The Man in the High Castle (a book review post)

As I've said previously, any good adaptation should make you at least curious about the source material, hopefully beyond, "Oh, it was based on some book," though I'm sure, people in general not being much for reading, that's where most people stop. But not me!

And, well, looking at the list of books PKD wrote, I can see that I haven't read enough of his works anyway.

Let's just get it out of the way that the Amazon series is only loosely based on the book, which is fine when that's what you set out to do and how you present it. The series, being a format which is ongoing, is able to do a little bit more with some of the concepts Dick introduced. But don't think that if you've watched the series that you have any idea of what the book is really about. You should definitely read the book.

The obvious premise of the book has to do with what the world might be like if the Axis powers had won World War II. That's a frightening thought, isn't it? What would the world be like under a totalitarian rule that covered most of the planet? It's a theme that unexpectedly resonates with our current political climate. Unexpectedly, because we all thought we had put that kind of shit behind us long ago, but here we are with a president (#fakepresident) with all of the leanings of a fascist dictator. If only, you know, people (Democrats) would just get out of his way and let him take over the world.

But I digress...

The book is fascinating on many levels, but Dick's use of language is one of the most interesting aspects. The characters are loosely grouped into two categories: the Japanese and the German, though the individual characters are not necessarily Japanese or German. When the focus is on one of the characters in the Japanese group, the prose (not just the dialogue) is stilted. There's a noticeable lack of articles. The dialogue and prose when centered on one of the German-side characters is fairly standard. There also seems to be a difference in thought processes from one side to the other, but it's possible that's just the prose speaking.

Then there are the characters: a Jew hiding out in Japanese territory under an assumed name, which is still not safe, because the Japanese and Nazis are ostensibly allies and it's routine for Jews to get sent to Germany for extermination when discovered; a "white," which is how the Japanese think of Americans in the part of America they control (just a white), small business owner who is enamored of Japanese culture and thinks they deserve to be in charge; a Swedish businessman on a trade mission to San Francisco; and more, but that should give you a taste. Almost none of the characters are precisely what they seem, though, an experience possibly like pulling on a rope only to find out it's a snake as it gets closer to you.

There's also a question as to what is or what constitutes reality, something Dick frequently does. You can see this just by looking at the basic question, "What would it be like if the Axis powers had won World War II?" But, within the book, there is a book which asks the question, "What would it be like if the Allied powers had won World War II?" The different perspectives on the answer to that question are interesting, to say the least, and they're not always what you would expect.

Maybe not as much as, say, 1984 or Brave New World, but this is definitely a book for our time and definitely worth a read. And I'm again reminded that I should really explore of PKD's works.

"The map is wrong" and Why It's Time To Ignore Trump

Living with an autocrat is never easy, not least of which because they can be erratic and unpredictable. Some of that unpredictableness comes from the fact that they warp reality around their assertions that their view of the world is the one and only correct view of the world. Let me give you an example:

When I was no more than seven or eight, I was having a discussion with my mom about a geography thing I learned at school that day. It was one of those "what did you learn today" moments. As I was telling her, my dad butted in with, "That's wrong."

Now, when I was a kid, I never held that typical belief that my parents were the ultimate authority on things. That was a view I held for teachers. Teachers were infallible. At least, at that point in my life, they were. So, of course, my response to my dad was something along the lines of, "But my teacher said..."

To which he responded, "Your teacher is wrong."

Some of you may have realized that I can be pretty... forceful... about the things I believe, and that has always been true, even when I was a kid, so an argument ensued. An argument which ended with the purchase of a map of the state, upon my insistence, because I was determined to prove that I was correct. We opened the map up, found the landmark, and...

I was right. It was just as I said from what we learned in class.

And my dad said, immediately, "The map is wrong."

I tried to argue. An argument which was cut short by my dad saying, "I'm right because I say I am."

I was, needless to say, flabbergasted. I just could not understand his insistence that he was right when, clearly, reality said otherwise.

It was also the very last time I ever argued anything with my dad. What was the point?

