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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| That Ubiquitous Muse My blog has 16 unique members who pop in and out throughout the month and read it. I think they catch up on back blogs when they show up and don’t necessarily visit that often. Still the number has grown steadily, albeit slowly. I average about 16 visit’s a day but this includes non-members and I really have no grip on who those are. Sometimes the ratio between members and not members at any given time is high…i.e. 501 members, 2304 non members. In the last thirty days total hits exceeded the 500 mark. Somebody is reading this stuff even if the numbers are not exactly earth shaking. Still they keep going up, with a slow sure consistency. I wish my stocks performed with such predictability. Speaking of the market, I understand all about “Buyer Beware.” However, its one thing to get wrung out by the vicissitudes of the market place and another to get taken by downright fraud. This exgovernor of New Jersey, Corzine, who took over MS Global and suddenly they can’t find 900 Million, and are alleged to have “Commingled” funds… This guy and his chief financial officer deserve a cell next to Bernie Maddoff. The reason for all this Wall Street protesting is that these financial weenies are as bad as the politicians. They’re a bunch of frackin thieves… I need to take a course on how commingling of funds is done by a Global Mutual Fund giant. Maybe they will explain it on Fox news. Maybe I can get a mini-tutorial. I thought I understood how mutual funds worked… that they are compartmentalized to keep “Commingling” from taking place, but I guess I don’t really know diddily-doo. However, I am resolved to not let my blood pressure rise any higher than it already is…. But SHEEHH! The nerve of these guys. People who manage billions, risking jail time, to make a few million more….Talk about dropping your hamburgers reaching for a French fry. I mentioned that I am very proud of my One Act Play students. The way I “teach” the course is to take each one as an individual case. I don’t compare them with one another and try and make the class some sort of completion. Clearly some of the products I get are superior to others and some, no doubt, have a greater potential for being serious contenders for the stage, but I don’t even think about that. What I do think about is a continuum that begins when I read their material on their port and use that as a base line of comparison for the play they are writing. Since the whole purpose of the course is to make the students better writers how much progress they make from where they start to where they end up is the measure I use to evaluate the success of the workshop. I know this is a bit of an unconventional approach but Karen, my boss, isn’t calling me to task. So each play is uniquely different by a host of different measures but they are similar because I insist they follow the same model and contain the same ingredients. When I look at the final products, when I do the final assessment, sitting in my bed, with my two dogs… and sometimes my wife, (when she isn’t mad at me) I get this warm and fuzzy feeling. And it isn’t just from my more talented and experienced students….It is from reading each and every play… Sure they are still full of things that need improvement and some are riddled with all manner of mediocrity and errors, from start to finish…but it never fails that somewhere I encounter a resonance of the spirit, vibrating unexpectedly and I mutter to myself in awe…“there it is….the real deal…that thread of creativity worming its way into the context of their writing from the cosmic dynamo’s of creation…” I know this isn’t a scientific explanation and there are those who will think I’m smoking…but I swear to you I don’t use drugs, maybe some prescription for my blood pressure and sinuses….but not weed, amphetamines or barbiturates or alcohol…cocaine or hallucinogens. Sometimes I read an entire book, written by the most gifted of the published elite and don’t get the “hummm,” or feel the subtle tremor that I get from reading these plays. “Oh my gosh, I mutter… The muse floated briefly through their fingers and onto the page leaving indisputable evidence that there is more to the life experience that can be measured in a laboratory.” It is like my watercolor teacher taking my brush and with the swish of her hand creating half a dozen leaves in a heart beat that I could struggle a lifetime to duplicate and never even come close. Don’t mean to get weird. My wife says a little bit of Percy Goodfellow goes a long way. |
| Percy Who? My Halloween story was rated as “Too Scary.” I felt bad because I didn’t really want to scare anybody. To me scary is the unseen more than the visible. I’m not much of an expert on this genre but I do know a thing or two about the “Fear” emotion. I served two tours in Vietnam, and the first was as a Rifle Platoon Leader. There I soon realized, that the worst kind of fear is the protracted and unrelenting type. It hangs above your head like an oppressive cloud and there is no way to get out from under it. Before I was more familiar with the adrenal pumping sort of fear that comes out of nowhere, raises up scaring the heck out of you and then passes. on This is much easier to deal with than the chronic and oppressive type that just won’t go away. To escape this variation the back side is almost “Joy.” Like Love/Hate I think Fear/Joy are opposite ends of the same emotion. Now I mention that the scariest form of fear is the type you can’t see. At least not with your eyes. You see it plain enough in your mind’s eye…the thing we call our imagination and let me submit a person’s imagination is one scary place. I remember as a kid on the playground knowing I was going to have to face some bully and how frightening that was. The fisticuffs, when it came, was always so anticlimactic, almost a relief, even though your body was getting pummeled and there was physical pain associated with the experience. It was nothing to compare with the dread and terror served up by the imagination. Great directors realize this and use imagination to evoke the worst type of dread. The flirt around with the terror, never letting you get a look, teasing and tormenting with the threat rather than the actual object. I recall seeing horror movies and being frightened at first and by the end the movie finding them almost comical. A monster towering over Tokyo with flamethrower nostrils…. Get real, how scary is that? Anyway I felt bad when the reviewer said my story scared her ten year old and her older daughter refused to name the creature for fear of bringing its curse down upon the family. I noticed a story being advertised on the right hand bar. It said. Prisoner: A boy finds a friend in a castle that isn't human. Is that a classic or what? I am writing this blog as a change of pace from the New Horizon’s Academy series. I think my readers are growing weary of my educational ramblings. Just like they tired of my automotive hobby and political views. Still I find myself compelled to write about things I know something about and that effect my daily life. This being a writer’s community there is also a need to write about writing. If I have learned anything with this blog it is that WDC is a writing site and that writing never fails to give my “View Meter” a spike. Still I sense that writing about my One Act Play course is reaching a point of diminishing returns. My mentor Karen, Head Mistress, at NHA, (Chief Administrator) says not to sweat it, to write about what we have a passion for… (except sensual prose and witchcraft, where she threatens to disavow any knowledge of who I am.) I try and be discreet when I dabble in the “Squeeze and Tease” and the Dark Arts. Actually I tried a series on a character who was telepathic and became a Warlock in a coven of witches. Both are entertaining genres but not ones I take too seriously. Once I wrote a computer program on reading Tarot Cards. Oh my GAWD! Percy who…? Nope, never heard of him. Is he new to WDC?…  |
| E-School Course Development I listed some positive and negative differences between an E-Course and a traditional classroom setting in an earlier blog. I knew when I presented these bullets that many would wonder exactly what I was referring to. For example I said that an E-Course requires more out of class preparation than a traditional classroom. Here is how I see it. To me the ideal E-Course would have the following pages. There would be: An Introductory Page A Home Page A Classroom Page A Lounge Page 8 Lesson Plans,. 