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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. |
| Knowing Best and Getting Others to do it. Well I picked up my 48 Studebaker Pickup that is on the S-10 Chassis and drove it home. The Registration says it’s a 46 Studebaker. (Is that a problem?) It cruised like a dream. I’m so excited. Still a lot of body work to do. I can’t decide if I want to prime and paint it in a traditional sense or seal with a clear coat and preserve the look of the rust patina. I am leaning towards the latter. Linda came home and I didn’t hear the car. Usually the dogs alert me and I make a big ta-doo over her being back and she likes that…. Well today I didn’t and she thinks I don’t appreciate her as much as I should. Women! Still I really like her and when I carry on it is genuine. She is such a force. Even the dogs walk in awe of her….When she sits down to eat one crowds up on either side….It’s her karma plus an occasional scrap from the table….What do they say about random reinforcement? I have to get working on my One Act Play….I finished with lesson one for the most part and now I have to push through lesson 2. I already wrote them in rough draft and had a bunch of stuff dumped in there…..One of the administrators came through and was not impressed. This will never fly she said in so many words… What can I say? These ladies have been such a great help assisting in getting ready I have to restrain my typical gruff response, characteristic of my well-earned reputation for being a "arsh locher"… bow my head in contrition, smile and fix the problem. Even Leger, who is one of my friends and supporters, tells me I’m abrasive and have a lousey bedside manner. She claims I’m protecting my voice but that’s a euphemism for acting like a smirky snit. I was born with the jerky gene and I can’t help it….I could claim my lack of sensitivity is a consequence of my age but I've always been difficult. In the military this was not seen as a deficiency but rather a quality…As long as "The Old Man," kept everybody on a roll everyone took it for granted. I was successfull in my chosen profession, but wearied of forever pushing, coaxing and cajoling others to measure up to what they were capable of. When I could get someone to rise above themselves and shine that was a real high. I didn’t always succeed but I got some units to moving that many thought hopelessly mired in the mud. By nature I’m not a stand up front and wave the flag sort of person…I love it when others with ability step up and I can turn my attention to the things I love to do. However, one of the things I learned early was there are plenty willing to presume the mantle of leadership who should not be wearing it. In the military that can get you killed. As much as I would have liked to carry the machinegun, the thought of some of the actors in my platoon, being in charge was too frightening to contemplate. That is a message I try and tell people….especially when they are capable and want to step back….If you aren’t willing to lead you are destined to follow a star of lesser brightness. That can be bad news for everybody. Sometimes however you luck out and get to follow someone who is at least as qualified for the job than you are. I have a definition for leadership. It is knowing best and getting others to do it. It is both of these variables working together that constitute a leader. You have to be able to exercise reason and come up with an optimal course of action and at the same time be able to get others to sign up and follow you down the path. Some have one or the other of these qualities but not both….Sorry, you have to have the set to be a leader…Amen |
| A novelist friend of mine was told by her publisher to set up a web site and blog for the purposes of promoting her Novel. I looked at it and she had done a pretty cool job, doing it all on her own and not spending money she didn’t have. After getting my Class well along I thought…hey! I have a blog….Last week it went over 1000 hits….even though things have fallen off since I upped the classification to 18+… why don’t I advertise my course on my blog….maybe post some links there to a coupe of the pages, like the home page, the welcome letter, maybe the Introduction page. Then the thought came to me….why not post some links to some of the other interesting courses offered at New Horizon’s Writing Academy (NHWA). After all NHWA is a part of WDC and for a few Gps a writer can learn from some very talented and dedicated instructors….This is a serious education minded group of writers that produces a well thought out and comprehensive product. I was amazed by the Scope of the enterprise and the dedication of the Instructors. Despite it’s presence and History here I’d never even heard of it until I saw they were looking for a Drama Teacher. As I often remark on my blog that dummies books are one of the ways I learn best…Now I will expand that to courses offered by NHWA. Don’t make me drive for an hour to a local tech school or University class that at best wastes the better part of the time trying to serve a room full of students at different levels of experience and ability….NHWA offers self paced instruction, tailored to the student, from the convenience of your laptop, at the ridiculously affordable price of 3K GP‘s per course. How affordable is that…? Anybody here can raise the tuition in a couple of hours doing a few quality reviews. There is even tuition assistance. And if you don’t know how to do a good review, there is a very smart lady who will teach you how to do one in short order. Since I am a junior staff member I won’t be doing any posting until I get the go ahead from the Academy but look for me to be posting links in the future. As a matter of fact I’ll go out on a limb and post a link to the main office. "Invalid Item"  |
| Barking in the Wind I experiment with sensual prose to make my other writing more attractive…I’m looking for the perfect blend that stirs the reader without offending their sensibilities. It is an almost task because were that line is represents a moving target from on person to the next. Still, every week I dutifully write my entry to the Weekly Quickie Contest…I always get at least one review because the host is obligated to comment…sometimes another of the contestants throws in their two cents worth which is always nice…then there is a core of readers who sometimes comment as well. I don ’t do well in this contest….This is for two reasons, maybe three  First the sole criteria for the “Quickie” is excitement. That all but presupposes that the sensual prose will be an end rather than a means. I don’t write sensual prose as an end so that puts me behind the power curve. “Oh Percy…they comment…It was well written but it just didn’t excite like some of the other submissions. This is entirely valid because my erotica is designed to promote the story rather than