I'm reading "House of Rain" by Craig Childs, about the Anasazi culture that disappeared from the Southwest around 1100 AD, and there's a quote from an archeologist named Tom Windes that struck a tone with me. 

I've lived a lot of places and I can attest to the feel of different cultures, but it never really dawned on me that the landscape itself could shape or mold that culture.  I had a pretty good idea that weather could make a difference (one of the reasons that I live in California), but it never really dawned on me that the lay of the land might also affect culture.  But, it seems to make sense.

A few years ago, I was on a work related trip and found myself standing in a playa (dry lake bed) just off the I-15 on the California side of the border with Nevada.  As we looked across the playa and several miles further, we could see a freight train gliding on invisible tracks across the base of one of the numerous mountains in the area.  One of the men I was with (a government worker from back east) scratched his head and said, "You know, I don't think I've ever seen an entire train before." 

So, what does that do to a persons perspective in life?  If it's easier to take in the whole of the world, does that help you become a "big picture" kind of person?  Does it feed your humility when it's easy to see how small you are in the world?  I'll have to think about this a little more in my writing and consider how the setting itself informs the culture as well as the individual.

I got a nice camera for my birthday last August.  And by nice, I mean "don't have to live with automatic settings".  I got frustrated with cameras that think they know when and how you want to take a picture.  There was quite a bit of luck in this shot.  I didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out, but I like it a lot.  It's a shot of an opening sequence in my daughters school play.  That's her in the middle.  The ghostly blurs behind her are from other cast members moving about the stage.  I took it without the flash (for obvious reasons) and the shutter stays open a little longer to allow enough light in.

I'm currently reading a fascinating book, "Creativity" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  Most of the time when you see a book with this kind of title, you'll find someone's personal insight to the creative process; the things they do to help themselves be creative.  But this book is very different.  The author is a research psychologist who applies the scientific process to analyzing creativity.  It's a very fresh look at an old subject.

I'll try to blog periodically about what I learn as I go through the book, with a focus on writing as the creativity in question, although it applies to all creative endeavors.  I'll start with the author's description of where we find creativity.  Most people would say that creativity is soley a function of a particular individual.  But Mihaly says creativity is a function of a system made up of three parts:

1) Domain: a set of symbolic rules and procedures.  Writing consists of such things as letters, words, syntax, punctuation, scenes, and chapters, and much has been written about the appropriate way to put these all together to shape a narrative (rules and procedures). Domains are nested within a culture where the symbolic knowledge is shared.

2) Field: all the individuals who act as gate keepers to the domain.  The members of the Field decide whether a new idea of product should be included in the Domain.

3) Individual.  Creativity happens only when the individual uses the symbols of the Domain to form a new idea or pattern, AND the Field decides the new idea should be included in the Domain.

So, Creativity is then defined as:

I turned fifty in August. 

At the time, it seemed like I should post something really profound, something to show off my accumulated wisdom.  But you'll notice it's now two months later, and I'm afraid the delay was not because I had too much material to organize.  It appears that I don't have any secret insights to life.  I can tell you about where I've been, and where I think I'm going, but the meaning of it all often escapes me.  But I'm fifty now, so I have to offer at least a little reflection.  I don't really want to, but I think it's a rule or something.  So here goes:

As time passes, we get older!!!!!!


That's it.  Nothing special.  Time doesn't guarantee any additional wisdom.  A lot of men go through mid-life crises around this age because they feel like doors are closing.  They have the affair and buy the sports car because they are confusing youthful pleasures with pleasures of youth.  And the real pleasure of youth is the open ended sense of opportunity, the ability to point your life in whichever direction you choose.  But are those opportunities really gone?  I can think of three separate careers that I'd probably enjoy more than my current choice except that I'd lose at least half my income and all or most of my benefits if I switched.  So, the choices are still there, but there's a cost to making the change that never had to be considered from a youthful perspective.  But it's still a choice.  And there are plenty of other choices and paths to take that are not so drastic.  I can keep my current career and explore other paths, other careers, more easily at age fifty than I could at age twenty.

