Teaching & Lessons to be Learned

29JAN17 Another quiet Sunday morning. Started with a scan of what is going on in the FB universe, and came across one of my former students posting a link to these two pictures

                           

Very happy that my student is expressing herself using photos and political cartoons! I plan on using both pictures in class this week as we finish our chapter on Huey Long and the Great Depression in Louisiana. I hope both pictures will spark some deep discussion on what has happened in the past (one of our vocabulary words this week is KKK) and what lessons can be learned for the present day and future.

As far as writing goes, I hit 73 thousand words for my main saga. I think it will end up hitting 100K by the end of the first draft. As usual, I have a lot of stuff going on, and am solving problems as I go back through it. Problem I fixed last night was that I had merged two characters previously, but never went through the whole manuscript and changed everything needing changing for that to happen. I smoothed that up a bit as well as adding more description here and there, especially for one scene. Not sure how long it will take me to complete this saga, maybe never! It is now composed of three books, but there are a lot of things that I still need to put in there, as well as hefty timeline issues I need to fix. Who knows. It is something I love to do, so at least I have that going for me, lol.

No additional pics for this post. The two above speak volumes. Have a great day.

The Book of Shells

The Book of Shells…Sounds innocent enough for a book title, maybe a memoir of long walks on the beach and the treasures found there. But what if…what if it were about creatures like hermit crabs…creatures that inhabit the bodies of larger and larger creatures, that take over and kill the host mind and live inside their ‘empty’ shells? 

They could start out small, a worm here, a fly, a cockroach, innocuous and harmless to us really, that is until they grow to a size that demands a bigger shell to live in. Then the Book of Shells becomes a totally different kind of memoir. Instead of a colorful selection of sandy treasures of the shore it becomes a list of the bodies that these creatures have inhabited, the creatures that they killed and then paraded around inside, disguised in their bigger and bigger shells. Sounds like a good book. Reminds me of the movie Fallen, with Denzel Washington and John Goodman. In it a devil inhabits bodies of other beings. Good flick that.  Fallen IMBD page

Pic for today...

Drams of Dreams

The things you dream about…

I dreamt that the vital organs are located where they are (above the stomach) so that as food and water wiggle their way down the esophagus the vital organs get first dibs. Small bits of no-need-to-digest nutrients and water are sidelined and sent to the heart and lungs before heading down to the stomach. Darn science teacher in me was like that doesn’t happen. And the other science teacher in me is thinking, you should look it up, you never know, it might be true, some little connecting esophageal tubes may lead to and feed the organs above the stomach. It could happen. Maybe no one has discovered this yet.

I also went to a conference in my dreams, a meeting of the military minded. New and old tech were being rolled out for display and performance reviews. A newer more streamlined version of the F-14, with a bottom fin below the nose and a beefier version of the A-6 were rolled out of the hangar as well. I was there with my camera. I was excited, remembering the days of sea voyages and launches.

I know where some of my dreams come from, the military conference was influenced by seeing the old helicopters during the inaugural parade. As far as the food and vital organs…not sure about that one! I don’t think either dream sequence will enter into my writing, but it is interesting nonetheless. A good number of my dreams end up evolving into stories. So who knows.

Picture today? A-6 all the way all day and all night.

Agatha Christie and Censorship

02 JAN 2017

Research into school stuff this week led me into some dark corners of the internet and uncovered censorship I was never aware of. For example, Ten Little Indians, a nonsense rhyme I heard as a kid, was not always ten little Indians but was The Ten Little [N-word]s! And one of the biggest areas where this is pertinent is a very popular mystery novel by Agatha Christie titled (now) And Then There Were None. The original title was Ten Little [N-word]s. They changed the title and the novel.

This led me through a long chain of events to an IMDB page about one Stepin Fetchit. Here is a partial section of the page, to give you an idea of the level of censorship:

"Because of the degrading image Stepin Fetchit represents to many African-Americans, Perry's appearances in mainstream movies typically are cut out of the picture, regardless of the narrative logic. Most of his films have not been widely released on video."

And also to a Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Michigan of all places.
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

We also watched the not-for-TV version of The Green Mile, excellent movie. The movie owes some of its greatness to the amazing writing that really captures the feel of long ago. Example, John Coffey, refers to Tom Hank's character as Boss, while Tom Hanks' character refers to him by his name. This was normal back then, blacks referred to whites using a title or sir, but whites referred to blacks without titles or sir. When they are introduced, the black man is introduced to the white man and not the other way round.