40 Lectures. A glossary of terms, Example forms Examples of lesson’s objectives. A compendium of FAQ’s Examples of lesson feedback to the students… To produce a Course Page requires a working knowledge of MLWrite which is a utility program for providing enhanced graphics to a course page. Developing a single course page easily takes a work session just to program, let alone learning the language and developing the material. Then there is the research which can take several weeks. Now I know that all E-Courses are not this extensively developed. On the contrary very few are. However at New Horizon’s Academy many of these pages and materials are required. So when I say developing an E-Course, and doing the job right is a big undertaking for an instructor, that is no understatement. If an instructor is lucky enough to inherit a course that is already fully developed, much of this work is already done, however this brings us to an interesting point. Unlike anything I have seen before in academia, the instructor in an E-Class owns the course. They can pass the course on to others however, they are under no real obligation to do so. Now this begs the question, how does the Administrative Staff at an E-School maintain quality if they don‘t own the educational materials. The answer is that they do this by recruiting teachers who they feel are competent and willing to teach a course. Then they can levy requirements on minimum essential course page development. They can also refuse to certify a course or instructor until the materials meet the school standards and the instructor is deemed competent to teach. The Next question that leaps to mind is how do you get the students to meet the standards of a given course. The answer in a nutshell is that you simply can’t. If a student fails to participate in the instruction they can be dropped from the course and this happens with some degree of frequency. However, each instructor must decide where this line gets drawn and get the administration involved when it’s time to drop the hammer. Since these courses are not officially sanctioned by a professional certifying agency they don’t have the traditional weight of grades, pass/fail and diplomas although some instructors offer these as unofficial incentives. So these traditional tools don’t really carry the same weight as in a certified, accredited, sanctioned, official Institutional type program. This begs the question, (Is there no end?) why then do the students take them. The answer is because they want to learn and the courses are essentially free. I know of no E-Class instructor who feels they are monetarily compensated in any way, shape manner or form. They do it because they love helping students become better writers. (they are given Gps but most wind up plowing these back into the system) The litmus of the quality of the Instruction is demonstrated by the filling of the classrooms each semester. One of the reasons that an E-School fails is because of reputation passed by word of mouth. If the courses are not worthwhile nobody signs up or those that do soon realize they are wasting their time . I will not dwell further on what happens when an E-School fails to measure up to its billing. |
| E-Courses.... A continuation from yesterday The reason I’m not a big fan of prerequisites is because there are some people who learn how to swim by jumping off the end of the pier. Sometimes they drown but not always. In the thrashing about, bobbing up and down and gasping for air some aspiring swimmers actually learn how to dog paddle. Thus in students of this ilk, who am I to deny them the opportunity to learn in this manner, even though it is not pleasant to watch any more than it is enjoyable for the drowning student. Still it’s a learning process and amid all the pain, anguish and gasping for air some writers launch their careers. Personally I don’t recommend this approach but far be it for me to tell those who aspire to learn in this manner that it is not a valid approach. I would estimate that this approach is adopted by the student about forty (40) percent of the time. So when a student opts for this approach, how does an instructor go about dealing with it? Keep in mind that amid all the thrashing and splashing some learning is taking place independent of anything the teacher adds to or detracts from the process. For my part I have a short list of writing axioms and I keep hammering away on these to start with. One is to use an outline. The outline frames the story and provides a structure to hang the dramatic ingredients. These include a central character (CC) on the verge of a life changing moment, driven by a want need or desire, who decides to get off their ass and do something to better their life. As they gird their resolve they begin to encounter a series of crisis, each building on the last and leading to the last and final that is called the climax. In the process the audience gets to see the CC in a beginning middle and ending snapshot and has the opportunity to watch the change taking place. After the climax the audience is brought to closure and the lights come back on. Why do you keep repeating the same old stuff Percy….Mercy Mercy! I keep repeating it because nobody seems to be listening. I read lots of stuff on WDC that sounds a whole lot like stream of conscious, which makes me yawn, stretch my arms and think about the old afternoon nap… Because my Dad used to tell me that if you want people to listen, you have to tell them something three times or more. So I try an front end load the paragraph above into the minds of my aspiring playwrights, however, this is no guarantee that they will pay it any heed. As a matter of fact I have yet to have a single student who started out using the model…. Who didn’t require me to beat them over the head with it over and over. I can still hear them muttering under their breath, questioning my qualifications and threatening to give up. Then and only then, to escape the unrelenting brow beating, do they finally go back and do what I asked them to begin with. And you know what? That was always a huge turning point. It is a corner turning event and their stage play goes suddenly from nowhere to somewhere, it transitions from “ho hum” to “oh my goodness gracious.” I know you all think I’m a total self centered opinionated butt hole but I swear to you I am not whistling Dixie This is the way the class goes. Then once the light comes on, even with the unskilled writers, a story emerges that will raise an eyebrow even though it continues to suffer from word choice, grammar, and spelling. It’s almost as if a thread of the writer’s spirit enters therein and the audience or reader makes some sort of weird psychic connection… that transcends words and like a helix of pure thought. A spark jumps that animates two minds at the same instant. Where am I… Oh yeah. The student that jumps off the pier. With these gals/guys, the first hurdle is to get them to apply the model to the play. Once this earth shaking leap is accomplished I have to apply the how bad is bad template and rank order the worst parts of it. Never mind the grammar, spelling and word choice. There is plenty worse with their play than any of these aforementioned three. So you figure out, applying the template, what they need to fix first. Usually three observations, maybe four using the “Have you considered this boilerplate.“ Usually this is too subtle an approach and it is necessary to revert to …. “Change this, this and this…Or even, “This is my course, dang nab it….this is a workshop… we are not writing a Broadway play… we are experimenting with some techniques you might consider learning….Then I have to dial it back. Any more tough love is to risk fracturing that tender tendril of creativity. I do not say this facetiously. I don’t want to stifle the flame, to rain on that bud of creativity. So I simply say in one form or another, fix these three things and when you do get back with me so I can see what we need to fix next… and so it goes, back and forth for as long as the floundering student can keep thrashing or until I finally can no longer endure the pain. Then I pull them back up onto the shore. The point is I don’t like prerequisites because I see going for it as a choice of the student. My job is to help them become all they can be. |
| One Line Classes at New Horizon’s Academy (NHA) As most of you already know I teach an E-Class at New Horizon’s Academy, called the One Act Play. It is a very positive and satisfying experience. If you are not aware it is essentially voluntary (GPs don’t really count as compensation in my view) for the instructors and the purpose is to help developing writers at the site to get better. These classes are non-accredited and while some instructors give grades, (again my view), they don’t really count for much. In a nutshell the whole reason a student takes a course is to improve and the whole reason a person teaches one is to put back into the world some of the training, skills and experience they have gathered over a lifetime. It is to make the writing world a better place and foster skills in developing writers that will make them better at the craft. Many of the Instructors have educational backgrounds, experience and/or commercial success in the areas they teach. As I have become involved in this type of teaching I have noticed a number of things that are different from teaching in a traditional stetting. There are advantages and disadvantages to both and indulge me while I review some that jump out. Here are some of the Negative differences. 1. The instructors are marginally compensated. 2. Teaching an e-course requires significantly more in advance class preparation. (I will be talking about why I see this as true at NHA) 3. Some of the students are more talented and experienced than the instructors. 4. The relationship between instructor and student tends to be more peer to peer than teacher to student 5. There is no real classroom everyday discipline that can be imposed on the students to complete assignments and achieve course standards. 6. There is a huge variation in the writing talent and skills of the students. 7. There is no threat hanging over a student’s head like grades or a diploma that really compares to a traditional setting. Here are some positive differences. 1. The instruction is affordable to the student. 2. The instructors don’t have to worry about big brother/sister breathing down their necks. 3. Instructors have a greater freedom and latitude in teaching their courses 4. Having some really bright students results in the teacher learning as much as they “Instruct.” 5. Students seem to have a greater desire to learn and appreciate more the mentoring of the teacher. 6. Since there is no fear based component, the instructor has recourse only to a positively fostered learning environment. 7. The instructor can easily assess the base level skills of the student by visiting their ports. 8. The instructor, (Not the Academy), owns the course they teach. 9. The quality of the course is ultimately determined by student word of mouth and the reputation of the teacher. I am sure there are plenty more but the ones listed above come readily to mind. So what kind of approach is a teacher encouraged to follow in this type of a learning environment? I’m reminded of the ten commandments and I think I could come up with ten good ones for teaching an E-Course. For now however, I think there’s an overarching one, analogous to the “Biggie” pointed out in the New Testament. For the E-Course Montra, I will steal a line from an old US Army recruiting slogan. “Be all that you can be.