Fart Jokes, Humor, and Dissecting Frogs

When someone asks me how to write humor, I often remind them that the world's oldest joke is a fart joke. (It's nice to know someone's keeping track of these things.)

If you can learn how to write a fart, you're there.

That's a bit glib, but it gets to the central problem with writing humor: many things are only funny because the situation makes them funny.

By the way: My eleven-year-old self would like an apology from everyone who ever lectured him using the words "That is not funny..."  He had historical precedent is on his side.  It's in the genome, nothing I can do about it; farts were funny in ancient Sumer!

(Nephews take note.)


To drag this up a notch from the archaeology of bodily functions, I was listening to an NPR interview with the great Canadian humorist Stuart McLean the other night. In the interview, McLean refused the interviewer's polite entreaties to analyse his humor.

He quoted E. B. White, who said: "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog; the frog dies in the process." He said that it wasn't his job to know how it worked, it was just his job to do it. And that stuck with me long after I turned off the car engine and the radio fell silent.

Somehow, when someone asks me how to write humor, or how I write humor, I can't bring myself to say "It's not my job to understand it, just to do it."


I want to understand it. Moreover, the teacher in me wants to be able to answer the question with something more than "Learn to write farts."

Exempting physical humor (which is almost impossible in written form) I see three common types of humor. It's really not that hard to be funny in real life, because almost all humor is physical, topical, anecdotal, or situational. The moments when you laugh so hard that you're literally ROTFL are usually a combination of all four.

(Someone keep an eye on the frog for me. Is it dead yet?)

If writing is supposed to be an honest reflection of our world, then most humor we write will be situational. Being funny in real life isn't that hard because it isn't about telling jokes, it's about a given moment when what happens is funny.  Farce is another thing entirely, worthy of its own frog... er... blog post.

For the most part, writing humor is and will always be about creating "You just had to be there" moments between your characters and your readers.  Some people can do this instinctively, what Stuart McLean called 'writing from the belly'. Some have to learn how to do it, and in order to do that, I'm afraid you're going to have to exploratory surgeries on some frogs.

Part of being a writer is examining our own lives and interactions, mining them for moments and ideas that will breathe life into our writing. In order to do that, we must take scalpel in hand and pull them apart at least a little.

Why was it funny when Aunt Bethany farted? If you accept that bodily functions aren't inherently funny, you're left with the incongruity, the surprise. Why was it a surprise? Because it was your prim Aunt Bethany? Because it was Thanksgiving dinner? Because she'd just told off your kid for doing the same thing?

If nothing else, watch a video or an episode of a good sitcom. Pick them apart and look at how they work. At first, you'll just be staring uncomprehendingly at the broken parts of a dead joke. Eventually, you'll start to see the function of each piece and how they fit together. Eventually, you'll be able to reassemble the joke, better, faster, stronger than before.

I guess you had to be there? Let me put you there...

In the meantime, don't tease the frogs.

Holiday Break

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, or some other that I am unaware of, may the season be a blessed one, full of togetherness and  hope for the new year to come.

We celebrate Christmas here at Fool's Paradise, so I have a lot of Santa traps to put out before the big day, so I will be taking a short break from the blog to make sure we get him this year. If you don't see him, you'll know we got him.  

To all of you out there in Internetland, don't forget to be silly.

Scott Walker Perkins

The Safety Epidemic: Dear Mister President...

Dear Mr. President,

I hope this letter finds you and your lovely family well.

I wanted to share a story with you about something I noticed recently about our country. This should be of especial interest to you since, if memory serves, your daughter Malia suffers from allergies.

I was shopping recently when I flipped the bag of nuts over and found a warning label, alerting consumers that this bag of nuts, may contain nuts.


Quelle surprise.


The packaging might have been more effective if it read: "Fair Warning: Our lawyers may be nuts, and if you sue us for finding nuts in your nuts, you may be nuts too."

Don't get me wrong, I have allergies. They have put me in the hospital several times recently. Some of these allergies are terrible and could, conceivably, kill me. I and my wife carry epinephrine injectors with us at all times, just in case the worst should happen. And I want there to be product labeling that warns me when something might be hidden in my food that could kill me.

And I worry that too many senseless warnings are making us numb to the real threats. Can't we just agree that coffee is hot, knives are sharp, a jar of nuts may will contain nuts, and if it causes cancer in the state of California, it causes cancer everywhere?

I ask because I'm not sitting down to write you a letter today about healthcare, or FDA mandated warnings, or allergies. I want to talk about safety and risk.

America seems addicted to safety and our politicians - you included - are unapologetic enablers.

One of the reasons that our national anthem pairs "land of the free" with "the home of the brave" is that the two cannot exist without one another. Risk is inherent in freedom. In a free society, there are always risks. Free speech means the risk of someone saying something we disagree with. The right to a presumption of innocence means that a guilty person might go free in order to ensure that the innocent person does as well.

And we accept those things.

Because we are the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Before I started my writing blog, I spent some time in the trenches as a political blogger. I wasn't very good at it, because I was and remain far too reasonable to succeed in that field. I'm not a firebrand for either the right or left, I'm just a guy trying to raise a family and carve out some space to write his books. This blog was meant to be a place where I don't need to be political. A place where I could talk about writing and nothing but writing.

Then my government tried to pass a law that would turn my homeland into a battlefield and simultaneously strip me of my unassailable right to due process. A law that could condemn me or one of my countrymen to indefinite detention if someone with sufficient clout were to accuse me of being a terrorist. Not prove me a terrorist, mind you, just the accusation would require indefinite military detention.

No trial, no confronting my accuser, no airing of the evidence against me, no jury of my peers. Detention in a military prison 'for the duration of hostilities' in a war in which there are no clear goals or metrics for measuring victory, and therefore no end in sight.

Why would my government do this? Why would you sign it?

Because our government, because your office, has become so accustomed to the idea that the citizenry wants to be endlessly protected to the point of absurdity. Because you seem to genuinely think that we want to be so coddled that we need a warning label on a bag of nuts telling us that it may contain nuts. Because the public has been trained to believe that safety is a right that must be defended with tear gas and infinite detention. That freedom is fragile rather than resilient, that it is so important to protect the Constitution that we should keep it under glass -- where we can see it, but safely out of reach.

I don't want to be that safe.

