Day Three

Monday, January 22, 2018

I got up for school and the internet was still not working.

Except that it was and, now, I know why everyone kept saying the internet itself was fine because now the internet is gone. Trump took it away. I thought I hated Trump before, but I really hate him now.

When I got up, I turned on my laptop to check. I figured it had to come back sometime and, really, I’ve been checking all the time all weekend so, of course, I checked. My google homepage said this:

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

This message brought to you by the free states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey

Even New Jersey.

I wondered who wrote it. It’s really pretty. I want to go to California. Even Washington.

Anyway, that’s what the internet said. Everywhere I checked, netflix, facebook, youtube, everywhere. That was on every page. Obviously, the internet was working even if that’s all that was there.

Then I had to go to school.

School was weird. The teachers tried to act like everything was normal, but there kept being questions about China. And about the poem on the internet. That’s where I found out that it was from the Statue of Liberty. I hadn’t known the statue said anything. I wanted to know why. Why did it say that, but I hate raising my hand to ask questions.

But Olivia’s hand shot right up – she ALWAYS asks questions, everyone hates her for it, which is why I hate asking questions – and she asked it, but the teacher wouldn’t answer. She just said we were in English class, not history, and we weren’t going to talk about that. So I thought it was a poem and we could talk about it because it was a poem, and I almost raised my hand because I really wanted to know, but Emma raised her hand and asked almost the same question and about who wrote it, but Mrs. Stick-up-her-butt still said no.

And that’s how it was all day. No one would answer the real questions we had. Like about the Statue of Liberty and about why California and Washington and New York would put something on the internet that said that and about whether we were in a war with China. Other than the trade war that everyone had been talking about for months and blaming China for why everything was costing so much.

After lunch, Trump came on TV. It was a live broadcast. He wanted everyone everywhere to watch it which made me wonder if my parents were being able to watch it, because the TV at home wouldn’t work because we didn’t have an antenna, and there were no TVs where my dad worked. But they heard it because it was on the radio, too.

And Trump said he turned off the internet.

He said we had to be protected from those rebellious states and thoughts and he couldn’t have them putting stuff like that on the internet because only he knew what was good for the United States and he wasn’t going to have that kind of stuff out there for people to see.

He said he would make a new internet and it would be beautiful. Then he talked about twitter. A lot. And he was mad that some people would ruin everything for everyone because they wouldn’t do what they were told. And that he was going to make a big, new, beautiful internet.

But, until then, we would all have to use our TVs so everyone should go buy antennas and he was going to make sure that there were plenty of TV antennas for everyone and it was going to make so many jobs.

So I was mad that my parents voted for Trump because he said awful things and did awful things, but my parents said I just didn’t understand but that I would when I got older and that he would be better as a president and I should just wait and see. But he hasn’t been better as a president; he’s been worse, and even they complain about the things he says and does all the time now.

AND NOW HE TURNED OFF THE INTERNET AND I HATE HIM!!!

Because when I got home, I found that instead of the blank screens I had been getting, I was getting that screen you get when the internet is down. The one with the little dinosaur that let’s you play that stupid game. And now there is no reason to check for the internet anymore, because I know that it’s gone.

At least until we get the internet that Trump says he’s going to build, but I expect that that is going to go about the same as the wall that he still is talking about but isn’t happening, either.

Dad spent all evening out trying to get an antenna for our TV, but no one has any. He said he might be able to make something out of a clothes hanger, and Mom spent an hour looking for one, including ransacking my closet. I told her I didn’t have any wires ones and that I would look, but she wouldn’t let me or even listen to me and shoved my stuff all around. It was rude, and, like I said, I didn’t have one. She couldn’t find one in the whole house, so we still don’t have any TV, either.

I feel depressed and don’t know what to do. There’s nothing to do. Except, I guess, read. Is that what people used to do before there was TV and the internet? I can’t even listen to music because Mom has the stupid news on the radio ALL the time, but all they do is say the same things over and over again without ever actually saying anything. THEY can’t even answer the question about whether we are in a war with China. Or what it means that that poem was in the internet and why those states said that.

Tomorrow, I guess, I need to go buy some books. Or go to the library. All I can find here are mom’s stupid romance things, and that’s not what I want to read about.

I want to go to California. I bet they have the internet.

How the System Failed My Son: Part Four -- A Moment of Hope

No recap. Just go back and read the previous posts here, here, and here.

4th grade was better. He had a good teacher that year, a teacher we had been looking forward to him having because of what we knew about him from when his older brother had had the same teacher. He began to enjoy school and quit asking if he didn't have to go. Not that he was being challenged, but it was at least interesting. He also started 6th grade math that year, which was still too easy, but at least it wasn't depressingly easy.

Well, it wasn't depressingly easy at school, at any rate. At home was another story. See, going into middle school math meant a certain amount of homework to go along with it. Unnecessary homework. It's not that he hadn't already been having unnecessary homework (and I would argue that nearly all homework is unnecessary (in fact, I have)), but it had been relatively small amounts of unnecessary homework. 6th grade math stepped that up to levels that became depressing, because, again, it amounted to busy work for him, and he hated doing it. Because he hated doing it, it became a huge ordeal every fucking day. Every fucking day that has lasted for years. That year to this one, in fact.

This homework thing is part of the system that has failed not just my son but is failing pretty much all students in the United States, right now, and we refuse to give it up because, well, it's how we do things. If there's one thing Americans are good at it's taking something that is failing and doing it harder and more intensely and hoping for a better outcome. Homework is a system that has proven to be a failure and, yet, we just continue to give students more and more of it.

As an aside, my kids' school, many years ago, now, did actually take a look at homework and considered doing away with it. That's what the research shows: Homework should be so minimal as to be almost non-existent. Except reading. Reading should be assigned and promoted, because kids need to be reading. However, when it came down to it, the teachers couldn't agree to drop it. Why? Because assigning homework is what they knew.

So... He did better at school, but the homework he was having cancelled all of that out and, rather than his level of dislike for school going down, it just sort of simmered there at the same level. But, other than spending hours on homework every night, the year went well.

About a week before school started the next year, the year he would have been in 5th grade, we got a call: The school had just received back the results from the STAR test from his 4th grade year and he had, essentially, scored a 100% on it (like a 99.5% or something). He had always had high STAR test results, scores in the high 90s, which is why they had done an academic review in 3rd grade, but they couldn't ignore the 100, and they wanted to skip him to 6th grade. Of course, we said "yes."

>sigh<

I mean, of course, we said "yes." Along with the request to skip 5th grade was also an apology for not having listened to me about him for the last several years. Yeah, the principal said something to the effect of, "We should have listened to you. We're sorry. But we'd like to move him up to 6th grade this year." And, actually, they had to know right then because school was going to start in a week.

In hindsight, that was probably the wrong year to have done that. Not because he wasn't ready but because we had finally found a teacher he enjoyed, and he would have had the same teacher in 5th grade as he'd had in 4th grade. We did, briefly, consider that, that he would have to leave that teacher's class, but we figured it would be better to get him more closely aligned to where he was academically.

But the 6th grade teacher, as nice as she was and as much as he liked her, was not engaging in the way his 4th grade teacher had been, and it wasn't long before he'd moved back to being bored with school because nothing interesting was happening, and they weren't doing anything that he didn't already know. Not in the core classes, at any rate. There was some history he wasn't familiar with, but there was nothing in math, science, or English that he didn't already know.

There were two saving graces for him in 6th grade:
1. He was in the middle school musical production of Alice in Wonderland, and he discovered a love of musical theater.
2. I went in once a week to teach creative writing, which he loved. [I discovered that my son is a brilliant writer, which was a surprise. Not that it was a surprise, but just how brilliant was a surprise. At 10, his writing had a fullness to it that most high school students never achieve. It was way beyond what I was doing at 10, that's for sure.]

The problem with all of this is that once the perception becomes a belief, it's really hard to shake. My son's perception of school was that it was a waste of time, and, by the end of 6th grade, that had become a belief. A solid belief. He couldn't see a point in it and found nearly all of the work beneath him. But, still, he had a successful year in 6th grade and, probably, other parents would have been unconcerned with what was going on. People tend not to worry about their kids' performance at school when they're bringing in A's.

How the System Failed My Son: Part Two -- Confirmation Bias

The real problems began in 2nd grade...

I just want to point out here that no child should be having problems with school in 2nd grade, at least not problems arising from school itself. Or from the teacher. The kids are just kids. I mean, they are really just kids, and the teachers... Well the teachers should be the adults. [Including when dealing with obnoxious kids in 1st grade. You don't dump them out of your class because you don't want to deal with them. (If you missed the first post, go back and read it.)]