“ I think the E-Class Instructor would be well advised to start here. The “You” in this slogan refers to the student. Help the student to be all that they can be. Now in the Army there was a carrot and a stick to motivate the soldiers to show due diligence. However in the E-Class there are only carrots and really that is not such a bad thing. I say this because of the range of talent and experience a student brings to the table. It is simply not possible to apply a single standard to each and every one. I’m sorry it just isn’t possible. I have students that I hesitated to explain anything much to because they were so awesome… they bring more excellence and experience into the classroom than I do. Then I have others who are hard pressed to write a coherent and lucid sentence. Trying to apply the same standard to everyone with such a wide spread simply won’t work. Thus the “Be all you can be approach.“ Here in a nutshell is how I use it. Once I have the class roster set, I spend an evening reading over the student’s portfolio. This is a huge advantage an E-class here at WDC offers and it gives the teacher a big edge over a traditional classroom. After several hours of reading through a student’s port it becomes self evident where they are in their development as writers. Once the teacher understands this they are much better postured to help the student with the material. Let me say here that writing a drama is a complex undertaking and a One Act Play requires all the ingredients of a full blow three act. So when I get a writer who is in way over their heads I have to decided how to handle it. My first thought was prerequisites. For reasons I can’t really explain, I eliminated this as a possible screening technique. Actually I do pretty much know why I don’t wish to go down that road Let me quit for now and pick up on this whole E-Class notion in the next few days. |
| The Mystery Voter I must have hit a vein with the Human Interest Stories. I have another one from the Town Hall that I thought was pretty cool. I told you about “Carol” yesterday and how she is a stickler. “The Devil’s in the Details,” must be her mantra. She keeps an eye on me because she thinks I’m a flake but I keep them entertained and none of these ladies, who are more qualified to be “Chief Inspector,” want the job. What this means is that I get the final say on questions of who gets to vote or not, when we get into a gray area. Now my view on questionable voters is try and find a way to allow them to vote. I mean our township is not Chicago or Milwaukee. The people tend to be pretty honest and upstanding. Its one thing if a busload of strangers were ever to show up, falsely claiming to be residents but one person walking throught the door... get real. Still, Carol is a stickler for the fine print. One of these rules is that if a person walks in claiming to be a resident of the township, that nobody can vouch for, they have to bring proof of residency. It can be a photo ID or a bill with their name on it but some proof that they actually reside in the jurisdiction. So we had this young woman walk in and want to vote. “Do you live in Lincoln Township?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied and pointed out on the township map the vicinity of where she was residing. “Do you have ID?” I asked next, “or some other form of documentation? “I have my driver’s license, ” she replied… Now things get real boring at times in the town hall and the poll workers, especially Carol were hanging on every word. to see how I handled the situation. “…however it shows the address of where I lived before I moved here.” Now this woman looked honest and not like someone trying to beat the system, so I went ahead and registered her at the new voter table. She proceeded to vote and left. As soon as she departed Carol spoke up. “You should not have allowed her to vote!” “Why not?” I answered “Because you had no way of knowing if she was telling the truth. The law is very specific… no proof no vote.” “We’re here to facilitate the voting process, not stymie it.” I replied defensively. “She had a valid drivers license. It has a unique serial number. If she tries voting somewhere else, the computer will catch her and she’ll face criminal prosecution.“ “You screwed up,” came Carol’s retort, “…admit it. You let her vote because she was pretty and flashed her eyes at you.” “Did not,” I answered turning red. “No fool like an old fool…“ she went on, shaking her head. “I’ll tell you what,” I offered… “I’ll write the incident up in the log and we’ll ask Martha, (the town clerk) when she comes back this this evening, which of us is correct.” So I wrote the incident up. Now our Town Clerk (Martha) knows everybody in the Town, the County and half the people in the State. That, plus every nuance of voting laws, regulations, and procedures. So when she showed up Carol was quick to explain what I had done. I’ll admit she did a fair job with the facts and when the explanation was over, Martha looked askance in my direction. “Is what she says true?” I hung my head and nodded yes. I knew exactly at that moment how Joe must have felt. (Yesterday’s blog) “Well let me just say that your decision was incorrect,” she said in a loud and officious voice. Carol’s eyes gleamed. “Now I’m going to have to go to the County and explain how we messed up. This error reflects on all of us and I just hate it when we make a mistake and I have to ‘fess up to Millie Hamilton. (County Clerk) Now show me again where this woman claims to be living. “ I pointed the general location. “That’s close to where I live… Like I don’t know who my neighbors are… Sheesh!” She exhaled, biting back her frustration.. I felt lower than whale poop. “What was the address she wrote down on the registration?” I showed her the address. Her eyes bulged…“That can’t be,” she stammered. “ “Why not? I asked. “That’s the old homestead my husband and I lived on when we first married. It’s on the back of our property. My son lives there now.” “Hmmmm, Fancy that,” I replied. “Just a minute,” she said punching numbers on her cell phone…“Just a minute.” She stepped outside and I heard one side of an animated conversation… She came back inside shaking her head. “That was my son and the mystery voter is a girl he has living with him… Now that’s an unexpected surprise.” “Sorry ’bout that. “I offered... (Glad I wasn't in Josh's shoes.) “Wasn’t your fault,…Guess I’ll just have to put another setting at the Thanksgiving table. “ |
| Joe Here in Wisconsin, I live way out in the country in one of the poorest Townships in the State. I live on the homestead (ten acres) that my great grandfather settled on at the turn of the century. We are surrounded by bluffs, big argo-growers and a lot of families that struggle to make it through the month. Yet sprinkled around are some middle class families, mostly retirees, who feel a civic responsibility to support the Democratic Process. We have about two-hundred, fifty registered voters and unless it is a presidential election we are lucky to see one hundred show up. Still we have to have a chief Inspector and two workers sitting in the town hall (An old one room school house) for when a voter decides to drop by. We have a voting machine however the electors are also allowed to use a paper ballot. I am a Chief Inspector, not as a consequence of my vast knowledge but rather because the ladies want a man around in case some crazy shows up, half in the bag and starts getting rowdy. The idea is that while I’m getting my ass kicked one of them will call the sheriff who is only about twenty minutes away. Anyway there is plenty of time in most elections to sit around and chew the fat and it is amazing some of the things we talk about. Yesterday I wrote a blog that got some interest and made me think about some of the conversations I have had with these ladies. First off, when I told them I belonged to an online writing community and taught drama, they wanted to know all about it. “Not much to say,” I told them….You pay your dues, write stuff and put it in your electronic portfolio under your pen writing name. “What’s yours?“ they wanted to know. “Percy Goodfellow,“ I answered. Now for some reason they thought this was funny and when I asked what prompted the outburst of mirth, they replied…. It sounds so gay. Couldn’t you come up with something better like, Thor Armstrong? No,” I explained, Lord Percy was a famous character in Baroness Ortzy’s series, The Scarlet Pimpernel and he was a hero of mine growing up… I see, they replied giggling at one another. Now I must look gay, and yes I have cousins who are gay and I guess there is a gay gene floating about in the family, and I have been mistaken for gay in my career in the military, (not cool) however, I have been married for over thirty-five years to a woman who is very affectionate and I am sure she will vouch where it counts. Anyway we sit around and talking about all manner of things waiting for a voter to show up. One poll worker, I’ll call her Carol, related the following story. When I was in grammar school there was a boy, Joe, the teacher made sit next to me because he tended to be disruptive. He was always trying to copy my work and sometimes I caught him staring at me. He wasn’t very attractive and had some dental issues. Now it was plain as I watched Carol relate her story that she had once been a knock-out… She is still willowy and very attractive, and she must have always known it and while she keeps a lid on her vanity there was no doubting that she takes her looks for granted. She is also very principled, dotting her “I”s and crossing her “T”s. She is very prim and proper, no doubt she was always the smartest student in the class, a veritable “Susie Spotless, Elvira Everything and probably always the Teacher’s pet. She became a middle school teacher. Continuing with her story she said, Anyway one day when the bell rang for recess, I stood up and Joe leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, in front of everybody. Well you can imagine how shocked I was. I slapped him across the face and went into a tirade in the classroom that continued out onto the playground. He was very humiliated and it made me so mad that for several days afterwards I kept reminding him that such behavior was not acceptable. As I scolded he would wince, shuffled his feet and look at the ground in embarassment. As time passed I reflected on my response and gradually came to realize that I had over-reacted. After all he was a boy and I have always attracted the sentiments of the men around me. As the years passed the memory began to wear and abrade. At the most unexpected of times my recollection would flash back and I’d cringe at how I treated this poor guy who had understandably, lost a grip on his feelings. Imagine sitting next to me day after day and harboring a deep and requited love. So finally there came a twenty year reunion and I saw his name on the list. I resolved to apologize and set my mind finally to rest. When I arrived that evening I looked around and he was nowhere to be seen. I asked several of my friends and they didn’t know either. Finally I asked Lucy who had arranged the whole thing. “Where is Joe?” Oh him, she answered, he moved out of state after graduating and when I wrote he said he was coming. Then just this morning I got a letter from his wife. He died last week from a massive heart attack. |
