If you follow American Idol, you already know that that the top 13 have been chosen. One of these 13 will win and it isn't necessarily the most talented.
Contests like American Idol or Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award offer a lot of exposure in a very short time. This makes it that much easier for an artist to sell their product to people. But despite TV's attempts to make it seem like they KNOW what's popular, they cannot actually predict whether the winner of said contest is ever going to land on the A list. For every hit show like American Idol there are thousands of failed pilots, hundreds of C list shows, dozens of B list shows, and handfuls of A list shows. American Idol is an A list show, but the idea that the producers could actually see into the future and predict how popular it was going to be is all smoke and mirrors. Creative Genius is an after the fact title. This is why it's ever so important for writers to write a lot of different things. But, be careful there is a cliff. When I was in first grade I got a bird's eye view of this cliff. I drew a whale in art class. Before I drew whales, I drew horses. My horse's never got a prize but my whale won me second place in our schools art show. After winning the prize ,I drew whales. I drew so many whales my art teacher said I drew too many whales. You see contestants on reality TV do this all the time. They get positive feedback and they repeat the same thing, seeking that positive feedback, bang their heads against a wall when they don't get it. Of course sometimes they do themselves too and fail. But at least that was an authentic failure. There really is no better way to fail. I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but the only answer is just to do you. When you are you, you are authentic. You may not be the most popular kid on the block. But hey, the A list is really just an accident anyway. An if you accidentally trip over it while being you, just pretend like that's what you intended. This is how you become a creative genius. First the Write While You Wait Contest runs until the 29th of February so you still have time to enter. It's free.
Moving on. I like TV. I like reality TV even though it's so far removed from reality .... it's like calling a bullet a missile. Nonetheless, I find watching reality TV as pleasurable as chocolate ice cream and peanut-butter. (Don't knock it if you haven't tried it, that's all I'm saying.) On American Idol the judges are always on the contestants to "show America who you are as an artist." On Project Runway, the judges always encourage contestants to be true to their point of view. Last seasons on America's Top Model it was all about branding. They use different slogans, but it really amounts down to one thing. Figure out what box you belong in and stay there. Boxes don't have to be a bad thing. When I discovered that I wanted to write horror, it was so freeing. I finally had a box I belonged in. I set about exploring it, reading the authors in the box, discovering that made the box. Despite years of writing horror, I didn't know that was what I was doing. So at first, this box was a big wonderful place to play. But I also discovered other boxes my writing fit into along the way. Maybe because I am naive, I continue to expand my all my boxes. Here's the thing. There is a huge difference, a monumental difference, between knowing who you are and playing to your strengths, and allowing someone -- fans, family, friends, agents, bosses-- to define the boxes for you. This is why I think advice like "brand yourself" is bad. Be you. Not some version you think people will like. This is one reason why the Indy Revolution is totally awesome. You are free to be yourself. You don't have to fit into another person's box. Ain't nobody can stop you except.... You. _I think this is going to be a long one because I'm going to address a couple of things that will on the surface seem completely unrelated which means I'm jumping into everything is everything thinking . I've never tried to put this thinking in writing before, so bear with me.
So our topics today are: "How much personal stuff should a writer share?" "Do you ever feel like two people?" Brain injuries. Since this is everything is everything, none of these things are unrelated. It doesn't matter which one I talk about first because it's connect deeply with the other two. But I have to start somewhere, so let's start with "Do you ever feel like two people?" If we were in classroom with a professor at the white board with his little black dry erase marker poised for work, I'd be the first to raise my hand. "All the time!" I'd shout. I'm not sure to what extent others have experiences this sensation, but for me it goes back to my earliest memories. I'm going to say now that I was divided in two by my name and nickname. Later I'm going to suggest that maybe I was born into duality, that we all are. But for now, let's say my names divided me in two. I was one part the nickname my family called me and I was one part my full name. And my first grade teacher, tired of me writing one one and then the other on my papers, said "You must choose who you are." I said, "But why?" She shook her head. To her the issue was simple. It made grading papers easier. For me it was a huge philosophical question, with my identity, my idea of self lying at its core. I was two people, a situation acerbated by home life. See my about page as I added a lot of personal stuff to my bio. This leads us to, "How much personal stuff should a writer share?" I don't know. I've chosen to share a bit more, which, and because I several distinct personalities— I don't actually have DID. When you don't have DID but have dived personality traits, you're called moody. Nobody has ever called me moody, but it's a good word. Anyway, I am simultaneously shy and outgoing, quite and loud, calm and bundle of energy. This brings us back to "Do you ever feel like two people?" "All the time," I answer. "And what's more research into brain injuries suggest that we might all be two people." In the early 18th century hypnotists reported seeing evidence of second personality while their patients were under. Some doctors dismissed the notion. Others said the patients had multiple personalities. But again, we're not talking DID manifestations here. Just incongruity or duality. If we fast forward to modern times, there's evidence to support that the left and right brain are in fact distinct personalities. Patients whose corpus callosum was severed either due injury or brain surgery. The corpus callosum is a band of brain tissue connecting