This part is actually very difficult for me to write:
1. Because my inclination is to go into all of the details, both about how the school works (it's a charter school, so not a "regular" public school) and about all of the things that happened while my son was in this woman's class (a 2nd/3rd class group, so he was in there for two years), and that would take too long. That would have to be many, many posts.
2. Because the teacher was not just a horrible teacher but a horrible person, and a large part of me wants to delve into how horrible she was.
3. Because this teacher is directly responsible for my son hating school, something he's never gotten over.

For context, though, undermining a teacher's authority is one of the worst things a parent can do when working in their child's classroom. Usually, it's just the teacher's authority with their own kid, but I've seen it where particular parents have undermined entire classes. As such, it's something I'm keenly aware of and take special pains not to do. Because of this, and because it was at the beginning of my son's first year in the class, I didn't say anything when the teacher began teaching about the "original 12 colonies of the United States."

Honestly, the first time she said it, and because I didn't know her yet, I thought it must just be a slip of the tongue, and I figured she'd correct herself. The second time, I was still in the mindset that it must be a slip, because why would anyone say that? Any adult, that is. By the time I'd realized that she was actually teaching the class that there were 12 original colonies, it was much too late for me to say anything. As it turns out, that was probably actually a good thing, because she was one of those "I'm right because I'm the teacher" kind of people, and nothing good would have come from me trying to correct her in the middle of class.

Instead, on the way home, I explained to my kid all of the correct information. Also, I let him know that he should always ask me if he had any question at all about what he was being taught, which, upon occasion, he did.

But none of this was the problem.

The problem was that he was bored. Not bored of being in school, bored of the work. He was bored of the work because he already knew everything they were doing, and he was tired of doing the same old repetitious stuff every day. We had a long conversation about it so that I could be sure that that's what he meant and not the typical "I'd rather be outside playing" that you'd expect from a kid. The truth was that my kid would have rather been inside doing scholastic-type material or reading, but he wanted something interesting and something challenging to do. He hated "busy work," and everything they did felt like that to him.

Before I go on, there are two things you should know:
1. He's a perfectionist, so he's willing to keep working on something until he has it the way he wants it. Nothing is "good enough" just because someone else says it's good enough.
2. Also, he tends to be rather slow and deliberate with the things he does, even eating. He's almost always the last person to be finished. He doesn't believe in speeding through anything just to get it finished.

And did I mention he was bored?
He didn't want to do the work, and getting my son to do anything he doesn't want to do is like trying to stuff a cat into a toilet. He's willing to just sit and stare, lost in his thoughts about things he'd rather be doing, than do busywork or stuff he sees as a waste of time. [We've spent a good portion of the past eight years or so, everyday, trying to stuff him into a toilet.] Everything they were doing in his 2nd grade class, he saw as a waste of time.

One other thing of note that you should remember in relation to what I am about to say:
Whenever the teacher needed someone to read aloud in class, she always relied on my son because he was by far the best reader. By far. He didn't just read the individual words (as did most of the kids in the class); he read the sentences and was able to read with appropriate emotion.

Now, I knew that he was well beyond the material they were working on in class, but I hadn't known, until he told me, that it was an issue for him. After we talked about it, though, I went to the teacher. I didn't go to her with a request for him to be promoted to 3rd grade, though, because that wouldn't have affected any change in his situation. He was already doing 3rd grade math and already in the most advanced reading group in the 2nd/3rd grade class. All I wanted was for him to be given some more challenging work.

Look, I get how difficult it can be to deal with one kid who is different in a class of 20-30 kids. One child with special needs. It can disrupt the entire class dynamic. The problem is that there is no provision for children on the upper end of the spectrum. If it's a child on the lower end of the spectrum, we have provisions for that... when they can be identified, not that that always happens, but the help is there for kids with disabilities or behavioral issues or whatever. I knew I was asking something difficult, asking that my kid be given special consideration.

I also believe that that is the job of the teacher.

I say that as someone who has spent time in the classroom, not someone with some vague idea of what ought to be happening.

But I wasn't prepared for the response I got...

I explained that the work was too easy for him and that he was bored in class and that he needed more challenging work and... well... she stared at me then told me I was wrong. Not only did she tell me that I was wrong, she explained to me as if I was dense or a little on the dumb side that my child was learning disabled. Somewhere in there she dropped the word stupid. She cited how slowly he worked and that he was almost always the last kid finished with his work. I'm sure by the time she was finished I was staring blankly because I was having trouble comprehending that she was telling me the utter shit she was spewing in all seriousness.

Completely ignoring that he was the best reader of the 40+ kids in the 2nd/3rd grade block, completely ignoring that he was already in 3rd grade math, completely ignoring that he never needed help or further instruction on any of his work, completely ignoring that his papers were always 100% correct; she stood there and told me that my kid, because he worked slowly (and she didn't like slow workers), was developmentally disabled.

And that's where the real problems began...

An Attack Against the Consciousness of Humanity (or The Angst of Reviewing) (an IWSG post)

Having been the recipient of multiple author tantrums as a result of reviews they didn't like, you'd think I wouldn't be surprised anymore by this kind of behavior. Amazingly, sometimes the meltdowns are so extraordinary that even I'm surprised. Not long after the whole Dilloway Incident was "resolved," a friend emailed me to point me at another author, another indie author, having an even more explosive tantrum about a negative review.

It seems that a reviewer had called his book "pretentious," and he didn't take very kindly to that. Well, he didn't take kindly to the whole thing, especially the 1-star rating, but that particular word, pretentious, seemed to draw particular ire. He called her an idiot who just didn't understand his book. In fact, he called her a lot of things. And, then, he called a lot of people a lot of things as people came to her defense and her right to have not liked his book. He called so many people so many things that goodreads eventually pulled his profile and his books from the site. [They are back, now, which makes me curious as to whether they put them back or if he just made a new profile.]

As the comment thread got longer, he lashed out at pretty much everyone, even people who tried to defend his right to be upset about receiving the negative review. In all of the flailing and raging, two things stood out to me:
1. He said (and I wish I could just go pull the quote but it appears his comments have been removed from the comment thread) that anyone who would give his book a 1-star rating was not anyone whom he would want reading his book to begin with.
2. Giving his book a 1-star rating was an "attack against the consciousness of humanity." [That quote I saved at the time, because it was so outrageous that I didn't want to forget it.] You know, because his book is all deep and meaningful and shhhtuff.

He went on from there to talk about how people who give his books bad ratings, or any indie book, are killing the soul of the world. Personally, I'd say that is a little more than pretentious. All of his comments were like that, lofty and pretentious, so, if his novel was anything similar to his comments, she was probably accurate in calling the book pretentious. [Incidentally, the "misunderstood artist" is one off the asshole archetypes that Aaron James identifies in his book Assholes. This guy who was just "defending" his book fit the definition like a glove. "You just don't understand me!"]

The thing that gets me in all of this is the whole "target audience" idea. The "you didn't like my book, so you're not my target audience and shouldn't have been reading it in the first place" idea.
BULLSHIT!
Unless you, as an author (or any kind of artist), are personally going to hand out copies of your work only to people of your own choosing, people you somehow just know will like it, you don't get to pull that whole "you're not my target audience" crap.

You put your work out for the public, and you live with the results. Period.
Or you don't put it out there.

You want to know what I think is an attack against the consciousness of humanity (and is killing the soul of the world)? All the crap being shoveled out into the marketplace, mostly by, yes, indie authors. Crap that we are then expected to admire and praise.
"Oh, look at the little poopy!"
"It's such a cute little poopy!"
"Just look at the texture and that smell! So exquisite!"
I'm sorry (no, I'm not), but that stuff just hurts my brain. Just, please, call it what it is:
"Dude, that's a pile of shit."

Okay, so, maybe, don't be so crude, but the weight of pretense surrounding indie authors and how good their books are is... well,  it's overwhelming.

And, you know, unlike most of you (almost all, in fact), I've tried. Because I'm an indie author and I want people to take a chance with my books, I've tried to do what I think is the right thing and support other indie authors by buying and reading their books. But I think I've hit my limit.

So far, with only a few exceptions, I have powered through even the worst books because I haven't felt like I should review a book I couldn't finish; however, I've come to believe there is some validity (more than just "some") in saying, "This book was so bad that I couldn't finish it." And, so, this latest indie book that I'm reading is so bad that I can't finish it. But that's not what did it. No, it was not just that it was a "bad book" that was the proverbial straw that killed the camel.

