The Third Commandment of Writing

3)Start with simple before you try complex.

I really can't overemphasize this.  Let me give you
a physical example from weight training.  Did you
know that you could work out every day, become
the strongest person in the world, and yet never
win a championship?  Simple.  All you'd have to do
is put just one pound more than you can lift on the
bar.  And the bar won't move.  The guy next to you,
more savvy about his limitations, places an appropriate
but smaller amount--and lifts it.  You lose.  He wins.

It's not fair, and it happens every day.  You are just
beginning your career.  More likely, you are in a stage
of "advanced education"--not actually in your career
yet, just learning.  You've spent the last ten years
reading complex, challenging novels.  Now it's your
turn.  Shall you write a complex, challenging novel?

NO!  This would be like training to run a marathon by
running 25 miles, your first time out of the blocks. 
You'll kill yourself.  Only a "natural" marathoner can
do such a thing (if they even exist!).  But almost
anyone can train to finish that full distance if they take
it slowly.

And this is what you must do. Start with the well-plotted
story before you go for the literary flavor.  Write short
stories before you try novels.  Use single protagonists
before you try multiple POV.  Use simple structure
before you try something fractured and experimental.

I know, I know...you're bursting to show the world all
you can do.  But if you want to learn to juggle, do you
start with six chainsaws, or three scarves?  Beware
your death instinct, the part of us that (in a healthy
person) exists to kill our egos.  It can also motivate
you to self-destructive behaviors, including
over-stretching your skills. 

For your first five published stories, or your first
novel--seek simplicity.  You have a lifetime to show
off.

The Descent (2006)

The Descent (2006)

Starting about eight months ago, I started hearing rumors about a British horror film called “The Descent,” directed by the same guy (Neil Marshall) who created “Dog Soldiers,” a superior if low-budget werewolf film from a couple of years back.

Well, I finally saw it yesterday, and I’ve got good news and bad news.  The good news is that this is good, grueling, tense horror dealing with six women spelunking in an Appalachian cave a year after a disaster struck their group.  Those who don’t want to know more should stop reading now.
*
SPOILERS
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The six women are MUCH better realized than victims…er, protagonists in most horror films.  Enough better that I wish Marshall had gone all the way there.  There were conversations left unfinished, questions unasked, emotional through-lines that felt choppy and unsatisfying.  All of this is a tribute to what works, however.  There are beasties down in the cave, and I 90% believe them, but there were moments when, frankly, I did not.  So these creatures are blind…hunt by hearing alone…and have been good enough at blind hunting to support an actual underground colony.  Well, that’s too good for these women to survive in some of the situations we see.

Further, they may be blind, but the “Crawlers” would certainly feel heat. There is at least one scene where a “Crawler” virtually walks right over a flaming torch without noticing it.  I popped completely out of my disbelief there, and that’s damaging in a film like this.

That said, the acting, most of the effects, and the sound design are excellent. The set design—all of that cave stuff was filmed in a studio…is terrific.  And the movie generates real fear.  But I just can’t give it an “A.”  A “B” is what Descent earns, in my book…if you happen to LOVE intense horror.  If not, it’s probably a “C” or less.

Great Sky Woman Interview

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=37424

Second Commandment of Writing

The Ten Commandments of Writing #2:


"Thou shalt balance plot, characterization, and poetics."

Plot is what a character does in a given situation. 
Characterization is the externalization of a human
being's inner world, generally through actions,
perceptions, and emotions.  Poetics is the use of
language   to guide the unconscious mind of the
reader--or of imagery and sound to guide the
mind of the movie viewer.

These three things, in combination, create that
mystical thing called "Thematics."  Imagine each
of them as one corner of a triangle, with thematics
within the triangle itself, and you'll grasp what I'm saying.

If you will look at your writing in this fashion, look
for the interaction of these three aspects, you will
accelerate the process of your work tremendously.

LIFEWRITING demands that you learn all you can
about human psychology--beginning with yourself.
Why do you have the career, relationship history
and physical body you currently have?  Take
responsibility for it, without blaming anything or
anyone external. If you can do this without falling
into guilt, blame, or shame, you will learn more in
one year than most people do in ten.

As for Plot, we use the Hero's Journey, because it
is the ONLY plot structure that not only organizes
ideas into story, but comments upon the very
structure of life itself.  Therefore, every time
you consider plot, you are questioning your very
Cosmology (reality map) and Epistomology (the
means of creating that map) themselves.  This
is deep, hard work--we've all got a LOT of cleaning
up to do.  None of us created these maps entirely
consciously and maturely.  Most of the time,
these maps were given to us in the cradle. 

As for Poetics, the rule is simple: read ten times as
much as you write, and read one level "up" from
your writing ambitions.  In other words, do you
want to write science fiction?  Then don't just read
science fiction.  Read science, and read the best
quality fiction your mind can decipher (everyone
has a limit!).  If you eat steak, how does it come
out on the other end?  Well, that degradation
process works with reading and writing as well.
If you START with b.s., if you read garbage, what
exactly do you think is going to happen to your
unconscious creative process?  Read poetry, the
best from all cultures, back through history.  Don't
be trapped by contemporary ideas., or your work
will be utterly plebian and dead in the water by
next year.  Poetics are the domain of the unconscious
mind...you must use the conscious mind to program
and prepare it.

The Ten commandments of Writing

I maintain several lists for different purposes.  One is a strictly "Lifewriting for writers" list, and for that one, I created a "Ten Commandments of Writing" series.  I like it so much that I thought I'd share it with you guys...

1) Thou Shalt Write

Hmmm...the 10 commandments of writing?  Why not?
I have so much fun waking up every morning and
wondering what I'm going to say to all of you.  This
time, I'm going to organize the next ten days to create
a 'ten commandments of writing.'  In other words, if I
had to create a system for my own son to follow on
his path to literary excellence, what would I have him
do?  This is an excellent thought experiement, because
it asks me to boil down the most important things
I've learned over forty years of writing.