So, as time passes, we make choices, take paths, and get older.  Then we make more choices, take additional paths, and get older still.  If we all focus on the choices and paths, does the age really matter?

When I'm writing I'm always looking at the plausibility of events.  Would it really happen that way?  Am I pulling a rabbit out of the hat, making something happen simply because it needs to happen?  But what about the surprises in life?  Sometimes, unlikely things just happen.  We can simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  For instance, three days ago I drove up to see the observatory on the top of Palomar Mountain.  It was a beautiful drive out, but on the way back I took a wrong turn.  I drove for about three miles before I realized my mistake and began to backtrack.  While driving back, we saw a helicopter flying around, and then lost view of it as it descended somewhere ahead.  When we got to within a hundred yards of my original wrong turn, we saw dust and dirt swirling around and quickly closed our windows as the helicopter we had seen before ascended from an open area to the right of the road.  A car approached us from the other direction, so I glanced at the helicopter for only a moment before looking back at the road to verify I was still driving on my side of the line.  As usual, I was fine.  I'm a decent driver and can usually manage the basics like staying on my side of the road.  Unfortunately I can't say the same about the other driver.  When I realized she was crossing the line, I pulled quickly to the right but she hit me at a point near the end of the passenger door and scraped to the end of the bumper (estimated $2100 damage).  The lady driving the other car apologized but said that she lost her attention because she was "afraid" of the helicopter.

Now here's the point I'm turning over in my mind.  In order for this accident to occur, I have to make a wrong turn, then I have to drive for a pretty good distance before returning to arrive at exactly the same time as the helicopter lifts off and a distracted local driver approaches me from the other direction.  I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  So, could I use this scenario in a story?  Things are supposed to happen for a reason in fiction.  But I think there is one major exception.  You can use fateful events as the hook or push into the story as long as you're faithful in making everything else happen for a reason.  So, I could write a story that starts with this fateful collision and then follow the drivers or passengers to show how they are changed.

I could also turn what seems to be a fateful event and reveal that it wasn't so fateful.  Perhaps the people in the helicopter were looking for me and the other driver was in on it.  When they spotted me returning, they quickly drew up the plan to distract me with the helicopter so the driver could hit me.  Maybe they were hoping to disable the car, but my quick reaction turned it into just a scrape, sending them to plan B (I'm looking over my shoulder now).  Or maybe the fateful event occurred because the "fates" conspired for it to happen to further their supernatural agenda.  I was meant to meet the distracted driver who will ultimately lead me to the holy grail.

In the real world, sometimes shit happens.  In fiction, it has to be a little more interesting than that.

It's been one of those weeks where I struggle with any kind of satisfaction with my own writing.  My characters say and do things that are either stupid or just don't make any coherent sense.  It's exhausting.  It makes me question the whole gig.  When the writing sucks, it's easy to start looking at other ways to add meaning to your life.  Maybe I could be better, more productive, more meaningful if I spent the time taking long walks, solving the Theory of Everything, or contemplating the fate of the universe.

And along those lines I started indulging a new distraction in the last couple of weeks.  I had my eye on this eight volume "History of Philosophy" set that's at the University Book Store.  They've been sitting there beckoning to me for months and I finally bit the bullet and got one of the volumes.  I couldn't start with Volume I because it was already gone, So, I have to intuit some of the basics about Greek philosophy and dive directly into medieval philosophy, which I find to be mostly about the struggle to make a distinction between philosophy and theology.  And I LOVE it.  Which means of course that I'm a hopeless geek.  For the most part it's completely useless information; so much counting of angels dancing on the head of a pin.  It has more to do with attempts to construct a false sense of certitude even though ambiguity reigns in the real world.  But it's utterly fascinating to me.  I'll probably buy the rest of the volumes as I feel the urge, but I don't want to read them all at once.  My brain needs a little time to digest it's food.