| Don Chase I am doing my final assessments for the end of the course on my student’s One Act Plays. I have a different standard for each one based upon their potential, as determined by the quality of materials on their port, the overall quality of their play, and if they followed the model in writing it. At first I thought about treating everyone the same but since grades don’t really mean anything in this course decided upon this alternative approach. The talent, skill and experience that each bring to the table make “One shoe fits all,“ a non starter. Each student has made a concerted effort and so it is a pleasure to do the final assessment. My best student tended to follow her own light which is OK but part of a workshop is to try the model provided by the course. In the military I taught at the Command and General Staff College and I frequently had students who were destined for positions of command and staff way above what I could ever manage. Some of these has really bright lights and sometimes went off in tangential directions and I tended to hold the reins rather loosely. Thus I have been on the race across the prairie, off the beaten path and never failed but enjoy the ride. This is how it was with this one student and reining her in was all but impossible. Still what she wrote was a darn good play, that stands out vividly in my mind. “What the heck are you sniveling about Percy?” I hear you say. “I’m not sniveling,” I reply indignantly… “just SHARING.” On trips my daughters used to play what I called the legal game. One would hit the other and the other would say, “She HIT me.” Her sister would reply, “I didn’t I SHOVED…. Gently.” They sounded like a couple of bickering lawyers… Like an EX President, saying “I didn’t have “SEX” with that woman.“ Here I am “Sniveling” and trying to substitute the word “Sharing.” What is this world coming to? Actually I count myself lucky to have five good students who worked hard to produce the best play possible. I’m “SHARING” dang nab it and don’t you dare refer to me as a “SNIVLER!” Last night I had vivid dreams again. In this dream I worked for a company involved in a hostile take over. Who do you suppose was the point girl for the company involved in the forced change in régime… My old Girlfriend. When I saw her I kissed her lightly on the cheek and she told me “Don’t do that again.” Then she started to dismantle the company before my very eyes. She still looked like I remembered her, although she has had five husbands since I knew here way back when. I don’t know why she made the process such a hostile experience, since to my recollection it was me that got down graded for a new model. I really liked her. What was her problem? Last year I got a call from a girl I had a crush on in High School. She was my best friend’s girl friend and they broke up. I asked her to the prom and she told Don and he got mad and we had a fight. Now get this… Forty years later she is divorced and tracks me down on the internet and tells me she is sorry she didn’t go with me to the prom and got me beat up by my best friend. She asked if I was married… I felt a twinge of sorrow for her… She was a pretty girl then and was now living alone and her children were gone. She was a librarian. She gave me the phone number of Don who I hadn’t spoken to since the ass kicking. When I got him on the phone his voice was slurred. No he wasn’t drunk. He had gone into law enforcement and was transporting a prisoner when the guy slipped his feet between his hands and got the cuff’s chain around Don’s neck. He almost strangled him and Don suffered a stroke. Anyway I heard his wife in the background say, “Don’t get upset Honey…” and we talked. At the end of the conversation he said… “I love you man.“ It really choked me up. |
| Odds and Ends Last night I didn’t have nightmares but strange and vivid dreams. I was a young man walking through a technological world of education. I couldn’t figure out where I was at, where my cubical was, where the classroom was, where my dormitory was….but I kept looking and going down hallways and seeing doors open and close. These doors were like bank vault doors or the sealed hatches on a submarine. An Air Force officer was complaining that the Russian students were cooking again in their rooms and stinking the place up. I drifted back to sleep and my golden doodle, who is white was pink in the dream. We were in a van and there were dried up bee hives on the roof and front windshied. My dad tried to brush them off so he could see better and they started to swarm. That was pretty traumatic...woke me up. Welcome to the world of Percy Goodfellow. Anyway I must have been thrashing about because I woke Linda up. “Last time we ever go to bed before 11 O’clock,” she muttered. Yesterday I split wood for a couple of hours while Linda took the car in for servicing. I made some progress on the block pile. I have about twelve full cords split in a pile and perhaps nine more in the wood shed. Still waiting to be blocked are ten piles of trunks that probably hold another twenty cords. There are at least three definitions around here of what a cord is. There is a full cord which is 8x4x4 ft. Then there are “face” cords that constitute a third of a full cord and finally stove cords that are about a fifth of a full cord. Everybody bandies the word "cord" around like they all mean the same thing. They don't. Linda got up and made some coffee and is reading the newspaper on her IPAD. When I think of how the technology has changed in my lifetime. Imagine Kindles instead of books and IPADs instead of newspapers. My father was born in 1912 and told me he talked once to a civil war veteran on the square, who remembered talking to his grandfather who fought in the American Revolution. Is that mind boggling or what? My great grandchildren will able to visit me in the nursing home, if the country can still afford them, and through me reach back a long way. How cool is that? After the basement flooded we had to get rid of tons of paper back books that had gotten mildewed. I spent another couple hours yesterday hauling them up the stairs and taking them out to the outdoor wood stove. For those of you that don’t have such a wonderful device let me say that they allow you to get rid of a lot of stuff and warm the house at the same time. The insurance man called and is sending a check for the remediation and new floor coverings. For awhile I thought they were going to try weaseling out of the claim but they grudgingly agreed to pay it. The new router is installed and working. I am still getting only two bars on the WIFY upstairs but we called the provider and got them to bump up the processing speed. The system seems to be working faster and that is progress. We are so far out in the country that the high speed fiber optic cables will never reach us, so I guess we are stuck with what we have. For now it seems to be serving our needs. One thing Wisconsin has a lot of and that is Bars. Every bar seems to have a grill and on Friday night serves a fish fry. These are nice but are getting so expensive we can’t go out every Friday night like we used to. Still there is one called the Wooden Nickel where the two of us can get a draft beer, burger and fries for under ten dollars. (Plus tip) Even that is a lot when you are watching your pennies. Gasoline is a huge household expense when you live in the country . On the other hand we save by having a well, in ground septic tank and outdoor wood burner for primary heat. Those three can get pricey in town. So, we manage OK out here and it is peaceful and quiet. Another cool aspect is that our home sits on the ten acre site my great grandfather homesteaded (well maybe not quite but his name is very close to the top of the abstract) around the turn of the century. |