And the first and most vital one is: thou shalt write. 
A writer isn't someone who publishes, or makes
herself wealthy, or wins awards, or gets movies.
A writer is someone who writes.  You have to grasp
how important this is.  In every field I know of, the
most excellent people practice their skills five days
a week minimum. The very best are polishing
every single day.

There is a shining star within you, a flaming beacon
of creativity that roared like a forest fire when you
were a child, and has doubtless dimmed a bit since
then.  But if you write every day, you can re-open
a channel to that sacred and intimate space.  I will
repeat here and now the advice I was given, advice
I've passed on to thousands of writers.  It is a
combination of the advice given by Robert Heinlein,
and Ray Bradbury:

1) Write a story a week, or a story every other week.
2) Finish what you write.
3) Put it in the mail, keep it in the mail until it sells.
4) Don't re-write except to editorial requests.

If you will do this, and read obsessively, you are darned
near doomed to succeed. 

Has a nice ring about it, doesn't it?  See you tomorrow!

Happy Anniversary to me!

Today is the eight anniversary of the day my life changed forever. The day my perfect partner, Tananarive Due, promised to have and to hold me. She is the best decision I never made: from the first moment my heart opened, I knew who and what she was, and needed only to chart the most honorable and efficient course to her side. I love her as I never knew I could love another human being. I just wanted to say here, publicly, that love is not only possible, I believe it to be the natural state of existence. All else is illusion, is a dream of separation. Thank God I awakened.

Seven-Level meditation

Yesterday’s conversation about Mel Gibson struck a note with me.  Shall we forgive? Forget?  And if we cannot forgive others, how can we ever forgive ourselves for our own failings?  And yet if we forgive too much, aren't we exposing ourselves to danger?  Are we at the most basic level good? Or evil?  Can we perfect ourselves, or is that the province of God’s Grace? 

I confess that when it comes to such questions, I know I have no actual answers, and probably never will.  I do, on the other hand (as you may have noticed) have opinions.

And the core opinion I have is that if you juxtapose thoughts on these matters from around the world, there do seem to be consensus points.  Where these different points of view agree, that is where I concentrate my attention.

To me, good and evil are largely created by human perception.  In other words, during the Crusades, a great Christian warrior would be described as “angelic” by his own side, and “demonic” by the Moslems.  No, there are certain behaviors: child murder or abuse, for instance, that are ALMOST universally considered “evil,” but does that make them so?  I know I consider them to be, but I remind myself that there are contexts where almost any behavior, no matter how heinous, could be considered appropriate.  Humanity has agonized over these questions for quite some time, and I’m not likely to be the one who arrives with the solution.

But we have to have a place to start, and I know what the foundation of my own personal practice is.  Do I believe that, without Grace, I can perfect myself?  No.  That sort of spontaneous awakening or enlightenment resists conscious, deliberate ego-driven effort.  But it also seems quite true that there are roads and action-streams that lead one to a life of contribution and love, and that it is in the process of living such lives that we have our best chance of touching the spiritual realm.

For me, this entails a morning meditation program.  It shifts and varies a bit in detail, but the core of it remains the same.  It is this practice  that stirs up my inner muck, clouding the waters in my soul.  If I can then run my “filter”—writing, speaking, praying, right action—I notice that, from day to day, things get clearer in there, and my daily actions are more direct, compact, efficient, and joyous.  I act spontaneously in accordance with my deepest beliefs, and everything in life seems more elegant and effective.

It starts when I sit up in bed in the morning.  Close my eyes, steady my breathing.  I start with the miracle of breath.  This is First Chakra: “I am.”  For one more day, life is mine to live.  Such an incredible gift.  I balance breath, movement and structure.  When those are flowing into each other nicely, I envision a mirror before me.  There are various games I play here, but the last few mornings I have envisioned a perfect, enlightened Steve.  Perfect body, perfectly clear aura, calm and centered mind and heart. 

This is where things can get painful.  I climb up the chakras, one at a time, and note where my own mental poisons have crippled my ability to fully manifest that perfected Steve.   Here are a sample of the issues:
1) Survival. Where have I allowed existential fear to influence my attitudes and behaviors?
2) Sex.  Have I behaved with complete compassion and awareness in all of my sexual interactions?  This arena has pretty much cleaned itself up since my marriage to Tananarive, but from time to time those flirtatious interactions can be confusing and distracting.  I ain’t perfect.
3) Power.  Where do I crave more than Knowledge, Service, and Self-Expression?  Where did I covet the success of others, or seek to be someone or something other than who and what I am?  It is not for me to determine how the outside world sees me—the determinate of all external success. Insanity and deep, deep emotional dysfunction lurks here.
4) Emotion: Do I come from love in all interactions?  God knows this one can be a killer.  Do you really love your enemies?  Is that even possible?  Have I made the deepest heartspace connection to my family? Do they truly know that every action I take, I take with them in mind?  Do I start with love for myself, and then extend that out to every human being, plant and animal I encounter all day long?  Do I live in such a manner that, if all men and women felt and acted in a similar way, the world would be a good place to live?
5) Expression and learning: am I honest with myself and others? Am I continually learning and growing?  When I speak and write, do I seek to communicate those things that words alone cannot contain?
6) Intellect: do I examine the perceptual filters through which I view reality?  Anyone with powerful political or religious beliefs would be very well advised to examine their filters daily.  How do I organize thought?  What is my world view, and how exactly did I come to believe in it?
7) Spirit: No matter what the books say, no matter how elegantly or eloquently priests, ministers or shamans speak, I cannot KNOW what lies on the other side of death.  I can have faith that I am right, and find a Way to live life, but cannot KNOW in the same way “knowing” operates in the Newtonian realm.  I cannot apply the Scientific Method to the existence of God.  So I must live my life such that, if at the moment of Death, I see there is Nothingness, my life has been lived to pass alone the greatest light and love to those left behind.  And if at that terrible, wonderful moment I see that there is indeed a living, personal God, I am prepared to stand before him and say honestly that I did my best to live according to His laws, as I could understand them.  Life lived in the context of our inevitable death must be prepared for either—I refuse to be disappointed, and to the degree that it is possible, I will face that moment without fear.