What was it then? Well, when I got to the part where my eyes fell out because I couldn't believe what I was reading (and having your eyes fall out just hurts, okay), I went over to Amazon (after laboriously cleaning the carpet fuzz off of my orbs and working them back into my head) to check the reviews of the book. There were a lot of reviews, close to 100, and more than 90% of them are 4- and 5-star ratings, with only one of them being under a 3. My first thought was, "Maybe, it's just me." But, then, I started reading the reviews and all of the reviews (all the ones I read, and I read seven or eight of the 5-star rated reviews) were... The reviews were not "good" reviews. They were not 5-star rating reviews. They were reviews that said things like:
"The beginning of this book was really hard to get through but it got better."
"I had a hard time accepting the insta-love."
"The characters seemed flat."
And, see, the reviews were all from names I recognize as author bloggers. Clearly, it was a case of not wanting to give someone they knew a bad rating.

That's just wrong. There's no other way around it: It's wrong. It's lying to readers who come in and see something like 70 4- and 5-star ratings and think they are buying something that's quality work when it's obviously not. Just because it is the author's "best effort" doesn't mean it's good or quality material or worth having on the market.

So, yeah, I'm pretty much done with indie authors except for those (very) few that I have found I already like. I'll be putting up a tab (hey, it might be there already as you read this, but it's not there while I'm writing it) pointing out the indie books that I think are worth your time; beyond that, I won't be sifting through other indie books trying to support other indie authors who
1. aren't doing anything themselves to support other indie authors (and)
2. aren't putting out anything worth reading, anyway.

However, if you want to run the risk of having me review your book, I will take requests. (I'll put up a tab for that, too (which may also already be there.)

Look, what I'm saying here is this:
It is not an "attack against the consciousness of humanity" to give a book a bad review (unless you're just doing it to be mean or spiteful). What is an attack against the consciousness of humanity is to lie in a review just to make someone feel good or to keep from hurting someone's feelings. Reviews are not for authors; they're for readers. You are doing an injustice to those readers when you don't tell the truth because you're worried about how the author is going to take it. You're also doing an injustice to the author, but that's a whole other topic (and one I've already talked about (not that I haven't talked about all of this before, anyway)).

This has been brought to you in part by the IWSG.

Reading Is Power

I was having one of those thought things recently, and I want to point out that it was just a thought thing. A thing like "I wonder if there's a connection here" kind of thing. Of course, since I'm about to talk about it, I think there is a connection, but my wife tells me I'm wrong about this one. But, hey, it's my thought, and she's just telling me that because I don't have any data to back it up. And, it's true, I don't have any data to back it up (she's a real data person), but, what's more, I'm not going to do the research, right now, to figure this one out, because it was just a thought thing.

However, it all makes sense to me, so I'm going to go with it. I mean, I'm going to go with it at least as far as I'm going to talk about it as an idea. It's not like I'm putting this forth as law or, even, as any kind of fact.

It does make me wonder if there's any data out there about this, though, or, even, how one would go about figuring it out. It doesn't make me wonder enough, though, to do the research.

So, anyway, here's where the thought began:

Reading Is Power

As someone who reads, this seems like a pretty obvious statement to me, but let me re-frame it by walking you through a bit of history.

For centuries (at least) only the wealthy have been able to read. Well, the wealthy and the priests, but there was wealth in the priesthood even if not controlled by the individual priests. And not just the wealthy but, more specifically, wealthy men. I'm not just talking about European culture; this has been prevalent across all cultures for thousands of years.

Now, an argument could be made that it's the wealth that created the power, but I think it was the ability to read. I think the reading created the wealth and the wealth was used to maintain the power. Books were expensive, so it was, then, easy to keep reading out of the hands of the "common man."

Over time, the power base expanded as reading was taught to those few who became successful enough, or wealthy enough, to be able to buy the knowledge. Remember, for hundreds of years, schooling only went to those who could buy it.

Eventually, though, education had to become more widely available because of a growing need for skilled professions (doctors, lawyers, even skilled laborers). And, then, an American guy had the startling idea that education should be available for all, and thus was born the public education system.

An interesting thing happened after that: Women started reading. I'm not trying to suggest that no women ever read prior to that, but, after public education, reading became available to women en masse. And, not long after that, women began to demand the right to vote. With the ability to read, women gained power.

Likewise, when under privileged minorities have learned to read, they have gained power.

When people in countries of oppression have learned to read, they have gained power.

It's through reading where ideas like "freedom" and "democracy" are spread.

Ideas are power, and ideas come from reading.

And here is where my thoughts lead me:
It is often widely bemoaned how boys don't read anymore and, when I say "boys," I mean white males in the USA. Reading has fallen out of fashion for white males and, as such, the white male power base has been eroding for years. Or decades. White men in power are gnashing their teeth about all sorts of things that are undermining their power. Like women. And "minorities." And "gays." And whoever else they complain about.

Well, I think it's their own fault. The white males, that is. It's their own fault that power is slipping from their grasp, because they have largely given up on reading and learning and are doing all they can to foster a society that thrives on ignorance, "faith," and a lack of education (the ability to read). White male leadership continually undermines the power of reading and science by clinging to... well, all sorts of things that have no factual basis.

Why?

Because they don't read.

So I don't feel bad for them that they are all fearful of losing their grip on power, because people who cling to ignorance don't deserve to lead.

Exploring Personality: Part Thirteen -- What It All Means

So let's talk analogy for a moment.
If you could have any car you wanted, any car at all, and you could afford to maintain and drive it, what kind of car would you have? That car, that bright and shiny car with the engine that purrs, that's your plot. But guess what; that car isn't going anywhere without a driver, the driver being your protagonist. And it doesn't matter how cool the car is if your protagonist is a total ass (ass... now that's a word I think I need to use more often; it's so versatile) or completely stupid (remember, stupid is not a personality type). Have you ever been in a car with a stupid driver (and I don't mean a bad driver, although a stupid driver is also a bad driver)? It's not something you ever want to do again.

See, it doesn't matter how good (or great) your plot is if you have a protagonist that doesn't work on some level; however, you can have even a junker if your protagonist is someone your readers want to hang out with. As long as the car isn't going to literally fall apart around your readers (or explode), you can get away with a lot if you have good, engaging characters. Which is not to say that I believe characters are more important than plot... except that they kind of are. People (readers) are going to talk about your characters way more (in a general sense) than they are ever going to talk about how cool your dashboard is. Or your steering wheel. Or the heated, leather seats. Okay, they might talk about that, especially if it's cold out. But, in the end, for most readers, it all boils down to the characters.

Which is why it's so important to understand how people are different from each other and, more importantly, how they are different from you, the author. It's a common thing to ask yourself, "What would I do in this situation?" but you're going to end up with only characters who act just like you if that's all you ever do. That's okay once, maybe twice, but, eventually, your readers will get tired of books filled with just one character: you. What you need is for Bob to act like Bob and Jane to act like Jane and Fred to act like Fred and Gortuka from planet Xenon to not act human at all.

I think the only real way to make characters distinct, to make them individuals as opposed to paper dolls, is to make those characterization decisions before you start writing. You ask yourself the question, "What kind of person is Bob? What kind of person is Jane?" And "What kind of... thing is Gortuka?" If you know that stuff before you go in, you can make informed decisions about how your characters act. That way, if you get to a point in your story where someone needs to push the red button, you can have Bob do it, because you know that Bob is the one that can't resist being told not to do something whereas Jane and Fred do what they're told and it would be breaking character for one them to say, "You know what, I'm going to push the red button even though my boss said not to."

I know I frequently come off as someone who gets nit-picky over the details (plot stuff) but, honestly, that stuff only grabs my attention when the characters aren't engaging. It's like being involved in a conversation with someone at a party. If the conversation is good, your attention will be focused on the character but, if the conversation is inane, your gaze starts to wander, and you start to pick up the details of the plot you're in. If that is also lacking (like all the plants are dead or there's a big crack in the ceiling or there are cockroaches crawling on the furniture), the whole thing falls apart, and you want to go home. Or quit reading. Whatever the case may be.

At any rate, for those of you out there who are authors, I hope this series has given some perspective on how to make characters more "real" and more complex and, yet, an insight into why not every character will make the same stupid mistake you might need to happen to move the plot along. For instance, an Eight (the Boss) is never going to act like a Four (the Individualist) and have that heart-to-heart talk about how special he really is if only you would see it. That's just never going to happen.

And, maybe, all of this will enable some of you to see more of whom you are, so you can separate out yourself from your characters. That, I think, is the biggest trap writers fall into. So don't ask, "What would I do if a ravenous slug were crawling up my leg?" Ask, "What would Bob do if a ravenous slug was crawling up his leg?" Answer: He would scream bloody murder and run to Jane to save him.