I want to take up my rights in one hand and my obligations in the other and I want to strive for the ideal that made this country free and brave.

I want to make something abundantly clear: I do not for a minute think that you or anyone in our current government means to misuse this law. I have no doubt in my mind that this is undertaken with the best of intentions.

But if the last eleven years has taught us anything, it's that you cannot predict, nor can I, what the world or the country will look like eleven years from now. Or twenty. Or thirty. And the laws that you sign today have force and effect beyond the limits of your term in office and any of our terms on this Earth. None of us can say for certain how future politicians will use this bill or whether and how this interminable "War Against Terror" might end.

The precedent being set here is chilling. If not for me, then for those who follow me. The implication that the unalienable rights endowed by our creator, supposedly enshrined in our constitution can be set aside in the passion of an historical moment us nothing short of a violation of your oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I voted for you in hopes of better.

My forefathers risked everything for this country. Grandparents and great grandparents fought and died for the preservation of this country. They were challenged by their government to stand up and fight, to accept the risk inherent in their citizenship and the obligation to the world and to those who would come after them. This is not to say that our country has always done the right thing. Japanese internment and HUAC spring to mind. A law similar to this one was vetoed by Harry Truman in 1950 and then overridden by congress. But every time we have done the wrong thing, the thing that later generations regretted and had to apologize for, it was done out of fear.

The British humorist Douglas Adams once noted that human beings are unique in their ability to learn from their mistakes, as well as their apparent unwillingness to do so.  But then, he also said that anyone capable of getting themselves elected president should on no account be allowed to do the job.

You have a chance to prove him wrong on both counts.

As a constitutional scholar, you know these things, and yet here we are anyway. You are faced with an historic chance to stand alongside the great leaders in history who brought their people a sense of shared sacrifice for a common ideal, or to become another also-ran.  You are facing reelection soon, and what I am asking for is a definite risk to your quest for a second term, but you once said you would rather be a great one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. It's time to prove it to us.

I think that most Americans are waiting for the chance to step up and the vocal few who want to hide under their bed until someone from the defense department sounds the all clear... well, I'm not willing to live by their standard. This country may contain nuts; It's right there on the package.

I believe that America can be both free and brave at the same time. I believe that we must.

Just as I accept that I may be killed by a psycho who slips through the system because the rights of the accused are protected in this country, so too do I accept the idea that I might be killed by a terrorist because I refuse to shred the founding documents that made this country worth defending.

I once told the Bush administration that if torturing someone will save me, don't bother, I would rather die. So too do I tell you: if my absolute safety comes at the expense of our Bill of Rights, then don't bother to save me. Because whether or not I ever stood before a magistrate and took the oath required of naturalized citizens, I understand that it applies to me anyway. I know that I can, should, and must support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; bear true faith and allegiance to the same; bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; and perform other work of national importance.

And I take this obligation freely and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Veto the NDAA and any subsequent bill that comes to your desk stripping Americans of their right to due process. Because there really is such a thing as being too safe.

Yours sincerely,

Scott Walker Perkins

Photo by Scott Perkins, ©2008 

Kinetic Text: Ira Glass on the Creative Process

I meant to post this video when I first found it and then I forgot about it a few times. This is excellent advice from Ira Glass of This American Life fame. It's aimed at the beginner, but just as important for the middler, or or even those of us who've made a living at this and are still assailed by the occasional (or more than occasional) doubt.

The Internet Is a Strange & Magical Place

An amusing aspect of having a character in one of your novels named after an historical figure is the number of hits your blog receives from school kids looking for information for a school report.

<Waves hand> This is not the Howard Carter you are looking for. </waves hand>

At least I deal with the mummy thing in the first chapter or two. I'm still having fun imagining the kinds of reports that sort of 'research' might generate. "Howard Carter discovered King Tut's tomb and then went on to defend the earth from an alien invasion, using an army of robots and a recipe for instant pudding."

I'm not a history teacher, but for my money, that should be an A+ paper.

Yes, I've been looking at my blog stats again. Yes, I'm blogging about blogging again.

I apologize. I'll go back to other stuff in the next post, I promise.

I used to ignore blog stats that Google coughed up for me (mostly because they made me sad) but then Blogger incorporated them into the actual site and it became a one-click thing. Which means that I've been forced to acknowledge that I'm no longer talking to myself.

It also provides endless amusements and quite a bit of head-scratching because it lists the search terms that got some of you here. My favorite search terms of this week are: "eschew your words carefully".  Now, that certainly sounds like me, though I don't recall saying it.

It almost lost out to "legal pen feathers law desk" which somehow got three people to my blog this week. How? I HAVE NO IDEA! But it's true.  And I'm happy to see you! Please leave a comment. I'd love to write more about these legal feather desk pens.

The internet is a strange and magical place.

Amazon's Latest News Cycle: Grinches or Goofs?

Does Amazon have any Public Relations people on staff? I mean... at all? Maybe some advisors of some sort that play the Jeff Goldblum role and say "Sure you can do that, but should you?"

If they do have such people, are they ever allowed to attend meetings? And if so, why don't they ever say "You know this is going to make us look like the Grinch that stole Christmas, right?"

Sometimes it seems like Amazon is a machine purpose-built for creating internet rage. They remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, they delisted LGBT titles or recategorized them or... something, they got in a very public spat with MacMillan that made all of us wish they'd fight in private like civilised people, and now... now they're paying you not to shop with mom & pop.

Well... sort of.

Dr. Villainous Deeds: An Online Approach to Character Creation

Hidden somewhere in every narrative is the author that created it.  As Oscar Wilde observed "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

Which should probably alarm me, because one of characters that people best know me for is a mad scientist and self-professed evil genius.

Some people have an inner child, I have an inner mad scientist.

For those of you who have read Howard Carter Saves the World, you know Dr Villainous Deeds as Howard's mad science teacher (in every sense). But he's much older than that. Before he became comedy relief for that novel, he was 'tried on' for size in several ways to make sure I could embody that sort of silly/evil character in a believable fashion.

Before I could commit to writing a novel about him, I needed to get inside his scary, freaky, head and see how he ticked.

Under normal circumstances, I 'try on' new characters in a series of short stories or vignettes.  Each time the character appears in these short pieces, there are subtle changes as I learn how they move through their worlds and interact with the people they meet.  I find my way into their skin and fill it out until they become as real as ink on a page can be.  Only then do I commit them to a longer, more complex storyline.