Also, that's a difficult lesson to learn when you're only seven or eight.

My dad also had that infuriating thing that you've probably seen in movies where he would ask me a question then yell at me not to "talk back" to him when I tried to answer. So, yeah, reality warping.

My tactic for dealing with him by the time I was in middle school was to just walk away. Literally. (And I have to say that it was actually quite satisfying, because it would leave him flustered and yelling, spittle flying out of his mouth as he did so. Seriously. (You didn't want to be close to him when he was yelling about something because there was always spittle.)) I refused to engage with him because you could never tell where you stood or what kind of crazy -- I hesitate to call them lies, because he was never "lying." -- untruth was going to come out of him. And you couldn't argue because facts didn't matter. He was right because he said he was. So, yeah, maybe it was disrespectful, but I would walk away, usually to my room but, sometimes, to outside.

And you know what? It would shut him up. I mean, after the "don't walk away from me while I'm talking to you!" part, that was the end of it. He never resumed anything later and there were never any consequences. Well, okay, there was the occasional "you're grounded!" that followed the bit about not walking away, but he never paid enough attention to ever enforce that; it just made him feel good to say it. Like he was actually doing something, I suppose.

Now, here's the punch line:
Trump is just like my dad. Or like my dad would have been if he'd had someone to give him a "small loan of a million dollars" to get him started off in life.

I realize what I'm about to say is more than impractical, but the way we need to be dealing with Trump, as a society, when he starts spouting nonsense is to "walk away." Ignore it. Deal with the actual business at hand and not pay any attention to his untruths. Because I'm pretty sure that Trump, also, isn't "lying." He's just saying stupid shit because
1. He's not very smart. and
2. He's right because he says he is; therefore, to him, anything he says is reality.

So here we are, two weeks later (as I write this and, probably, three weeks later as you read this), and we're still talking about Trump's completely unsupported and demonstrably false statement that he was wiretapped by Obama. Why are we still talking about it? Because we have allowed Trump to warp or reality. Rather than talking about him and his ties to Russia or any number of other things, we are now focused on whether Obama, the least scandalous President ever, had Trump under surveillance. With the British! Because Trump has to continue to warp reality to keep us focused on the wrong things. On non-things.

All of that to say this:
It's time to move the conversation back to where it should be, on Trump and the evil of his cohorts and how they are trying to ruin the world for everyone except the very wealthy. Because, actually, some of Trump's untruths are lies and, certainly, the people around him are lying all the time, just look at Flynn and Sessions for starters.

What we need to learn, as a society, especially the press, is that when Trump offers up something that comes without proof, something like "I was wiretapped," we need to not even acknowledge it. You stay focused on the actual story (in this case, it was the story about Sessions and how he lied under oath, but we haven't heard anymore about that since Trump made his completely fallacious claim) and resist chasing the squirrels that Trump is tossing into the room.

Personally, I think it would be great if we really could just walk away from him, just like I did with my dad. I bet Trump spittles, too, when he yells.

A to Z Flashback: 2012 -- Fiction to Reality

This year, 2014, is my third "A to Z," which would make 2012 my first one. There are a lot of you around these days that weren't around back then, so I thought -- Okay, actually, my wife thought. She said to me, "Since everyone seems to really like your theme this year (which, again, was her idea),you should do a post highlighting your previous A to Z themes." Which, um, were also her ideas. Yeah, she throws ideas at me all the time; some of them stick. -- I would drop an extra (Sunday) post in case any of you are interested in seeing what I've done before. So start at the beginning, right?

Well, not that beginning... that's too far back. Just the beginning of my participation in "A to Z," which was this:

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality

See, there's a link there, so you can go read the intro post if you want to. And here's a list of the topics I covered of things that started out as fiction, started out in some author's mind, made its way onto some paper, worked its way into some reader's mind where it poked and nudged until that person made that thing, that thing that was just made up by someone, into something that is real, something that works, and, often, something that has changed the world. There're all linked, so, if you see one you think you want to know about, you can just go directly to that one without having to wade through all 26. But, you know, if you want to wade through, or swim in, all 26, feel free to do that, too. Oh, and don't be shy about commenting on any of the old posts if you feel so lead. It's not like commenting expires or anything.

