I forgot to mention that I did an interview with The Enchanted Inkpot (not an actual enchanted inkpot) which was posted on their blog Tuesday.  You can still read it by clicking here, if you’re interested.  It’s largely about conflict in story and how I applied my theories on conflict rich narrative in GDC. 

And a final reminder that the Fire Petal Books auction will only be accepting bids on most items and services until tomorrow.  If you haven’t yet looked at what’s available, go here.

Lastly, I just added a paper I wrote a few years ago about archetypal literary theory to the essay section of the site. (That section is available to members only, so you’ll need to join for free to see it.) This is more academic than the other essays I’ve posted so far, with citation of sources used included. Anyone interested in a more theoretical treatment of my storytelling philosophy may be interested. As always, comments are welcome, and complaints are accepted.

Just updated my calendar, so all these events that I’m taking part in are included there if you’re interested and want a reminder.

First off, tonight I’ll be talking to Rick Walton’s BYU class on children’s publishing again. The class is about breaking into the business, and having one book out for roughly nine months I’m sure qualifies me. I really enjoyed the last time I visited the class, and expect to do so again tonight.

Next up, I’ll be taking part in a pair of events next week. The first will be a visit to East Sandy Elementary school on Thursday, March 4th. I’ll do an assembly for 3rd-6th grades at 1:30 p.m. Should be fun, as always.

The next day, Friday, March 5th, I’ll be presenting at UELMA’s Spring Conference (the Utah Educational Library Media Association), which is being held at Mountain View High School (665 West Center Street, Orem, UT). I’m slated to present at noon (as is James Dashner, who somehow always seems to follow me around. I will need to think of a particularly biting joke about him to use in my presentation to teach him a lesson). The presentation is called Goosebumps, Great Expectations? Tomato, Tomaeto, Potato, Potaeto…: Why the only poor story is a story not read. I’ve put together what should be a really fun workshop on archetypes in narrative, why they exist, and how they undergird the importance of libraries as a place where children can develop narrative literacy without the impositions on reading that come from other areas of their lives. We’ll talk about archetypal theory and see it in action in a wide variety of texts, learn who fills the Darth Vader role in Pride and Prejudice, and stuff like that. Any school librarians considering me for a visit to their school are encouraged to attend the breakout session. It will give you a good idea of what I have to offer as a teacher and presenter.

Finally, a pair of events on May 15th. In the morning I’ll be conducting a two-hour workshop on characterization and triple-duty writing (come to the workshop to see what that is) for the League of Utah Writers’ Spring Workshop. I’ll be holding the workshop from 9 – 11:00 in the morning. The event is free for League members, though I promise the experience will be worthwhile even if you have to pay. (Joining the League for $24 a year is cheaper, and well worth it for any local writer.) I’ll give more information about venue and other contributors when I learn more.

After the workshop, I’m driving to Provo to take part in the Provo Library’s Annual Provo Children’s Book Festival. I believe that I will be reading from Green Dragon Codex in the afternoon, but I’m not sure when. Of course, I’ll let you know as soon as I do. This is a great—and FREE—event, so anyone interested in children’s literature really should be there. The list of participants is just fantastic. When you start with names like Brandon Mull and Shannon Hale and don’t go down much at all from there, you know it’s going to be a quality experience. Also, those who know me are aware that I don’t do many readings, especially of my work for children. (Though I’m not too shabby at it, if you’re worried about that.) If you want to hear me read from GDC, this may be your only chance in the near future.

Finally, I try to announce other writing events in my local area when I hear about them (and when I remember to pass along the message). I’m not participating in this one this year, but the 2010 Teen Writers Conference is being held on Saturday, June 5th, at Weber State University. This is a really cool conference focused on encouraging teenage writers between the ages of 13 to 19. Josi Kilpack is kind of the driving force behind this conference, and she and other organizers have lined up a fantastic list of presenters and instructors, many of whom are good friends I respect a lot. If you’re a teen who writes or is interested in writing, or if you know such a person, please let them know about this event. It’s really a great opportunity for professional level instruction very early in a person’s development as a writer.

What do you call a bunch of librarians?  A pack?  A mob?  I hope it’s not a murder (it is for crows, you see).  Next month I’m presenting at the UELMA (Utah Educational Library Media Association) Spring Conference, where I’ll begin the session by pointing out that Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and R.L. Stine’s Welcome to Dead House are essentially (in terms of archetype) the same story.  I’ve never known any books to generate such antipathy in elementary educators as the Goosebumps books, so I’m a little worried that the session will end prematurely in some violent episode. 

If it doesn’t, I’ll claim much more than a foundational sameness between Great Expectations and Welcome to Dead House; I’ll argue for the following texts being riffs on the same elemental story: Pride and Prejudice, The Harry Potter Series, The Graveyard Book, Holes, Much Ado about Nothing, Fablehaven, A Wrinkle in Time, The Tale of Despereaux, Last of the Mohicans, Dracula, Dune, Little Women, The Illiad, and the books of 1 and 2 Samuel from the Old Testament (the story of King David).  And just for the record, I am NOT making a comment on the veracity or lack of such of scripture.  Archetypal theory is about narrative, not fiction; it addresses the structure humans apply to everything, including facts and events, in order to construct meaning.