I did this with Howard Carter and his friends, I did this with Ashleigh MacLeod, and I did it with a host of other characters that never grew into actual novels because what the short stories taught me was that I didn't want to live with them through 90,000 words.

Doctor Deeds called for an entirely new approach.

Research: The Gateway Drug

Research is a gateway drug for procrastination. The secret to writing is putting new words on a page, not obssessively noodling with the words already there. On your first draft, make something up or put a pin in it and move on.

This year, I was a pedestrian walking alongside the freeway that is NaNoWriMo, and as I watched the authors whizzing past, ignoring my outstretched thumb, I noticed something... a lot of them stopped. Not for me, or because their book ran out of gas, but because they felt like they needed to know the number of bolts in the nosecone of an Ares rocket, or the exact color of the bed sheets in the Lincoln bedroom, or did Gladstone really have a Gladstone bag?

And all too many of them exited their novels, went up the steps into the library that is the internet... and never came back out.  And the few who did had trouble starting their novels again.

I'm a huge fan of libraries, both personal and public, and the Internet really is an amazing tool for researching your novel. Within easy reach of this chair, I can find the lineage of Galileo Galilei and detailed instructions on lock picking, plus everything in between.

But if I hit a section of my novel where I need to show Galileo's grandmother picking a lock, I don't reach for either of those books. Either I know it or I don't, and if I don't, I write "Galileo's Grandma picks lock." highlight it in yellow and/or append a footnote so I can find it again and move on.

NaNoWriMo: How to extend an imaginary deadline.

Today is the last day of November, the last day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and a day in which thousands of writers wish that their keyboards came with an 'Extend Deadline' button. According to the official count, as of this morning, 2.9 billion words have been written and verified by NaNoWriMo participants, and over $640,000 were raised to fund the writing outreach programs of the Office of Letters & Light.

Last weekend, I took a moment out of my holiday to read through the #NaNoWriMo Twitter feed and noticed the number of people who were boiling with existential angst and self-loathing because they weren't going to make it. They weren't going to win.

As someone who bathes daily in the existential angst of students dragged unwillingly to the keyboard and ordered to write 1,500 words on the American Revolution (or whatever) it was refreshing for a moment to see people who begrudged the time spent at the table on Thanksgiving because they would rather be writing.

Then I came to my senses.

The NaNoWriMo movement gets a lot of crap, and I'm on record here and elsewhere defending the validity of the idea, but that does not mean it is without flaws. If there was one thing I could change about the way we talk about this, it would be to eliminate the word "Winner" from the conversation. Anyone who manages to vomit 50,000 words into the word counter -- any words will do -- is a winner; everyone else is, by extension, a loser. And that's a false premise.

Nevertheless, as the minutes tick away toward the midnight deadline, those who did not complete their 50k will inevitably fume and fuss and glare at their screens and think of ways to pad their numbers. Do outlines count? Character notes? This old short story that has a character with the same name? Some of them will make it across the finish line and some will not. 

I want to remind those people that the inability to write a novel in 30 days does not make you less of a writer. It's entirely possible that it makes you more of one.  So as this imaginary deadline approaches I want all of you to promise me not to take this too seriously.

This is a celebration of the novel, not a celebration of the deadline.

Your worth as a writer is not on the line.

Congratulations to those who will receive that postage-stamp sized digital diploma. You wrote quickly, and I hope you wrote well. Post your plaque on Facebook or Twitter, accept the plaudits of your peers and sleep well tonight. 

Whether you 'won' or not, tomorrow it will be December and you will all sit down at the computer out of habit, take a deep breath, and look back at your share of those nearly 3 billion words, and wonder "What now?"

The answer is the same for all of you, win, lose or draw... 

Make a fresh cup of your favorite morning beverage, congratulate yourself for surviving, and then hit that extend deadline button and keep writing.

Being Green :: The Jim Henson Generation

Of course, I haven't seen the new Muppet movie yet. But I come from that generation sometimes referred to alternatively as "The MTV Generation" or "Generation X" and a few other less salubrious titles. But really, we're the Jim Henson Generation.

And don't you ever forget it.

My generation was the first that never knew a time when it wasn't perfectly acceptable for a bunch of monsters to teach your kids how to share and get along with people who don't look just like them. I learned my numbers and letters from my sister, but she was backstopped by Kermit the Frog and company.

She didn't have to teach me it was okay to be green. Jim took care of that one.

Since Sesame Street first aired in 1969, by the time I was old enough to sing the song, it was already a cultural institution. I remember when no one believed Big Bird had a woolly mammoth buddy named Mr. Snuffleupagus. I remember when Grover was the monster at the end of the book and Elmo was just another red monster in the chorus of many. Ernie was my favorite, followed close by Grover and Oscar the Grouch.

Alas that mom refused to buy me a trash can to hang out in.

But it wasn't Sesame Street that makes me think of myself as living in a world that Jim Henson created. It was the Muppet Show, which ran from 1975-1981 and then lived on in reruns through most of my life.

As much as anything else, picking apart that show taught me how to write comedy.

‎"One thing that happens with comedy writers is that they are all really good at coming up with beginnings... really good set ups, but they can't figure out how to pay them off. What my father figured out was, if you can't get out, you just either blow something up, or eat something, or just throw penguins in the air."                                                                                               - Brian Henson

And the writing on the Muppet Show was nothing short of brilliant. At times, it was entry-level Monty Python and at the same time hearkened back to the vaudeville impresarios of yesteryear. They channeled Groucho Marx and Jack Benny and Bob Hope without pausing to see if you got the last joke before moving on to the next. Sometimes there wasn't a joke, just an absurd situation devolving into chaos.

On some level, we knew that the show was trying to appeal to our parents. Going back and watching the shows now as an adult, I find new appreciation for just how much Jim was pitching over our heads to hit the adults on the sofa behind us.

The Muppets introduced me to Peter Ustinov and Zero Mostel, as well as the madcap brilliance of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. Henson and his writers delighted in wordplay and snappy patter. It's quite possible that they're responsible for my fondness for puns, but don't hold that against them. The Muppet Show was the first time I saw John Cleese. They also taught me a new way to think about comedy and led me, by way of Spike Milligan to the Goon Show and on to Monty Python and the rest is history.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to watch the Muppet Movie again on the big screen. The Seattle International Film Festival has been having an entire month of Muppet-related shows and events.