A -- Artificial Intelligence

B -- Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans

C -- Cyborgs

D -- Driverless Cars

E -- Exo-suits

F -- Flying Cars

G -- Genetic Engineering

H -- the Holographic Interface

I -- the Internet and the Invisibility Cloak

J -- Jekyll and Hyde

K -- Klingon

L -- Lasers

M -- Moon Landing

N -- Nanotechnology

O -- Opton

P -- Platforms

Q -- Quantum Communication

R -- Robots and Androids

S -- Snow Crash, Second Life, and Submarines

T -- Tom Swift and the TASER

U -- Ultraphone Ear-Disc

V -- Virtual Reality

W -- Wonka

X -- Xenobiology

Y -- the Yeast-Beast Machine

Z -- Zero Gravity and Zombies

NOTE: I did eventually read Snow Crash, prompted by how often it came up while doing research for this series, and I would never recommend it to anyone. You can read my review here.

Nebraska (a movie review post)

Before I get into the actual review, I want to say that this makes 9 out of 9 seen of the movies nominated for Best Picture, this year. We've never managed to see them all ahead of the Oscars before. I'm not sure if we'll ever actually try to get them all in, again, the way we did this year. It just sort of worked out.

Nebraska is another of those movies that I would never have gone to see (or probably even rented) if it wasn't nominated for Best Picture. I don't think it's a "best picture," but I am glad I saw it. Of all of this year's best picture nominees, it is probably the one that will linger the longest in my mind despite it's very subdued quality as a movie.

And it is subdued. Slow moving. And black-and-white, which adds to the subdued quality. I've been trying to figure out what the movie would be like in color, and I can't really imagine it that way. Color would change the tone of the movie, which is kind of weird to me, but I think it would. It would make it not quite so somber, and it needs the somberness, the sense of depression and desperation, to make it work.

Being black and white, though, it won't appeal to a lot of people (my daughter (and, yeah, she's just a kid, but I've known plenty of adults with the same attitude) refuses to watch b&w movies out of principle. The fact that it's slow, including scenes of people just sitting around not talking, will also make it unappealing to pretty sizable chunk of people. But some of those scenes of people just sitting, or sitting and watching football, reminded me of being a kid in East Texas, and those scenes really resonated with me which has caused me to continue to think about it even though it's not at all spectacular.

The other part of that is that the movie is not what it's about. On the surface it's a movie about an old guy that seems not quite all there trying to walk to Nebraska to pick up $1,000,000 that he thinks he's won, but it's not about that. I mean, it's not about growing old and losing your grasp on reality. It's about relationships and how we don't always know people as well as we think we do, even when those people are our parents.

The acting was great. I'm not sure Bruce Dern deserves the best actor nomination, but he was very good. He really sold the depression and desperation. Okay, maybe he does deserve the nomination. The role is so... normal; it makes it hard to tell. Will Forte was even better as his younger son, David. He brought the helplessness and exasperation to the role. They were great together. And Forte was also great with Bob Odenkirk who played his older brother. They had great chemistry. June Squib was frightening and hilarious as Woody's wife.

I'm going to hold myself back, at this point, and not talk about the relationships and family dynamics, because it would require all kinds of spoilers, and I think this is the kind of movie that each person should come to on his/her own, so to speak. It probably has something different to say to any given person based on what that person is bringing into it, like my resonance with the old men in my family sitting around, mostly silently, watching football.

This one probably won't appeal to a lot of people at the outset. There are no explosions, no gunfights, and no car chases. But, if you let yourself follow along, I think it's one you'll find yourself pondering at odd moments for weeks (or at least days) after you see it.

