Archive for November, 2009

Thanks to all the teachers and students who took part in last Thursday’s assembly at Bell View Elementary in Sandy.  Thanks, in particular, to Principal Webb and to Ms. Chilcutt, who, I believe, has the impressive title of Literacy Specialist.  As for the event itself, it went about as well as I could imagine for a first time presentation.  

Grades 4 through 6 attended, and they were excited and eager from the moment they entered the auditorium.  (This enthusiasm was helped along by the really cool images of dragons I had cycling on the projector.  I know they were very cool because each class that entered the room did so with choruses of “Oh, Wow!” which is always good.)  The students were well-behaved and participated eagerly.  Together we learned about the secret pieces of a story, told a great tale about a hero and best friend searching for Captain Kidd’s lost treasure while being chased by Evil Tyler (who used a giant eggbeater to create a whirlpool and, when that didn’t work, sicked his trained attack swordfish on our heroes), and made a lot of noise in general.  Then I talked a little bit about GDC, answered a few questions, and signed books for kids who had bought copies.  A few others asked if Barnes and Noble carried them for Christmas.  I assured them that my book would be the single greatest Christmas present that any kid ever received in the history of the world.  I think they were too smart for that, but some still said they’d ask for it on their Christmas lists.

It was a good learning experience for me, and I’m looking forward to more school visits in the future.  I’m confident it was an entertaining and useful experience for the students and teachers as well.  What I covered should give the teachers a platform from which to address reading, writing, narrative, and media overall, and I hope the students now have a new appreciation for how capable they are at storytelling, and know that is important. 

If none of that happened, well, at least they’ll always have me as Superwoman.  (Just a photoshopped image.  I thought that showing up at the school in a red miniskirt and cape, while interesting, might send the wrong message.  I’m not certain just what message that might have been, but I suspect it would have been wrong on a multitude of levels.)

And I love scrums. 

So, after my diatribe on non-fiction (to which I am prone, periodically) and its having its own celebratory month, like NaNoWriMo, ForeverTeal pointed out a few supposed holes in my claim of a fiction centered cosmos.  I will address each of these in order below. 

ForeverTeal wrote: 

Response from “The World Out There”:

April - National Poetry Month, complete with NaPoWriMo established in 1996 (3 years before NaNoWriMo) by the American Academy of Poets (to reject poetry as a nonentity would be to disown W.H.Auden whose work you have claimed to enjoy though not understood which men never can anyway per your conclusion that emotion is a purely feminine construct); also National Card and Letter Writing Month.

While I do like Auden (E.E. Cummings, Poe, and Lewis Carroll also have work I enjoy), I don’t think that affection extends to a claim of ownership.  As for the existence of a poetry month, well, of course!  What else do you do with an endangered species?  You give it its own preserve to try to keep it breathing.  (I don’t say this with relish; quite the contrary.  While poetry is not my proverbial cup of tea, it is a near religion to others, and I don’t think we’re better off for its precipitous decline over the last sixty or so years.)  More to the point, poetry is far closer to fiction than non-fiction because of its emphasis on meaning (which is emotionally predicated).  Fiction is about truth—or you could say meaning or relevance.  Non-fiction, especially of the narrative variety, aspires to that, but always within the burdensome constraints of fact and veracity.  By striving for both ends, it knows it can achieve neither.  Meaning requires interpretation, and interpretation pollutes fact.  Uninterpreted facts (which means unorganized facts) are meaningless, while interpreted facts are not pure.  Poetry, like fiction, emphasizes meaning to the point of disregarding veracity when needed, in most cases.  Because of this kinship, I find it reasonable to offer poetry a month without risking the unraveling of all creation. 

As for a month dedicated to letter writing, this is clearly a memorial, as letter writing is dead.  Sad but true.  At least there isn’t a National Texting Month.     

November - in addition to NaNoWriMo, Family Stories Month (family stories usually being memoirs/bios/autobios which are generally nonfiction though not always purely) and National Life Writing Month; also Dear Santa Letter Month

Let’s be honest: most family stories are fictional.  They may be “based on a true story,” but ask any genuine non-fiction writer just how much respect that term deserves.  Family stories aren’t about what happened; they’re about how people responded to what happened.  That response is so important that it tends to change over time with the needs of the family.  This need for change is so powerful that the catalytic event will change as well so as to better fit the interpretive needs of the storytellers over time.  When a family or life story is recorded well, it communicates a genuine emotional response to something.  When fiction is written well, it does the exact same thing.  The factual basis of what provoked the emotional response is, largely or completely, irrelevant.  If I write a contemporary novel well and tell you it’s true, and you believe it, its impact on you is that of non-fiction.  Veracity has nothing to do with any of this; the perception of veracity does.  The only life stories that can truly be categorized as bordering on factual are listed dates, names, and events done by strict chronology.  And come on, who wants a whole month of that?