| Taking a Deep Breath I have been a bad boy and neglected my blog the past two days. There has been a lot going on. First off I have been catching up on my reading at WDC. Victor Hugo has a famous quote that likened writing to a water pitcher and a glass. He likened reading to keeping the pitcher full and drinking deep…i.e. reading a whole lot. He said words to the effect, “You must keep your mind constantly refreshed with new ideas lest you become stale and repetitive.” Next I have been experimenting with some of the sensual prose I wrote earlier and trying to develop in it a greater sensess of context. Writing for the stage and writing for a reader require a different skill set and application of writing principles. Finally I have been thinking about my class,The One Act Play, and being impressed by the progress each of the students made. I had five this semester and each moved from a beginning base line of talent and skills to far beyond my expectations. In my reading I follow a number of contests and find that those that have a greater word limit ceiling tend to get better results. I used to write for one flash fiction contest and found it difficult to write both an interesting story, rich exposition and sensual prose in 600 words. Plus my abrasive personality tended to put off some of the other writers, and I moved on, focusing on my class and other things. There are however, other contests that have higher word limits and I have been quite taken by some of the submissions. All writers think in their heart of hearts that what they write exceptionally well and I find no fault with that… however I am seeing more and more work, that I must admit, exceeds my own best efforts. When I see something of high caliber my first response is jealously and I have to overcome that petty reaction. Then I say “I bet if I look close I can find a misspelling, incorrect use of grammar or some other nitnoid observation the author needs correcting. This is almost as jerky as the jealously thing. Then I can always look at the composition from the structural perspective and find something out of alignment with the science model of good writing and story telling. Alas, ENOUGH! I tell myself. Just tell the writer “WOW!“ and pass on the recognition it deserves. Anyway, I've been doing some reviews that explain why I like some of the things I’m reading. I think I 'll go now and post the last lesson. Then I’ll write my last “Hello Everyone” epistyle to my students. How they love to hang on my every word They all surged at the end of the class and I think I'll quit all the critiquing while I’m ahead. For anyone interested I’ll be doing the One Act Play course again next semester and for those of you that are bold and audacious please consider signing up. Be advised that I can be something of a pain in the butt, and there will be more than a little strain as your skills as a writer bump up against my hard head as a dramaturge. But I guarantee you will learn something of the science of writing and what the story telling model is all about. Hope to see you in the new year. |
| Pain One of my students came in with a One Act Play that was surprisingly well done. There has been a tension between us and I have kept trying to get her to follow the model rather than her own light. Well I guess we both bent a little and what she wrote turned out exceeding well, exceeding all my expectations. I am very happy for her. I wrote a piece a while back that dealt with an art exhibit. A banker was sponsoring the exhibit and asked an art teacher to bring him up to speed on judging art. She told him that the most important aspect of judging was the “Wow! Factor.” That is where you stand back and look at the work and if it dazzles and excites your passion you say wow! That is how I felt last night reading this student’s work and despite the fact that she went off on something of a tangent and didn’t really follow the model as closely as I wanted, when I finished reading her work, I said “WOW!“ When I get close with a magnifying glass there are things I could comment on but that would seem like sour grapes. Instead I backed off and simply gave her the credit and praise she deserved. I have two more students that have also struggled applying the model and at times the frustration level between us has also been strained. Still I see real progress in their work even though at times I know they have wanted to tell me to take a hike. I suppose that nothing in life is ever achieved without some pain. Yesterday I wrote a blog that might not have made a whole lot of sense. What I was trying to express was not exactly self evident to Karen, my boss and mentor but it was an important revelation to me. It was an attempt to explain why my writing has been fraught with struggle here at WDC. The reason, it finally dawned is because my dialogue is written to be spoken on a stage rather than read in a novel or short story. Dialogue is not simply dialogue. If you can see the conversation taking place that is one thing as in real life or watching a stage or screen play. There is so much more to conversation than just the words… there is the body language, inflection, tone of voice, movement that supplements the words and seeing and adjusting to the effect they are having on another person. In a novel, or short story that stage has to be illuminated in the mind of the reader. It takes more words and hence the importance of the effect the words are having in a genre where the players are not actually seen. I am going back now and rewriting some of the material I got hammered on in some of the courses I have taken in the past year and trying to add that missing exposition in. That is what I was trying to express yesterday. On the other hand my students come from a short story or novel frame of reference. When they write dialogue they are not thinking concurrently about their words and the backdrop of the stage. They are thinking about a novel where they have to explain more to create the necessary imagery in the minds eye of the reader. Duh! This is so simple to see in retrospect but the cause of so much frustration and anguish in going from one genre to the other. Good dialogue is hard enough to write without having to transition from one to the other . We need a course on writing dialogue, exposition and monologues. These are huge and deserve more treatment that I can provide in one class session. Still we learn as writers by doing and my students have been “doing” a lot of that. And I still have 5 that are continuing in the chase to writing their dramas. In pain there is progress and I have to think regardless of how little or much I can impart, that all my students will understand the Story Telling Model before the class ends. They will leave with an understanding that a drama centers around a Central Character (CC), that the audience must quickly latch onto… that this character gets a before, during and after snapshot, that this character has a want need or desire and faces a life changing event, and decides to do something about the direction their life is taking. That there are a series of crisis that develop as a consequence where the audience sees the CC’s change and these crisis build on one another each more daunting than the last until the big tsunami sweeps over them changing their lives forever. Then the audience is brought to closure and leave the theater wrung out by the catharsis that has been wrought, be it tragedy of Comedy, tears or laughter and have something to talk about on the ride home. |
| On line Classes Teaching an Online class is quite different from any other form of instruction. Since the class can’t see the instructor, the materials are more analogous to a novel that a stage play. This is to say that all you have to go by is the written word, although I am sure innovations are on the way that will expand that horizon. After looking around I feel that New Horizons offers better on line courses and instruction than other on line schools. There are Course pages and lesson plans and instructors that show up more frequently providing more feedback than is commonly the case. The problem is that the student doesn’t have that one on one visual interface with the instructor that happens in a more traditional classroom. There is no mean old teacher to exhort and threaten if the assignments are not handed in on time, and the threat of having to face a real person each day if you don’t go to class or show up unprepared. To further complicate my problem teaching the One Act Play is the fact that WDC is oriented to short stories, vignettes, novels and poetry and is not exactly a Mecca for screen plays and stage plays. The way a staged production is written is quite different from the way a novel is written. The reason is obviously because there is a stage. I submit that half of our communications with one another is verbal while the other half is reading body language, nuance, inflection and the actions of those reacting to our words. On a stage you can show this to an extent, not to the degree of a screen play, but with some, albeit less resolution. So here I am in a site with expository writers when I am more accustomed to staged productions. The way this develops is that with a novel or short story the reader needs more words to compensate for what can’t be seen on the stage. The expository writer must illuminate the stage of a reader's imagination and this takes more words than if the stage is already illuminated by the genre. The stage is a big help in conveying sensory and emotional inputs performed by the actors. In a sense a monologue in a stage drama is like exposition in a novel. In a monologue an actor stands on the stage and tells the audience what the character is thinking, and feeling emotionally and the two big senses, sight and sound can be directly observed. Thus the monologue/dialogue does not need to convey as much as it does in a novel. When I first started writing here I got continuously hammered because I had difficulty grasping this point. I saw my dialogue supplemented by actions of the actors and the set on the stage. My crisp banter did not need to show and tell as much as it would in a short story. Thus when I wrote in some of the classes I took the instructors responded that my writing was sterile and clinical and they were right from the perspective of a novel writer. Now hold that thought. So when I see monologues or dialogs written by a novel writer for a stage play they contain much more information, information that is necessary in a book or essay but that’s overkill in a play. When I was in school the material was always slow to sink in. The minions of my mind took their time sorting and filing the information I was learning and I was often only able to access it after it had been percolating and digestion and being processed for several months in the caverns of my psyche. The only thing that could speed the process up was my fear that I would flunk out of college… When the minions got the drift of that message they went to plan “B”…. actually it was plan “C” which translates to the grade I needed to keep from getting booted out on my butt. So when I began taking writing courses at WDC I wrote like I did writing stage plays and that tended to leave the reader nonplused. After a year here I am beginning to get the hang of exposition in a short story or novel. I am beginning to figure out that I can show the mind of the Central Character and need to use this more effectively. Concurrently I need to explain the emotional response of the other characters whose minds I can’t plumb Omni potently. Then there are the senses and emotions, that need to be considered and developed. So on the one hand I have students who take the need for exposition more for granted and try and say too much, contrasted by my understanding of how a set and actors allow the dramatist a greater economy of words. Sometimes we have trouble getting on the same wavelength. |