appeal to the prurient interests of the reader. Second is the sad but undeniable fact that I have an abrasive personality. Readers get a bad first impression of me and it becomes a case of “Hate me hate my dog..” And possibly, way back in distant third is the possibility that every writer hates to acknowledge….Maybe my material “Sucks.” Now while all this is going on I keep pecking away like a little bird, writing what appeals to me…. And an amazing thing is beginning to happen. This is going to blow your mind. My work is having an influence on those other writers around me. More and more I see submissions where there is a story and the erotica makes it better. Some of this was going on before I got involved (Dawn Embers) but it was the exception…Now I am seeing a conscious attempt at story telling using sensual prose as an accent rather than the main entrée. In the better submissions, not always those who win, there is also more dialogue being included and the characters are actually showing some definition….all in 869 words! Now I point this out not to blow my horn….It certainly isn’t all me…What it shows is that just because you don’t win a contest, or get gushing feedback doesn’t mean your writing is not having an influence on those around you. I know I am being read by the number of views a vignette gets in a months period….Further an indicator I thing is repeat views….If someone read it and thought it “Sucked” would they be reading it a second time….? I doubt it… Try entering a weekly contest on a consistent basis and express your views in a forum…Pay attention to “Views” and how the entries are being written. You might be having more of an influence than the feedback might seem to be indicating. Then again like me, you might be barking in the wind. |
| The Sands of Ambivalence I am surrounded by interesting people. There’s my wife who is the most interesting of all. She is amazing and every day I remind myself that I’m one lucky son-of-a-gun to have her….Even when she’s a “B**** I still like her. Then I have my two dogs Chloe and Honey. They are great company and always good for a lick or a nudge….even if its at 3 O’clock in the morning…what the heck, I can let them out…nothing better to do but sleep and what’s that? Not to mention my shop and my trucks…I could go on and on about that aspect of my life and I have tried it on occasion in my blog….Had to quit…Not that readership is the sole criteria, however, when nobody reads the darn thing, absolutely nobody then maybe automotive things are not what interest people on WDC. Now writing things do stir some interest so I try and restrict my blog to writing things. Right now most of my writing is centered on my class that will begin in early May. It has been fun getting ready and quite a challenge. Plus it has been a huge learning experience. At the same time I have been taking an HSP course on integrating emotion and desire into prose writing… I think I did a blog on that recently so won’t go there again…except to say the class material has been extremely useful. It doing the research I found some excellent references…It amazes me how two different authors can discuss the same subject… The One Act Play and approach the subject from such difference perspectives. It has opened my eyes and there were aspects to Playwriting that I was simply unaware of until I really began taking a close look. I’d tell you but I want you to take the course. I don’t believe there will be many takers….Drama is not a best seller these days….Romance Novels on the other hand have a following… In going back to drama and teaching this course I am seeing some things that will make me a better writer…For example in a stage play the difference between showing and telling is more evident than in a novel. In a stage play if showing is taking place it tends to pop up in dialogues. Dialogues tend to show and monologues tend to tell. People go to the “Show” to be shown. They do not go to a “Tell to be told.” I thought that up….pretty profound don’t cha-know? In a stage production words are as important as the imagery of the set and the costumes and presentation of the actors…. To the extent that the actors use their voices the sounds are at least as important as the vision….not the same as in screen plays or TV Dramas… A big distinction that I marvel at is that shakesphere cheap tickets to the poor who couldn’t ever see the actors or stage. All they could do was listen to the words….the resonance of those magic words….How may would go to a movie and sit blindfolded outside…Get the point? Anyway I think learning to write a One Act Play is of great benefit to virtually any kind of writer….So I encourage the occasional reader who strays to this oasis deep in the sands of ambivalence….Go to New Horizons and sign up…if not for my course then one of the many that are an adventure into the affordable opportunities that WDC offers. |
| Reading People The past two days I have had plenty to blog about but I have been immersed in writing my New Horizons course, The One Act Play. One of my occasional readers is Legerdemain, I hope she doesn’t mind my mentioning her in my blog. She often comments and her ideas propel me in new directions….It also happens that she runs a sig shop on WDC and does good work. Anyway as I was working on my course I had a requirement for some images and I told her what I was looking for. She came back with several that looked good and provided me with some links to go searching on the web. Now here is the interesting part….She provided me with 5 links and I spent about six (6) hours I couldn’t afford, exploring probably just the bare tip of what was out there and didn’t find anything that really got the amp meter needle to twitching. So I went back and said essentially….Didn’t find anything any better than what you showed me.….Take those and make the following modifications….. She did and the results were great…I love to see good stuff and she really delivered. As I looked at the six (6) images I was struck not so much by their individual quality but by their integration….The went together…..It was like an ensemble that not only contained quality garments but they were coordinated….is this making sense? Sometimes I see writers who can say for example write great exposition but that exposition is not well coordinated with the overall structure or the demands of the genre…. Anyway I told her that working with her was amazing because from the briefest of links….where I explained the requirement in an email….she entered a huge universe of images and found exactly what I wanted. I went out into this same world and found where she had gotten the images and conceded they were the best ones out there…. I could have saved myself 6 hours….but then again how often do you find someone with the interface software that can read your mind….my wife can, my daughters can…my mother could….and that’s about it… Isn’t it amazing the stuff that happens around us that we have to pause and take a second look at before we notice a connection with more that a “so what?“ shrug. |