But, even with interesting brain candy out there trying to distract me, I'm not willing to give up the writing.  The occasional decent stuff I produce is enough to keep me going for now.  And I also draw some perverse encouragement when I watch TV and realize that people are actually getting paid to write some of that nonsense.  I watched an episode of NCIS the other day and they had a female agent looking for her 16 or 17 year old "contact" in Baghdad.  The contact's father had tried to help her brother (a marine) and was killed by other marines for his troubles.  The agent was of course grateful, so she bequeathed this amazing and touching gift: 

"What?  You are giving us your laptop so my younger sister can have contact with the world?  Never mind that you haven't given us a power cord.  Never mind that the conditions of the community don't look like they even have power, let alone any kind of connectivity.  But, thank you, O wise and gracious keeper of holy technology.  This more than makes up for the loss of our father."

At least, that's how it came across to me.  I wanted to throw something at the TV.

And then I watched an episode of Shark.  I love James Woods acting, but the writers are killing his credibility.  They have him diving to the floor to avoid sniper bullets that are shattering the windows of his home, and then a day later he gets upset and takes a walk alone on a dark and deserted road.  He gets picked up in a limo (miraculous timing) by the same guy who was trying to kill him.  But NOW, with nobody watching, the bad guy only wants to give him a low-ball bribe.  Is it too much to ask for just a little bit of intelligent consistency in characters?

I would be embarrassed ... or maybe I should say I am embarrassed to write such ridiculous dreck.  But, I'll continue to plug away with the hope that some day I'll reach a level of competency that doesn't make me cringe without twenty rewrites.  It will probably take years and makes me wish I had started much earlier in my life.  I don't want to become a competent writer just in time to keel over with a stroke.  I might have to make plans to live forever just to get it right.  Or, I can always give it up and become an irritated TV critic.

 I stuck my neck out a bit over on a blog that I really enjoy called Depleted Cranium.  The blog focusses on bad science and crazy alarmist fears and such things as that.  But, they had a post about a particularly nasty looking cult and one of the commenters expressed a desire not to hear things that makes her question her faith.  The Atheists that hang out there immediately jumped on it and told her that the only conclusion she could draw was that "everything she had been told about god was a lie, and god didn't exist."  Now, I'm fine with letting people believe whatever they believe, but I couldn't let that stand as the only option. Not, when someone's faith was hanging out there, blowing in the wind.  

Chances are, the commenter didn't even read it, but I took at least a little bit of pleasure in it.

When we are writing fictional characters we are told to make them real, by making them more than one-dimensional.  A character who is bad and has no redeeming qualities may work in fiction up to a point, but when we want some kind of lasting depth to the story, we need to recognize that even the bad guy is a hero in his own story.  We don't have to agree with his motives or fully understand his reasoning, but simply knowing that the character does things for a reason is enough to give them depth. 

So, why do we try to ignore that in real life?  Senator Obama says that Rev. Wright is characterized by so much more than those few statements that are being played by the media.  He feeds the hungry and generally helps others in need.  But many of the pundits continue to tell us that Senator Obama must reject Rev. Wright, not just the statements, but the man himself.  But you can only do that if you believe those few statements define the man, and Senator Obama has already assured us that they don't.

Back in the 90's I attended a couple of Promise Keeper events, where Christian men came together and encouraged each other to a masculine approach to their faith.  I must honestly admit that I didn't come away with a whole lot of new insight.  I believe all of us, men and women have characteristics that can be defined as feminine and masculine and we need to work effectively with what we have, what God has given us.  I've never been a "manly man" and am perfectly comfortable with what that means.  Manly men get together and talk about football over beer.  I'd rather talk about the future of humanity over a bottle of water. But, one of the things that Promise Keepers pushed quite a bit was the need in this country for racial healing.  It recognized the biblical pronouncement that the sins of the father are visited upon the children for up to nine generations.  The consequences of the enslavement and degradation of a race of people does not end when the next generation comes along and says they aren't going to do that anymore.  We have created two separate realities and it will take a lot of work from future generations on both sides to bridge the gap. 