Things I've Forgotten To Say

Over the past little while, there have been things I've forgotten to say or include in posts. Frequently, this has to do with getting interrupted while I'm writing and losing whatever I was thinking about. Probably, most of these things were of no great import, but, sometimes, they are.

One of the things I forgot was supposed to go into my A to Z posts. When my wife brought this to my attention, I was already past where it would have logically fit within the letters, so I had planned to work it in at another spot. But I forgot. And, then, I was going to work it in at the end, but I forgot. And, then, I was going to put it into my reflections post, but I saw that article about the bionic eyes and got all excited about that, and, guess what, I forgot. This is why when I go to the grocery store only needing three things, I come back with only two of them. Actually, often that's because of the "Can I haves" from my daughter. Having to say "no" 30 times during a 15 minute trip into the store can make you forget anything.

But I digress...

Every year at Christmas, we watch Scrooged. That may be my wife's favorite movie. I'm sure that's not what she would say, but we've seen that more than anything else my wife would claim as her favorite, so I'm just declaring it her favorite. So! My wife's favorite movie is Scrooged, and we watch that every year at Christmas. [Aren't you glad we got that all cleared up? Boy, I am!]

In the movie there's this bit where the out-of-touch president of the TV station is telling Bill Murray's character that they need to have television for cats and dogs. They also need to work things into regular programming to get those same cats and dogs hooked on TV. You know, like a detective show where the cop dangles a piece of string as his "thing." This whole thing, to put into a modern perspective, is meant to show how ludicrous and absurd the 1% can be with their time and money. This guy was into cats, so he wanted television for his cats, and, since he owned the TV station, he was gonna make that happen. No matter how stupid the idea.

And, see, that's the thing: it is a stupid idea.

It's a stupid idea that has, now, become a reality. I give you DogTV! Seriously. I don't care how much science has been put into it, and they claim there has been a lot of science put into it, it's insane. I mean, I love my dog (you remember her, right?),

I even let her lick my face (was that too much?), but she's a dog! Dogs are supposed to lick faces. They are not supposed to watch TV. If dogs were supposed to watch TV, they would have grown thumbs and invented it for themselves. Heck, we did invent TV, and I don't even think we should be watching it. Which is why we just get static on ours.

Anyway... just another example of fiction being turned into reality. Even if it is a dumb one.

The other big thing I meant to mention is something that leads into something else. Not that it was supposed to, originally, but it's going to now.

I just did a review on A Thread of Grace and, really, Mary Doria Russel in general. Okay, really, it was about The Sparrow, which I'm still looking for so that I can re-read it (and that's a big deal as some of you may have picked up), but I didn't just read that one. The Sparrow, aside from winning a bunch of awards (like the Arthur C. Clarke Award), was Russel's first novel. Yes, it was her first novel. I don't mean first published, just her first.

Modern, conventional wisdom tells us that first novels are no good. First novels are for practice. First novels are to get your foot in the door and all that other... stuff that they say. Modern, conventional wisdom is often just wrong. Say it with me: it's wrong!

I'm not saying that that means that a first novel is one's best novel, I'm just saying that, often, the first is the best. Orson Welles knew it. He made Citizen Kane and said everything he did after that would be downhill. He wasn't wrong. In fact, some people have written just the one and stopped. But the one was great. Gone With the Wind. To Kill a Mockingbird (and Harper Lee was somewhat pressured to write more books, but she refused, because she knew she could never surpass the one she did write). And, even though Richard Adams has continued to write, he's never done anything better than Watership Down.

Okay, what I'm really saying is that you shouldn't listen too hard to what "conventional wisdom" tells you. Conventional wisdom is not, usually, wisdom; usually, it's just dumb things people say to each other to make each other feel better. What I am saying is that you should believe in yourself and your work and do the best you can.

Don't listen to agents. Don't listen to publishers. Don't listen to your crit partners. Only you know the story you want to write. No one else, just you. You work on it, mold it, smash it, cut it, build it, believe in it, until you, only you, after having read it 20 times or 45 times or however many times that you've read it until you're sick of it, can read it and say, "Hey, I like this. This is good. I would read this." When you have something that you would read, that you would flip through at the bookstore and think, "hey, this sounds interesting," that you would pick up and buy, well... don't worry about the rest.