Many who read my writing complain that my prose is bloodless and is way short on exposition that appeals to emotion and desire....They claim that I rely way too much on dialogue to covey what I should be beefing up with exposition that appeals to emotion and desires. Well what the heck does everyone expect...My limited background is stage plays and the body language and attire of the actors and the designe of the sets taken with the dialogues and monologues is what you get. Yeah they answer but when you write short stories and novels you ain't exactly following the drama format and if you expect to succeeed in the realm of expository prose you better wake up! Alas, this is a valid criticism. As an author I tend to have the dialogue of the characters bring it all out. In a short story or novel emotions and desires tend to find expression in the narrative description and to a lesser extent in the conversational exchanges of the characters. Sometimes, as in dialogue, it is implied in the language being bantered back and forth. Sometimes we get a full dose of emotions and very little of the passion and desire felt by the characters. Then again sometimes we a whole lot of the graphic detail and not much of the lubricating emotion that make the physical act of love palatable. Emotions are what goes on inside a person’s head. They are thoughts which set physiological chords to vibrating. In writing sensual prose the emotional exposition should appeal to the mind just as the aspects of desire appeal to the body. Show below are examples lifted from a vignette showing emotion. By themselves the emotions of the characters show the reader the importance that a frame of mind plays in the writing of sensual prose. It’s almost as if the mind triggers chemical reactions that drug the psyche from the raw obscenity of the act of intercourse. Here the exposition begins to numb the mind and make almost surreal what would otherwise be a numbing animal experience. It converts a bloodless clinical trial into one of the most delightful moments that life has to offer. So in the first case you have emotions, the narcotic of love, used to prepare the mind for what is about to transpire in the flesh. To the extent that an author can do this in prose, like an experienced lover creates a mood of seduction is a tribute to the skill of the story teller. This example is effective in doing it. The emotional part is full of metaphor, simile and euphemisms as well as adjectives that give emphasis to what is largely an imaginative experience. Some appeal is made to also to the senses of touch, and a reference to the absence of sound. Heat imagery is used extensively as well as hunger. I won't cite examples because I don't have permission of the author....I will however refer to them. The vignette showed the influence of desire which was acting to excite the prurience of the reader. Descriptive prose is interjected that pandered to sensations that compelled the lovers to make the experience one of the flesh. The senses of touch and to a lesser extent sound were used again to achieve this. An example of sound iwas expressed when she whimpered in a low tone. The “hunger “metaphor was a euphemism that softened what was otherwise a raw bodily attraction. “Heat” was another that served the same purpose. Flooding was a metaphor that described a strong and continuing sensation. In addition to emotional appeal there were also examples of the author appealing to desire using mostly the sense of touch. Together the two pointed out the effectiveness of using not one but both in a format that included a full range of literary devices. For example the piece relied heavily on exposition that interplayed emotion with desire….More dialogue might have added a third dimension. The two appealed to the senses of touch and sound ….the other three are not visited. So the author might have done more but the point is how much was actually included. It was a well written vignette and demonstrated how sensual prose should be used to elevate the context of prose to the next higher level. The readers were lulled into a mood that let them warm to the graphic truth without feeling it’ thrust into their faces. |
| The Impact of E-Education on traditional classroom teaching. I can see now with this course I’m going to have to get up to speed on ML-Write. I’ve been on this site for almost 2 years and have a portfolio of 250 entries and still haven’t leaned the ropes to doing it. I think that is all about to change. One of the administrators at New Horizon Writing Academy is helping me get smart. Actually I kinda know what it is about….not all the code but what it is designed to do…..It is a cross between programming and user friendly software….a sort of utility software. Having worked in GW Basic and “C++” I have a remedial understanding of programming languages and expect this utility software or ML-Write will not be that hard to understand. The reason the investment in time and energy should be worthwhile is because all these Class Pages and Lesson plans are going to have to be tied together with links allowing the student to move easily back and forth between pages. When you think about it there are some real advantages to an E-Classroom over a conventional one. For one thing you don’t have to leave your workplace to go to the library…For another you can flip easily between linked items where you once had to go to an appendix or table of contents to find a page in a textbook. One of the things you learn in programming is something called modular programming…..it isn’t really programming at all but creating functional modules of code that can be written independently and plugged into the thread or exoskeleton of a control module. This is going to have some real utility in this course I’m designing. For example you can set up a series of links on a page and use some “If then Statements…” and return to the master module. In addition to Lesson Plans and Class Materials there will be a compendium of terms (A dictionary) which will be cross-referenced to a sample play/style manual. Then there will be a Repository of Comments linked to the check lists used to evaluate each lesson which have some common answers to common questions and problems…This should make it easier to answer questions, if the answers are stored….so they can be cut and pasted when the same one crops up again. This should be helpful if a substitute has to step in. Undisciplined classrooms and disruptive kids have become such a big problem that learning has really been impaired in today’s schools and the E-Classroom could loom big in the future. Home schooling and private schooling have shown there are quality alternatives to the expensive traditional public school venue. It is only a question of time before taxpayers start looking for alternatives. I have sympathy for teachers and the conditions under which they work, but am troubled by all the extremism, politicalization and indoctrination that is going on. Maybe the time for decentralizing our education systems is at hand. |