December - National Write a Business Plan Month and Write to a Friend Month

The best way to ensure you have no friends is to speak and act always out of unpolluted honesty and to treat fact as immutable.  No friendship can survive without a kind and wise dose of periodic fiction.  Often times, the best in us is brought out by our friends telling us stories about ourselves that aren’t strictly true.  As for National Write a Business Plan Month, when did you last consider someone writing “Invent invisible glasses, sell a billion, get rich” less than fictional?  And I officially motion for December to be changed to National Write a World Domination Plan Month.   

Other months of interest:
January - National Book Blitz Month (feature book on a relevant website: 1,000 Places to See Before You Die [or atomize] - a nonfiction work)

The more non-fiction (true not merely named such) books such a site includes, the less relevant said site becomes.

February - Library Lovers Month (notice nonfiction genre sections when you next visit aforesaid institution)

You do know that those non-fiction sections are just for the books that haven’t been caught in their madeupness yet, right?

October - National Book Month (note the various forms of aforementioned genre)

This one you simply misunderstand.  As October is my birthday, this month is in celebration of my book.  Note that “Book” is singular, see?

December - Read a New Book Month (note that books come in the nonfiction variety and thus exist, noteably one Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass - a NONFICTION book I purchased yesterday, largely due to your recommendation of it at a workshop I attended. Care to retract any such non-entity statements?

Donald Maass’s books are good and, as non-narrative forms, they have a closer claim to non-fiction than most books that boast such.  Does that deserve a month in such books’ honor?  That’s really irrelevant, isn’t it.  After all, December is already taken: it’s National Write a World Domination Plan Month. 

Which begs the question: Are your opinions fictional or non-fictional? The implications of the first scenario are quite amusing. Those of the second mean you yourself are a non-entity.

If you define non-fiction as factual and verifiable, my opinions are closer to fiction—which does not mean unreal or unmeaningful.  Quite the contrary.  All our opinions move beyond pure documentation of fact; we move through this world making stuff up as we go.  The only difference is I don’t feel comfortable hiding that much of what I make up is actually made up.  I don’t hang a non-fiction trapping on it.  

Now, no quibbling, driveling, or dithering. Before you completely dissolve, please distill your atoms so that “Essence of Clint Johnson” remains as a trophy of my momentary victory and my antagonist’s demise in the latest battle of wits.

Warning to readers: this is what happens when you ask an innocent question and are subjected to public harangue. It is curiously a simultaneous honor and humiliation worthy regardless of some manner of retort.

Yes, this is exactly what happens, that is exactly how it feels.

(And just for the record, ForeverTeal is a good friend, and we pick on each other like this often.  So no comments about my being abusive, please.  After all, Teal knows that I’m the one perpetually picked on.)

A long post on the imaginary NaNoNonWriMo is coming, but it’ll take far more time that I have tonight.  So I thought I would share the news that not quite all females fall in love with jerks (which, if you’ve kept informed on the latest science, truly is news, because biology suggests that women, well,  often do).  That the females in question are water striders, I have decided, will not dampen my enthusiasm.  Though, now that I think about it, being irresistibly jerky does has a kind of forbidden fruit appeal…

Want to read about the amorous quirkiness of females, including human, find it here.  G’night.

ForeverTeal asked: “Are there any months for non-fiction writing?”

The answer is no, and is such on multiple levels.  Firstly, according to my knowledge, there is no national non-fiction book writing month (note that I kept all words lower case so as not to overemphasize something that does not exist).  I suspect this is because non-fiction doesn’t have the same romanticism as the novel.  (That’s right, ladies, all us novelists ooze romance.  Just look at Hemingway.)  We don’t talk about everyone aspiring to write the Next Great American Non-fiction Book, nor do we proclaim that every person in the world has one non-fiction book in them.  In fact, it strikes me that there are few things less romantic than writing non-fiction.  Which brings me to my secondary point…

Secondarily, there will never be a national non-fiction book writing month, both because such an idea is perverse and because NaNoFiWriMo just sounds silly (when compared to the dignity of NaNoWriMo).  To think of people all over the nation engaging in unified exertion to write in words imitations of things not in words that have actually happened…  The very idea is off-putting.  It would be like taking a month to celebrate mimes.  No, non-fiction aspires to pale recreation; fiction is Creation, with a capital C.  There is no doubt, in this writer’s mind, which is deserving of its own month.

And thirdly, there will be no national non-fiction book writing month because non-fiction is itself a fictional thing (meaning it doesn’t exist—no, I’m not joking, it really doesn’t exist).  If such a non-entity were attached to a chronological fragment of reality I have this sick feeling that the space-time continuum would unhinge, unravel, and undo itself in general.  I’m telling you, the fakeness of non-fiction is dangerous.

This is why there is no non-fiction writing month.

(If there is a non-fiction writing month, please, someone tell me, for I would like to be prepared when my atoms dissolve and disappear with the rest of the cosmos.)

It means National Novel Writing Month, if you don’t know (and as a visitor of this blog, you probably do).  So what does National Novel Writing Month mean?  From November 1st to midnight of November 30th, people are encouraged to write 50,000 words of that novel they’ve always meant to write but haven’t because of work, or because the kids just set the couch on fire again (which, as excuses go, is a darn good one), or because talking about how great your novel will be when you finally write it is a lot more fun (and easier) than, you know, actually writing it (which, as excuses go, is a mighty poor if popular one). 