When Perfect Isn't Good Enough

It's probably an odd thing to say on a blog from a writer, a blog that often deals with writing, and from someone who teaches creative writing, but I was a math person when I was a kid. Technically, I suppose I still am, but I loved math when I was a kid. I did math for fun when I was a kid. Seriously. I loved math and I loved to read; I suppose that was an odd combination. People seem to think so, anyway. At any rate, I gave up on math a long time ago. It all started with geometry.

Don't get me wrong, I was good at geometry, excellent, actually, but I'll get to that in a moment. I was good at it; I just hated it. To be fair to Geometry, it wasn't Geometry's fault that I hated it. No, that honor goes to the teacher who made us memorize all the theorems and postulates by chapter notation. So, on a test, if we had to do a proof (and you always had to do proofs, because that's what geometry is), and we needed to use a particular theorem, we had to know it as, for instance, Theorem 16.2 and, then, quote the theorem. But the 16.2 part was completely arbitrary based on the book we were using, and it kind of pissed me off that we had to know that when it was completely not useful once we were out of the class.

Also, I hated doing problems that could potentially take up an entire sheet of paper.

But I was good at it. As in, I had the highest grade in the class good at it, and I didn't even pay attention. Reading was strictly forbidden during my geometry class. The teacher routinely had a stack of books she'd taken away from students for reading during class, but she let me read. I suppose when you have a student whose carrying 106% that it might be safer just to let him read. Did I mention that this was honors geometry? Yeah, it was.

There are two things you need to know:
1. Every test had a couple of bonus problems on it. [Yes, I always did the bonus problems. Not because I wanted the points, but because I couldn't make myself leave the problems blank.]
2. Along with the grade for the specific test, when we got the tests back, our overall grade was also on the test. Actually, it was our grade before the test and after the test so that we could see how the test had affected our grades.

I say every test had bonus problems, but there was one that didn't. I didn't think it was significant at the time. Not while I was taking the test, at any rate. However, I didn't feel that way about it when I got the test back. See, the 100% I'd made on the test had lowered my grade in the class. Yeah, you heard me; the perfect score lowered my grade. I sat there and stared at that for a while being kind of weirded out by it. Then, I did the math. You know, just to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing even though I knew that I was. Yes, the 100% lowered my grade.

There's just something inherently not right about that. It didn't matter from any kind of practical standpoint, but my sense of justice was... It wasn't happy with the situation. My teacher thought it was funny. And it is funny, but, as you can see, it made an impression on me. And it's a bit of a life lesson: There are times when you can do everything right, do a perfect job, and it will hurt your score. So to speak. You did all you could do, and it was all the right stuff to do, but it still has a negative impact.

I suppose the way to look at that is this:
Suppose you had done nothing. Or that you had done the wrong thing. The negative impact would have been so much greater. So it becomes all about doing the most you can to keep the negative results at a minimum. I guess, in some situations, that's the best you can hope for.

The thing that has me thinking about this is that my daughter is going through the same sort of thing right now in Spanish. She has something like 110% in the class (or 112% (something ridiculous, at any rate)) and, recently, she turned something in on which she only got 105%. Yes, it brought her grade down. She was very upset. There were a lot of "It's not fair!"s thrown around. I did explain it to her and told her my geometry story (which made her feel slightly better since it had happened to someone else), but it didn't really keep her from seething about it for a while. It just made her more determined to get her grade back up to where it was.

She has a good attitude about those things. I mean, she has the right attitude in how to deal with them. Instead of getting depressed or saying "what's the point," she's using it as motivation. That's how you respond to the inequities in life, let them inspire you to rise higher.

"If it's not on the shelf..."

One of the summer jobs I had while I was in college was working at Toys R Us. I've mentioned that I worked there before, but I don't think I mentioned that I worked there on two separate occasions, the first being while I was in college. It... didn't go well.

See, there was a problem: I was too helpful. No, seriously. At the time, TRU had a policy about helping customers: We were allowed to take the customer to the place in the store where any given item ought to be but, if it wasn't there, we were to say, "If it's not on the shelf, we don't have it." Even if there was a box of the item on the overstock shelf (on the aisle just above the items), we were to tell the customers that line. I couldn't bring myself to do it; it was virtually always a lie.

I got more commendations from customers than any other... oh, wait, I was the only employee that summer to have customers comment that I had done a good job to management. Enough so that it was brought up in a store meeting. And, yet, I was reprimanded for helping customers during my first performance review. During my second, I was told I "wasn't working out" and let go. Oh, yeah, also because I was "anti-social" and did things like read during my breaks rather than go outside and smoke with everyone else. [Yes, I was told that part of why I was being let go was non-work-related behavior. (And the not smoking was specifically mentioned.)]

Jump forward several years. I had moved to CA a few months before, and I needed a job. I needed a job like "right now." TRU was running an ad that they were hiring, so I went in. Yes, even having worked there before, I was willing to go. I needed the job. And I wasn't in LA anymore, so I was hoping things would be different.

And they were different. One of the things that had changed during my absence was a shift in corporate thought from "the customers get in the way of the job" to "the customer is the job." When I was hired in CA, I was told "the customer always comes first." It was a huge difference. So huge in fact that not only was I not "let go" after my "trial period" (or whatever it's called), I was promoted faster than anyone else working in that location. Basically, as soon as they were able to promote me (because TRU has policies about minimum times before someone can be promoted), they did. And again. And again. Until I quit (which is a long story and not applicable to this).

Which brings me to my point: I didn't change. I had the same attitude and behaviors working at TRU the second time as I did the first time. It was Toys R Us that changed. They changed what they were looking for in an employee, so I went from being someone who "wasn't working out" to someone who was very valuable (they tried to talk me into staying more than once when I quit). Oh, and I was still reading during my lunches and breaks, too.

If I had try to change who I was, the way I was, when I went and tried to get the job after I moved, I wouldn't have been right for it, and I would have been "let go" again because "it wasn't working out." Writing books works that way, too. If you spend your time trying to adapt to the market, trying to fit in with the current trend, you'll always be a step or two behind. You can't help but be, because you're too busy reacting to an organism that changes faster than anyone can keep up with. When you just do your thing, eventually, it will come into alignment with you.

At least for a while.

I'm sure that at some point (if it hasn't happened already), TRU will go back to their attitude that the customers are an evil which have to be endured, just as readers will one day go back to the attitude that vampires are an evil which have to be endured. [As my son would say, "See what I did there?"] Basically, trends change. Find your thing and stick with it.

And, if anyone ever tells you, "If it's not on the shelf, we don't have it," don't believe them. Right now, that's Target's line, but I make them go look.

Do You Remember Your First?

You know what? You guys need to keep your minds out of the gutter. I'm talking about books. That very first book you just couldn't put down. The one that, maybe, kept you up all night because you just had to know what happened. Or, maybe, you took a sick day from work. If you read, I mean, if you really read, you've almost certainly had one of those books that would have had to have been pried from your cold, dead hands to get it away from you. I'll tell you my story, if you tell me yours. Just hop over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out.

Man, I should have made this a blog hop! Hmm...

And, hey! look! Bonus!
I recently did a review of Dead and Moaning in Las Vegas. Evidently, my review caused such a stir (totally true; I would never say that if it wasn't!) that the boys are running a special deal on it this week, so click the thing below and pick up your copy for a mere $0.99! Do it now before the zombies eat all of the copies.

What I Learned From Reading

It's tempting to say, "Well, of course, I learned everything from reading," but that wouldn't really be true. I didn't learn to walk by reading, and I didn't learn to play kickball by reading, and, really, I didn't learn most of the stuff I did as a kid from reading. But there are some significant things I did learn from reading.

For example, I learned to read by reading...
For the rest of this post, hop over to Indie Writers Monthly where I do not talk about all of the things I learned about dinosaurs from reading when I was a kid, most of which things were probably wrong anyway. Like that whole reptile thing. And maybe they all had feathers. But, of course, I learned this new stuff from reading. Anyway, go read what I have to say about learning from reading.

Also, don't forget, you can earn FREE! books. Click the link to find out how; you only have till Friday.

A Good Book Is Like A Bad Cold

I don't get sick a whole lot. However, I did catch the cold thing that's been going around here lately. Possibly, it was the lack of sleep that did it. I had three or four nights in a row with little or restless sleep, including the one before I had to get my blood taken from me and one where I went to a midnight pre-release Magic tournament from which I didn't get home until 5:00am. Why, yes, I am getting a little too old for that stuff, but only because my body can't recover very well anymore. Not! because I'm too old. No, those aren't the same things!