| Frost off the Window Pane Many people don’t like erotica or sensual prose and simply don’t read it….if the classification is greater than eighteen (18) plus they simply don’t go there. That’s what’s great about the classification system here at WDC…it alerts readers to the graphic nature of the material and allows them an option to steer clear. If you don’t like that kind of stuff then by all means don’t read it. I have a theory that artistic endeavor is tied to our creative energies….that our urge to procreate is the motive force that pounds deep inside us like the engine of a tramp steamer. Some of that power that turns the props also spins up gyros and that power can be used for things that don’t directly propell the vessel. Like lights and radios and refrigeration units and a host of other unrelated purposes. So it is that from our sex drive comes the energy to paint pictures, write music and compose literature…..We might not want to mix Mozart with the churning of a huge and noisey crankshaft but there is a connection between the two….Because of that connection I choose to venture down into the engine room from time to time and listen to the power of the dynamo and the resonance of the huge pistons surging up and down….Yes it’s noisy down there, and a bit dangerous amid all those pressure lines steam and hot greasy fluids ...but being close to the font….the creative source of power a writer can wallow in the motive energy that animates artistic beauty in its rawest of forms is….I find it simply invigorating. The anology to a writer is the ability or willingness to using the power of sensual prose to enhance their literary efforts….Great composers combined the pounding of the base drum with the lilting notes of the flute, nor did they disdain the big horns because they preferred the signature of a clarinet. Sex is such a motive force in our lives that we just can’t afford to hide it under a bushel basket….to use it to make an occasional baby but otherwise keep it locked down in some obscure corner of our soul. Yes the physical act can be raw and brutally unnerving at times even though our minds have the capacity to dull the senses to all that and turn the primordial grunting and groaning into the most compelling experience of our existence. Still their remains the question of how close do you want to have it hanging around for the nine-nine percent of our daily lives where it doesn’t directly apply….when our minds are not drugged by physiological secretions that make the flesh slapping seem surreal and the urgency of our animal instincts so disconcerting. The answer to that lies in how close you want to get when the necessity for venturing close comes upon us….For many it seems almost like an on off light switch rather than the dial on a light fixture…For a writer we need to be able to dial up the intensity in our writing…to approach as close as we dare without getting too far into the comfort zone of our readers and ourselves. Prose that dares not skirt the fringe and bring heat to the story can be sterile and bloodless indeed. Writers need to venture to the fringe and return with some embers from the fire ….bring some of those glowing coals back into the shack and take some of the frost off the window pane. |
| Marital Roulette Today I reached an important milestone in getting ready for my class. I saw it all flash together in my mind. This doesn’t mean I am close to finished; it just means I emerged from the fog and saw the finished product far in the distance. This is better than plodding along hoping that a vision of closure would come to me. Its been an adventure the scope of which I never imagined at the outset. The project kept expanding and getting bigger and bigger….Now I see a need for a compendium of terms referenced to examples in a pseudo like play written for explanatory purposes. I have written one acts before in a short period so this hurdle should not be that daunting. I am getting some great support from the administration at New Horizons and before it is all over I am going to have learned more than the students. What I am finding is that an E-Course needs the structure of a traditional lesson planning base but it also needs a means to breath life into such a sterile document. Don’t get me wrong…..these documents are necessary to lead the student along in an environment where there is no flesh and blood teacher….Its like having a customer service problem and not being able to talk to a real person….the instructions have to be as crystal clear as they can possibly be so the student doesn’t waste precious time over the most mundane of matters rather than getting along with the learning. Anyway I got a lot done today. Linda and I are a bit under the weather and we can grate on each other when we aren’t feeling well. We can also network and do some amazing things, however when we are at our best the sparks have a way of flying….For example last month we installed a new pump on our hydronic outdoor wood heater….This week it was installing a new dishwasher….I’ll be darned if I want to pay a plumber a hundred dollars to hook up three wires, a water line in and a drain out of our new appliance. There is nothing we can’t figure out together except for wall papering…for some reason that is undoable and we finally gave up on it…..Our daughters have dubbed it marital roulette and insist we never attempt it again together. We almost managed it….if Linda hadn’t been so anal. |
| The Importance of Stepping Back In the past I have given the Percy Goodfellow take on how the human mind works. My friend Freud agrees with me and his muse often stops by for clarification on some of the subtle nuances of the psyche. Anyway he knows I’m writing this Playwriting course and really got in the face of my dreaming last night, offering all manner of advice and comments. His biggest and most emphatic piece of advice was to “Give it a Break!