There’s no doubt that NaNoWriMois a good thing.  It challenges people to man up (women included) and get words on the page, which is the most essential skill for anyone who wants to be a writer.  So why has it taken me nearly half the month to mention it?  Because I forgot.  Why did I forget?  Because to me, it’s never been particularly memorable.  When I say that please understand that the first and only year I tried to take the NanoWriMo challenge of 50,000 in 30 days—2004, I believe—I approached the experience with much of the enthusiasm that most aspiring writers do.  I’d already completed a 250,000-word novel (my first) at that point, so I didn’t have problems with production and thus wasn’t as impressed by my daring to accept the mark as most would be.  But I’d never sat down and tried to write 2,000 words a day, which was about the pace I set for that month.  (I write 6 days a week.)  I expected a genuine challenge.  By the end of the month, I had well over 50,000 words, and they’d come, well, not easy, but what does one say that means almost as easy as easy?  Whatever the word, my NaNoWriMo experience was that. 

I may have tried again the next year, but that summer I wrote a 150,000-word novel in three months—including revision.  And I didn’t even have a deadline for that one. 

So the whole motivate the writer by daring him, insulting his manhood, that kind of thing, hasn’t really worked since.  Now the only thing that goes through my head when I think of NaNoWriMo—which, you can tell by the timing of this post, I almost never do—is that for this month, at least, I’m not quite so odd as usual.  Everyone else is trying to write books by the bushelfull as well.

For those making the effort, good on you all.

For those not making the effort who should be, eternal shame upon your house.

For those who do this all the time and sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about every November, comrade, I done been there.

(For those wondering about the dialectical expressions, take it as a hint for NaNoWriMo: if some word comes, don’t take time to ask why.  Just leave it and move on.  After all, you’ve got 49,999 more to go.)

On Thursday the 19th I’ll be conducting my first full-blown assembly at Bell View elementary in the south Salt Lake area. Don’t know if any of you have kids that attend this school, but if so tell them to let me know that their parents are particularly astute and interesting (characteristics shared by all frequenters of this site, I’m sure).

Beyond Bell View, the next six months look to hold a number of such visits, so keep your eye on this blog. There’s a distinct chance that if you live in the Salt Lake and surrounding areas that I may be coming to your kids’ school. Also, if any of you are interested in observing a school visit (many of you may be planning to do your own sometime in the future), just let me know and I’ll invite you to an event. Give me a few times to get the program down and I’ll be happy to let people see what I’ve come up with.

As for the “something” in this post’s title, do any of you ever wonder what exactly is poetry? One of the many, many random thoughts that continually ricochet through my head is, I think, an odd attempt to answer that question. (Do any of you have spontaneous definitions or semantic explorations just shoot through your heads? If not, how weird are you?) Here’s what popped in there this time: the semantic exercise which turns blunt tools (words) simultaneously sharp and squishy. If anyone knows what that means, please let me know, because it has me awfully curious.

Oh, and just a reminder to come see me Monday at the Layton Barnes and Noble at 7:00 for my free workshop.

Just finalized today: I’ll be conducting a full two-hour version of my most popular workshop, Conflict and the Mechanism of Story, next Monday at 7:00 pm in the Layton Barnes and Noble (1780 North Woodland Park Drive, Layton, UT).  The event is being held by the Wasatch Writers chapter of the League of Utah Writers and is free to all who would like to attend. 

Anyone interested in storytelling (even if you aren’t a writer) who hasn’t attended this workshop really should consider it.  It’s quite different from most other workshops on writing or story that you’ll ever attend in that it tackles how components and facets of narrative work together in a systematic way for effect.  If the system isn’t right, the story isn’t right, and too often we talk about and teach writing by addressing facets or elements in isolation.  Every single time I’ve given this workshop at least one person has come up to me afterward to say that I either helped them solve a problem in the story they’re working on or helped them improve the story by taking it someplace they never would have reached alone.

I’m firmly convinced that anyone, regardless of natural talent, can write great stories; I’m just as convinced that the way to do so can be taught.  For those who are interested in learning—for free—drop in next Monday.  If anyone wants, I’ll also sign copies of GDC if you bring them or buy them that night.

Twenty-nine years (and two days) ago I entered this world.  I like to believe that my appearance was accompanied by earthquakes, miraculous occurrences, and a really classic theme song (can’t decide which… the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, “Back in Black” by AC/DC, “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana, “Master of Puppets” by Metallica, the Indiana Jones theme, stuff like that).  I find it logical to expect such signs and portents on a Halloween birth, though I have no actual documentation of such.  You may believe as you chose.  (Though those who have met me likely will not find it difficult to believe that my origins coincided with, at least, a minor explosion or two.)

Why do I write this today?  Because I did not write it two days ago.  Why do I not write more?  I just turned twenty-nine.  Maybe turning thirty deserves more than 150 words, but as one recently minted twenty-nine year old, trust me, turning twenty-nine does not.