So I got sick with this cold which I didn't realize, at first, was me getting sick since it started during the Magic tournament with my throat getting sore; I just thought it was the lack of water and how tired I was, but it persisted all through Saturday and, by Sunday, I felt pretty terrible. Sunday night, I felt especially terrible, and I woke up Monday morning feeling none to great. But I went back to sleep (not by choice) after I took the kids to school and felt a bit better once I woke up. So, now, I'm over the sick part of the sick and just have the aftereffects to deal with.

Several years ago while at the doctor's office, probably with one of the kids for one of the vast numbers of possibilities for which I could have been there with a kid, I noticed a chart. A chart about colds and flu and longevity. Basically, the "sick" part of being sick for either the cold or flu is quite short, usually less than a week, often not more than a couple of days; however, the aftermath of the being sick can last up to four to six weeks. Yes, I said weeks. A month or more of snot and mucus and coughing and whatever other lingering things can happen. There were more (I'm sure), but I mostly just focused on the snot. Look, when you're a parent, snot is one of those things that you just sort of have to know about.

Anyway...
It's just kind of not fair. I mean, you catch a cold and you get a sore throat and cough and, maybe, have a headache. Or whatever. And your body comes in and says, "Hulk SMASH!" and takes care of the cold. It kills it dead. DEAD! Two days to muster the troops and slap the sick right out of you. But, then, you have a month, a freaking month, of damage control and cleanup.

Yes, that's where I am, right now, the cleanup. Meaning the mucus. I feel fine except for all of the snot draining out of my body, and, really, how can there be SO MUCH after being sick for just two days? It's kind of insane. Plus, all of the snot stops up my ears and makes my head hurt. So, yea, I'm not sick anymore, but I'm going to have a week of sinus headaches as my body packs mucus into my head. Why isn't there a better way to get rid of that stuff than through my nose? Seriously.

There I was in the kitchen blowing my nose and, well, you know, checking the paper towel for color and consistency and stuff (because that tells you how much more you can expect! geez!) when I had a realization: A good book sticks with you just like snot does after being sick. Okay, so, maybe, that's a little gross, but it's true.

Some books you read, you shrug, you put it away, and you barely ever think of it again. But some books stick with you and make you think and continue to stick with you and poke at your mind every so often and it's like having a head full of mucus. I mean, you put the book away, but it's sticking with you for the next four to six weeks. And that's when you know it's a good book, when it's like a bad cold.

To carry the analogy just a step further, those books happen more frequently when we're younger, just like kids get sick a lot more than adults do. Man, I used to hate the first few months of every school year, because I knew it was just going to be one sick kid after the other, but, as they get older, they build up their immune systems (thank God!) and not every bug that comes along gets into them. And books are like that. Each new book we read as a kid is a NEW BOOK! and is much more likely to get under our skins. But the next book that's like that one is much less likely to make an impact.

Which is why, as an adult, it's impressive when you read a book that really infects you. A book that gets in there and makes you think and stays with you and has long lasting aftereffects. I have to admit, I've been inoculated against a lot of books, so it takes a lot for a book to really make me continue to think about it weeks after the fact. But those are the best books. Those are the books I look for.

And those are the kinds of books I want to write.

Reading in the Cracks (an IWSG post)

I've always been one of those people that carries a book wherever I go. It started in elementary school, actually, when I would finish assignments way before the rest of the class, and the thing I was allowed to do was read. Well, or sit quietly at my desk. I don't think teachers realize how difficult it is for an eight-year-old to just sit quietly anywhere when everyone else has something to do. So I started filling in those cracks with reading. Of course, at the time, it was from books in the classroom; it wasn't until middle school that I started carrying books with me. Probably so that I'd have something to read on the school bus. But I discovered that having a book with me was a good thing because it didn't matter where I was, when I was stuck waiting for anything, stuck in a crack in time, I had a book to read. By high school, I was the guy with a book. Not that anyone ever called me that, not to my face, anyway, but people would comment. And my friends would ask me why: "Why do you always have to have a book with you?"

They never really understood the answer. Even that I liked reading didn't suffice as an answer. I suppose that was too foreign a concept for most of them. I know they didn't get it, because the same people would ask that question over and over, like I was lying to them, "But why...?"

When I was younger, those cracks in time where I would slip some reading in were often large and happened frequently. Actually, thinking back on it, now, it's amazing how much time kids have to just... waste. And, mostly, that's what they do with it. Yeah, yeah, I know it's part of being a kid, but, still...

The biggest crack was at bedtime. That was like a grand canyon of time every night when I would spend a couple or few hours reading. Man, that was so luxurious, and I didn't even know it.

The problem is that those cracks get smaller and smaller as you get older, especially once (if) you have kids. In fact, some of those cracks get filled in completely. There's no sitting around in class reading because you've finished whatever everyone else is working on. I'm thinking that behavior is mostly frowned on at most jobs, at least most of the jobs I've had. And bedtime reading is nearly non-existent. There is just too much tiredness. Whereas I used to read at least an hour every night, I'm doing good to get in 10 minutes these days (which is why it took most of the last year to read The Casual Vacancy). My reading cracks have been reduced to waiting for my kids after school, a yield of about 20 minutes a day, and waiting in line at the bank, which I generally don't do more than once a month.

All of that means that I need to restructure the way I read. Reading in the cracks just isn't good enough anymore. But there's a bigger reason for that.

The way I read, or have been reading, requires that I have something I can carry with me, which means an actual, physical book (because I have no mobile device for reading), but what I really need to be doing is increasing my e-reading (which requires that I sit at my computer (not entirely pleasant after sitting in front of my computer all day already)). And why do I need to do that, you might ask.

One of the things that really bothers me as I bounce around to blogs by other indie writers ("indie" encompasses (by definition) self-published authors and traditionally published authors published by any publisher that is not one of the "big" publishers) is that, when they talk about the books they "love," they are almost exclusively talking about books from the "Big Six." In fact, there are frequent posts that just gush over books like Gone Girl (being the one that I ran across the most this week (half a dozen separate posts about this book)), which is not the problem. The problem is that there is a deficit of posts like that about other indie writers.

The implied message (which I'm sure is completely unintentional but is there just the same):
I am an indie writer and you should read my books. Yes, I am that good. However, other indie writers out there are not as good as me, which you can tell because I only read books published by the Big Six traditional publishers.

Yes, this bothers me. As an indie writer, I do my best to support other indie writers by reading their books (and reviewing them, but that's another discussion) and letting people know what indie books I've read that I really like (see that reviewing thing, again, which is still another discussion). It doesn't mean that you have to give up reading books by the Big Six, but, if you are an indie writer, you probably ought to be giving something close to equal time to other indie writers. That message says:
I value what you do as much as I value what I do.

That's an important message to be sending. Not to the other indie writers (though that is important) but to readers. Readers need to know that indie books are no less good than Big Six books, and the only way to let them know that is by showing that we are reading them, too.

For me, specifically, this is going to involve some changes in the way I do my reading (at least until I get some kind of portable device). No more just reading in the cracks. I will have to set aside deliberate time in which to do reading at my computer so that I can start working on, really working on, my TBR list of indie authors. It's important.

Catfish Tastes

I grew up on catfish... Wait, no, that makes it sound like it was the only thing I ever ate. Let me try that again:

When I was a kid, to say that we were having fish meant that we were having catfish. It was the only kind of fish we ever had (other than the rare trip to Long John Silver's). But we didn't buy it (and, now, I'm wondering why anyone would ever buy catfish), because to say that we were having fish meant that we were going fishing. And I don't mean a few of us, either.

No, when we went fishing, it was everyone. Everyone includes my parents and brother, my grandparents, several uncles and aunts of various sorts, and at least a cousin or two. It was a family event. And, really, you had to have a lot of people, because all of those people were going to be there to eat the fish no matter how many people went fishing, so the only way to make sure there was enough fish was for everyone to go fishing. However, in actuality, the women mostly didn't fish. I suppose they went along because it was an event. That and they made sandwiches and stuff for everyone.

Often, these trips were "caused" by me and, possibly, a cousin or two asking my grandfather to take us fishing. We loved it when he took us fishing, because, no matter how many people were along on the trip, it was my grandfather taking us fishing. The rest of the people were... superfluous. (Except for that time I caught this huge fish and one of my uncles knocked it back into the water. You can't be merely superfluous when you cause someone to lose such a big fish.)

After the fishing trips, we'd bring the fish back to the farm and the men would sit around and clean the fish. It was always catfish except for the very occasional perch, which we called sunfish, because no one liked cleaning them except my Uncle Fred (scaling a fish is much different than skinning a fish), so those got thrown back unless he was with us.