“ What he was referring to is that the conscious and unconscious levels of our bio processor work at different speeds and layers. In our awareness it uses a short term program and in our imaginative back screen, it chunks more slowly with a long term view to the issues under consideration. One program hogs the computer space while we are awake and the other comes aboard with the night shift. Yes, yes….I know there is some overlap but for the most part that is the way the human CPU operates. Now how does this apply to my playwriting course, begs the question….The answer is that about mid way through the course I need to take a break. I need to tell the writer….”Writer” or in this case the roll-playing student, now that you have a “Straw Man,” finished..., now that the thread of a first draft is completed, take the darn thing and put it in a desk drawer for the next week. Don’t even think about the Drama….give it a rest. The reason that Sigmund is so emphatic about this is because he had this theory his publisher missplaced, that postulated that when a writer writes something they need to let it cool off. How many times have you fired off an E-mail or posted a contest entry only to discover it would have been better had you not been so eager….if you had let the dog sleep before insisting it was time to go for a walk. Well this is the reason for stepping back….It gives the unconscious an opportunity to catch up with the conscious. Allows for a little reconciliation of reality. The larger and more unfamiliar the territory the longer the tango takes….duh! Everybody knows that….Everybody but authors who try and cram a hundred pounds of wet fish into a ten pound croaker sack. So I'm going to build a pause into my eight week course….tell the playwright to take their significant other out to dinner and the movies….maybe the kids to the zoo. It will be therapeutic, professionally enhancing, yield unexpected dividends and maybe even lead to an offer... the aspiring dramatist can’t refuse. |
| Laughing at Yourself I often laugh at my material….it might be hubris, I don’t know…all I know is that my own stuff makes me chuckle. Anyway like I touched on earlier, I'm writing this Playwright Course. There is an academic level and a role playing level….The way it will work is that the lesson will be provided as an attachment E-Mail from the role playing publisher, Matty Rosen. The students are playing serial romance writers between assignments….The Publishing house has this contract to write some High School Dramas and Matty has asked some of his stable writers to help out with the project. Anyway after I write each lesson plan, I explain to the student (Novelist) through the cynical prose of Matty, the nuances of writing a play and how it differs from a novel and how this will be unfamiliar ground but I know they can do it. There have been three lessons completed and the reward for this somewhat uninspiring and mundane task is to write the explanatory (forwarding) letter. This is where the fun comes in. It is in a sense a clash between expectation and reality which is often the germ of humor which I insist in the letters must be a component of the play….These are after all going to be comedies. So as I write to a student, pretending they are a novelist, pointing out the differences.... the humor begins to bubble up beneath the lines….it is pure Percy Goodfellow cornball type humor….(the type that makes my wife and daughters groan) of an editor exhorting novel writers to help him out by getting them to write one of these twenty-two (22) one act plays. Traditionally playwrights came to drama from a literary background. Perhaps they were first intrigued by seeing a play performed or excited by the potential thay saw in one of their classes. If they were really interested they went home and tried to write one and those with the talent and persistence eventually got good enough to be offered a production opportunity. This was hit and miss and there wasn’t a lot of good material coming out of the pipeline back in the 40’s and the record abounds with discovering in rehearsals flawed workmanship and frantic scurrying behind the scenes to remedy it often the night before the curtain was scheduled to rise. As a consequence workshops and readings were developed as tools to help school writers in the art of producing an integrated and stage worthy production. This is where things stand today…A writer begins by writing a play and it gets work shopped, read and marketed. The key is to give the writer enough substance to get started and have them start pushing the pencil or pounding the keys. The first couple of times through the process are going to be rough but learning to write plays is a solitary and immersion type experience for a writer. That is what this course will be about. Matty will be hammering the writer to get through the process while concurrently providing them with the big ticket items that have to be included and integrated… Monologues, dialogues, ascending action, climax and trailing action as well as devices, like humor, asides, repetition, resonance and a host of others that will keep recurring. Early on a first draft will be completed (By week 3 of Eight) but only after a comprehensive outline is expanded from a given one and the Character sketches are written…Then the student will write the “Straw Man” and the remainder of the lessons will look at how the whole thing is getting pinned together. Sounds like fun doesn’t it. Not a classroom exercise but a mandate to “Just Do It,” with a little adult supervision and encouragement. |
| Flat Humor Well I am getting along on my Lesson Plans for the Playwriting course at New Horizons. It will be a synthesis of a traditional academically structured class and role playing. The students will not be students but rather serial novel writers between assignments and I will be the editor of a publishing house who has landed a contract to write Twenty-Two One Act Plays for sale to high school drama departments. It will be an immersion course like a workshop where a General Outline is expanded into a comprehensive one and the students write a one act play I am also taking a course and I need to get on that tomorrow and do my assignment. I don’t want to be late or turn in some half baked submission. Already I have the quickie submission done and posted…."Stranger in a Strange Place (GC) I like it but it won’t do well because it doesn’t really excite as the sole criteria of the contest requires. It uses a sensual (erotic) component to provide a submerged level of dialogue and action that is happening concurrently with the superficial action. It is experimental like submerged dialog….where there is a proxy issue used where the real issue is too painful to discuss. It happens all the time in life but when you see it in writing it represents a level of sophistication worth noting. Sometimes my sense of humor gets me in trouble….A few years ago Larson had a cartoon of two gorillas, a male and a female….and the female finds a blond hair on the malte and becomes indignant telling him angrily…"I see you’ve been with that Godall woman again…" .It made me chuckle because his humor appeals to me but the executive secretary of Jane Goodall, the famous anthropologist, took umbrage and threatened to sue….When Jane found out she stopped the action and invited Larson to Africa to see her gorillas. AT WDC sometimes my humor is not appreciated and I have to be careful what I say because I don’t want to spoil anyone’s day when I only want to lighten things up. I retracted one of my blogs (deleted it) thinking something I saw as complimentary and funny might have been misconstrued. Fortunately nobody reads my stuff and I shouldn’t worry. But I do. |