Creating a being of Light in the inner mirror, and then examining all the ways I have “sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” places responsibility for my earthly existence squarely on my own shoulders, and one day at a time I seek to carry that burden honorably along the Thousand Mile Road. 

Mel Gibson and entrenched racism

By now, everyone has heard about superstar Mel Gibson’s alcoholic meltdown, and the anti-Semitic comments caught on tape by the Malibu PD. Understandably, his "Jews run the world" comments, follwowing the controversial "Passion of the Christ" (considered by many to be anti-Semitic, or capable of stirring such...passions) are raising eyebrows around the world.

I am certainly not Jewish, so it requires a thought experiment to really get into this: I asked myself: what would I think if he had, say, made a gigantically popular Civil War era film suggesting blacks were happily and appropriately enslaved, and then followed up with a tirade about “Niggers are ruining this country, and polluting our women.”

It would be reasonable for me to suspect that on some level, that was exactly what he actually thought. Alcohol is no excuse—it releases monsters of the id, but those monsters had to be in there to begin with, didn’t they? In this case, I suspect they were monsters of the Superego—programmed attitudes given him by his father, which he has struggled against his whole life.

In the aforementioned case, my first response would be to speak to black people who had worked with Gibson, to see what their experience had been. If it had been positive, I would assume that Gibson, like most of us, is dealing with very serious issues that scramble his perceptual equipment. He’s been known as an ultra-Conservative Christian, and anytime someone swings strongly to one extreme or the other, it is reasonable to suggest that they are viewing reality through a powerful belief filter. Such filters are generally tucked into place with our bedtime stories, long before conscious, rational thought can evaluate them.

So, I believe Gibson’s protestations that anti-Semitism is unChristian. I also believe it to be quite possible that he has warred with it all his life. You know, I have an interesting attitude about alcohol. The first time you do something crappy under its influence, you have an excuse: you didn’t know. After that, you CHOSE to use a substance that you KNEW would make you violent, profane, promiscuous, whatever. You chose that. And as a result, you can no longer blame the substance quite so readily. My guess? Gibson will have several very, very grim huddles with Jewish friends, and members of the Jewish community. Groveling apologies will be made, donations offered, public service arranged. Perhaps his production company will make a film about the Holocaust. In time, Hollywood will forget most of this, because it is profitable to do so. But you can believe that many of his Jewish fans will not. Nor should we.

I think it is vital not to point the finger: who among us does not have ugly thoughts and voices lurking in our heads? We must be vigilant, especially those of us with access to media. The country is so divided right now. The world is in such turmoil. We really didn’t need this. But since it happened…let it trigger healthy conversation about the depths of the human heart, and how we might best come to live together. Stardom elevated Gibson to god status. It is best we remember that he is just a man, heir to the same fleshly and spiritual failings that devil us all.

But Mel…there is a limit to my understanding and compassion. Third time’s the charm.

Miami Vice (2006)

Wish I could say that this one was a winner, but it doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped, is definitely a triumph of style over substance—to the degree that it is a triumph.  This updating—or re-boot—of the groundbreaking  1980’s television series is shot on HDV, has a pounding soundtrack, and two ultra-cool heroes.  Heck, even if I was disappointed with the amount of time Foxx is offscreen (they lavish time and attention on the relationship between Colin Ferrel’s “Sonny” Crockett and Gong Li as a mysterious money launderer, Micheal Mann has the heuvos to give Jamie Foxx an actual relationship (including a very nice love scene).  But truth be told, it is overlong, it drags, characters are often sketched rather than filled in.  There are basically three action set pieces, beautifully done.  But overall I found myself feeling restless at times, and can’t give it more than a “B.”
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Warning: Sambo alert!
Yes, it’s time to discuss racial politics in film a bit.  I predict that “Vice” will be a disappointment at the box office, and would have been willing to predict that before I saw it, based on the rumor that Foxx had  a love scene. 

We’ll see.  A hint: looking around the Internet for movie reviews, and seeing how few of them even mentioned Foxx’s relationship, as opposed to the amount of attention given to Ferrel’s.  True, there was more screen time and intensity there (of course.)

Another problem: the arc of relationships in movies goes
1)     Boy Meets Girl
2)     Boy Loses Girl
3)     Boy Gets Girl.

This is probably the most common pattern in all of Cinema, perhaps even of world literature.  Variations are played upon this theme, of course.  Now…consider the “Boy Meets Girl” arc to contain an intense, involving, hot-blooded love scene, and you’ll have refined this successful and consistent pattern.  I dare you to find a single week in the past twenty years when at least one movie playing in major cities did not contain this pattern.  And I equally dare you to find a single instance of this pattern given to non-white males, where the movie was considered a mainstream success.

Of course, blacks are doing somewhat better than Asians.  Asian men must be pretty disgusted looking at the number of their women presented as love interests for white guys…at the same time that Asian men get no play at all.  Not at all.  If they get leads in movies, it is only as emasculated, celibate martial arts monks.  In the entire history of American film, I can remember only one film where an Asian man got laid: “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.”  Nothing else that I can remember at all. 
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Reading reviews and reader’s comments, it’s interesting to note some of the reactions.  Reading between the lines, it is easy to see very, very serious issues.  Guys talking about “not wanting to see Jamie Foxx’s butt” or “there were too many sex scenes” and implying that Foxx’s should have been cut…completely predictable.

But there is something else I wonder about.  Yes, all movies with non-white males having sex underperform at the box office.  No, I’m not saying that these are all wonderful movies, torpedoed by racism.  In fact, I often see flaws in these movies myself.

And I wonder about that.  Could it actually be true that the average film in white non-white males drop trou could actually be below-average in quality?  That’s a little boggling, trying to figure out what in the living hell might cause THAT.  Because it certainly isn’t true when white guys do it.  And there is a possibility that occurs, one rather disturbing in implication.