You want to know a secret? Agents don't know. Publishers don't even know. Heck, the public doesn't even know. You just do the best you can. You figure out what you want, what you need, from writing, and you work toward that. Sure, I know for a lot of you that means the validation of being traditionally published, so that means working with agents and publishers and jumping through hoops and all of that, but like I said way back in this post, you have to figure out what you want. If what you want doesn't require traditional publishing, then don't go that route (really, go back and read that post (you can even still comment on it, if you want to) if you want the full discussion).

>steps off of soapbox< (who put that there, anyway?)

Look, all I'm trying to say is don't let people get you down by telling you things that aren't necessarily true. Things like "it's only your first novel, so it can't be any good." Go look at a list of first novels by many famous authors (or only novels), and you'll often find that those first novels stand out among their work. You'll find just as many who had awful first novels and kept getting better and better. Just don't think that because it's your first it can't be any good.

Personally, I like my first novel, The House on the Corner (which I reviewed here). It's good. I've read it... many times, now, and I still enjoy it (and I had a whole class of 6th graders (and the teacher) laughing during chapter 19 this morning). But it's not The Sparrow, or Neormancer, or Citizen Kane (although it has been compared with The Sorcerer's Stone by more than one person), and I hope I get better. In fact, I plan to.

I suppose what all of this boils down to is this:
Believe in yourself.
Not in any New Age way or belief that believing in yourself will bring you everything you could hope for. It won't. Don't let anyone fool you. However, believing in yourself, that you can do it, is the only way that you will keep working at it. No one else can give that to you, but plenty of people can take it away. If you let them. So don't. Believe in yourself, believe that you can make it happen, work to make that come true.

Blogging A to Z: The A to Z of Fiction to Reality

A year ago, when the A to Z thing was going on, I had just started blogging. I hadn't even been at it two months when I found out about the challenge, and I only found out about it a couple of weeks before it started. I knew there was no way that I would be able to do that, post every day, in any kind of way that I would be happy with. I didn't want to be staring at my own posts thinking "how lame..." Save that for other people's posts, right? I knew that if I was going to ever do the A to Z challenge, it would have to be about something.

But that was a year ago, and, mostly, I just didn't think about it again. Well, that is until everyone started talking about it for this year. There's a certain amount of peer pressure involved in this whole thing which makes me want to avoid it. Everyone saying you should be involved and all of that. I'm fairly immune to peer pressure, so that didn't really sway me. And I knew that trying to post every day would, well, be impossible. That would mean a lot of planning. That would mean I would need something for my posts to be about. Not just a theme. Something they could be about.

And, still, there was everyone talking about it and talking about how they were going to do it and saying how everyone should do it and if everyone ate rocks, would you? Seriously? Because I think you would. And if everyone jumped off of a cliff, would you? Well, you probably would, because, really, you don't have a choice when everyone jumps off a cliff, because the ones at the front that can see the cliff coming can't stop because they're being pushed by the swarm of lemmings behind them, and the ones at the back can't see the cliff at all, so everyone goes over. It's just better not to get involved at all, wouldn't you say?

But, see, here's the thing. When everyone else goes and jumps off a cliff, you're left all alone, and, when you're talking about blogs, that's one thing you don't want to be. All alone. I kind of learned that last year. Everyone's busy with all the A to Z posts, and no one has time for anything else, so did I really want my blog to spend a month hibernating. Or, maybe, I should just take the month off? That didn't seem unreasonable.

Then... well, then, I opened my mouth. Sometimes, I say things that I don't intend to say. Okay, well, that's not exactly true. I never say anything I don't intend to say, but, sometimes, the things I say have effects that I don't anticipate. And so it was that I said something to my wife, just in passing, I thought, along the lines of, "hey, there's this big blog thing coming that lasts the whole month of April, and I'd kind of like to do it, but I'd need something really good for my posts to be about, and I'm not thinking of anything really good, so I'm thinking about, maybe, just taking the month off." Something like that, at any rate.