| In the Beginning was the Word Well today I finished an outline to the play I am programmed to teach…I wonder if the staff at New Horizons will throw up their hands and politely tell me that due to unexpected technical difficulties I need to get lost. From what I can see the headmistress and two assistants are steeped in the academic tradition of formal lesson planning. I am not complaining mind you because on line class’s demand a lot of boiler plate to make sure they work in an E-environment in the absence of a living breathing professor manifested in the flesh. I can do this I keep telling myself. I'm not awed by the syllabus and lesson planning and the function of the E-Classroom…certainly there is much to learn of that but what is a bit unnerving is teaching in an area where I hardly consider myself an expert. Normally I don’t confess my doubts over perceived shortcoming but since nobody reads this blog anyway I am quite safe in venting my concerns. As a writer I have always been a practitioner. As a student my teachers always despaired because by the time I began catching onto the material the semester was over and the grades a matter of the historical record. I remember waking up one morning a year after barely passing a statistics course and suddenly coming to the realization of what Standard Deviation was all about. The upside to my abuse mind is that I was able to apply belated knowledge to life where many of my academically gifted peers seemed to have forgotten the material altogether. Actually being a failure as a play writer has been a benefit to my prose writing….once some fundamental differences are allowed the yearlong soak thru the soggy filter of my cortex. What I have had to learn in novel writing is the importance of exposition. A novel reader likes to be told about the trees and mountains and the wart on the Hero’s nose. On the stage the audience sees the wart and the set tells him the little about the surrounding she needs to know. So there you have it. A playwright starts out deficient in exposition and a novelist starts out deficient in dialog. Well except for another deficiency a novelist has….resonance. I talked to a writer friend of mine about to be published in a legitimate press and she had no idea what resonance was. Can you imagine that? Shakespeare was able to sell tickets to people who weren’t even allowed in the theater and they paid good money to simply listen outside to the words. Is there a message there to writers or what….and how about rappers and the sudden resurgence of rhythm and meter and rhyme in speech patterns? The screen is great, and special effects are mindboggling but the pendulum keeps swinging back to the word….How does it go….In the beginning was the word… |
| Percy the Playwright I’ve been neglecting my blog for the past couple of days….the reason is that I have started a new course, applied for a job to teach a course at New Horizons here on WDC, am doing a Quickie Entry each week and working on my novel Habit of Despair. This is in addition to trying to lead a normal life. At least I have been busy. The course I will be teaching is one on playwriting that will begin in May. In looking over some of the syllabuses I am amazed by how comprehensive they are and the detail of the planning that has gone into them. Right now I am trying to decide how to approach the subject in a way best suited to my experience and talents. It is my experience that in seeking to define something a good place to start is with what that something isn’t. I am a practitioner rather than an academic. To use a driving school analogy, I will not be teaching the history of the automobile, the theory of how the components operate…how they are assembled or anything in that vein. I will be the guy in the passenger seat explaining how to start the vehicle, use the transmission, steer, apply the brake and where to put the gas. I won’t be discussing the history of Drama, the Shakespearian period, contemporary drama or anything like that….I will be teaching how to parallel park, turn into a skid and fix a flat tire. I won’t be teaching periodic maintenance, race car driving, or how to pass a driving test….I will be teaching staying focused on the road, using the turn signal, and defensive driving… Now I know some will think that all this other stuff is important to learn and it is….however it is not where I intend to go. I will be using the one act play as a guide, providing a canned story line outline, and saying In scene 1 we will have a monolog and some dialog and foreshadowing…in scene 2 more dialog, character development, and conflict and in scene 3 a climax and some resolution. The student will write the play’s script within the structured constraints using the most common tools of the trade….The output will be the student will complete a 1 act play. I had to chuckle when I inquired into doing it that after novels and poetry I mentioned some limited stage play writing experience….Don’t you know that was the area they were looking for someone….Well for what its worth I wrote a formal three act Shakespearian/Greek play and it is named Andromache and is parked on my port….What you see is what you get….and while it was never produced I still like to read it from time to time and remark to myself…..self, this darn thing wasn’t all that bad. |
| Writing Good Stuff I'm reading the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel. The author is a guy named Tom Monteleone. He is pretty good writer and I find that these Idiot and Dummies books are better than text books and actually do a pretty good job explaining things. As a matter of fact I will probably never take a course again in something if I can get the material explained in a book such as this. Anyway the author (Tom) tells a story that struck me as very profound. He said that when he needed a little extra income as a struggling writer he used to sell subscriptions to a cable company…In the process of this work he got to go into people’s homes and see where the connections would be hooked. As a writer the first thing he looked to see is what kind of literature the family was reading. Would you believe that in almost all cases the answer was NADA….He was lucky to see a copy of TV Guide or Soap Opera Digest. Now I should have realized this but for the last ten (10) years I have been living on an isolated farmstead and so some of the obvious trends in American society are passing me by. Tonight however, I received another wake-up call on what a back-water I'm living in. There was an advertisement looking for instructors for a school here on WDC. I filled out the application and got a prompt reply inquiring into my suitability to teach a playwriting course. I had written a full blown Old School (Shakespeare like) play a few years back and it was parked on my port. The follow up question was how I would structure a syllabus for teaching the subject, which I provided off the cuff. Meanwhile the screener had glanced at my play and said it would never fly these days, a fact I already knew from trying to marked the epistle after I wrote it…. However I had to wonder….how can someone be expected to write anything of quality if there were no books in the house while they were growing up and despite the fact that Shakespearian English might be arcane, this guy broke the code on what it took to pack a theater. His material was so good people bought tickets to stand outside and listen. To write good stuff you have to have read a lot of good stuff and yes….of course…you have to be able to package and present it with modern tastes and trends in mind. Being on WDC makes the marketing challenges of selling a literary work abundantly clear. |