| Looking Deeper Today was a busy day on the farm. To begin with I had to take one of the cars in for servicing. Then the technician came from Best Buy to install a new router. The old one that is part of my WIFI went on the fritz. Then the exterminators came. I finally got my latest shooter game to load and fooled around with it for about an hour. We have been very busy this week. Tomorrow I will take the other car in for servicing and I think we will go on to Madison and visit Barnes and Nobles. I normally trade my daily driver car in when it hit’s the 100,000 mile mark. I like to find something that has about 20,000 miles on it and is a few years old. That way I get it for about a third of what it cost new. I know, I must sound like a cheapskate but when you are retired and living on a fixed income you compensate for a reduced cash flow by thinking more about how you spend those limited resources. Anyway I might take Linda looking for a used car that has low mileage. I get a good amount of feedback, usually in the form of a personal email and I get to see how people think, respond and react. Actually a blog response is little more than a glimpse of what the writer thinks, sort of the very tip of the iceberg that only suggests as to what lies deep beneath the surface providing the real motive force for the comment. Still I try not to read too much into them but rather accept them at face value and try and respond accordingly. What I am finding is that much of what I say is out of the mainstream of what most have to say on the craft. I have a half dozen references I particularly like and use these as the underpinning of what I say about writing, however I need to stress that what I write in these blogs is to sharpen my own understanding more than trying to influence the attitudes of others. When you try and “teach” something a writer goes to a lot more trouble thinking things through than what otherwise might be the case. Anyway one of the comments I got was from a reader that said she is constantly hearing the comment of the importance of learning the “Craft” but those who offer that advice don’t always have much to say about what that really means. Actually there is much written on the subject but many developing writers haven’t gotten very far beyond just trying to emulate some of the better works they have seen written. When we read something we do it at at least two levels. The first is just sitting back and enjoying the story. If its good and entertaining we usually just wallow in the ambience of soaking in a good tale. Nothing wrong with that. However, if you are really interested in why it is a good tale you read it a second time to see how it was crafted. In my experience it is very unusual for someone to do this.....taking the story telling model and seeing how it was followed in a given work. In an earlier blog I used the Screen Play “Real Steel” to show how I do this but that is an interest I developed only after years of reading solely for enjoyment. An aspiring writer however should take a closer look at what they read and enjoy to learn what it is about the piece that they particularly liked and how the writer went about achieving it. For newer writers the focus is generally on the art, where they look at exposition or dialogue they found particularly moving or sharp and cleverly bantered. While this is worthwhile it is also useful to look at the model and see how the science was followed. Did the Central Character (CC) appear early, was the CC Central, was this someone easy to attach to and relate to…. Did you get a good before during and after snapshot… was there a story beneath the story? Yada, yada yada…all that stuff that is subliminal in a first read begins to come into focus when you take a closer look. This is what people refer to when they talk about the craft and there are many references that go on and on about explaining how it works. |
| Pointers Today I have to go to the Veterans Administration VA) and explain what happened to my hearing aids. I think Honey ate one and where the other went is a mystery. I have a theory as to why things disappear… that the “Hide-a-Behind” gets it. The Hide-a-Behind is an imaginary creature that follows me about but whenever I look back to catch a glimpse, she quick Hide-a-Behinds something. As I grow older and become more and more aware of his presence I have more opportunities to try and catch him. Alas, to this point I have been unsuccessful. Anyway I am psyching myself up to take the ass chewing the service matron is sure to administer. As I write my blog my wife Linda is in and out of the room reminding me of the time and how we have to go and that we are going to be late. Plus she has a list of people I need to talk to regarding the water in the basement fiasco. I have ten minutes. She just warned me to get out of bed, take a shower and make the necessary calls. I work well under pressure, having done it most of my life and don’t mind her constant distractions and getting on my case. After all there is plenty about my case that needs getting on. Today I posted the lesson on dialogues. There is so much that could be written on this subject that I don’t really know where to start. I guess you have to begin where a new writer begins….Trying to emulate conversation in their manuscript. Newer writers tend to write their characters all in the same voice and that voice is generally similar to theirs. I did a critique early on here at WDC where I told a long time member that her black character didn’t sound very “ethnic.“ Boy! Did that bring down a firestorm. Actually I had toned it down from…. Your “brother” sounds like a middle class white, spray painted black.” Fortunately I didn’t use those words . I am a fan of Janet Evanovitch and she does dialogue as well as anyone these days. Her Palestinian characters are so good and true to form that they really crack me up. She already has me in stitches for most of her novels but I thought the Palestinians were classic. Listening to them suggested that she is very familiar with their speech patters, the result of careful listening to the how they speak English. The flip side to ethnicity is going off the deep end. That is getting so wound up in the phonetics, that the words are almost undecipherable. A reader and a listener want to first grasp what the character is saying. If the syrup is ladled on too thick it breaks the continuity of the read and requires the reader to go back and take a second or third look. In a stage play this is not really necessary as the actors and directors understand ethnic dialects and are usually good at casting those who can make it believable. You don’t really need to articulate to a Hispanic actor how a Hispanic character sounds. All they really need to know is that the character is Hispanic and the context of the conversation, although an occasional word is OK for a little reminder. The Next thing I note in a student are lines of dialogue that contain two or more thoughts or ideas. I like to use a rule of thumb of one idea per line. For example I would not say… “George works for Barclay’s and I think he‘s gay.” but rather “George is gay.” “What makes you say that?” “Straight guys come on to me…” “And he doesn’t?” “Yesterday we were talking on the Exchange…” “Yeah…” “I was giving him some “pointers,” you know, chest to chest?“ "I've see you in action." "I even brused up against him." “That should have gotten a rise…” “He never even picked up on it.” This also illustrates "showing" instead of "telling." I have more to say about dialogue but think I’ll save it for tomorrow. |
| Where Angels Fear to Tread In a group of students there is always one who is filled with probing questions. Right now the class is transitioning from the science of writing a drama to the art and trying to explain art is always more complex and challenging. This latest lesson is about monologues. At this stage in my life I 'm no longer under any delusions regarding who and what I am as a writer. I consider myself most ordinary and explaining to others how I do things might not be the same for others as it is for me. After all when it comes to art as opposed to science I am the first to acknowledge the talent and skill out there that often exceeds my pay grade. However when asked, a “teacher” has an obligation to explain things as best they can. In writing monologues I go through several stages. The first step is to clearly articulate in simple words what the monologue needs to accomplish. There are things I want to tell the audience (reader) that will move the drama along....there are things I want to show about the character. There are aspects of back story I want to communicate as well. Once I have this figured out and stated in simple terms, I think about what a person's thoughts sound like. Historically these have been written in a more poetic and higher form of the English language. This tells the reader or audience that a thought process is going on. In exposition we often use elipses for this purpose, however in a monologue ratcheting up the language a notch often serves. This doesn't mean a monologue has to read like a Dr. Seuss poem but a monologue tends to be expressed more poetically with what I call a resonance or meter to the prose. A monologue