A friend of a friend has been caught up in a back current of the Michael Jackson drama, over some Christmas Eve photos. I thought about what he could have done, or what I would have done in this situation. But, in my life, every time I thought the Hollywood Money Train was going to stop in front of my door, I became quite unbalanced inwardly. Anxious, paranoid, grasping.
Exceedingly unpleasant.
I've found in this life that the only way a person can stack the deck in his or her favor is to help others. Whatever you do to help others, you'll get that back plus ten percent. If you're lost, you'll be found. Need money, it'll come through. Need guidance in a dark time, it'll come through.
Of course, I might also be the fox saying I didn't want those grapes anyway.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Summer In Words Update
I taught at workshop at Jessica Morrell's new conference, Summer in Words, held in Manzanita, Oregon. I didn't arrive until early Friday afternoon.
I sat in on a workshop led by Jennie Shortridge and was very impressed. Jennie started by asking people to write about their favorite meal as a way to get people to write about something they had strong feelings about. She also mentioned that eating is a large part of life, but is often short-changed in stories.
To help writers create interesting characters, Jennie had authors consider what kind of jobs/occupations/passions were attractive to them when young. She then suggested authors could give a character in a novel those occupations/interests/passions, and as the author explored a character in that kind of field, the author would be exploring something that spoke to the author's passion.
Jennie did a great job of getting the assembled authors to write from a deeper place.
I sat in on a workshop led by Jennie Shortridge and was very impressed. Jennie started by asking people to write about their favorite meal as a way to get people to write about something they had strong feelings about. She also mentioned that eating is a large part of life, but is often short-changed in stories.
To help writers create interesting characters, Jennie had authors consider what kind of jobs/occupations/passions were attractive to them when young. She then suggested authors could give a character in a novel those occupations/interests/passions, and as the author explored a character in that kind of field, the author would be exploring something that spoke to the author's passion.
Jennie did a great job of getting the assembled authors to write from a deeper place.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Self Awareness/Directed Awareness
I was thinking about awareness today. For people, self-awareness has many facets. People in general need brain power to filter out much of the information their senses collect. I think self-awareness for particular people can end up running in channels, so that we can quickly assign meaning and values to people and relationships in our lives and not get bogged down/drown in processing details. Relationships can also be symbolic, in the sense that a symbol can stand in for a relationship, a kind of short hand code.
The problem arises when a new writer doesn't realize their particular short hand code (a dark-haired woman with thick glasses could be a symbol for an abusive parent) doesn't evoke anything for a reader. The job of our brains to filter out details or shape our reality to a particular design can lead to a kind of neutered, thin writing that fails to ring true. Except for the person writing in their particular symbolic code.
Directed awareness, however, is a choice about where to focus awareness. Cynthia Whitcomb, the President of Willamette Writers, has had a long career as a successful screenwriter. When she began focusing more on writing plays, she read a play a day for a year. That was one way she assimilated a deeper understanding of what makes for a good play.
I find students in my screenwriting classes who don't like or watch movies. They simply want to imagine an idea of theirs turned into a Hollywood film, or imagine their life being turned into a major motion picture, with the money involved. I sometimes lose 50% to 70% of my students in a particular class. I suspect when I try and teach them directed awareness about storytelling -- consciously learning the craft -- they aren't ready for the work involved, or they come to realize the work involved.
About directed awareness versus intuition, recent brain scan studies have shown that once people have assimilated understanding (gained understanding about some facet of writing like plot, for example), when a problem arises, the subconscious can take that assimilated understanding of storytelling and find a solution to a particular plot problem. Then pop the answer in to the conscious mind.
Which some people interpret as intuition.
The catch is, the subconsious can only present that answer to the conscious mind when that mind is not pre-occupied with a particular problem. Being pre-occupied with a problem blocks the subconscious mind from accessing the conscious mind and providing an answer.
I go over this more in the lastest version of my book, and reference some of these new scientific studies. I find it facinating that brain scans give a more accurate representation of how the brain works and functions.
Many years ago I was in a state of deep meditation where I could see the flow of my subconscious thoughts/feelings/awareness welling up into my conscious mind; be aware of thoughts before they became conscious thoughts. Odd, enchanting process to observe.
The problem arises when a new writer doesn't realize their particular short hand code (a dark-haired woman with thick glasses could be a symbol for an abusive parent) doesn't evoke anything for a reader. The job of our brains to filter out details or shape our reality to a particular design can lead to a kind of neutered, thin writing that fails to ring true. Except for the person writing in their particular symbolic code.
Directed awareness, however, is a choice about where to focus awareness. Cynthia Whitcomb, the President of Willamette Writers, has had a long career as a successful screenwriter. When she began focusing more on writing plays, she read a play a day for a year. That was one way she assimilated a deeper understanding of what makes for a good play.
I find students in my screenwriting classes who don't like or watch movies. They simply want to imagine an idea of theirs turned into a Hollywood film, or imagine their life being turned into a major motion picture, with the money involved. I sometimes lose 50% to 70% of my students in a particular class. I suspect when I try and teach them directed awareness about storytelling -- consciously learning the craft -- they aren't ready for the work involved, or they come to realize the work involved.
About directed awareness versus intuition, recent brain scan studies have shown that once people have assimilated understanding (gained understanding about some facet of writing like plot, for example), when a problem arises, the subconscious can take that assimilated understanding of storytelling and find a solution to a particular plot problem. Then pop the answer in to the conscious mind.
Which some people interpret as intuition.
The catch is, the subconsious can only present that answer to the conscious mind when that mind is not pre-occupied with a particular problem. Being pre-occupied with a problem blocks the subconscious mind from accessing the conscious mind and providing an answer.