| Not so fast Percy After I finished with my second edit of Habit of Despair it became clear that there were some pieces that had been left hanging and some areas that needed further elaboration. I mean it “flew” but it just wasn’t buttoned down the way I wanted it to be. For example some key characters that needed to be there weren’t and some that were needed to be better accounted for. For example: 1. There needed to be a funeral ceremony for the Count, Angelina’s husband that would introduce some future characters. I decided that Angelina and Teresa needed to be sisters and they would have a brother who was a strange little guy inclined to mathematics who would break the ciphers on legers Ricardo discovers at the end of book one. 2. Second since Teresa’s parents were New Christians it would be good to let Angelina’s bungling of a well intentioned escape attempt implicate Ricardo and his new wife Teresa, and get him dragged before the Inquisition. 3. Of course Carlos and the budding relationship with Angelina could be expanded….This would increase the word count of the first novel, set up the second, and tie these loose ends together. I wish in a sense that I would have known when I started out what I do now….it would have enabled me to get it right the first time but that hasn’t been the case and rather than snivel I need to fix it. Better now than have an editor tell me down the road. This novel needs to be as good as I can make it. My age is already one strike and I think that editors are more inclined to accept risk from an unpublished younger writer than and unpublished older writer. It could well be that I am screwed regardless of the quality, however I’ll let the system decide that and not take myself prematurely out of the game. |
| Beyond the Edge Once the writer decides to skirt the edge of acceptability and finds the effort was a success then what is the next step? Pageant was certainly a case in point. I suspected after it was written that it would excite the ire of the female readers because it basically glorified the dominant male submissive female theme. The woman was led around like a model on a concourse, leashed like a dog, paraded naked in bondage and then made to dance with abandon while at the same time having intercourse with her partner before a live audience. If that story won’t get you shot as a chauvinist I don’t know what will. That however was not the reaction. Outside the obligatory review by the contest sponsor which awarded it first place and a review that characterized it as “Surreal” that was about the extent of the “Reviews.” The views however told another story….that it resonated with many readers giving them a look at something forbidden in a context of a fashion (dog) show, a slave auction and a dancing with the stars, sex show. Now it came as no surprise that males liked the vignette….but why the interest by women? Here are some possibilities. 1. Perhaps the vignette spread word of mouth as an example of how disgusting a writer Percy Goodfellow is and the lengths he is willing to go to put down women 2. Perhaps many women in their heart of hearts find a strong man appealing and are titillated by a strong male assertion of dominion. 3. Perhaps there are still women who are comfortable in a role of a male walking the point and providing a buffer to the outside world. 4. Perhaps the historical male/female social relationship is so deeply engrained in our DNA that despite all the hoopla about woman’s rights and equal opportunity there is still recognition of the need for a man strong enough to protect while a woman provides nurture to their children. 5. Perhaps assertiveness and submission are ends of the same emotion and one excites the other. 6. Perhaps there are qualities in each of us that both ennoble and damn our characters and our lives are so insulated from conditions that could excite these emotive forces, that when we do have opportunity, they resonate with a thrill of novelty. 7. That men and woman but for the intervention of a sperm began life as the same thing….and for all the differences we ascribe, as a consequence of some differention that took place…(Mars and Venus) we still have elements of both sexes that reside deep within us. In the wild of our early evolution and even today in primitive societies could it be that people experienced/experience an intensity of physiological and emotional experiences that we have escaped the edge of knowing, by our sheltered existences….That we are attracted to the forbidden edges to know more of ourselves like a moth to a flame….to see beneath the tip of our awareness into the deeper recess of our being? |
Characters with Warts Yesterday I got a comment to my blog that raised half a dozen other questions each of which merits at least a blog's worth of response. I encourage readers to read Leger's comment because I will be exploring it in the next series of blogs. The first of these is what a writer should write. It is my position that a writer should write with a view towards getting read. At WDC the measure of what is being read is “Views.” What we do here at WDC prepares us for publication. Once published the new measure becomes, “book sales". My strategy at WDC is to keep an eye on the “Views” of what I write for clues as to what provokes reader interest. One of the most highly viewed items I have posted here was an entry to the Quickie Contest called Pageant. This item is approaching 300 views and there is something about it that made it a best seller on this site…. When I read Leger’s comments I placed them in the context of what made this vignette soar to the level of twice the views of anything else I had written. I am confounded by what made it so popular and maybe by examining it in light of Leger’s comments will have a better appreciation for why it viewed so well . The vignette involves an organized crime figure named Manny Harden. He is recruiting women for a mysterious enterprise that is so sensitive to the Cosa Nostra that it must be safeguarded