Sitting in the darkness of the SIFF cinema, surrounded by children and their parents, I was astounded by how well it held up. Leaving aside the six year old behind me who whispered to his mom "Why are people laughing at the waiter? He hasn't said anything yet!"

How do you explain Steve Martin to a six year old?

Wherever I went, I was always the "different" kid. The outsider, and not in a cool way. But it didn't matter because I lived in a world where it's getting easier to be green.  And we have Jim to thank for that. When I grew up, I wanted to be Jim Henson.  I still do.  In the meantime, I'm having fun being someone that he inspired.
---

UPDATE!

SIFF's celebration of Jim Henson "Muppets, Music, and Magic: Jim Henson's Legacy" continues through the end of November! Click here for show times and ticket information. http://www.siff.net/cinema/seriesDetail.aspx?FID=253

(Note: I am unaffiliated with the Seattle International Film Festival, et al. This is genuine enthusiasm, not a bizarre scheme to boost ticket sales.)

Shyness Unmasked :: Finding My Inner Extrovert

This morning, a writer and storyteller I greatly admire not only correctly identified me by my work, but also told me that he loved the story. My tongue cleaved to the top of my mouth, my palms got clammy and it took me several minutes to figure out how to respond.

If this interaction didn't take place via Twitter, I'd have been in real trouble.

Like everyone on the internet, my various bios conceal as much as they reveal. When someone asks about me, I'm prone to default to being funny rather than honest. I have no excuse for that, it's just the way I am. If you asked me the same question at a restaurant, I'd probably do the same thing.

Well, at least I'm consistent.

My sense of humor comes from a place of extreme discomfort. I am notoriously awkward in social situations, excitable, shy, prone to blushing, and generally nervous around new people. Strangely, I've been told by many that I'm a compelling public speaker. I'm not sure how that works, but when I hear it, I smile, sort of jerk my head in a nervous half-nod and carry on carrying on.

My favorite aunt was a source of particular terror for me as a child. I was so painfully shy that I ran away and hid from her. I locked myself in a bathroom or two and she once pursued me over and around furniture, determined to give her great nephew a hug. This perfectly turned-out woman, always proper and dignified and accustomed to moving in the circles of power and propriety, determined to get me over my fear of her.

Because she was just that awesome.

If you meet me, you might not realize I'm the adult that used to be that kid. I've been developing ways to conceal these kneejerk responses for over thirty years. When I was single it was ten times worse. It's a wonder and a miracle that my wife and I ever met, much less married.

Even conversations with people I've known for years are often filled with odd stretches of complete silence while I try to come up with something say.

I've always suspected that I'm not alone in this. Not to paint with too broad of a brush, writers are by definition, people who are inclined to spend a lot of time alone with their thoughts. Let's face it: when your imaginary friends are so good you want to share their antics with other people, it leads to a lot of living inside of your own head.

My imaginary friends are so at home they built a lovely little village named Westmoore and made themselves at home. If there's room for a whole village in there, surely the rest of you will fit?

One of the ways I get past my anxiety is by wearing a mask. And not a metaphorical one either, a real one. The one in the snapshot to the right.

I realize that sounds a little weird, but bear with me for a moment.

Consider for a moment a man who is terrified of walking up and standing in front of a room full of people and talking. Then consider what it would take to make that happen. What kind of shield would it take for that person to walk up in front of a crowd and not only command their attention, but hold it?

It was almost exactly ten years ago that I met my Dumbo's feather.

Unfortunately, you can't just wander around in a mask without paying a higher social price than you are already paying for merely being shy. It is possible for the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction and what I really needed was a controlled environment for the experiment where this sort of behavior isn't that strange.

I needed a place that would allow a largely inexperienced, completely unknown and shy actor on their stage.  There really is only one place where that sort of thing is possible. Luckily I'm an historical reenactor and was therefore already on the cast of my local renaissance faire.

Meet Calabash. (I'm the one that isn't made out of bronze.)

I've mentioned before that I'm a clown. Calabash began as a strange experiment and it became something more than that. He became the outlet valve for a part of my personality that I didn't know existed.

With that mask on, I could walk up to complete strangers and not only engage them in conversations, but I could stand on a stage, shouting at the top of my lungs and attracting the sort of attention that without the mask would have me scrambling for cover. I became a lead character. I got paid to show up places. I was on the cover of the program.

A terrified flying elephant holding onto a feather for all he's worth.

And like that feather, the mask was a trick. And just as with Dumbo, it worked.

About eight years after I first put on the mask, I attended my first writer's conference and I was one of the few people there actively meeting the eyes of those around me. Who was starting conversations with strangers, walking up to tables at the dinners and introducing myself, leading conversations, holding up my hand in classrooms...

Outside the agents and editors room instead of staring intently at my shoes, I pictured myself putting on the Calabash mask before I went in.  I was still shaking when I walked out, but my voice was as steady as my handshake and my eye contact was good.

As dumb as it sounds, I couldn't have done it without Calabash the clown.

Writers are mainly introverts, people who would rather sit and chat with their imaginary friends than stand in front of a room full of people who are looking for them to be as interesting in person as they are on the page.

Given my druthers, I would still hide in my corner and write my stories without ever doing anything else. Instead, I'm presenting ideas to the boards of local charities and nonprofits. I'm heading up comittees designated with the task of broadcasting the missions of those organizations to a larger audience. I've walked up to editors and agents and journalists and felt less like I was ice skating on thin ice over the dark waters of panic.  I've found myself on a stage both literally and figuratively, and I've found my a way to make myself at home there.

Because if I want to introduce all of you to those imaginary friends of mine, it's what I have to do. And to be successful at this, you do too.

i

Running out of stories, or just looking for a way around?

The other day, I posted on a discussion board dedicated mostly to discussing Queen Elizabeth & her reign, that I'd seen a copy of "The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer" on the shelf at a bookstore. I confess that I was snarky about it.

As someone who posted after me pointed out, this is one of an emerging genre of books that posit famous historical personages as secret warriors in the fight against the undead. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer is a famous one. There are others including Queen Victoria and even Sarah Palin, though I hope the latter is satire of some sort.