I go over this more in the lastest version of my book, and reference some of these new scientific studies. I find it facinating that brain scans give a more accurate representation of how the brain works and functions.
Many years ago I was in a state of deep meditation where I could see the flow of my subconscious thoughts/feelings/awareness welling up into my conscious mind; be aware of thoughts before they became conscious thoughts. Odd, enchanting process to observe.
An Unexpected Revelation
There was a gathering of some of the original cable access video volunteers in Portland at my place today. I introduced myself to one gentleman who started telling me about putting together a memoir about his father's life and experiences in WWII. Then it came out that his father lived in a boarding house in Vienna after WWI, with Adolf Hitler living in the basement of the boarding house.
I'd like to see the memoir when it's completed.
Many years ago I met a man who said his father was a pilot in a bomber group in WWII. That when missions were aborted mid-flight, the bombers could pretty much drop bombs on a long list of targets, except the railroad tracks running in to the death camps. They were forbidden by direct order not to bomb those railroad tracks, while railroad tracks in general were an open target if missions were aborted.
Interesting stories you can hear at gatherings.
For a short time in my life, I kept finding myself being a minor irritant to various billionaires. I kind of miss those days. I haven't irritated a billionaire in many years now. I'm sure I wasn't much above the level of a bug hitting a windshield to them, but still, that's a righteous feeling, being a bug with a mission.
I'd like to see the memoir when it's completed.
Many years ago I met a man who said his father was a pilot in a bomber group in WWII. That when missions were aborted mid-flight, the bombers could pretty much drop bombs on a long list of targets, except the railroad tracks running in to the death camps. They were forbidden by direct order not to bomb those railroad tracks, while railroad tracks in general were an open target if missions were aborted.
Interesting stories you can hear at gatherings.
For a short time in my life, I kept finding myself being a minor irritant to various billionaires. I kind of miss those days. I haven't irritated a billionaire in many years now. I'm sure I wasn't much above the level of a bug hitting a windshield to them, but still, that's a righteous feeling, being a bug with a mission.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Dolltender, by Nancy Hill
Nancy Hill's The Dolltender is a video of a book written and photographed by Nancy. In the story, a young girl's parents disappear into a looking glass. She ends up hiding in a trunk stored in the back room of an antique store. The little girl begins to care for the dolls until she's found out and exiled...until the dolls help her come up with a plan to come back to the home she's created for them all.
The Dolltender is a heart warming story for all ages.
Nancy is a professional photographer and writer living in Portland, Oregon. To view other photos by Nancy, visit http://www.nancyhillphotography.com/
Copyright The Dolltender Nancy Hill, all rights reserved.
Monday, April 6, 2009
David Michael Slater Speaks about His Children's and YA Books
Author David Michael Slater speaks about his children's books and his new novel aimed at teens, The Book of Nonsense.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thinking about the Spirit of Storytelling
I've worked through many of the A Story is a Promise ideas. I've started working through the ideas around the difference between personal storytelling and telling a story to an audience. Almost two years ago I was listening to a monk speak and I had a deep, clear realization about how the brain operates (conscious, subconscious or unconscious), and superconscious. But I didn't have a pen, and I lost the realization.
So now I'm trying to put the pieces together instead of starting with a foundation and building on it.
Initial ideas, conscious mind deals with relationships, subconscious stores memories/facts, superconscious (spirit) is a place we can see the truth about ourselves and story characters, and not have a need for others/story characters to be characters in an internal drama.
So, I was speaking to my friend Monty tonight. His observation is that we live in a culture where people are rewarded for being active and busy and getting paid for developing or using skills to do things. Which creates people good at recording facts, and processing relationship info from an ego-centric frame of reference, and also creating people who are emotionally numb. Being perpetually busy becomes a substitute for feeling.
When such people try to write a story, which is often on a basic level a journey of feeling, all they relate are facts devoid of feeling, except for minor characters who act out the author's anger, jealousy, rage, etc.
But how to help people get to that spirit level which exists, first, in a quiet mind which isn't tied up re-imagining daily events or ruminating about old wounds and re-projecting different outcomes. And then to a place where that place of quiet spirit someone can accept themselves and see others as they are without a need to project something onto them, and thus write in a deeply felt way that allows story characters to have their own truths.
But what that original insight was, I still don't remember.
I guess I'll just keep wrestling with the pieces.
Bill
So now I'm trying to put the pieces together instead of starting with a foundation and building on it.
Initial ideas, conscious mind deals with relationships, subconscious stores memories/facts, superconscious (spirit) is a place we can see the truth about ourselves and story characters, and not have a need for others/story characters to be characters in an internal drama.
So, I was speaking to my friend Monty tonight. His observation is that we live in a culture where people are rewarded for being active and busy and getting paid for developing or using skills to do things. Which creates people good at recording facts, and processing relationship info from an ego-centric frame of reference, and also creating people who are emotionally numb. Being perpetually busy becomes a substitute for feeling.
When such people try to write a story, which is often on a basic level a journey of feeling, all they relate are facts devoid of feeling, except for minor characters who act out the author's anger, jealousy, rage, etc.
But how to help people get to that spirit level which exists, first, in a quiet mind which isn't tied up re-imagining daily events or ruminating about old wounds and re-projecting different outcomes. And then to a place where that place of quiet spirit someone can accept themselves and see others as they are without a need to project something onto them, and thus write in a deeply felt way that allows story characters to have their own truths.
But what that original insight was, I still don't remember.
I guess I'll just keep wrestling with the pieces.
Bill
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