And here are the ideas that I'd already discarded when I said that to my wife:

1. Favorite words. That could be fun, right? Like for "A" I have adamant... and a whole bunch of others. And for "B" I have belligerent. But the idea didn't really grab me, and, for some letters, I'd have a lot of words and, for some letters, I'd only have one, so I really didn't like it for the whole inequality thing.

2. Star Wars. As many people can attest, there may be no better topic for me. I'm good at talking about Star Wars. I mean, I'm so good at talking about Star Wars that Briane Pagel is busy trying to think of ever more and more ways to make me lose points in his big Star Wars blogfest. Well, not lose points so much as let other people gain more points than me. Okay, well, he has, actually, come up with a way for me to lose points, too. Wow... So far, I've managed to keep my lead, but it is shortening. And that is why you should all go sign up for the blogfest. Because, if you do, you'll get 50 points, and I will, too, and, right now, I could use the point cushion! But, anyway... I thought about doing Star Wars, but, in the end, the topic was just too broad. Yeah, I know, that sounds weird, but I couldn't just talk about random things from Star Wars, so there'd have to be some way to decide between talking about, say, an A-wing fighter and Alderaan or, even, Admiral Akbar (and he's a double "A" topic!). Basically, I couldn't pick out a sub-theme I was interested in going with, so I had to discard Star Wars, too.

3. Well, there were any number of other ideas that flitted through this spot, but none of them took hold long enough to even stick as a third option. However, when you make a list, you must have 3 items for it to be considered a list, so #3 is for all of those other topics. The ones that weren't even good enough to be topics.

And that's where I was when I made that comment to my wife. Of course, she liked the idea of me taking a month off from blogging, because she thinks I spend too much time on the blog and not enough time on actual writing. Well, that doesn't sound right... Okay, more time on my actual book. How's that? She also thinks I spend too much time on Farmville, but that's a topic for another time. ANYWAY! (geez! would you people stop sidetracking me?) I think we were talking about the idea of taking a month off, but, then, she had an idea. Not an idea, the idea. Because my wife is good at ideas. And she said I must give her full credit for the idea or she would take it back. I'm not sure how that would work since I've written a bunch of posts already, but I suspect they would all poof out of existence, and I might well poof out of existence, too, for all I know. What I do know is that, at the very least, I'd be signed up for this crazy thing, and I'd have no posts to go with it, and that would really suck.

But the IDEA... and it's a really great idea, too. See, most of what I do on this blog is related to writing. Even the pop culture stuff, because the movies and all of that have to do with writing. And most of the other stuff I talk about I relate to writing in some way, too. Having a theme related to writing is, kind of, a no-brainer. Most of the A to Z blogs I saw last year that had a theme had some sort of theme that was related to writing in some way or another. And, well, I don't want to do some thing that everyone else is doing even if I'm participating in a big blogfest that everyone else is participating in. So it all has to go a step beyond. And that's what my wife's idea did.

So here you go... my more than a theme... it's more than a theme, because it's about how we are all affected by writers. And I don't mean we all as in us people that are writers being affected by other writers, because, of course, we are. No, I mean how we, all of us people everywhere, are affected by writers. Not just in what we read or watch or whatever but how writers affect our lives. But what does that mean?

Well, in my research for my individual topics, I discovered that there's this TV show by some physicist that is an ongoing exploration of current science fiction that could be reality some day. He has a book, too. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is, because you don't need to go look at that until May. But that's not what I'm going to talk about anyway. Not current science fiction. No, I'm going to talk about the ways that past fiction (not just science fiction) has become real and, to some extent, what that means to us. Okay, well, I'm  not going to talk about that part so much, because, really, there's just not time to do it within the confines of the blogfest, but I'm sure you'll be able to see how some of these things have changed our lives or will, soon, change our lives.