stands in sharp contrast to the crisp banter of dialogue. It is more like a song than a conversation, a breeze than a breath of air. Many novel writers have a signature to their exposition and how I go about writing a monologue is my signature as a dramatist. It is point in the writing process where a transition takes place between the science and art of written expression. Thus a monologue often transcends a person's speech patterns often showing an elegance in thinking that is different from how they articulate their conversational speech. The expression is often more fanciful than words spoken in conversation. In dialogue you have a model of how people express themselves in every day life, but in a monologue you are expressing thoughts and the only model you have is the voice and imagery you hear and see rising up from your imagination. It is very common to get the two processes confused. I often see dialogues written like thoughts… words that would never pass between two people in any sort of conversation I have ever heard. The flip side is monologues and exposition that sounds like the writer is talking (muttering) to themselves. These are distinctively different processes and the way the writer expresses them is the art of writing. Each adheres to the structure and has an unmistakable luster and color. This is my take anyway and while I might insist on following the model, in setting up the story, when it comes to the art of telling it, I get nervous suggesting to others how to go about it, like walking on egg shells and begin furtively looking about… fearful of entering the realm where angels fear to tread. |
| Listen Up As I “teach” the One Act Play Course, the struggles of my students are a mirror to my own shortcomings as a writer. The hardest thing about the course is getting the students to embrace the Model. There is a basic story telling model and if a writer accepts it, and learns how it works then the writing that follows will be rewarded and an editor or publisher will lean forward in their chair and say “Ah hah…. At last a manuscript written by someone who understands.” Unfortunately, the realization of how important the model is, dawns slowly to the wanna-be writer and in digressing from its form find themselves mired in frustration, tangents, and incongruities. For some who have talent, the light of its importance never comes on. They follow their own thinking believing that what comes to mind will lead somewhere besides the netherworld. The story telling model has evolved over thousands of years and countless generations of story tellers and for an aspiring writer it is a structure etched in stone. The model begins at a point in space and time close to a life changing event. There is a Central Character (CC) . Call him Joe Schmo. Joe is tooling along in life but begins to have some difficulties. He starts to realize he has a problem. For the writer the first step is to characterize Joe. Say we ascribe to him three character traits Say these are “Me First,” “If it feels good do it,” and “Whatever it takes.” So in a One Act Play the first scene starts out with Joe on the stage showing the audience how he has it all figured out. The problem is that if Joe has it all figured how come his life is on the skids…? Towards the end of Scene 1 he faces the first crisis where he bottoms out….sort of like an alcoholic falling into the gutter. Now the audience (reader) is watching (listening) to all this and gets to see the before snapshot of Joe Schmo. There is something familiar about this fellow. In scene two there comes a second crisis. Joe has resolved at this point to turn things around but hasn’t figured out what his real want, need or desire is. He starts getting really hammered. The light comes on and he has that life changing experience. However, this presents a whole new spin on adversity. The audience now begins to see Joe in transition from who he was to what he is becoming. Then comes a third crisis even more portentous, as Joe tries to get his life back on track. As he begins to crawl out of the hole there comes the tsunami, (climax) and it washes over, leaving him changed forever. Joe is no longer who he was in the beginning of Scene 1. The audience sees him as a different person, sighs and goes home emotionally wrung out and entertained. This is the story telling model. It is the tip of the story telling ice burg. What lies beneath the surface fills volumes of how-to books and libraries of published works. The aspiring writer does well to have it tattooed into his/her psychic understanding. This is where it all starts. A writer can do exploratory writing that digresses from the model but once they have the thread of a storyline… need to come back and use it as a starting point. They shouldn't try reinventing the wheel until becoming successful in the trade (evidenced by publication credits) and know enough about what they are doing to start breaking the rules. The model launches the story on a proven trajectory and leaves it to an author’s talent and skill to guide it to the mark. |
| Water in the Basement Yesterday Linda headed off to work. She works in a nice modern hospital and has a difficult job on the cardiac ward administering all the drugs associated with cardiac surgery. It is extremely hectic and they call her about every day to come in and work extra hours. She politely declines, except on Fridays when she goes up anyway for the weekends. In six weeks she will be retiring and we will have each other full time. That is a mixed blessing. The interludes put a strain on our relationship but also give it a breather. A little bit of Percy Goodfellow goes a long way, I like having the weekends to work on my trucks and yes the extra income is good. Sometimes it is hard sorting the right reasons from the wrong reasons. Anyway yesterday evening I got up from a marathon writing session and walked into the bathroom. I noticed water running in the commode. I picked up the porcelain cover and noticed the float plunger in the down position, no water in the reservoir and the slide not seated where the plastic valve drops into the drain hole. Normally this is not a big deal for most urban dwellers expect they receive a whopping water bill that month. I reseated the valve and there wasn’t much water pressure in the house. Out in the country we have a well and a silt filter and the water is pure but a bit murky coming up from deep in the ground. Anyway I went downstairs into our finished basement and there was about an inch of water on the floor. SHUCKS! I said to myself. Now, the only way that this could happed was for there to be two concurrent failures. First the commode had to continuously drain and second the sump pump had to fail to function. The water from a continuously draining commode goes into a sump, which is a 55 gallon drum sunk into the floor when the basement is poured. When the sump fills a lift pump sends the excess water to the septic tank however when the pump malfunctions at the same time ,the water backs up into basement. At midnight I was sweeping water across the linoleum floor into the drain and jiggling the sump pump to connect and evacuate the water. When I got all I could up I put the floor fans to going full blast. It was 3 O’clock in the morning when I called it quits. It could have been worse. This house is 15 years old and the guts in the commodes need to be replaced as does the sump pump. That will be another project for next week. I wish Linda had some plumbing skills. In a rural area you learn how to do lots of things folks in the urban areas would never even attempt. They aren’t all that difficult if you get a how-to book and follow the directions closely. It isn’t that we can’t afford service technicians but it takes forever for them to get out here. So when something breaks, Linda and I sit down at the kitchen table and figure out how to fix it. These discussions we have are good for our relationship and while we yell at each other sometimes when we try and fix things together there is a feeling of accomplishment when we succeed together, not to mention the money we save. This has worked for everything but hanging wallpaper. That was almost the end of our marriage.Linda is also good for my writing. She has read so much about everything that she has a good sense for what will work and what will not. I use her as a sounding board. This morning she called from the Hospital. It is a ritual of hers as she settles into the days work. She calls it her “Percy Fix.” She needs to talk to me as part of the putting on her game face process. It is an interesting psychological process because when she is home there are long interludes when we don’t say much to one another. Then when the weekend arrives and she is away she calls me three times a day. (No it isn’t because she doesn’t trust me!) I think I told my readers that unlike my father and brother I don’t have the “Twinkle” gene. Except for Linda… she says I do but you can’t really trust your wife to be completely honest on that subject. Anyway today I will spent most of my time in the basement and perhaps I can have it dried out by the time she gets home. Why is it that everything goes wrong when your wife is off to work? |