It is this.  Please follow my reasoning, and I’m sorry if it is a bit torturous, but here it goes:

1) racism is so hard-wired into the human (especially the male human) nervous system.  This results in an average   10% aversion  factor.  A feeling of discomfort seeing “the other” outside of their familiar, supportive, non-threatening roles. 
2)This factor would cause an average 10% drop-off in box office in any film depicting images disturbing on this level.  Say, mating behavior.  Of course, if the mating behavior was interracial (black man, white woman) the box office would take an even bigger hit.  Explicit love scenes would be even worse.
4)     NO ONE will admit to being racist on this level, unless they have anonymity (note the internet chats).  But that racism will subtly influence reviews (“I didn’t believe the relationships” “the love scenes stopped the movie” or criticisms of completely different aspects of the film.  You see this commonly when films contain a political content contrary to the orientation of the viewer.  The whole movie just feels “lousy.”
5)     Because of the above factors, a director who DOES put such images into their film has gone just a little crazy.  If he doesn’t understand the risk he is putting his film under, and listening to the nudging “advice” of his studio to trim this or that bit of dark-skinned flesh…well, such a person is probably going to make other mistakes in judgement too.  In essence, he is well-intentioned, but committing a bit of career suicide.
6)     Film is a collaborative medium.  Hundreds of people have input into pacing, effects, music, scripting, acting, etc.  No one person can really do it alone, despite the auteur theories of filmmaking.  Now take another look at that 10% disconnect theory.  I think that when people are working on a film that touches their hearts, they put extra time and energy into it.  And when they work on a film that offends them…even subliminally, they simply put in a day’s work.  And great films require more than that.  They require people willing to go the extra mile.  When that 10% disconnect kicks in, technicians and craft people smile, come to work, go home…and never understand why they aren’t QUITE as invested in this project.  As a result, the director doesn’t get the kind of brutal, honest, creative feedback he needs to lift the film from the pedestrian.

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In other words (and this is spooky) one can look at the history of racial images in film (and television.  And literature) and see a mirror of the evolution of race relations in America.  That such relations have been twisted not only by an ugly history (slaver) but also the actual neurophysiological structure of the brain (Amydalic response to “the Other” when visually identifiable.
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But note: saying “10% aversion” does not, in any way, mean things are hopeless.  I watch Will Smith and Jamie Foxx, and I suspect one of these fine performers are going to find a way to break through.  Audiences, are, slowly, learning and opening their hearts to embrace the humanity of other groups.  This stuff is TOUGH.  In fact, if you follow my reasoning, you see one of the reasons peace has been so hard to achieve, why war and rape and massive denial are so common.

What is the way out?  Forward.  I see nothing in our past that gives me more hope than our present, or our future.
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The truth is that this is one of the main problems I have with Conservatism.  In speaking with my Conservative friends, I find them harking back to “the old days” when, in their thought, people were better, and we were freer.  And they are damned uncomfortable when it is pointed out that there was NOT more freedom.  There was less.  But that freedom was concentrated in the white community, especially white male heterosexual Christians.  If you are not of this group, you are VERY unlikely to look backwards to any “Good Old Days.”

And they look at me, and suddenly remember that I’m black, and the room gets a little chillier.  No, I don’t want to go backwards—I want to go ahead.  But nor do I want to throw the baby out with the bath-water.  Gun Control, Child-Rearing, Education, National Defense—on many issues I tend to be far more “Conservative” than my Liberal friends.  Truth is, I get it from both sides, until they relax and say, “oh, that’s just Steve.”

And I guess I can be content with that.  I guess, ultimately, I have to be.

Writing--and Living--From the Inside Out

The trick with Lifewriting is to grasp that you are your own primary audience.  That sales or awards or anything else are entirely secondary to being honest to YOU. 

How to do this?  You must develop a set of theories about how human beings operate, what the world is, how we can best live together.  What is love?  What is worth dying for?  How much freedom shall we sacrifice for security, or vice versa?

These questions have plagued philosophers, psychologists, and politicians for generations.  I have my own answers to each of these.  Some of them are clear, and solid.  Others are more flexible and less dogmatic (my dabbling in politics is notoriously likely to be more philosophical than historical in basis.)  But still, you must be prepared to defend your positions, because in essence, that is what a story is: a conversation setting out part of your beliefs about the structure of the universe.

An example: in my Outer Limits episode “A Stitch In Time” there is a moment when a woman has the opportunity to travel back in time and kill the man who raped her.  Executives at the company wanted me to have her walk away, realizing that if she changed her own past in such a fashion, many other women would suffer.  I stared at them, and  said “It’s easy for us to say that.  We’re all guys.”  And indeed, there wasn’t a woman in the room.  “Go home and ask your wives about that one.”

I rarely push back hard against television and film folks, but this was a matter of principle.  I’ve dealt with rape victims for decades, and I haven’t met one who wouldn’t move heaven and earth to go back and change that part of their past.  This ties in intimately with my beliefs about the most basic motivations in the human spirit: survival, and a healthy sexual expression.  We’ll do almost anything to live without fear and dysfunction in these arenas.

Well, they came back the next day looking pretty sheepish.  To a woman, their wives agreed with me.  They shot it my way.
##
I tell my students often: “I’m not asking you to accept my values and beliefs.  I want you to develop YOURS.  To be prepared to die defending them, because ultimately that is what life is, a daily expression of your deepest values.” 

The LIFEWRITING YEAR LONG is based on ideas like this: to clarify what we are as human beings, and then find ways to communicate it in our work.  More, to integrate our world view into the STRUCTURE of our work, and our lives. 

Monster House (2006)

My favorite movie so far this year. Wow. This Spielberg production hits all the notes right, feeling like a stellar collaboration with, say, Steven King. Somehow, the filmmakers remembered all of the fear, wonder, and hope of childhood, and created a computer-generated film with the first fully human characters I've ever seen in the medium. Well...the characters and situations are SLIGHTLY flattened out (where the heck are all the adults?) but I had the clear and continual sense that I was watching a breakthrough in the field. The story is basic, and deceptively complex. A local neighborhood Mean Old Man lives in a Spooky House. Local kids are terrified to step onto his lawn, and for damned good reason. Then one Halloween...
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Heck, I'm not going to spoil it. No, the movie isn't perfect. But it is a virutally perfect (pun intended) realization of an idea. More, the human beings work as human beings, without that spooky, empy, zomboid appearance that kept me away from "Polar Express." This one is a minor classic, and my hat is absolutely off to all involved. WARNING: this movie has genuinely scarey moments. Think before you take the kids. I give it, warts and all, an A+ for vastly exceeding my expectations, and thrilling me from opening to closing credits.