at all costs. In a sense it is like the ULTRA secret in WW2 where the workers were threatened with death if the secret was compromised. Thus Manny must screen the candidates (young woman) to make sure they have the qualities and attributes suited for the job. I.e. that they could resist interrogation and are totally committed. Thus a series of trials have been devised to see if a young woman has the necessary traits and qualities for the job. In this framework in the file “The Car Builder and real estate Agent” the vignettes are stored on my portfolio . Now keep in mind most of these vignettes were written for the quickie contest. The prompts for this contest often involve fetish based concepts such as bondage, blindfolds, roleplaying, and peeping. There is something about appealing to dark compulsions and leading readers into the realm of the forbidden that resonates. If done artfully and in moderation these yearnings that many readers have can prove enhancing from within the context of a broader story. So now you have the overall context of what I’ll be discussing for the next couple of days |
| Legal and the Obscene There was a good article in the Unofficial Erotica Newsletter, UEN this week by an informed writer, as to what constitutes obscenity under the Law. She discussed a community standard, a Patently Offensive standard and an Artistic/Scientific/Lliterary/Political standard. What the law says is always a good place to start in trying to draw the line between legitimate literary expression and obscenity. She also mentioned that the law is a baseline standard. This means a point below which society will not suffer an act of human expression to fall. This is also important for a writer to consider because just because something is legal does not mean it is morally or otherwise acceptable. To a writer what this translates into is what a reader or viewer or censor will tolerate. In other words is anyone going to read it or watch it… which is very different from its legal context. Most of what is written here at writing.com I would not consider obscene in a legal sense, however some of it would certainly be considered offensive to many. This is the reason for rating classifications. Since an important litmus test of writing is whether or not it gets read, the concern of the writer is not so much with the legal standard but rather with how much the reader’s awareness is going to accept something without becoming disgusted and putting it aside. Where the line gets drawn by the public is a moving target. It varies from genre to genre and from nitch to nitch. In some cases a reader or viewer will tolerate more based upon the interest of the story and the quality in which it is written. At writing.com I am constantly groping about trying to find out where that point is and to get into the ball park and ask myself the question… “Will seventy-five percent of the reading public be comfortable with the language or graphic expression of the material. The answer to this hypothetical question frames the window in which the story will be written. |
| Sensual vs Porn Right now there is a discussion taking place in a quiet corner of writing.com as to where sensual prose leaves off and porn begins. I find the discussion interesting because I always take away something from the views of others and the views I am reading are substantative and well thought out. In my mind the way to answere the question is not to look at literature but rather at movies. Most of us I think have seen a "Blue Movie" and there is little question that these are porn. We have also seen movies that had sex in them which would not be considered Pornographic. So somewhere on the line between the two there comes a point where a viewer will draw the line and say this movie is and that movie isn't. I believe there is the same analogy in literature and to get a sense for where it is a good place to start is a porn movie. wou What a Porn movie is: 1. They are graphic….there is no attempt made to soften the graphic impact. They are a vivid rendering of methods and techniques used to express a category of sexual expression. (Heterosexual, Homosexual etc.) 2. The rendering of these methods follows a rather predictable format. In the heterosexual category a typical example would be kissing, foreplay, oral sex, normal intercourse, often with a dominant male and subservient female culminating in male ejactulation. 3. The structure of the movie is a series of scenes showing these forms of expression more or less in an orderly progression. 4. It is focused exclusively on the physiological pleasure of the category of expression. What a Porn Movie isn’t. 1. It does not rely on a story line to move the action along, rather a series of graphic scenes. 2. It does not seek to examine the emotional aspects of human sensuality 3. It does not show much variation in structure from one presentation to the next. In my view porn literature is analogous to Porm movies. They both focus on the graphic nature of a sexual act as the exclusive center of interest. They are both forms of literary expression. On HBO the past couple of seasons there was a series called Deadwood. This serial was compelling and had a high level of artistic merit. It was also charged with sensual content which was used to take it from an interesting story line to an even higher level of intensity. There were scenes that showed frontal views of males with erections, females with breasts showing performing acts of oral sex and scenes showing sexual intercourse. The only thing not shown was the graphic depiction of the union of male and female body parts. This is where the producers and directors drew the line and there was little need to go beyond it in order to get the idea of the scene across. The sensual treatment elevated the drama and took mature viewers to the edge by not over it. The sensual component was blended with the emotional state of the characters, and resonated with the story line and provided the right amount of graphic treatment to optimize the stroy. Romance writers can certainly profit from the study of how this HBO series was put together, not just the sensual components but the distinct characterization of the players involved. If you want to know the difference between erotica and porn this is a good place to start. Watch a porn movie and then watch a few episodes of Deadwood. Those who ask a writer the question,"... do you write porn?" my response is that I write Romance. Frankly unless you write for the porn movie industry, or scripts for telesex markerters I would't think there would be much of a market for porn literature. There is however, one heck of a market for Romance that takes the sensual component integrates it with emotion, story line and enough graphic detail to make it compelling while stopping short of getting in the readers face. |
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