Sound implausible, all those books being the same story?  Well, if you’re not a librarian you may have to figure out how and why this is true on your own.  Then again, once I have a presentation in my toolbox I’m not one to let it rust in there.  If things go well I’ll see about doing the presentation other places.  Then the world can share in the wonderful knowledge that Mr. Darcy is Darth Vader, Japanese Kabuki is only technically and cosmetically different from classical Ballet, and not only do all the world’s great religions believe very similar things, but that these things are taught using the same story that undergirds life.

I’ll let you know how things go next month, as always.  But next on the docket is LTUE!

Kids are cool.  Some adults are as well (the child-like ones), but, frankly, it’s kind of hit and miss once people have had time to ferment. 

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that my recent visits to Farnsworth and Jordan Ridge Elementaries were greatly enjoyable.  I was more experienced at the assembly I give, which made me both more comfortable and more effective at the presentation.  I think everyone involved got something from the experience.

On Thursday I went to Farnsworth and did the assembly for several grades, 3rd-6th, I think.  That ended up being a few hundred students.  We experienced some technical problems that almost had me doing the assembly without any visuals, but a number of technical wizards got together and willed my laptop to work with the school’s projector.  Things went smoothly from then on and we told a story about two heroes mining for cheese on the moon when a villain, bitter at their success, ate all the cheese and was thereafter blown up, spraying previously injested cheese all over the kids.  In spite of the mess, teachers and administrators all seemed happy I’d come, and I spent longer than I anticipated signing books for students, teachers, and even one parent.  Special thanks to everyone at the school, especially Principal Kissell for the invitation. 

The next morning I drove to Jordan Ridge Elementary for their first ever author day.  This was a surprisingly big event that the school pulled off flawlessly.  There were a number of authors there in addition to myself: Ann Cannon, Kristen Crow, M’Lin Rowley, Virginia Smith, and my friend Jessica Day George, who is completely deserving of the reputation of red-headed women (in all good and scary ways).  We each addressed two grade levels, one at a time in two sessions.  I got third and fourth graders, which I think is very suitable given my maturity level.  It was quite a shindig with breakfast and a catered lunch and everything.  I’m sure that those of us fortunate enough to be invited to participate had far more fun than the students, but hopefully they enjoyed it too.  This event was so complex that there are more people to thank than I even know their names, but I can’t leave out Pam Onederra, organizer and the school’s literacy specialists.  She went above and beyond with this, believe me. 

And, of course, I must thank my wonderful guide Meridenne (let me know if I spelled this wrong!) yet pronounced Meredith, a very sharp girl who wants to be an editor when she grows up.  A decade from now some writers are going to be awfully lucky to work with you, and when you’re famous in writing circles I’ll tell all my friends, “Hey, she showed me around her school once.  Yeah, I know you’re jealous.”  And they will be.  Very.

Tangent:…

(Tangent from the tangent: If one is of a schizophrenic persuasion, chasing impulse and flighty ideas like a dog spinning at cars on the freeway, is any thought really tangential? It’s not like we have a strong, solid baseline from which to diverge. Well, back to the initial thought.)

Isn’t it cool that storytellers rule the world? I find that truth to be totally awesome, to use a Dashnerism. (Dashnerism: noun—A word used with great frequency by James Dashner and which is, without exception, completely incongruous with the world of Jane Austin, unlike James’s name; common Dashnerisms include “totally”, “awesome”, and “totally awesome”.)

What do I mean? Simply that story is structure, as William Goldman says. This doesn’t mean that screenplays include three acts or that novels wrap up with a denouement, no more than consciousness means having the physical ability to sense the outside world. The truth is so much greater and grander and unfathomable than that. The structure of story is nothing less than meaning; story is the interrelating of stuff (anything really) in such a way that relevance can be drawn from the raw material of life, thought, and imagination.

I’ve been thinking about this since teaching an adult learning class on writing last night. (Thanks to Brenda Bench and her class for an interesting and enjoyable evening, as always.) The presentation was on using POV to achieve the three objectives of story simultaneously, and I got to talking about how we can only make sense of anything by incorporating it into a story. Here’s an example: China has a population of about 1.2 billion; the U.S. population is around 300 million. So tell me what that means. No, “China has more people that the U.S.,” doesn’t count. That’s like saying red and blue are different colors: meaningless. Can’t do it, can you—at least, not without placing these numbers into a story, such as: Because of their massive workforce, China will supplant the U.S. this century as the world’s greatest economic power because of its power; or, as environmental destruction and global climate change continue to intensify, China’s massive population will result in far greater negative consequences than the U.S.’s smaller citizenry, which is why China will not overcome the U.S. as the world’s dominant economy. One story is the story of environmentalism, one is of means of production. What are these, really, but perspectives or points of view and the narratives that go along with such?

No fact matters in isolation, only in conjunction with other facts. The structure of aligning information is story. Story is the substance of who we are as individuals, cultures, religions, nations, and even as a species. With that being so, a storyteller becomes something a good deal more than the proverbial daydreamer detached from things that really matter. We’re more akin to superheroes, possessed of mystical powers to manipulate reality according to our desires and designs. All the truly influential individuals in history have understood this or have benefited from someone who did, whether politicians, scientists, artists, business people, philosophers, or whatever. History isn’t just written by the winners; the meaning of life and its substance is created by the tellers of tales.

Which leaves only one question: am I, Clint Johnson, also known as R.D. Henham and a slue of less respectful appellations I won’t mention, a superhero or supervillain? There is a certain romanticism about being bad….

May one be a  super-anti-hero? Now come on, there’s no way a question that important could be considered tangential.