No Gain, No Loss

“When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached. No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.”

Boy, does this ever sound like a fever dream of Liberal philosophical excess. It would seem that such a position on life would lead to an inability to defend or differentiate between friends and enemies, good and bad, right and wrong, gain and loss.And yet some of the deadliest warriors who have ever lived embraced such a path.

And some of the smartest people I’ve ever known have guided their lives in such a manner.

I remember a conversation with a Scientologist (I have to assume that it was that aspect of his life that prompted his comments) in which he asserted that any human experience or thought could be communicated linguistically. As the above quote suggests, there are some states which, if they have not been experienced, simply exceed language’s capacity.

But is it useful? Well…I currently have a situation in my life where an opportunity MAY be arising. If it happens, it will be the single greatest thing that has ever happened in my career. Too many of my interests and talents, hopes and dreams come together in this particular situation. And as we all know, most such situations don’t work out.

I absolutely CANNOT allow myself to hope too much.And yet…I must also bring 100% of my skill, energy, creativity, integrity, and enthusiasm to the table, or there is even LESS chance of it happening.

I mean…the truth is that people’s dreams are fulfilled every day. I have had wonderful, wonderful things happen to me over the course of my life. This could well be another one.

In speaking to Mushtaq about this situation, I asked what he thought my perfect reaction to all of this might be. And what he said was that I must approach this potential career move as if it is a service to God, a natural unfolding of the universal plan. Seek neither victory nor defeat. He was coming from a Sufi perspective, and the above quote is Zen. Truth is truth.

And the truth is, I must raise my son with 100% commitment every day, although I have no way to control what will happen to him, or who he will be.I must write my heart out every day, although I cannot control how the public will view my work. I must do my best, protect my interests, without being attached to the balance sheets or sales figures.I must love my life and do my best to preserve it at every moment…without caring if I live or die.

Damn, this is hard. But then, if it weren’t I doubt I’d get such joy out of life.

Basic Instinct 2 (2006)

Warning!  Sambo Alert!

We all knew this one was a loser.  The original was a delirious fever-dream of male-female combat, two killers (Micheal Douglas and Sharon Stone) locked in an erotic dance where either of them might die at any moment.  It had a sleezy charm to it, and a genuine erotic sizzle.  Well, this long-delayed sequel isn’t as bad as I’d feared…about the level of a decent direct-to-video movie, but man oh man, I understand why it bombed.  Sharon Stone looks great, but she is simply paired with a British actor of no power or authority.  Not for a moment do we believe them to be equally matched.

Worse (for me) the movie opens with Stone rocketing through London being digitally pleasured by a black soccer player as she drives.  Of course, the car goes off a bridge, and the poor Negro dies a dog’s death.  Sniff.  Who didn’t see THAT coming? 

At any rate, the film contains a tiny bit of interesting violence, some appropriately nasty sex, and no real entertainment value at all.  I want my two hours back.
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The power went out yesterday, a rolling blackout said to last until three pm today.  So I went out and got some dry ice to keep the food cool in the refrigerator.  Then…the lights came back on, and I ended up using the stuff to cool my office, and to entertain my son Jason.  He’d never seen the stuff boil water…which is way cool.  He’s going through some kind of emotional/intellectual growth spurt, and I think the (mostly) Spanish-speaking ladies at his day care may be having a bit of trouble communicating with him.  Of course, maybe he’s just being stubborn and fractious, but we’re looking into alternative daycare.  Maybe preschool—he’s about ready for it…
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Some delicate conversations going on on the radio about Israel.  You know, the history of that region is sufficiently murky that I feel like I couldn’t get the truth from anyone who is either a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim.  Sad.  I wonder if anyone knows a Middle-East tome written by a Japanese Buddhist?

While it seems to me that Israel can overreact, God, I sure understand how that can happen.  They ARE surrounded by people sworn to kill them.  That kind of stress produces some pretty bad behavior, and I feel terrible all around.

I remember when I was on publicity tour for LION’S BLOOD, and a man came up to me and asked me if the Muslim background of the book meant I thought Israel had no right to exist.  I had the odd sense that this man was a bit unbalanced, and that my answer was more important than logic might suggest, so I thought carefully.

And what I came up with was this: if there was one other country, anywhere in the world, that was Jewish, I might doubt Israel’s right to exist.  But there is no other place.  Literally, then, nowhere for Jews, as Jews, to go where they are in control of their own fate. If we tell Israel it has no right to exist, we are in essence telling them we don’t care if they live or die, and the only reasonable response is for them to say “screw you.”  There is an imperative with all living things: survive.  And after WW2 and the horrors of the Holocaust, it is easy to see that the Jews needed a patch of ground that was theirs.  Should it have been THAT patch of ground?  I cannot say.  Entirely too ignorant. 

It is quite possible that that was a flawed decision.  But now we’re stuck with it.  I pray, I really pray, that there is a way to peace.  The entire Middle-East situation reminds me of an awful, lethal, dysfunctional family argument.
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Unfortunately, I feel that this Administration will have more difficulty than most maintaining any kind of neutrality.  We’ve lost a huge amount of any moral highground in our current actions, including Abu Gharib and Guantanamo.  With those, and the invasion of a sovereign nation that had not attacked us, it is ENTIRELY reasonable for Arabs to doubt our intent.

Further, there has been too much talk of the Christian God in our White House.  This creates a problem as follows: a President, as a political leader, can speak to the Theocratic leader of a Muslim nation.  But when that President wears his Christianity on his sleeve, well, you have to ask what he really thinks of Islam, or Judaism.  Doesn’t he really HAVE to consider Muslims just flat wrong in their beliefs?  Doesn’t he HAVE to consider Jews wrong, sort of like Alzheimer-ridden parents who got you started in life and then lost their way, misinterpreting the signs?