For what it's worth, I have nothing against these authors or any other who turns their hand to the literary mash-up genre. Kudos to all of you for pursuing your idea and getting it published and read in a tough market. This genre is emerging as adjacent to if not part of the literary mashups like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies among others.

My problem isn't with the individual books, but that they are viewed by the world at large as science fiction or at best fantasy. And we should all be aware that to those outside the fan base for those things, there isn't a difference.

But the question this really begs is have we expended all of our ideas to the extent that the only way forward is endless remixing and rehashing of what we've already done?

I have a folder full of ideas that argues otherwise.  But if every author has one of these folders (and they do) then why does it seem like it?

While I was thinking about this, I stumbled across a thought-provoking essay by astrophysicist and novelist David Brin on how to define Science Fiction and while I don't agree on every point, it clarified a lot of what I've been feeling about the state of science fiction.

The lack of originality is one part pessimism and one part laziness. Because if you believe there are no new stories to tell, or if you believe that telling an imaginative and uplifting story is trite, then why not be lazy?

"Let there be no mistake—this is the giant fault line down the middle of science fiction’s broadly varied and tolerantly diverse community of authors and readers. The notion that children might, possibly, sometimes,learn from the mistakes of their parents, avoid repeating them… then forge on to make new mistakes all their own, overcoming obstacles on their way to becoming better beings than ourselves."
David BrinWriting for the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologieshttp://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4947

On this point, I concur with Dr. Brin: we live in a time when optimism is treated as though it were a contagious disease. When the hope that (as Dr Brin says) our successors might learn from our mistakes and not repeat them seems anathema to us. Year after year, we are hammered with stories whose key element seems to be complete failure of human society to learn and improve.

And I get that too. I watch the events that are happening in the world. As a student of history, I see the cycles of human experience repeat. And it saddens me.

But it does not make me a pessimist.

Howard Carter is an homage to the greatest stories of Sci Fi's past, but it is more than that. Its story rests on the refutation that cycles are unbreakable. Its stance is pointedly and fearlessly anti-fatalist.

Because I am, at heart, an optimist. I'm a cynical one sometimes, but an optimist nonetheless.

There are dystopian stories that need to be told. And science fiction does and should have a role to play in warning us of the future consequences of current trends. But I feel deeply and personally that we took a wrong turn somewhere when we decided that science fiction had to stop positing positive futures. Not that dystopian stories should not be told, but by making it cliche or trite to posit any advancement and dwell solely on the inevitability of decline, we've shot ourselves in the collective foot as a literary movement and as a society.

Though much of it is dystopian, Steampunk is an expression of this, a point that I think Dr. Brin misses. That by re-imagining the past as more enlightened and inclusive than it really way, we've turned our optimism inside out and sent it back in time and into alternate universes. When we were told we're not allowed to imagine that mankind can be better, we started imagining how mankind could have been better.

I don't think these strange genre fluctuations and mash-ups mean we've run out of ideas or that we've reached the end of our creativity. I think it means we're running against a wall and I see it as a sign of frustration on the part of authors at the constraints imposed upon them. I see them as a way of saying, 'If we can't go forward, we'll go under, over, or around'.

But then... I am an optimist.

Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighters: A case study in the futility of "Platform Building" advice

This is the topic I don't want to talk about. But it's a writing blog and we had to get to it sooner or later... Platform.

There are a lot of writing books in the world and I've read most of them. One of the reasons I particularly love the older ones is because they spend more time talking about how to write and less time talking about why you need to have a wildly popular blog or other online presence.

For the record: none of the books pictured do this.
That's part of what I like about them.

This advice is all-too-often dispensed with an air of "any idiot could do it".

Aspiring writers are repeatedly told (not advised, told) to create and maintain an online fanbase. Get online. What are you waiting for? Generate some buzz! And hordes of writers run screaming into the cybernetic night, searching for fans.

This is referred to as creating an online "platform".

Platform is one of those things that agents and editors talk about with dreamy voices. Most of the reasons given boil down to this: if you already have an audience, you don't have to waste time creating one after your book comes out.  At its best, it's a ready-made fan base that guarantees your devoted followers will mob bookstores on the day your novel comes out, or even drive it to the top of the bestseller lists before it's even finished.

Let me say that again: Before it's even finished.

Click that link. Go ahead. We'll be here when you get back.

Did you read it? Were you just a little sick with envy? I certainly was.

For people who don't click links: YA author John Green's newest book A Fault In Our Stars wasn't even finished yet when it became a bestseller.

John is a talented, award-winning writer. He received the Printz honors and an Edgar Award for his writing, quite apart from his online fame. (I doubt there are many Nerdfighters, as his online community calls itself, on the awards committee at the MWA.) His plaudits are many and that little bust of Edgar Allen Poe was well-earned.

You might recall that back in September of 2009, I named him "One To Watch" because he has a knack for using the internet to tell stories and create community.  (We'll ignore the fact that he was only one of the three on that list you still hear about.  As prophecies go, one out of three ain't bad.) The YouTube channel he created with his brother Hank (collectively known as the "Vlogbrothers") developed the kind of following that bloggers dream of. Millions of fans (myself included) who call themselves "Nerdfighters" watch the weekly uploads, follow him on Twitter, and buy his books.

Here's the tricky part that those advising that everyone go out and do likewise... in almost every case I can find of this happening, it happened mostly on accident.

Sure, at some point, the Vlogbrothers discovered that their videos had acquired an audience. Since then, they have consistently made an effort to include those fans in what they were doing, to inspire them to raise money for charity, and have otherwise capitalized on their following in a way that managed not to alienate them. They even use their nerdiness to exploit YouTube's own ranking algorithm to push videos that advertise charities into the top rankings by motivating their fanbase to watch and rate these videos over and over again.

It's impressive. And I'd wager that it cannot be reproduced.

"Build a platform!" Is the new battlecry heard at a thousand writing conferences. Every book about writing that's appeared in recent years will tell you that you must create some level of buzz online in order to get noticed by publishers. And after every writer's conference, aspiring writers flood the internet, trying to become the next Vlogbrothers, or Bloggess, Scalzi, or Julie Powell, or whoever the presenter used as an example.

That's a huge wall to plop down in front of an aspiring writer and I think it leads to a lot of discouragement. And I think it's largely needless.

Yes, there are things we can all learn from watching those bloggers I just named find success. But in many of the presentations I've attended and books I've read, there lacked a key piece of advice: They did this by being themselves.