So, when I read the full transcript of Senator Obama's recent speech, it literally brought tears to my eyes.  It is simply the finest statement on race from a politician that I've ever seen.  He is standing in the gap and sees both realities, and knows that abandoning one side for the other will never bring the two sides together.  His approach is ultimately Christian, demonstrating forgiveness and love for one another, as we've been instructed to do.  And yet, I don't see the outspoken "religious right" flocking to his cause.  If Bill Clinton was bad for the country because of his moral failings, then shouldn't they be supporting the candidate with the highest moral integrity?  I suspect (but have no proof) that this is where Senator Obama is getting the majority of his cross-over from the "other side". 

It's my hope that over time, this country will abandon its obsessive desire for politicians that can be portrayed as one-dimensional caricatures, but we're going to have to find our own depth of character to get there.

I love music and I really try to keep what I'm listening to as fresh as possible.  I went through high school in the 70's but I'm not one of those people that thinks they stopped making music after Kansas or the Eagles.  I loved them then, but I rarely have the urge to listen to them now because there's always someone new and creative who speaks to us for today, this very moment.  I try to pay attention to new artists when I can, and I recently discovered that channel 101 on DirecTV had 24 hours of music programming from the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin.  And that's where I found Justin Nozuka.  He is simply the most amazing artist I have come across in a long, long, long time.  And he's only 19. 


Here's a sample.

Spread the word!

One of the standard requirements of a story is having a character or characters with some kind of goal or desire.  It's their drive to reach their goal that pushes the story along.  So, I recently started reading Undertow, by Elizabeth Bear (my first try with this author), and I struggled with the beginning of it, lots of characters, and lots of description.  I could only grab fifteen minutes here, twenty minutes there, to read the book, and I found myself completely confused after about forty pages, so I started over and really paid attention to the different characters and slowed my reading down so I could fully grasp the world that the author was building.  I rarely start over like that, because if the story doesn't grab me, I'd rather spend my limited time reading something else that does, but people I respect continue to praise her writing, so I wanted to give it a respectable try. 

I must admit that sometimes I grow impatient with descriptions, because it often gets in the way of the story (for me), but when I slowed myself down, I really couldn't fault any of the descriptions as being out of place.  They did a good job of coloring in the strangeness of this world.  And by starting over and slowing down, I kept better track of the characters and found of course that they all had goals and desires.  And yet, I still wasn't hooked into the story ... until I got to somewhere close to page 100.  And then it grabbed me and I'm running with it, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

So, I had to scratch my head a bit to figure out what happened, and I realized that prior to that point, the characters all had their own goals and desires, but for the most part, everyone was trying to do their own thing, meet their own needs.  But, then it was revealed that their were bigger things going on in the galaxy, things that could have dire consequences for everyone, human and alien alike.  It sets up lot's of questions where you have to ask if the bad guys are really bad and the good guys really good.  But mostly what it does is moves the goals and desires from a strictly personal level to something that is important for a lot of people. 

This is where art imitates life.  If everyone cares only for their own issues, tries to solve only their own personal problem, we don't get very excited about it.  For instance, let's say it's my goal to get ahead at work, but I have a crappy boss trying to keep me down.  Maybe if I watch the boss very closely, I can find him doing something really bad and work through the inherent roadblocks of the system but eventually cause him to be fired.  If I make myself really sympathetic to you, you might be interested in my story simply because you want to see me win.  But, let's assume that I'm not so sympathetic.   I make a decent living already and there's lots of people who would love to have my job, so going after the boss can become very petty ... unless ... I'm going after the boss because he represents all that's bad with the company and by going after him, I'm making changes in the company that will benefit everyone.  It's the idea of doing something that's greater than ourselves that resonates.

I need to remember this in my own writing.