This lack of neutrality would almost HAVE to create misunderstandings…and that is assuming the very, very best of intentions.

But…supposing that about 10% of human beings don’t have good intentions.  If they are encouraged to think of themselves as Christians first, political creatures second (and I’m not saying this has happened) wouldn’t some of them have downright contempt for those of other beliefs?  Wouldn’t that affect any plans for, say, re-structuring governments?  When you think you will be greeted as liberators, and are instead greeted with a vicious insurgency, don’t you have to wonder if someone had thinly-veiled contempt for the Iraqi people, thinking that they would be happier to have an occupying army (from their POV) on their soil than we Americans would be?

That kind of miscalculation can come from thinking we are the pinnacle of creation, the ones closest to God.   I can’t help but think that there is real, serious danger in having Conservative religious zealots…of whatever stripe…in charge of political maneuverings.
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A thought on Global Warming.  While no one can say for CERTAIN what is happening with climate change, it is increasingly clear that the majority of scientists are concerned with anthropogenic warming.  That doesn’t make them correct, but it does lend an interesting tone to the conversation, when one hears people suggesting the opposite.

I remember twenty-five years ago, during the Nuclear Power debate.  I noticed something: most of the technical people, the engineers and physicists, were in favor of nuclear energy.  Most of the opponents were Leftists, with inferior academic credentials, or high academic credentials in areas only tangential at best.  Many of those in opposition struck me as good-hearted environmentalists who were acting more from an emotional than an intellectual basis.  I remember talking to some Conservative friends at the time, telling them that I’d pretty much come down in favor of nuclear power based on this observation.  I was applauded for my perspicacity.

Well, the shoe is on the other foot now.  Virtually everyone I hear doubting Global Warming is way over on the Right.  The clear majority of anyone who would seem to me to have a real academic, scientifically based opinion believes its happening. There are many, many intelligent people in opposition to this notion: but most of these are in tangential areas at best.  The exact same situation, in reverse.   

Free Teleseminar

This is the first time I've ever cross-promoted
with another teacher, but the gentleman involved is
offering a perfectly free teleseminar for Lifewriters,
and I thought this was too good to pass up!
##
I have arranged for you to join this special one-time
event coming up this Wednesday, July 26th.
Mark your calendar!

Whether you want to write, direct, produce or act
in your first feature film, this FRE(E) TeleConference,
happening tomorrow, will start you on your
path to filmmaking.

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And remember, it's free!

Cheers,
Steve

Non-Discrimination

“If the mind makes no discrimination, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence.  To understand the mystery of this One-essence is reached.  No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.”

Balancing this state with the (apparent) NEED to discriminate,   is a killer.  I don’t want to plunge into hierarchicalism, nor drift in an ocean of undifferentiated thought.

The solution as I feel it today is to allow my ordinary mind to function in the world of choices and gradients.  While I continue to hone that higher function, the observer self.  It watches me screw up, and helps me re-align after I have.  It watches me flinch from negative images, and points out that I still have much healing to do…but then encourages me to dissociate from the wounded being himself.  I am more than my wounds.

To do this, I have to maintain a position difficult to even describe.  How do I know when I am there?  How can I feel confident that my efforts are taking me closer to truth?

One very clear answer: when the voices in my head quiet.  In my meditations, I go through several layers, or membranes.  The first is apparent quiet: there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in my mind.  The next is a descent into cacophony, and I realize that what I took for peace was actually a screaming whirlwind of thoughts, desires, and fears behind a thin, thin sheet of glass.  Drop far enough through this, and you reach more peace…and then another layer of emotional crud, and then more peace…

If I’ve been meditating VERY regularly, I can reach a place where there is a kind of “drifting stability” and you know?  It’s kind of odd, but from that place everything looks, well, it looks RIGHT.  Appropriate.  Life is just as it is. 

I don’t mistake this state for some advanced form of enlightenment, but it seems to be a doorway.  Of course, the problem is  that, properly, I shouldn’t prefer enlightenment to any other state.  Arrgh. 

Ah, I know: “I” shouldn’t prefer enlightenment to another state.  My true essence IS enlightenment.  The trick is to calm the “ego-I” so that it ceases its endless quest for more and better and deeper and so forth.

Note how tricky this is?  You need to head in the direction of truth, but even preferring truth to lies can take you from the path.  It requires a sort of disinterested commitment, something that sounds truly wonky, unless you’ve experienced it…

Does Talent Exist?

Does Talent Exist?

Probably, in the same sense that “height” exists…but in the game of life, how high you can jump, and how hard you train to increase agility, counts for more than whatever genetic gifts you may or may not have been given.

Similarly, most people think of talent in connection with writing, and wince.  Either they have it, or they don’t.  And they fear that if they don’t, what’s the point?
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Just Sunday, I was speaking to a television writer, who spoke of an acquaintance, a man who worked on a show with him.  The man, he said, was a genius.  Understood structure intuitively, had a phenomenal grasp of dialogue and character, and wrote like a whirlwind.  He could only ask himself: “why do I bother?”

Well, there are multiple answers to that.  The first is:
Because you must.  Because you are a writer, and that is what writers do. They write. 
The second is: because there are very, very few such people, and they can’t write everything themselves!  Just look at film, television, books, stage…and you will see very swiftly that the majority of the work is NOT written by blessed, intuitive geniuses.  No, at best most of it is written by people with moderate talent who work very hard at creating the contacts and skills necessary to survive in the writing game.

Never be intimidated by “talent.”  Rather, spend all of your time and energy improving your own skills, cutting closer to the bone, being more honest, reading a higher level of work.  THAT is the way to move forward in your life and career, not by envying the few “natural talents” you will encounter in life.

And by the way: the writer I spoke to is healthy, with a lovely family.  The “natural” talent was just working on his third divorce.  To me, this indicates not “natural talent” but a willingness to sacrifice emotional health for career boost.  And this is not the Lifewriting way.

It's Kinda Warm...

Hot here—108 degrees Saturday, considerably cooler Sunday because of overcast. But that worried me too…an extremely hot day seems to draw mist off the ocean, leading to a cooler day…but there are blistering times ahead. 