both hemispheres of the brain. Each hemisphere has separate duties. In general terms, the "right brain" is artistic and the "left brain" is analytical. Speech tends to be orientated on the analytical side and vision on the artistic side. Now, I'm over simplifying a very complex system. What you need to take away from this is that corpus callosum allows for communication between the two hemispheres. When this is severed, scientists have seen some interesting things. Remember the hand from Adam's family. Well, some people with a severed corpus callosum experience "wondering hands." This can be anything from groping to punching someone. There was also a simple experiment where patients were asked their ideal job was, first verbally, and then in shown the question in writing as well as a set of pictures to choose from. The patient might say banker, but choose a picture of a racecar driver. In fact, when asked what they wanted to be the verbal response was most often an analytical job while the visual response was often artistic. I suspect that this is intuitively recognized in language. See: "Me, myself, and I" and whenever we refer to ourselves in the the plural. And we're back to "How much personal stuff is too much?" and "Do you ever feel like two people." There's an old saying: "I'm of two minds on this." Two years ago a friend of mine was staying at my place. She had to catch flight from Incheon Airport. I was living in Wanju at the time, about two hours by direct bus. She got up at Six A.M.. Because of insomnia, I sometimes don't sleep for weeks at a time. When it's at it's worst, I might get an hour an night. Falling asleep can take hours and sometimes not at all. If I do fall asleep, I'll wake up in as little as thirty minutes. It makes me grouch and irritable and not myself. When I agreed for her to come stay with me a month prior, I was getting about five hours a night. By the time she came, I was in a rough patch, not having slept more than three hours a night for two weeks. As would have it, we stayed up late chatting and around one, I fell into the deepest sleep I'd had in months.
As you can imagine, I was not particularly happy to be woken up at 6 A.M.I didn't get up to see her off, which resulted in her slamming things. We hadn't seen each other in a while, so she'd kind of come for my company as much for convenience. Well, I don't really know how a two hour bus ride to the airport was convenient. I wasn't being a good friend-- I was awake by then, but drifting in and out of sleep -- and knew it. But I was too exhausted to drag myself out of bed. I remember telling her there was some fruit in the fridge. I think it was apples. It was a sad peace offering. "I brought my owned damned tangerines," she barked. "I know," I barked back. "Refrigerators don't generally make their own fruit." I fell asleep and by the time I woke up, she had gone. We made up later. In the meantime, I had a great idea for a story. In it, the refrigerator would produce fruit. The story was first called "Don't Eat the Fruit." I later retitled it, "Irresistible." I'm particularly proud of this story. At the time, I hadn't done anything remotely like it. You could say it's my first real story. Today, it found a home with Bards and Sages Quarterly. Freud compared the mind to an iceberg. Our conscious is everything that we see above water and our subconscious is everything below the surface. I first became that much of writing was subconscious some months after finishing my third book. I realized I'd writing 100,000 words or so about hunger. Yes, it was horror with a decent monster, but all that time I was writing about monsters, I was also writing about hunger. But not, the emotion limited to the intake of food. My soul ( or some deep part of me) was / is hungry. To my own ears this sounds rather melodramatic but it's true. So I wrote a whole book about hunger and not one word of it was conscious. Now that's not to say, I won't bring the themes out as I edit it.
The unconcious is a nonverbal beast. It has no words of it's own so it enters out lives in odd ways. We do things and we don't entirely understand why we're doing them. I have a theory that what drives humans to dance, sing, and write stories is an unconscious need to share our experiences. Carl Jung, a psychologist, purposed that all of the human experience is contained in the collective unconscious. I purpose that the collective unconscious is very real. It is all around us, in the music, art, movies and literature we share. How else can we explain why one mention of fire by Robert frost calls to mind Dante's inferno? Ultimately, I think transference of knowledge is at the core of what drives us to tell stories, to read, to watch and to sing about them. When I was a kid, I used to draw, mostly horses, but I could copy anything I saw or remembered seeing. Most of my pictures were drawn with a number two pencil. Later, when I was in middle school, I was introduced to pencil sets. I drew some incredible fish with a cheap set of colored pencils. My teacher handed me a set of water colors. Not the kind that comes in a tube, but the kind that is comes in a tray of twelve. I painted a picture of some water lilies and the forest. I remember my teacher coming to stand and watch. She said it could have been painted by a professional. I don't know by what standard she judged this. Art was always something I could just do and I never really cared if I was good at it. I can't judge know because the painting was lost, as was so much of my art, after I entered foster care at age 14. I continued to draw a little here and there, and even took up painting after college. Paints and canvas are not terribly portable, so I gave up all artistic pursuits outside of writing when I came to the ROK (Republic of Korea). It wasn't really a sacrifice or it hadn't seemed like it. I never wanted it the way I wanted and still want to write. I saw art as thing that took time away from writing.
Two days ago (as of writing this) I bought myself a gift. It's a electronic drawing pad and pen. I wanted this so I could make electronic mind maps for my books. But I have a copy of Artrage. I drew a horse, a nose and a mouth. I drew the horse because I know to draw them from memory. I drew the nose and the mouth for practice. But something much more important happened when I was drawing and I want to put what that was in to words. I've written a dozen sentences and deleted them all. Art was something could always just do and I think it's something I need to do, even if it takes time away from other pursuits. |
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