FYI, I grew up in Los Angeles next to a black boy of roughly the same age, my closest friend by all accounts. I am not racist by any means, but I found a lot of this troubling in terms of changing things. I don't like the n-word, never have, but changing things to make it more palatable does not feel right to me. Just leave the past as it is. If we white-wash this stuff, maybe it will happen again. On the other hand, people who haven't seen these images or read these words may be inspired to use them again.

Now, how does this pertain to writing? Well, it makes me wonder. I will have stories written in different time periods, throughout the history of my world. Would it make it more real to censor some past instances?

One phrase I came across today I think will stick with me for a while, and be embedded in my writing somehow:
Southern and other white Americans could experience fondness for black folk, but would "put them in their place" at any time, for any reason. 

Amazing that this was the norm, not too long ago.

May your days be good and long upon this Earth.

03 DEC 16 Ode to a Young Eve

I'd really have to become a much more better writer to do an Ode to a Young Eve real justice, but since I am thinking about it now, this is what you get!

I had a dream, and in it I was thinking about religion. Lots of things bother me about religion, but that whole subject will have to wait for a later date. What struck me as I lay in bed is that Eve never had a childhood. Adam neither, for that matter. Does that make a difference? Growing up is such an integral part of what makes us human. All of our trials and tribulations, learning from our mistakes. And this thought led me to the whole notion of Eve being made from a piece of Adam. God is God! Why didn't he just make Eve and say he took a piece from Adam? Or just duplicate a piece of Adam and not take a piece out of him. Point being that there are multiple ways to show integration and/or loss when you are the All mighty.

Anyways, thanks for listening. Comments are always appreciated, as well as different points of view.

Thanksgiving Break

Well. It's Thanksgiving! And with my regular day job giving me an entire week off, this is a great time for writing! Yay! It would be great for visiting with family too of course, but they are not close by.

I have been working on a winter anthology submission that is past deadline already. But work comes first. And my submission is having some issues as well. It's not flowing as easily as other stories have. I have all sorts of things going on, maybe too many things. But each time I work on it I come across and fix another plot/world issue. So there is progress, and it is good progress, but it is slow going. This winter story features magic of a highly unusual nature, even more unusual than usual!

One problem I ran into is that I changed some of the underlying world basics involved in the story, something that I don't like to do, but I had some good ideas that needed a bit of tweaking to be even better.

I feel too another issue I have is I still need to work on showing not saying. One key thing for this story is that one of the characters feels both happy and sad that his mother died.  How do I show that and not say it?  Here is one piece of the tale that I came up with on that angle:

Far to the southwest, August’s whole body jerked taut at a sudden, overwhelming ringing noise. He fell to the floor, twitching, the ancient document in his hands crumbling and tearing into pieces as his hands clenched with uncontrollable seizures. Tears welled in his eyes and his heart shattered into a million shards as the ringing sound grew louder and louder before passing through him and away. As the sound faded, August’s body went limp, his every muscle exhausted from the strain.

“No,” he whimpered softly, “No no no,” and then a final, almost unheard, “Yes.”

Another thing I am working on tonight is family dynamics. Between the sisters, between August and his aunts, etc...

Picture for today is of a woman. It has some of the feel for one of the sisters in my story. Now if it only had her changing into a fish that would be perfect!

Hyperion

08NOV16
I am reading Hyperion today, by Dan Simmons. I have tried to read it several times before and have never found the time nor inclination to finish reading it. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it is a science fiction story about a pilgrimage to a planet with a very mysterious being. So far it is a great read, though I am distracted by the fact of how much it reminds me of the Canterbury Tales.
One thing I do find fascinating is the idea of a Treeship, this massive, growing spaceship and the Templars who man it. The picture below is a cover illustration of a treeship.
The book is the first of several about the same universe. Written by a former teacher, it makes me wonder how my stories are affected by my teaching. Will I hide lessons in amongst the words as this teacher obviously did?
If you've read Hyperion, what are your thoughts about the book? What worked, what didn't work? I confess, that it is not my style at all. I really did like his introductions of the various characters as they sat for their first meal together. Good stuff that. His character development was great. Easy to see each one in my mind's eye.