So... Starting on Sunday, what you'll be getting is 26 things that started out as fiction and are now real. That doesn't mean they're a part of everyday life, yet, but that the things work. Someone, somewhere, has these things now or is very close to producing them. Others are part of everyday life. But all of these things started out in the imagination of a writer. And, maybe, we'd have them anyway, but, maybe, we wouldn't. It's hard to say. The point is, though, is that writers are important. They have IDEAS, and ideas are... well, they are essential. Imagination is essential. And it's so often so easily dismissed.

And, if you've read my book, The House on the Corner, you might have an idea of how important I think imagination is.

At any rate, sit back, relax, and prepare to discover 26 things that you might not realize came from the pages of a book before it was something you could pick up and touch.

The Dream vs The World

I didn't grow up wanting to be a writer. I grew up wanting to be a paleontologist. I saw my very first dinosaur sometime around the age of three, and I was instantly captivated. It was on a gas station of all places. I'm not sure if it was meant to be ironic or not. It's hard to know those kinds of things at three. My mother has told me, though, that I was hooked from that moment on. Everything was dinosaurs. In many ways, I learned to read by reading about dinosaurs.

In first grade, our teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up and, then, went around the room letting everyone answer that question. All of the usual answers came up. Fireman. Policeman. Doctor. Someone may have even said scientist. I know all of the other answers were normal because the teacher would nod and go on to the next person. Until she got to me. I said paleontologist. She told me I was making that up. We had an argument. She said if it was a real thing, then, I should I write it on the chalkboard. I'm sure she thought that there was no way I could spell a word that long even if it was a made up word. But I put the word on  the chalkboard spelled correctly. I won the argument.

All of my science fair projects while I was in elementary school dealt with dinosaurs in some capacity or another. Well, except for that one year where they actually told me I couldn't do dinosaurs again, so I did my project on the solar system. Generally speaking, I knew more about dinosaurs than anyone else at any school I was ever in, including the teachers.

Typically, kids' ideas about what they want to be when they grow up change quite a bit. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think most kids change their minds a couple of times a year before adolescence, meaning that the typical kid has had anywhere from 6 to 12 things s/he has firmly wanted to be as a grown up by the time s/he hits middle school. I only ever wanted to be one thing: a paleontologist.

Ironically, it was middle school that changed that for me. Two things happened: Earth science and Careers class. In Earth science there was a unit about rocks. I  hated it. Absolutely hated it. And the test on rocks at the end of the unit? The test where we had a bucket of rocks on the table, and we had to name them. No, not things like Bob and George. We had to identify them. That was my only non-A grade all year. I'm not talking about just in that class, I'm talking about all year. All of my classes. Everything except the rock unit. I hated rocks. And, thus, my Dream came face-to-face with the reality of the World and the World won. Between that and a project I had to do in Careers class about the profession I wanted to go into, I realized that no matter how much I loved dinosaurs, I would never enjoy being a paleontologist.

I first dreamed of being a writer sometime in high school. It had to do with Shakespeare, whom I didn't like, at the time, but that's another story. You can blame it on Romeo and Juliet. At any rate, I remember thinking about how cool it would be to write something that people were still reading, even studying, hundreds of years after I was dead. I mean, really, how cool is that? That was the dream... to write something that people would be still be reading and enjoying, maybe even learning about in school, after I was dead.

At some point, there was a new dream. Wouldn't it be cool to walk into a book store and see a book that I wrote sitting there on the shelf. I mean, how cool is that? Right? I'm sure we all have that dream. Just like I'm sure that, at some point, all guys dream/wish they were great poets. Usually, right around the time they fall in love for the first time. For most guys, though, that's just a brief phase. heh

So, here I am, 20 some odd years later, staring that dream in the face. Just like I had to stare that dream of paleontology in the face. Because dreams are great, essential, but, often, not realistic. Or, even worse, not what we really want.