 Back to the Vlogbrothers... John and Hank Green built their fan base the old fashioned way: by being funny and topical, yes, but mostly by being genuine and sincere. Two brothers sending 4-minute videos to each other became a force that helped send John up the bestseller lists and helped his brother Hank hit the Billboard charts. Along the way, they've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity and made the world suck less.  Their stated mission is literally "to decrease worldsuck" and they mean it.

More importantly, there isn't a disingenuous bone in either of their bodies. John didn't sit down with his brother and say "How are we going to use YouTube to make my books bestsellers?"

The siren call of the platform builders is a seductive one. I find myself listening to it from time to time myself when I'm trying to decide what to write or not write about on this blog. When in fact, this blog is not an effort to create an online platform. Not because I don't want to sell out a print run before it's even printed, but because that's not why I'm here. I'm writing here because if I didn't write this stuff here, I'd be writing it someplace else. And because I feel like someone should be able to find out the things I had to learn the hard way.

These really are the pages I need to type before I can sleep. And often, they're the things I need to write before I can write. When my brain coughs up an idea, I have to write it down or it will keep nagging at me like a song stuck in my head until I can't think of anything else.

I am honestly gratified that anyone chooses to read these brainfarts of mine, but it's not part of a master plan to build an army and conquer the publishing industry.

This is a place where I stand to tell the truth where the people I think need to hear it can hear me.

Remember when I said that the real successes, the things that really catch fire, mostly happen on accident? Well, that's not entirely true. You have to put yourself out there, and that means a certain amount of premeditation.

The decision to be yourself in public is a decision, not an accident. Being yourself is scary. I get that. But as someone else once noted, everyone else is taken.

And that's the only genuine "platform" advice anyone needs to hear. Because "Go be like them" is never good advice. You will never get anywhere you want to go by being someone else. I can try to write like Jenny from Bloggess, and I can go recipe-by-recipe through a cookbook like Julie Powell, and I can go on Youtube and talk to my sister... But that's me trying to be them, not me being me. And if there's one thing John & Hank's success really should teach you, is that if you have to be someone else to get there, it's someplace you don't want to go.

My Tea Will Beat Up Your Tea

Okay, fine. I will drink tea. One condition: The strainer has to have a better than average chance of getting loose and seizing control of the planet.

The 5 Most Useful P2T Posts for NaNoWriMo

At the request of several friends who are too busy trying to hit 50,000 words to paw through the archives for inspiration, I've assembled my personal top five most useful posts for the NaNoWriMos. I hope it helps you!  (Each heading is a clickable link.)

1. Last Year's NaNoWriMo Pep Talk
   I wasn't asked to write a pep talk for National Novel Writing Month.  But writing something no one asked you to write is really the point of NaNoWriMo, isn't it?  So in the spirit of the month, I did it anyway.
   
2. Where do you get your ideas?
   Where do Ideas come from?  It's the question every writer dreads and emphatically answers with "I don't know".  Honestly, I suspect that for most writers that's a bit of a fib -- we may not know where ideas come from in the cosmic sense any more than we can tell you the meaning of life, but we generally know where a specific idea came from, or at least what prompted it.
   
3. What if I get stuck?
   Especially during the month of November (cough-NaNoWriMo-cough), I get people asking me how to deal with writer's block. I admit that used to be a real problem for me until I developed methods of dealing with it when it happens, writing around it and generally stripping it of its power to hurt my productivity. In April, 2009, I compiled my 7 favorite tips for breaking out of a literary cul de sac.
   
4. What if I'm still stuck?
   Personally, I think that a big part of writer's block is the fear of it happening much more than the actuality of the thing.  It's the bugbear under the bed, the monster in the anxiety closet of too many writer's offices.  So what do you do to disarm a bogey man?  We mock them, of course. So, in the interest of a bit of fun and making fun of the bugbears, I've generated a list of some of my favorite and most oddball advice on writer's block. If my advice doesn't help you, maybe someone else's will...
   
5. Why should I listen to you?Listen to me only if what I say helps you. There's no such thing as "One Size Fits All" in either hats or advice. Only take what helps you; discard what that doesn't.

From all of us on the sidelines this year, cheering you on: Best of luck to you all! And we'll try to keep the vuvuzela blowing to a minimum.

10 Tips to Get You From Idea to Finished Novel

For all those who are on the NaNoWriMo marathon, here are 10 things that I keep in mind as I progress from the idea I scribbled on a napkin to the moment I sit down to turn it into a book.

Ten Tips to Get From Idea to Finished Novel

1. Be interested in your story. Writing is hard work and before you commit to spending long hours sitting in a chair stringing tens of thousands of words together to tell your story, you'd better darn well be sure it's a story that interests you enough to make that worthwhile.
   
   
2. Feed your brain. Your brain generates stories from the stuff you cram in there. Give it the fodder it needs to make new and interesting stories and well fleshed-out characters. Interview everyone you meet, explore every place you go, try new things.
   
   
3. Everything is research. Accept it. Pay attention. Take notes and snapshots. You never know when you'll need the story about the kid who accidentally ordered a Harrier fighter jet on eBay.
   
   
4. Ideas are not sacred. Don't get so attached to an idea that you're unwilling to allow it to evolve. A story idea is less like the directions from a GPS and more like finding your way through a new city with written directions scrawled on the back of a coffee-stained napkin.
   
   
5. Write now, edit later. Just sit you butt in the chair and put the story on the page. Editing is inevitable, but it is a stage of its own that can wait until later. Your initial goal is to get the story out of your head, everything else follows that.
   
   
6. Take little bites. A big idea can choke you if you try to eat it all at once. Writing anything long form is a lot like the old adage about eating an elephant: Start at one end and take it one bite at a time.
   
   
7. Make stuff up. Research can be a very addictive drug. It's easy to get so wrapped up in the intriguing minutiae of your subject matter that you forget to write a book about it. If it ever gets shelved in a library or bookstore, your novel will be in the fiction section, this gives you license to fake it... within reason, of course.
   
   
8. Keep everything. Create a file on your computer (or in your filing cabinet if you're a luddite like me) of the random ideas or characters that occur to you as you're writing. Not everything you create while writing will fit the story you're working on. Hang on to those tidbits for later use in this or another story.
   