It was my grandfather that taught me how to fish. How to bait a hook (and where to find said bait). How to hook a fish (turn a nibble into a caught fish). How to take the fish off of the hook (which is not an easy task with a catfish (for those of you who have never done it)). How to clean a fish, both catfish and scaled fish (but, yeah, I know why no one liked doing it, because you get scales all over you). He taught me how to do all of it up to the cooking part. I had the eating part all worked out on my own, and I figured out the cooking part later.

When I got to be a teenager and we no longer did those huge fishing trips and it was just my nuclear family that would go fishing (basically, whenever my mom would decide that she felt like having fish), I was the one that had to do all the maintenance stuff, meaning that I was the hook baiter and fish remover. Yeah, I hated those trips, because I never actually got to do any fishing. I got plenty of bites, but they were all from mosquitoes, and, when all you get from a fishing trip is mosquito bites, it's just not any fun. Why was I the hook baiter and fish remover? Because no one in my family would do those things. I mean, one time when I was doing something else and my dad caught a fish, I turned around to find him stepping on the fish (so that he wouldn't have to touch it) while trying to get the hook out of its mouth with a pair of pliers. I started finding other things to do rather than go fishing, so the catfish eating dwindled away.

But, see, I grew up liking, even loving, catfish. And I didn't have to give you all of that background, but I wanted you to have the context of my relationship with catfish. In my mind, it's associated, mostly, with these great family fishing trips with my grandfather and him teaching me how to do all the stuff. He gave me my first fillet knife and skinners one year when I was probably around 9 or 10, and I thought that was one of the greatest presents ever.

But we don't do the whole catfish thing out here in CA. It's just not a thing here the way it is in the south. Out here it's salmon and, well, I don't really know, because I lost any inclination I had for fishing when my grandfather died, so it's not a thing we do. I mean, not a thing my family does. I know plenty of people that take off to fish for salmon or do ocean fishing. I don't know anyone that does catfishing.

On Friday nights, we do special family dinner night. Special dinners are things that take more time or are more elaborate than we can do on a night when people have to get up early the following morning. Every so often, I'll do a fried fish night, but those are more rare than even the normal special dinner nights, because it takes a lot of time to prep and fry everything. Like the onion rings. Because, according to everyone that's had them, I make the best onion rings ever. And fried mushrooms, too. But I digress. So... fried fish, which is generally cod.

Last week I was out buying fish because were going to have our first fried fish night in... I don't know, months, at least. So I was picking up the cod, and there in the display case with the fish was catfish. Catfish. Oh, man, I hadn't had catfish in so long. I mean, I've lived in California for a long time, and I think I'd only had it once before since I moved out here. I love catfish. My kids should try it, right? My kids that don't actually like fish that much to begin with, and I was thinking they should try catfish of all things, but I'm not really to that part yet. I bought some of the catfish. I love catfish.

Friday night came. I mixed up the batter. I sliced up a couple of onions. I chopped the mushrooms down to appropriate sizes (because they hadn't had anything of an appropriate size at the store). I started frying those up. Everyone was eating onions rings voraciously. My wife and I were eating the mushrooms. I got out the fish, the cod, and sliced it up and started frying that up. People started eating the cod. I pulled out the catfish...

I pulled out the catfish and fried up a few pieces, nuggets, because I was eager to pop one into my mouth. Long time since catfish. I love catfish. I was... actually excited, I think. I toss the first couple of pieces onto the plate to cool. Before it was quite cool enough, I popped one into my mouth...

And, man, it was like eating a mud ball. And, yeah, I know what dirt tastes like. I was a kid that played in a lot of dirt. Not that I ever actually on purpose ate any, but, you know, it gets in your mouth. And that piece of catfish was the equivalent of a handful of dirt down at the farm when I was a kid.

It must have been a mistake. Just a bad piece, right? Right...
So I got another piece and... dirt! OH MY GOSH! Catfish tastes like dirt! Then I thought back to the previous time I'd had catfish, the last time, years before, when I thought "I love catfish; I should get some for everyone to try," and it had tasted like dirt, too, and no one else liked it or would eat any of it. Just like this time. And I realized: I had grown up liking the taste of... dirt. [And, see, when I was growing up, I'd heard people say they didn't like catfish for that very reason, but I'd always dismissed them as not knowing what they were talking about.]

But that's what growing up is for. I also grew up drinking only soda, but I can't stand the stuff, now, after being off of it for the last five years or so. The sweet of it is just too much for me. And I grew up liking some shows (mostly cartoons) that I look back now and wonder what I was thinking when I was 15 and watching G. I. Joe every day after school. And there have been books and/or authors that have been that way for me, too. All of it dirt.

There are a few things, I suppose, that you could come away with from this, some of which I've talked about before (like, just, outgrowing things), but it would take too much time, at this point, to talk about all of those things. Instead, I will just mention this one thing:

Sometimes, you have to get away from something long enough to realize that it was dirt all along. Some things that we think are good are only good because we've never experienced anything else. But, when we go on to new things, hopefully better things, we can later recognize that that thing we used to love was really just dirt and we'd only loved that thing because it was the only thing we'd ever had. Which is why we need to always be broadening our experiences. Trying new things. Reading new books.

And, on the book note, I suppose that's why it bothers me when I see people saying things like, "I only read YA" like it's a good thing and, worse, like that makes them better than people who read a variety of types of books. What I want to say to that is that you're eating catfish. [Which is not to say that all YA is dirt.] Or, maybe, baby food. I get that you grew up reading YA and you love YA, but, really, you're 30 now; branch out a little bit. Seriously. You might discover that some of that YA you always thought was so yummy is really just a mud pie.

What Your Blog Says About You: Part One -- Personality

As with many writers I know, I was advised that starting a blog would be a good way to gain readers for my recently finished book (this was back in 2011), but I had no idea how to go about doing that. Basically, the one thing I did know was that I couldn't have a blog that just said "buy my book" every time I posted something. I mean, I wouldn't read that blog, and I was pretty sure that no one else would either. Heck, I don't actually think I could even write that blog if I tried.

Which left the question: If I'm going to have a blog, what do I blog about?

The obvious answer, as a writer, was writing. But that seemed to me, on an ongoing basis, to be boring. I mean, I wouldn't read that blog. Well, maybe occasionally, if there was an interesting topic, but it's hard to make gerunds interesting. Still, writing seemed like a good starting place. And things related to writing. And reading. And, well, you can see what I decided on by looking up at the top of the screen.

Still, having content is not the same as having personality, and it's the personality (or the way that you talk about the content) that's important. Why? Because, other than when you're talking about yourself (which you have to do if you want to sell your book), there is no topic that you can choose to talk about that someone else isn't also going to be talking about. If I did (and if I ever do, please smack me) want to do a post about gerunds, it would not be a topic that some other blogger hasn't already done, so the only thing I can bring to that is, well, me.

Of course, when I was first starting out, I hadn't thought about it like that. I hadn't thought about the personality of my blog at all at that point. I had just kind of gone with it. The most I knew was that I would talk about the things that I like to talk about, and, to that extent, it would convey my personality.

About a year into blogging, I was confronted with it, though. I'd decided to do the a-to-z thing, and they were pushing short posts. I get the whole short post thing; I really do, and that wasn't the first time I'd seen people saying that the best way to get followers is to have short posts, but, see, that's not me. For one thing, I don't tend to like short posts. Either they don't say anything to begin with or, about the time the blogger is beginning to say something, the post is over. Why would I want to write in a style I don't like? But, more importantly, I felt it would be like lying. If I was going to have a bunch of new traffic to my blog, I wanted them to see the way that I blog, not some false front for the sake of pulling in followers only to go back to my actual style once a-to-z was over.

To put it another way, I realized that I had established a particular personality with my blog, and I wasn't willing to subvert that temporarily just to gain followers. Who I was on my blog was important to me.

And the blogs that I like most are all ones that have a particular personality that comes from the blogger. Maybe, it's a total facade for the sake of the blog, but that's okay, because the blog is the interface, so it's the personality presented through that interface which is important. I find more and more that I have no interest in blogs that are devoid of any type of personality. And, specifically, I like best those blogs which promote thought. Thoughts. I like what I read to make me think. And that's the kind of blog I try to have, too. So, even when I'm talking about writing or reading or even pop culture, I try to do it in a way that will make people think. Or see things from a new perspective. I'm just not a bandwagon kind of guy.

I also realize that the personality of my blog is not what anyone could say is a popular one, but I'm okay with that. I'm not, after all, trying to fit in.