No, I don’t blame George Bush for the temperatures.  Only a fool would do that.  But you know what?  Ten years from now, if the Global Warming model is correct, and anthrogenic (is that the right word?) we may be cursing each and every politician who didn’t sound the emergency claxon.  And Bush would certainly be among them.

Geeze, I war with bitterness about that guy.  I’ve never hated him.  I’ve never thought he was stupid.  But there seems to be a uniquely ugly list of problems in the world right now.  If the President of the United States is the powerful, influential figure he has always been stated to be, then surely he has some connection.  I’d be contemptuous of a Left-Winger who suggests Bush is responsible for all of it.  But equally contemptuous  of a Right-wing partisan who suggests that Bush had nothing to do with ANY of it, or worse, tries to blame a President out of office for six years.    Shall we take a look at a partial list?

1)     Katrina.  Even if you say that the fault was New Orleans’, and that the people screwed themselves over with lack of foresight, wouldn’t this have been a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate our national readiness for an emergency?  Instead, we watched the government flounder on every level.  Worst natural disaster in American history?  Maybe.

2)     Iran.  Seeking Nukes!  Somebody took their eye off the ball here.

3)     Korea.  Testing missiles!  Again, eyes off the ball.

4)     Iraq.  Arguably the worst foreign policy decision in our nation’s history.  Oops!  No weapons of mass destruction here…

5)     Israel-Lebanon.  Arrgh.  I was in a restaurant in DC, and saw a CNN bullitin: “WW2: Yea or Nay?”  What the hell? 

6)     Worst deficit in American history.

7)     Worst indebtedness in American history

8)     Most indicted members of a sitting administration in history.  (I might be wrong about this—I’m sure I’ll have this pointed out to me if I am.)

9)     President taking the most vacation days in history.  Something is very, very wrong with this, considering the number of problems we have.

10)     Highest gas prices in history.  People wondered what the impact would be of having so many energy-related folks working in the White House.  You know: the secret energy meetings and so forth.  Now we know!  (I know, I know.  Temporal sequence does not imply causality.  But man, it’s tempting…)

11)      9/11 itself.  The worst attack on American soil in history.

I could go on, but don’t have the heart.  Absolutely, it would be ridiculous to blame Bush for all of this.  But…isn’t it reasonable to think that the man at the helm of the ship has responsibility for something?  If he isn’t responsible for ANYTHING aren’t you saying that he is not “Response-Able”: that he is, in essence, unable to respond effectively.

The same side of the political spectrum is in charge of both Houses, the White House, and the Supreme Court.  If Liberal Democrats were in charge of all these things, and the country was in the shape it’s in, I would be SCREAMING to get them out.  But then, I’m not a partisan hack.

We have had great conservative, Republican presidents.  Bush is not one of them.  The health of this country is, I think, determined by the BALANCE between the Right and the Left.  And right now, we are more imbalanced than I’ve ever seen, and seem to be careening toward an ice berg. 

I hope, I really, really hope, that I’m wrong. 

Dualities

“Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.  All dualities come from ignorant inference…”

This is a fragment of the verses Tim is having me memorize for the Friday morning class.  The resolution of dualities is one of the doorways to wisdom.  This is hard.  It is so difficult to look past male/female, black/white, left/right.  Most human beings cannot hold two competing ideas simultaneously in their minds.

At the Hurston Wright workshop, I concentrated on plot and characterization, and the way they interact to create theme.  Ultimately, plot is character, and character is plot.

But I also wanted them to erase the perceived separation between their art and their lives.  By using the Hero’s Journey not only to plot books but to understand the process of conducting their career, I was able to give them a glimpse of this higher, more complex reality.

The Path workshop takes this further: by concentrating on the smallest cycle of the Journey that can be voluntarily influenced: a single breath.  The road to understanding how a single breath relates to the Journey is found in the meta-cycle of say, 14-20 minutes of rhythmic endurance exercise (in the workshop, we use Flowfit for this).  The phenomenon of “Second Wind” contains all the elements of the Hero’s Journey: commitment to the path, girding our psychological loins, encountering deep resistance, pushing through with Faith, victory through blissful embrace of challenge.

To understand this is to grasp a secret every culture has known.  Most of the citizens of those cultures have been entirely ignorant of the potential of these patterns, the power of such daily cleansing.

I strongly encourage you to find some healthful physical discipline which will help you to explore this aspect of our brains.  Walking, running, dancing, rowing, striding, swimming…there are many, many rhythmic endurance activities that open this neurological doorway.  Embrace one.  The rewards are entirely disproportunate to the effort.

My Super ex-Girlfriend (2006) and other topics...

Saw this sporadically funny movie last night…and felt that there was a much, much funnier movie lurking in there.  Uma Thurman plays “G-Girl”, a superheroine who falls in love with a normal guy (Luke Wilson).  The relationship falls apart, and that is, as they say, when the fun begins.  Don’t get me wrong…there is much genuine hilarity to be had here.  But Uma’s twitchy characterization, of a woman who is plagued by the need to continuously save the world, while her personal life falls to pieces, suggests another, deeper, funnier, more honest film lurking in there.  It needed to be crazier, more creative visually.  The relationship between “G-Girl” and the villain “Professor Bedlam” needed to be tarted up.  We NEVER get to see exactly what villainy Bedlam has been up to, and that creates some problems understanding the characters’ reactions to each other.  Is he a Lex Luthor type?  Does he kill?  Or just steal?  We need to know that in order to know what to feel about the rest of the film.  And we never do.  I’m going to give it a “C+” for a few hysterical scenes, and an all-out performance by Thurman.  Director Ivan Reitman (“Ghostbusters”) just didn’t have his comic rhythm fully in hand.


Just got back from the Hurston-Wright writing workshop.  It was intense, and I wanted to do a core dump of things I saw there, and thoughts I’ve had in the last week.