   
9. Step away from the Television and/or the Internet. That might sound odd coming from me, but these mediums are specifically designed to catch your attention and hold it. I've recently begun doing my writing on a computer that is isolated from the internet to combat this. My writing output tripled when we got rid of TV and as a bonus we saved a lot of money each month.
   
   
10. Write with the vocabulary you have. Put away the thesaurus, it's just slowing you down and making self-conscious. Finding your authorial "voice" is about telling the story the way you tell it, not the way Roget would tell it if he were writing it. Your vocabulary will grow organically on its own and in a way that is unique to you as you research and read. Language is a fragile thing and it will break if you try to force it.

It's easy to end a list with the words "And it's as easy as that!" but it really isn't all that easy or everyone would do it.

It's not as easy as that and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind at every stage.  Writing is hard.  It's supposed to be hard.  So don't beat yourself up when you find that it isn't easy.  This is job, a task like any other -- a task that must be performed before you can enjoy the results.  

Because at the end of the day (or the end of November) it's the person who puts their butt in the chair and puts the words on the page who will win the race.

Best of luck to you all!
-Scott

NaNoWriMo :: A waste of enthusiasm?

I am not a NaNoWriMo participant this year, but I've been there and thrown fifty thousand words at a wall to see what sticks.  So I'm re-posting this post from last year as a preemptive strike against the naysayers and the nattering nabobs of NaNo negativity. 

Every year, someone whines that the participants are somehow wasting their time.

I disagree...

-------

I've been known to answer the "What do you do?" question with "I drink coffee and make stuff up".  My favorite response thus far was just the other day when a guy said "So you're in politics then?"

Enthusiasm can be created, it can be encouraged, it can be diminished, and it even can be destroyed. But it is rarely ever wasted.
Writing a novel is more than a profession.  I once said that a writer is "society's designated dreamer" and I stand by that.  (Try putting that on your tax return.)  At the risk of getting too airy-fairy on you, it's a mindset.  For my money, a writer is a conspirator in the great and secret game of words, broker in the exchange of ideas.  And as far as I'm concerned, everyone is welcome to roll up their sleeves and join us.
---
UPDATE! The Los Angeles Times book blog "Jacket Copy" has come out with a point-by-point refutation of Miller's piece in Salon. Worth the read.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/11/12-reasons-to-ignore-the-naysayers-do-nanowrimo.html
 

For some reason I was thinking about this exchange when I read this Op/Ed published by Salon.com that tells us that we should knock it off.  NaNoWriMo is apparently a colossal waste of time and enthusiasm.  Why?  Because by focusing on writing, we are apparently drawing too much attention away from reading and we're supposedly encouraging people to create stuff that won't be published.

It occurs to me to wonder what Laura Miller, the author of that piece would say if I asked her to define what makes a writer.  If I asked her who does have her permission to write a novel.

Based upon a few interactions with NaNoers, Miller draws some remarkably broad conclusions about who is participating and what effect it has upon their reading habits.  I would like to emphasize that at no point does she present any actual data to back up her thesis that when people are encouraged to write, they'll stop reading.

I read.  I write.  All the writers I know who write came to it because they like to read.  As I type this, I'm quite literally sitting in a personal home library packed with thousands of books.  The notion that encouraging writing will curtail reading is preposterous.

In fact, after spending decades writing, reading and running bookstores, I must say that I've never met anyone serious about writing who doesn't also read voraciously.  We do read a little less when we're writing, but as Lev Grossman recently discussed, writers are actually given to reading and re-reading not just what we write, but the things we enjoy and the authors we want to emulate.  Despite the anecdotes presented as evidence in the Salon piece, how many people have you really met that sit down to write a book but don't actually like reading them?

Seriously?

The piece includes the curious argument that encouraging amateur novelists hurts the sales of fiction because writing books sell well.  In the case of one literary magazine that she mentioned, they sell well enough that they pay for the publication of the literary magazine. I take it we're supposed to take that as a bad thing because we wouldn't want dangerous advice espoused in those writing books to get out into the world and encourage these dangerous fools...

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."  
-Stephen King On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft

And while I haven't read every writing book in existence, I used to sell them so I've read a lot of them and every one I have read includes this same exhortation to read widely.

That sort of madness must be stopped at all costs. 

The hard truth of the matter is that on one level, Miller is correct: the great bulk of what we create during NaNoWriMo is not publishable fiction by any means.  It is, at best, a first draft.  A first draft that must be subjected to repeated revisions and subsequent drafts in order to create something that's worth the time of a publisher or agent.  The organizers warn participants about this and every year, some of them ignore the advice.

Publishers and agents alike have repeatedly told me that NaNoWriMo causes their in-boxes to swell with things that they can't sell, aren't finished and aren't good.  (So do writing conferences, incidentally) Many of them spend the month of December digging their way out of the blizzard of hopeful 50,000 word mini-novels.  I'm sure that several great books get overlooked every year because they're lost in the storm.

That's really too bad, but frankly, that's the way it goes.

I feel a bit sorry for the people shifting that slush pile and wish them well, but agents knew that was part of the gig when they went out for the team.  I'm actually curious if the incidence of this is really that much greater among NaNoWriMo participants than the rest of the people who throw unpublishable pap over the transom or if it's just concentrated in a single month so it draws attention.

So, with not a mote more or less proof of my assertion than Miller, I tell you that the assertion that reading and writing are hindering one another is ludicrous in the extreme.  Her wish that we did more to encourage reading and discovering new authors is laudable.  Her reasoning that NaNoWriMo is hindering that effort is just silly.

So who is a real writer and who has Laura Miller's permission to write a book?  The people who don't give a damn what she thinks.  Frankly, if her snark is enough to get you to walk away from the keyboard, then good riddance to you because if you can't handle someone telling you that what you're doing is silly or pointless or crap then you're not ready to be a professional writer.

"It's impossible to discourage the real writers, they don't give a damn what you think, they're going to write."
- Sinclair Lewis 

 

The Total Perspective Vortex

This morning, my mother called to remind me that today was Make a Difference Day.

I'd never heard of that, so I got online and looked it up.

As cynical as my initial knee-jerk reaction to the National Day of Insert-Cause-of-Your-Choice-Here might be, there's something to be said for having a reminder pop up now and then not to get so self-involved that I forget that there are other people in the world and that the things I do have an impact upon them.