All of that to say that I think the first thing you should do as a blogger is to figure out what kind of personality you want your blog to have. Yes, you can choose that, because the personality of your blog doesn't have to be related to your own personality. That's the fascinating thing about blogging. And, if you have more than one blog (which is CRAZY, but I know some people do), each blog can have a different personality. Amazing, I know.

But, wait, you say, "I've been blogging for three years, and I've never given my blog a personality!" Well, actually, you have, because you can't get away from that. Your blog projects some kind of image about who you are; it just might be that it's not an image you would have chosen if you'd thought about it. The good thing about it is that you can always make that decision and implement it. And, if you plan for your blog to be interactive in any way, I'd say that it's a necessary thing.

So, sit down with your blog today if you haven't already done so and help it to figure out who it wants to be. The overprotective big brother? The crazy, inappropriate uncle? The insane aunt with too many cats that wants to pinch your cheeks? The grandfather that slips money to the grand kids when no one is looking? Oh, no, wait, the class clown! [Yeah, that's so not me, even though I wish it was sometimes.] Personality is the first step toward a successful blogging career.

Oh, and, yeah, go buy my book!

How To Be... a Writer (an IWSG post)

"Write what you know."
How long has that phrase been going around? Forever? Close enough, right?

Some people say that's bad advice, but writing about things you know nothing about is a sure way to end up with bad writing. For instance, it's clear that George R. R. Martin writes about a lot of stuff he has no clue about, which is fine for other people that have no clue about it, but, when you get to someone who does have a clue, the writing comes off as, well, stupid. Like the whole ravens as couriers thing. That's just dumb. Clearly, his thought process was, "That would be cool," but ravens aren't that kind of bird. They don't work like homing pigeons. And, sure, you can say, "Well,  in his world they are that kind of bird," which is fine, but, then, why call them "ravens"? [And, yeah, I'm picking on Martin because he can take it (he's mega-rich), but I strongly object to doing something in your writing just because it's cool if it's also stupid and/or wrong (like the Emperor going down into the arena at the end of Gladiator: That was stupid and historically inaccurate).]

My advice is to always write what you know, if for nothing else, so that you don't come off looking stupid.

Here's the good news, though, it's easier, right now, to be a writer than ever before in history. Even just 20 years ago, doing the research you would need to do to write anything could be a laborious and time consuming prospect, not to mention that, in some cases, travel might be required. I mean, if you want the setting of your story to be Paris or Egypt, it might be a good thing to know about those places, right? That's part of why authors so desperately needed advances. Sometimes, delivering the product required money to do the research. But not anymore...

Today... well, today, you can know anything. Seriously. But, wait! There's more! Today, you can know anything without ever leaving your home! How amazing is that? And that... That was the whole point of my "a-to-z" theme this year.

If you want your protagonist in your shiny, new novel to be a brain surgeon, you can do that. You can find out everything you need to know about it without having to actually find a brain surgeon to tell you. If you want your main character to work for the CIA, you can do that, too. If your character discovers ancient ruins, you can have all the info at hand that you need to present that in a realistic way. Even if it's unidentified bones. If you're writing sci-fi, you have, at the touch of your fingers, all of the latest information from genetic engineering to warp technology. Or, if you're writing historical fiction and you want to have knights in shining armor, you'll know not to set it during the First Crusade or include King Arthur.

Just as a personal example, when I was writing The House on the Corner, I frequently used Google Earth to cruise around Shreveport to remind myself of details about locations that I needed for the story, even things that didn't necessarily get stated explicitly in the book (like the name of the diner they have breakfast at). You can make any place as real as being there that way. It's really rather amazing.

Being a writer has never (NEVER) been easier.

Not only is virtually any piece of information you might need to know a few key strokes away, but there is no longer the need to wait at the gates of the Giants anymore. Those giants aren't so big after all. In fact, the publishing industry is more akin to the wizard of Oz. No, not the book, the dude. That dude behind the curtain that's acting all scary and powerful, but, you know, he's just a dude, and the thing that's been between you and publishing your book is just a curtain.

It's just a curtain! There's no magic. No gate keeper. No special power or insight. All you have to do is pull back the curtain and step through. Wait, maybe, that is magic!

It's the magic of the Internet.

If you're writing fiction, there are no more excuses. You can do it all. Wait, let me say that again. You can do it all. Oh, wait, one more time. You can do it all. You can do it all! (yeah, so I lied; that was twice)

Really, the only thing standing between you and being a writer is, well, yourself. Which is not to say that you can just throw some crap onto some paper and be done with it (although there are certainly plenty of people that do that), but, if you work at it, if you practice, if you read, if you read a lot, and you practice some more, writing that is, if you practice writing, and you practice writing a lot, you can be a writer. All of the information you could ever need is at your disposal, be it about monsters or being the voice of god.

So... just... get out there and do it. Work on it. Be it.

[This post has been brought to you by Alex Cavanaugh's IWSG.]

I'd Rather Be Disney

I grew up on Six Flags. So to speak. The original one. The one that was built because Angus Wynne went to Disneyland and thought he would also build an amusement park, one that didn't require you to go all the way to the west coast, and, so, he built Six Flags near Dallas, kind of a halfway point in the U.S.

I only, actually, went to Six Flags a few times as a kid, but I went a lot as a teenager. A few times a year. It was only about two hours away, so, when we wanted a bigger trip, that's where we went. Not my family, my youth group. My family never went. See the "only a few times as a kid" (and that may be stretching it, as I can actually only remember going twice prior to being 15).

At any rate, I loved it. I thought Six Flags was great and the epitome of amusement parks. At this point in my life, I've been to several of the Six Flags parks, and, until last summer, I didn't think it could get better than that. Seriously. See, I'd never been to a Disney park, and, really, the only reason I even wanted to go to one was because of Star Tours. I mean, seriously, Disneyland couldn't really be that much better than Six Flags, right? Right? Well... how wrong I was, and you can read all about the trip to Disneyland starting here, if you're so inclined.

Still, at the point I went to Disneyland, it had been a good 10 years since I'd been to a Six Flags, so, although I knew Disney was better, it was kind of an abstract thing, because it had been so long since I'd been to a Six Flags, the memory wasn't really fresh enough to know why Disney was better.

My younger son received for his birthday, this year, a season pass to Six Flags: Discovery Kingdom. Actually, for his birthday, the entire family received season passes. This is, of course, a mixed blessing, because, on the one hand: yea! season passes!, but, on the other hand: oh, season passes; now, we have to go enough to make them worthwhile. This past weekend was our first trip (because we had to go by the end of the first week of April to activate our parking pass, which would have become void if we didn't (and can I just say, "What the heck?" I mean, it's paid for. It's not quite fair to put a time limit on when it can be activated especially since the park only opened for the season two weeks ago).

So what did I learn about why Disney is better after our first trip of  the season to Six Flags?

1. Everything at Disneyland is designed to make the experience better for the user. For instance, when we went to Disneyland, everything we needed was mailed to us ahead of time, and we had it all when we got there, so getting into Disneyland was smooth and hassle free. However, when we got to Six Flags, we had to go get IDs made for our passes, and that was the longest line we had of the day, nearly two hours just to get IDs, not to mention that the parking pass is specific to me, so, if my wife wanted to take the kids to Six Flags on a day that I couldn't go (which won't happen, but still...), she would have to pay for parking.

2. Disneyland is SO clean. It's clean for two reasons: If you have some piece of trash in your hand (like, you just finished a beverage), and you want to throw it away, there is a trash can right there for you. They make disposing of trash so convenient, it's almost more trouble to drop it on the ground. But, if you do, there are people walking around with brooms constantly cleaning up. It's not only the "happiest place on Earth," I would bet it's the cleanest. On the other hand, Six Flags makes it extremely difficult to get rid of trash. There are no trash cans at all in the ride lines, so, if you get in a line with a beverage and want to throw your trash away before you get on the ride, you CAN'T, because there are NO trash cans. But, yet, they have signs up everywhere saying "Please Keep Our Park Clean." I just want to know how they expect that to happen when the trash cans are hidden. And they have no people walking around on clean up duty.

3. There are ads all over Six Flags for EVERYTHING, the most annoying of which are the ads to upgrade. Upgrade your daily ticket to a season pass, upgrade your season pass to a gold pass, upgrade to a Flash pass so that you can get on the rides more quickly. Upgrade to a season pass for meals. Buy a souvenir cup that you can refill for cheap. Everything aimed and designed to get the customer to spend more and more money. There's none of this stuff at Disneyland. Maybe, Disneyland is enough of an ad in and of itself, I don't know, but there are not banners and ads all over the place trying to get you to spend more and more money. Okay, so they have gift shops everywhere, but so does Six Flags, and those aren't as obtrusive as all the banner ads.

