouldn't understand anyway. Or, maybe, you would, which would be worse. Much worse. So let's just leave it at that. The book has been added into the list, at any rate, so it's all good, now. Right?

Also, I added on some comedians. Not sure why I didn't think to add them in to begin with, but I didn't think about it until Abbot and Costello came up in casual conversation within my household, yesterday. They were important enough to influence my book, so they should be on the list. You can find the comedians down at the bottom of the list. Not that that's where they belong, but it's where they ended up.

As for the new tab, it's all about how crafty I am. It was supposed to be about painting, but I figured I'd throw in the rest, too. There are some pics of miniatures I've painted, and a couple of links to more pics of miniatures I've painted. Those will lead you to facebook, so, if you're on facebook, and you want to send me an invite, feel free to do so. Also, you may actually have to be logged into facebook for the links to work. I thought I had those things set to public, but it made me be logged in to access the links. I don't think you have to have me friended to see them, but I don't know for sure.

Now, if I could only figure out how to change the silly background for my blog! Not that I don't like the books, but it's sooo used! However, blogspot keeps telling me that the pics I'm trying to import to serve as a new background are too big, which I just don't get...
Well, at least, I managed to figure out the tabs! One thing at a time, right?