Alas, there's no ribbon for that.

In Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams introduced a device called "The Total Perspective Vortex". In his story, it was invented by a scientist whose wife badgered him about having a sense of perspective. So he took a piece of cake, extrapolated the entirety of creation from it (like you do) and on a microscopic point resting atop a microscopic point, he placed a sign that said "You Are Here". And seeing one's insignificance in relation to the whole of "one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation" was enough to destroy your mind.

And comedy hijinks ensue.

All beings, Adams reasoned, constantly divide themselves into smaller groups in an effort to fight the enormity of it all.

I've recently read a few blog posts by cancer survivors railing against the practice of wearing pink ribbons or the curious practice of Facebook status memes meant to raise awareness.

And to be honest, the Facebook thing annoys me too.

The number of people in my life who have either beaten or succumbed to cancer isn't something I care to dwell upon very often. It's just too... big. When it jumps out at me, it overshadows everything else and I can't think of anything else. I'm just a microscopic point on a microscopic point holding a sign: "I am here."

Those damn Facebook posts do that too me every time. And I remain like that until I've managed to write my way out of it, push it back with a phalanx of giant robots until it is sequestered once more in my mental basement, where it will lurk under the stairs until the next time it reaches out to grab my ankle.

But that's not the fault of the person I saw wearing a pink ribbon or even the person who cut and pasted a status meme onto their Facebook wall.

Adams reasoned that our minds cannot cope with how small we are in terms of the bigger picture. That if we were forced to confront the impunity with which the world moves regardless of our individual whims, we couldn't handle it.

He's both right and wrong. Right in that we do indeed constantly retreat from the enormity of the world without and wrong insomuch as we can take it. In small doses.

And maybe that's the value of these commemorative days. It's certainly why I have a special place in my heart for this one.

Make a Difference Day. Nothing telling you what to do or how to do it or who to do it for. Just make a difference. A positive one.

Lately, I've been working with an organization called "FindAnHour.org" which is a mentoring drive in the Tacoma area. The site acts as a clearing house for agencies and volunteer organizations ranging from the write@253 writing center where I volunteer to Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

The marketing campaign I designed for them hinges on the graphic to the right, which handily explains our name. Look at how you spend your time: sitting in traffic, surfing the web, watching TV, and find an hour you can reallocate to changing the life of one child.

Even if you don't live in the south Puget Sound area, I encourage you to reach out to one of these organizations and ask "How can I help?"

Wearing a pin probably won't help cure cancer, nor will expending electrons on a Facebook post. But deciding you'll Tivo your favorite show so you can spend an hour helping a kid with his homework? That effect is immediate and measurable.

Even if I am a microscopic dot atop a microscopic dot, within my reach are hundreds of other microscopic dots and the shadow I cast touches an unknowable number of other microscopic dots.

Which is why I'm wearing a blue rubber band on my left wrist as I type this. And why I don't hide the friends who remind me about the things I'd rather forget. Because my grandfather and my father were taken from us prematurely by cancer.

And while these things do cause the beast under the stairs to stir and grumble, they also keep me from pretending it's not there. Because when i do that, I forget to reach out to the person next to me. To break out of my protective isolation and touch another person.

Because this microscopic dot is here to make a difference. I hope you are too.

Speak with Authority :: The Incomparable Taylor Mali

Milk & Steak :: Heinlein on censorship

"How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show — it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."

- Robert A. Heinlein

The Week In Links :: Banned Books Week

I'm With the Banned
It is Banned Books Week in the United States, a celebration of books that have been suppressed and a flag raised to rally support for books that are challenged as "unfit for public consumption."  I stand firmly in opposition to the idea that it should ever be allowed in a free society for the government to think on behalf of the governed. For one to impose their viewpoint on the unwilling many or hide the viewpoint of another is nothing less than tyranny. 

The strength of your opinion will not be proven by your efforts to suppress the contrary opinions. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It is in each of us to decide for ourselves and for our families what is or is not acceptable, to guide our own behavior, and our own consumption of art, literature, and music (or anything else for that matter). It is for the betterment of the whole that we strive. 

I only regret that I have but one mind to give to my country.

"Official" Banned Books Week Links
Banned  Books Week -- Official Site
The newly-launched official website of the OIF and Banned Books Week. Home of the BBW Read-Out and resources for anyone looking for more information on the events around the country tied to this week.

American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom
The founding organization for Banned Books Week, the ALA acts as clearing house for information and support of citizens, their libraries, and their librarians fighting the good fight for intellectual freedoms in their communities. It's about the right to decide for our selves.


"Happy Banned Books Week" from "Jacket Copy" the official books blog at the LA Times. The LA Times kicked off Banned Books Week by challenging all of us to think beyond the usual suspects of Song of Solomon and Huck Finn with the provacative question: "Are there books that should be banned? What about Mein Kampf?"

Playing with the banned: My own thoughts on book banning.

An Odious Little Book
The LA Times points out that we spend all of our time talking about beloved classics during Banned Books Week. Well, not here. Let us test our intellectual mettle and talk about one of the most evil books in history: Mein Kampf.
 
I'm with the Banned
Childhood is just one banned thing after another. With all the imaginary dangers of the media I consumed growing up, it's a wonder we survived at all.


Hucked :: The Trouble with Twain
The thorny issue of Twain's language and how we handle it in this (allegedly) post-racial world.

On Censorship
 Is banning a book really even possible in a world with an internet? Or are we making tempests in teapots?  (Spoiler: The answer to the first question is "yes", the answer to the second one is "no.")

Becoming a Writer :: You don't need permission from anyone

The other day, I cleaned out my art studio and learned something about myself as a writer.

The art instruction in my small mid-Missouri hometown was only so-so. Certainly there weren't any figure drawing classes to be had and since what I really wanted to do (or thought I did at the time) was draw comic books, that was more than a little frustrating for young Scottie.

So I taught myself.

I did it by tracing comic books. I traced page after page of Xmen, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, GI Joe, and even Archie & Jughead. I filled entire notebooks with page after page of traced comic books.  At one point in my life, no piece of paper was safe. My dad had to lock away the onionskin typing paper because if he didn't it wouldn't be there when he went looking for it.

I did it over and over and over again until one day I didn't need to anymore. My hand had learned how to draw the human form in every style that was popular in the comics world at the time.