1)     There are a lot of good writers out there.  I was blessed to have several of them in my class.  In fact, there wasn’t a loser in the bunch, thank God.  And one of them…well, one of them might just be a genius.  I’m not sure.  Hope so…

2)     Women outnumbered men by a wide margin. We had high school students from across the country, and all but two of them were girls.  They complained that the boys were so quiet…the girls were brash, funny, confident, and kicked butt.  This grew into general discussions of black men and women in America…and some of the discussions weren’t fun.  You all know that I straddle a fence that can make me unpopular with people who are strongly to the left or right: One, that we as individuals, especially Black American individuals, must take responsibility for our individual fates—there is no one else to do it.  Two, that historically, we were indeed screwed over major league big time.  I don’t suggest to “just get over it.”  I say that if you want to bring your dreams into existence, you must find a way to move forward despite your wounds and pain.  Black women have taken point right now—and the reasons are the same reason you see black and Asian women having sex with white men in movies, but you don’t see non-white men having sex with ANYBODY.  If you want to know the core difference, look at the Oscars two years ago.  Halle Berry got her Oscar for whoring herself to Billy Bob Thornton.  Denzel got his  for dying in the street like a mad dog.  And that, right there, in the secret greasy heart of men, is the secret: we’d like access to all the females of all groups, and we’d like the men of other groups to…well, to crawl away and die.  As men and women, we aren’t terribly attractive.  As black or white, we’re less attractive still.  As human beings, on the other hand, there is hope.  As spirits, there is light itself.

3)     Was listening to Michael Savage on the radio yesterday.  My sister likes him quite a bit.  I don’t.  But I wanted to give him a chance.  He was saying something positive about an Muslim who wrote a book about the silent Muslim majority, and I kinda liked that.  Then he got off on Global Warming.  He accused Al Gore of lying without being specific about the lies, which bothered me.  He then took note of the current heat wave, and said the “left wing media” was scientifically ignorant, and rattled off the dates for all-time hottest days in various states, many of which were before the invention of the internal combustion engine.  I had the terrible feeling that his audience was nodding their heads “yup!  Lyin’ Liberals!” like little bobble-head dolls.  The problem is that all the facts about cyclic weather and solar fluctuations, which anti-Global Warming folks often quote, are covered quite nicely in the works of various climatologists I’ve seen addressing these issues.  Those attacking them seem to be speaking to an audience who thinks this is new data.  My other problem is that these guys are starting to sound to me like the Tobacco companies, who set an impossibly high standard for “proof” that tobacco (and now second-hand smoke) causes cancer, and then sat back to see who they had conned into accepting an impossible challenge. 

4)     He also said that the Liberal Media was attacking Israel horribly.  I’ve seen a lot fo news shows on Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.  It may be ignorance on my part, but it seems to me that they are just as likely to show Islamic extremist attacks on Israel.  Does anyone out there have an opinion on this?

5)     While I was in Washington D.C. I went on an Afro-Centric tour of the city.  I vastly enjoyed most of it, especially talk of Benjamin Banneker, an African-American who was integral to the design of Washington D.C.  I was grieved, once again, that I had never even heard of him until after I graduated college.  On numerous occasions, I’ve had white Conservatives ask me: “why does there need to be Black History? Why isn’t American History enough?”  Because any given group will tend to over-state their own contributions, and minimalize the contributions of others.  The ONLY way blacks have gotten into the history books is by voting and thinking as a bloc, and forcing the majority group to change.  This has been an horrifically slow and painful process, fighting all the way.  Whether that :outsider” group is women, gays, blacks, the disabled, the non-Christian, or whatever—don’t stop fighting, and don’t assume you are morally superior to the oppressing group.  Blacks, women, gays, and non-Christians, when holding the reins of power, display the same grasping pathologies.  The key to freedom is balance and love.

6)     While on the tour, I was disturbed when the tour guide brought up that old wive’s tale about Napoleon shooting off the nose of the Sphinx, supposedly offended at the “Negro-ness” of the features.  Sigh. Would anyone with knowledge of the slightest actual original documentation on this please stand up?   A diary entry?  A letter by a soldier at the time?  I understand the need to establish a history that includes black people, but when you get your facts wrong, it gives bigots a chance to reject everything else you are saying.

7)     I had only Scott Sonnon’s FlowFit 2 to exercise with while I was there.  When I first arrived, my body looked pretty carved—I’d been doing Kettlebells, yoga, and FlowFit for my fitness.  After a week of just doing 20 minutes of Flowfit, most of my muscle mass was intact, and I was more flexible.  My wind had decreased a bit—I’m not advanced at FF2 yet, still working on the coordination and recovery aspect.  But I’ll tell you this…Scott has created a graduated path from couch potato to world-class athlete.  NO ONE who can do FF2 for twenty minutes, at one rep per minute, would be anything other than a paragon.  I kid you not.  And because of his brilliant instinctive training methods, it is really more a mental than a physical system.  I am seriously impressed, and can only HOPE that one day I’ll do just that.  Twenty minutes.  Sixty seconds per rep (right now, it takes me about 2 1/2 minutes per rep.)  Mother of God.
The first Two-Day Path workshop is at the end of September.  I’m going to be talking about every aspect of it, working out how we’re going to handle it.  This is the One.  This is what I’ve been waiting for for three years.  It’s going to be fabulous!

Little Man (2006)

Staggeringly bad taste.  This clumsy Wayans Brothers comedy about a diminutive thief masquerading as a baby is one of the most honestly advertised films I’ve seen in a long time.  If you are amused by the sight of a little black baby with a grotesque adult head punching people in the groin and French-kissing blondes, you’re going to howl.  I did.  It’s hysterically uneven, a live-action cartoon that breaks more social taboos than I can count.  I KNEW that critics were going to tear this one apart, before I ever knew what it’s values and problems actually were.  The Wayans’ understand the underbelly of certain aspects of American culture with laser precision, and go straight for the jugular.

I suspect this movie is going to make a ton of money, that they may have found the right way to package a lot of actually interesting and intelligent observation—in the form of a tasteless, calculatedly artless fart-joke fest. I can’t exactly recommend it, but it really gets the job done.  Hell, I haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time.  I’m going to give it a politically-incorrect “B+”