When I was a kid, paleontology was not really my dream. Dinosaurs were my dream. I was like the kid  in Ray Bradbury's excellent short story, "Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?" Not that I actually wanted to be a dinosaur, like the boy in the story, but I thought I wanted something that I didn't really want.

After I finished my novel, I had this same sort of experience. I was grappling with the replacement dream, the dream of "wouldn't it be cool to walk into a book store, or, even, a Target or Wal-Mart, and see my book sitting there on  the shelf?" I think as writers, most of us start out with that dream somewhere in our heads. Possibly, that's the only dream we're having. The cool factor of being a name on a bookshelf. But I started delving into the data about the publishing industry to work out all of this how to get published stuff, and I didn't like what I was finding.

Now, I already knew about the huge amount of waste that publishing industry produces every year in conjunction with book stores, because I worked in a used book store when I was in college, and the owner used to rant about people bringing coverless books to him. But that was just the tip of ice berg. And all of this is a topic for another post, so I'm not going to go into it, now. As I found things out, I would comment on them to my wife. In a, um, negative way. That way she takes as me complaining when, really, I'm just commenting. She knows in my mind there's difference, but it affects her the same either way. Anyway...

Don't tell her I said this, but my wife is a smart woman. At some point in there, she said to me, "Well, what is it you want? Do you want to be published [i.e. have my book in bookstores] or do you want people to read and enjoy your books?" That's really what it comes down to, in the end: does your dream, the dream that drives you, match up to what you really want? For me, the dream of "being published" was at odds with what I really and truly actually want, that other people will read and enjoy my books.

Yes, yes, I hear you. "But being published is the way that other people will get to read and enjoy my books!" Except that's not true. I'll concede the point that it used to be true, but, now, today, there are so many other options. And most books that go through traditional publishing (and when I say most, I mean almost all), never sell 5000 copies. At this point, we could get into the huge debate over traditional publishing vs, well, whatever else, but that's also not the point. I will say, though, that, I think, we often defend traditional publishing not because it deserves defending but because we're defending our dream of being on a bookshelf in a book store.

I had to look at that dream and evaluate it. Is that what I really wanted? To be published and be able to walk into a store and point and say, "that's my book!" That would be so cool! I get it. It would be. But is it what I really wanted. No, it's not. What I really want is for people to have the chance to read and enjoy my book. On top of that, I don't want to support an industry I feel is wrong in so many ways. My Dream came up against the reality of the World, and the World won. Again. But it's okay, because that dream... it's not what I really wanted, anyway.

It's great to have dreams. We should have dreams. We need them. They fuel us. They give us goals. They keep us striving to achieve. However, we shouldn't just cling to dreams because they're our dreams. We need to evaluate those dreams on a fairly consistent basis so that we know if they are worthy of still being our dreams. Do they match up with what we really want? Do they align with reality? Which is not to say that, even, having impossible dreams is not okay. Some great things have been accomplished due to the "impossible" dreams of some people. But it's a pretty horrible thing to achieve a dream, to get there, and find out that, although you reached your dream, it wasn't what you wanted.

Here's what it boils down to: I see so many blogs from people striving, reaching, investing everything in the dream of being published, but I have to wonder if that's really what all these people really want. If it is, that's great. But when confronted with the question, and looking at it honestly and objectively, I couldn't say that that is what I really wanted. And, if it's  not what I really want, why pursue it so single-mindedly? I'll admit, that dream of being published still worms its way around in my head causing conflict, so I have to, pretty constantly, remind myself about what I really want. Make my work available for people to read and enjoy and do my best to let them know it's out there. After all, it's the same work I'd have to do even with traditional publishing. Maybe I'm the only one that this is true for.

This whole thing about evaluating our dreams isn't just for writers; everyone should remember to do this. I need to remember to do this more often. Is the dream we're pursuing, whether it's growing up to be a T-Rex or having a book published, actually the dream that we want? With all the changes in the publishing industry, right now, though, I think this is an even more important question for writers to be asking themselves. What is it you want from your writing? Does your dream of being published actually fulfill what you want?