4. Water. We all know that staying hydrated is important. I mean, really important. To help you with this issue, Disneyland does two things: 1. Water is pretty cheap, not more than $2.00 a bottle, and some of the places you can eat let you have free cups of water, rather like a lot of restaurants do. 2. You can bring things in with you, so, if you choose, you can bring in water or snacks or whatever rather than being forced to buy it in the park. Six Flags, however, charges $4.00 for a bottle of water, which is beyond ridiculous. AND they don't allow you to bring in anything from outside the park. Not even water. This just seems wrong to me.

5. Six Flags (all of them) is mostly a park of roller coasters. That's cool. I mean, you know, roller coasters are cool. They are the biggest attractions at Six Flag parks. There's not a lot there beyond the roller coasters, though. Not overall. Discovery Kingdom does have some animal shows and stuff, because it was a Marine World before Six Flags bought it, so there is still a dolphin show (which we missed because an employee WORKING AT THE DOLPHIN SHOW told me the incorrect time for the next show) and a tiger show, and you can (pay more money to) ride elephants (I guess that's the "elephant upgrade"), and stuff like that, but the main things, the big attractions, are the roller coasters (and let me just add that 2/3 of my children do not like roller coasters). I compare this to an action movie where the focus is on the explosions with just enough story to tie them together. Disneyland, on the other hand, has a well developed plot with plenty of action to keep it exciting, but it also has character development and cool settings and all the things you'd expect from a really good book. Although there are roller coasters, it's not about the roller coasters.

6. The lines. Disney knows that waiting in line is a dreary experience, and they do everything they can to make the experience better. There are things to look, environments to experience, all sorts of things to ease the pain of waiting in line, including being able to get "fast passes" to get onto some rides more quickly, and that fast pass thing is just an extra they offer to you. For free. None of that Six Flags. Six Flags is like the Soviet Union of amusement parks. Just drudging through the lines for hours. Nothing to see. Nothing to do. Only ads. And no trash cans. Oh, and their version of the fast pass, the "Flash Pass" (after the The Flash comic book character), costs extra money (see point 3).

And that's why, as a writer, I'd rather be Disney. Sure, roller coasters may be exciting, eye catching and all of that, and they may be fun (they are), but, at the end of the day, I was ready to leave Six Flags. And, you know, we'll have a good time when we go back, but it's really light fair. Surface. I was never ready to leave Disneyland. It was only with reluctance that we left each night because we were too tired to go on, but we were never just ready to leave. And we couldn't wait to get back the next morning. Of course, my kids can't wait to go back to Six Flags, even the ones that don't like roller coasters, and that's okay. They're kids. They're not quite able to differentiate yet. Which is not to say that they don't think Disneyland is better, because they do, but they still approach both experiences with approximately the same level of enthusiasm. Right now, the roller coasters work for them (or the butterfly habitat), mostly because they're young, but there will come a day when just the roller coasters won't be enough.

And that's okay. There are books I read when I was young, books that I enjoyed, that I can't go back to now. They were good for me at the time. However, when you continue to expand and deepen your reading, you find you can't go back to those other books with the same kind of enjoyment, just like I will never again be able to enjoy Six Flags in the way I did before I went to Disneyland. Disneyland is just better. And that's the kind of books I want to write, too.

On Poetry (part 3)

Many of you may be wondering, at this point, why I'm bothering to talk about poetry at all; after all, as I already pointed out, "Only poets read poetry." What does it have to do with everyone else? Well... honestly? Nothing.

And everything.

Just for the aesthetics, I think everyone who is a reader, which should be everyone even though it's not, should learn how to read poetry. Not the new stuff, either. I mean really learn to read poetry. I'm fairly convinced that learning to read poetry broadens our minds to the beauty of language, saying things elegantly, and allows us expand upon the types of things that we read. I'm sorry, but I don't care if you read 500 books last year if 498 of them were romance or light fantasy. That's the equivalent of only eating candy. Okay, I'm not really sorry. None of which  is to say that you need to always be reading poetry; I don't spend a lot of time with poetry anymore, but I used to, which is part of why I don't spend so much time with it, now, because, as I've said numerous times, I'm not much on re-reading.

There are also some great stories that ought to be experienced in the language and form they were written in as much as possible. Thinks like Beowulf and Gilgamesh. Heck, I've even read Le Morte d'Arthur, and, my gosh, there is so much more there than in any modern interpretations of Malory. Not that I'm suggesting that everyone run out and buy a copy of Malory, because, man, that was a tough read, and it took me a year to get through it. The point is that we miss so much by just discounting older, poetic works.

But writers... well, I don't really understand why any writer would discount poetry, especially classical poetry, as something not worthwhile to, at least, read. To be a good writer, a writer must write, but a writer must also read, and the more broadly the writer readers, the better his writing grows. Poetry is certainly not something that should be discounted just because it's poetry.

Of course, I think authors should also write poetry. And I don't mean author's should write prose in verse form and call it free verse, either. Authors can only benefit from learning the structure and flow of poetry and practice at writing it. It's like a football player taking ballet, and I don't think you'll find any that have done that who will tell you that it was a waste of time. Personally, I think the sonnet works best, because it has such a rigid structure. If you can write a sonnet, you can write anything.

And, no, I'm not much of a poet. I tried for a good long time at it though. Back when I was 15 or so, I had it stuck in my head that you couldn't be a "real" writer unless you wrote poetry. That was the dividing line between being a "writer" and being a "real writer." But, then, teenagers always have strange ideas. I wrote a lot of poetry back then. All of it bad. I probably still have it packed away somewhere, but I don't think I'd want to read about 99% of it. I focused on poetry early on in college, too, until one of my professors famously told me, "This is great prose, but it's lousy poetry," a statement that really opened my eyes to everything that I've been talking about in these posts about how poetry is not (and can not be) just prose written in verse form.

So, yeah, from time to time, I play with poetry. I have sonnets. And, at some point, I'll share some of them. I have some project notes for some more substantial pieces of poetry, too, but poetry requires a lot of time and effort on my part, that whole what is stressed and what is not is really difficult for me, always has been, so I end up pushing those projects down the list in favor of things I can finish more quickly. But, so as not to leave you empty-handed and to prove that, yes, I stand by what I'm saying here, I'll give you a sample of something I wrote a few years ago. Right before I started House, I think. Or, maybe, right after I started it. A few years ago, at any rate. No explanations this time, because it's always better to see how the reader interprets these things rather than just spelling it out, but I might be willing to answer some questions, depending upon what they are, if anyone has any.

The Dissolution of Love

The snow fell hard and heavy the day we

met, covering over that old empty

field. Filling in the holes, hiding the roots

and broken glass from our crunching boots.

The snow grew deep, blanketing all in white

and hiding all that was wrong from our sight.

In this pristine place, we would meet and play

in the field of snow until the day

was gone. And the days, they passed, and the snow

continued to fall and deepen and grow.

Until one day, we did decide to make

a snowman and, on this, put all at stake.

So we set to work upon the base

piling up the snow with all due haste.

Upon this base we placed the body that

Together we rolled into being, patting

the snow down hard and firm. Then the head

settled at last upon the top and wed

to the body below. Now complete but

for the details. Two rocks for eyes we put

upon the face and then for the nose and

mouth we added more. Our gloves for the hands,

we each gave one, joining our naked palms

to keep them warm. Our hearts, as one, grew calm

as we placed our last tokens: my hat, your

scarf. In our knowledge that all was secure,

we walked away to other things, other

pursuits, sure that our snowman would be safe.

Hand-in-hand, enjoying one another,

we left him alone like a long lost waif.

Forgotten, he stayed as we went on our

way, until we reached a time when joined hands

became a burden. So in that hour

we returned to where our lonely man stands

and retrieved our gloves so that we could act

independently. One eye, we found, had

fallen loose. Recognizing, then, the fact

that left alone he would not last, in gladness

we made a vow to watch over him

together. But quickly tiresome that chore

grew and, so, we forsook that very whim

and the promise that would have held us more

tightly bound together. Alone we left

him, once again, to brave the coming storm.

The rains and winds came as he stood bereft

of care and then the sun to rob his form.

The sun, more frequently, would show its eye,

driving back the snow and breaking the frost

that held the little field in grip. The sky,

cleared to blue, loosed its wind and winter lost

its battle. With no snow left to hold us,

we parted ways without a backward glance

for our poor creation. The wind’s last gust

lost my hat. Your scarf left, muddied, to dance

in the wind, caught in the last patch of snow --

the dirty heap of snow left behind from

our joint endeavor. But how could we know

that this would be all that that would become?

copyright 2013 Andrew Leon