| Missing the Boat I live in a rural area where all we have is dial-up or satellite. Satellite was a big improvement but it is being eclipsed by the ever growing demands for modem speed. I bought a computer game and in order for it to load it has to download a support platform called “Steam.” This is a good name because it really steams anyone trying to get it to down load. My wife bought an IPAD and to load IOS-5 for Apple was going to take 25 hours. We had to take it back to Best Buy for the upload. I still haven’t gotten my new shooter game, “Black Ops” to load. I suppose if I ever do it will be worth it but right now I am so ticked off by the engineering morons who package it that I have vowed to never buy another that uses the Steam platform. Get real. You buy the disk and then have to wait 24 hours while it uploads… Oh and if your machine shuts down because windows pops in out of the blue, you can expect to start over…. This is all a bunch of crap. On the disk you get with the game or application you pay for should be 99% of the code required. The other 1% to prevent hackers should be on a server somewhere but not 24 hours worth of code. Don’t these pin head developers realize they are antagonizing their customers and the cure to the security issue is worse than the disease? Last night I had another vivid dream. No it wasn’t a nightmare… Thank goodness. As a young man I led combat patrols in Vietnam. The dream I had was that the CIA needed to go somewhere and find and extract an agent who had been compromised. The patrol got all botched up, not by interference from the enemy but rather by a host of logistic and human errors… to the point where the participants were called together at Fort Benning to make a “Lessons Learned” film that demonstrated how what can go wrong will go wrong. In the first filming there was simply a walk-thru that examined the multitude of things that were not being executed well, none of which in themselves was so bad, but which collectively led to blunders and the blunders to failure. It was sort of like watching an NFL football game where the contest is decided by mistakes and who makes the most, rather than by skillful execution. When I read some of the things written here at WDC I see a real analogy. The compositions are filled with mistakes, missed assignments, penalties and a lousy game plan. It isn’t just one or two huge shortcomings but all those little things that continuously undermine and detract from the overall quality of the work. As you read the momentum of all the good things in the work stalls, the wrong scuttles the piece, and the reader or audience loses interest. I am beginning to think that the science of writing is the defense and the art is the offense in executing a good composition. It isn’t one or the other but both, working in harmony with each other. For this to happen there has to be some structure and planning to go along with the artsy part. Under the statistics of my blog there are URLs that indicated where the reader was before visiting the blog. When I clicked on one it highlighted a line from one of my blogs. I don’t know quite how it happened but here is the line. “Most inexperienced writers are more focused on the gilding than the lily.” If you don’t know what that means consider taking some courses at New Horizon’s Academy. |
| Trials of an On Line Drama Teacher One of my problems as a teacher of drama is that I see the potential of where my student’s plays could wind up and want to write it for them. I have learned to resist this impulse and instead make suggestions. “Have you considered this, how about that?“ Instead a voice in me says…. “When student’s hear that simpering guidance they blow you off and go off on whatever tangent they want…. Dance into Namby-Pamby land singing the tune…. My Way. You are such a wuss Percy, and you do them a disservice by not reining them in and telling them.. Look this is my class and forget about what you think, follow what the model thinks… You seem to believe that the first thing popping to mind is the optimal solution and following your intuition will take you where you need to go. But it won’t…. Follow the model and like the rainbow it will lead you to the pot of gold. That light of yours is flitting all over the place and if you chance to see Valhalla, you probably won’t recognize it when you do. Now I know what my readers are thinking. Ah-Hah! Percy has given us a rare and honest glimpse into what a jerk he really is. Remind me never to take a class of his. However, what your missing is that what I think sometimes and what I do are two altogether different things. There is only so much a teacher can do before stepping back and letting the students try their hands at things. Failure is a great teacher and some trial and error will leave them scratching their heads. On the disjointed framework of a half assed attempt the ingredients of good writing begin to adhere and gradually students will begin to see for themselves how the theory translates into reality. In other words, try and front end load the science to the extent possible and then let then go off and fool around with it. The result is something less than optimal but what the heck. This isn’t about the instructor it is about the student. Sure there are those that will read what the student’s write and think, this is pretty bad….That Percy doesn’t know what the heck he is talking about. He is really leading them astray. For those who reach such a conclusion I can only offer that you try teaching an E-course. At New Horizons we are constantly in search of good writers who could become good instructors. As a matter of fact if you really want to improve as a writer try your hand at teaching. It will require you to read those references you never before had the time to fully digest and deep down didn’t think you really need bother with. Teaching a course, The One Act Play and writing a daily blog, regardless of how many bother to read it… are experiences that have really sharpened my skills as a writer. There are several courses that are already developed that won’t be taught next semester for want of an instructor. There are still more yet to be written, that would benefit everyone. Then there are slots for assistant instructors for those who want to test the waters before jumping in. Come on... be bold... Contact New Horizons Academy and step outside your comfort zone. |
| Hippies There was a period in my lifetime when the Hippies had their day in the sun. Woodstock came and went and there was a philosophy that came along which I recall as “Do your own Thing.” People joined communes and experimented with “Free Love” and all that sort of thing. It was sort of like Socialism… a concept that might sound good but leads nowhere. In the end there are no free rides and no substitute for hard work and ambition. I was as affected by this but never got sucked into the vortex. I didn’t do drugs, attended a Military College, went to Vietnam and believed firmly then as I do now that there are some insidious political ideas out there that are a sham designed to lead people astray. For example in Russia under Communism, the new aristocracy was the government who tried to control the economy (An impossible task) and those who wound up with the power and the perks (Dacha’s on the Black Sea) were the card carrying members of the party who had the talent and ambition to work hard and make their miserable unworkable system perform to the low levels of its potential. Anyway most of my Hippy friends woke up and those who had not fried their brains got jobs and raised families and made a decent life for themselves. Unfortunately many also passed on to their children that do nothing Hippy philosophy which the kids liked so much they never moved out of the house They got their student loans, went to college, played around and expected the Namby-Pamby land they saw as the “Real World” to give them something for nothing. In College this culture affected the arts as well. Discipline and structure went out the window. Liberal leaning professors taught, “Just pick up the pencil and write anything that comes to mind and as long as the words are spelled right and the grammar is correct, who is to say that what you are cranking out is any better or any worse than what others are writing. Publishers and Editors were painted as the “Capitalists” when they refused to print most of the trash they were getting. They knew all to well that if writers chose to disregard the story telling and poetic models that had proven themselves over time that nobody outside the “Intelligencia” was going to plunk down their hard earned money to read this crap. Writers who wanted to succeed had to relearn much of what they had been taught…. To realize it was full of holes, to rediscover what it was to write something decent and get the public to buy it. This struggle is ongoing and the gulf between what “Higher Education” education teaches and what a person needs to succeed in life widens. Now… “What?” you might ask, brought on this tirade. It is having to continuously explain the importance of the science of writing. Only after coming to Writing.com did I realize how shortchanged I was by the educational process. I thought I was so talented that all I had to do was write down what popped into my mind and I would be rewarded by instant success. Duh! Was I stupid or what? If you read Essence and the Stones, and Bedelia and Petra in my port you will see the result of writing what pops into your head. I’m not saying that a writer can't do this for awhile but what you wind up with is a hodge-podge of different things that ramble on with nothing to really give them direction and cohesiveness. The structure and characters do not "develop themselves" and the more you go on the more convoluted everything becomes. I do exploratory writing but once the story line begins to firm in my mind I have to stop and go back. It is a frustrating and difficult task to clean up the mess. What I have learned is that once you have the thread, you write an outline of the chapters and inside each chapter a thread of what it will convey and the things that move the story along. Then try and write a first draft one step at a time. HOWEVER! the outline is more than what you learned in school. It is not just the framework of the story you intend to write. It is also a structure where you append the basic ingredients to good story telling. THE MODEL! For example who the central character is, what is their want need and desire, what are the crisis, one two and three, how is the CC changing, is the momentum building, etc. From your references write down the ingredients the “experts” say are important and make sure you include these in the outline along with the story line. Then write your novel in baby steps one scene at a time, following your outline and character sketches. This is simple… How come nobody ever mentioned it in college and graduate school?“ |
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