Tonight I realized one of my most consistent influences as a middle grade writer has been Calvin and Hobbes. I never noticed it before, but after watching the documentary "Dear Mr. Watterson" it's hard to ignore. I remember reading one of the rare interviews Bill Watterson gave when he was still writing the strip, explaining that Calvin's mother and father had always gone unnamed because their names weren't important. Everything in the strip was filtered through Calvin's perspective, and he only ever saw them as Mom and Dad.
In FOLLOWING INFINITY, the manuscript I'm pushing these days, Molly's parents are never mentioned by name, which was done by design. The same thing can be said for the one before it, THE GHOST OF LAKE EMILY, because all of the action is about what happens to the kids. The parents went nameless because they were, to a certain degree, peripheral. That's a thread I see in almost everything I've written in the past ten years, with only a handful of exceptions when the parents have been directly involved in the story.
Like a lot of people could claim, much of my childhood helped me relate to Calvin. I grew up in a house filled with stuffed animals. I had a wild imagination that my sisters had very little interest in trying to keep up with. One of my favorite playgrounds, when the seasons allowed, was the woods behind our house, complete with enough mucky streams, fallen trees, and briar thickets to give me more settings for afternoon adventures than I could ever exhaust.
I find it interesting that I've identified this influence right now. I'm at kind of a writing crossroads, and I feel a little bit of Calvin pulling at me. I've got three works-in-progress that I would consider possibly viable manuscripts, and I'm trying to decide which of them deserves my main writing focus. The one that feels it would be the most fun is something of a contemporary fantasy about a little boy with a big imagination. I finished a draft of it a few years ago and it was a bit of a misfire, but I've never been able to shake the concept and I'm kind of itching to take another crack at it. And now with my actual summer vacation only months away, I'm thinking that if I dug out my old Calvin and Hobbes books, revisiting those characters and that unique childhood perspective would likely help me make my decision.
But even if it didn't, it'd still be great fun to check in with those snow goons again.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
How to TV Binge in 10 Easy Steps
I know watching a lot of television isn't necessarily a good thing.
But with the advent of DVD rentals and Internet streaming, I think it's
fair to say that binge-watching a series is now something like the 21st
century equivalent of staying up all night to finish reading a good
book. If the story is strong and the characters are compelling, well,
why not?
One of my projects for spring break this year was to clear out my DVR. A big part of doing that meant watching the entire series run of "True Detective." I'd read a lot about it before it aired and knew I wanted to see it, but it's kind of hard for me to get caught up in a new TV show when I've got a lot of other things going on. It didn't take long to decide I'd just record the whole thing and watch it when the series ended, which was coincidentally right when I was beginning spring break.
I won't say much about the show because I know how much I hate to have things spoiled, but I will say it was pretty great. "True Detective" had a perfect sense of place that made you feel like you were in Louisiana, as if every minute visual detail had been carefully constructed that way. The music was very important, both in terms of supporting the setting and establishing a menacing tone when it was required. The actors did a great job of inhabiting their roles, to the degree I began to identify even the most well-known on the cast more as their characters than as their own real-life personalities. And the writing was great. The dialogue was full of the type of artistry and care I wish people would put into their every day interactions. Why tell someone they look tired when you could say "Your eyes seem kind of brittle" instead?
A show like "True Detective" makes it easer to binge-watch a series because it keeps you engaged. I've gone through a few shows like this in the past, and I've learned that even if the show really captures your imagination (because why else would you stick with it?) there are certain strategies to use that can be helpful on a television binge. My tips:
1 - Find a time to start watching when you'll be able to get at least the first three episodes in. You need some time to get to know the characters and see how the arc of the story starts to build.
2 - Take breaks between episodes. Come back to the real world so you don't get too lost in what's going on. This is especially useful when you get into the "Silence of the Lambs" level of creepiness that "True Detective" had in its most unsettling moments.
3 - Pay attention to the "last time on" previews at the beginning of the episodes. They don't just catch you up, but they clue you in about what's going to happen next.
4 - Pay attention to the imagery in the opening credits. It isn't all random.
5 - Have your Shazam app ready to go in case a great song gets played over the closing credits.
6 - Respect the story arc. Not every episode will be jaw-dropping, but they all work together to build the bigger picture.
7 - Prepare yourself for disturbing moments to occur right at the end of most episodes.
8 - Don't read anything about the show online when you aren't watching it. When I read the finale of "True Detective" had crashed HBO's online streaming server I knew there was a reason, but I didn't want to know what it was.
9 - Remember that the story is going to end and the absence of these characters you've spent so much time with will leave a bit of a hole in your life for awhile.
10 - Have the next thing ready to go so you can plug that whole. I've got a Lydia Millet book on my nightstand ready to go, but I've got three months of "True Detective" online theories and articles to catch up on first....
One of my projects for spring break this year was to clear out my DVR. A big part of doing that meant watching the entire series run of "True Detective." I'd read a lot about it before it aired and knew I wanted to see it, but it's kind of hard for me to get caught up in a new TV show when I've got a lot of other things going on. It didn't take long to decide I'd just record the whole thing and watch it when the series ended, which was coincidentally right when I was beginning spring break.
I won't say much about the show because I know how much I hate to have things spoiled, but I will say it was pretty great. "True Detective" had a perfect sense of place that made you feel like you were in Louisiana, as if every minute visual detail had been carefully constructed that way. The music was very important, both in terms of supporting the setting and establishing a menacing tone when it was required. The actors did a great job of inhabiting their roles, to the degree I began to identify even the most well-known on the cast more as their characters than as their own real-life personalities. And the writing was great. The dialogue was full of the type of artistry and care I wish people would put into their every day interactions. Why tell someone they look tired when you could say "Your eyes seem kind of brittle" instead?
A show like "True Detective" makes it easer to binge-watch a series because it keeps you engaged. I've gone through a few shows like this in the past, and I've learned that even if the show really captures your imagination (because why else would you stick with it?) there are certain strategies to use that can be helpful on a television binge. My tips:
1 - Find a time to start watching when you'll be able to get at least the first three episodes in. You need some time to get to know the characters and see how the arc of the story starts to build.
2 - Take breaks between episodes. Come back to the real world so you don't get too lost in what's going on. This is especially useful when you get into the "Silence of the Lambs" level of creepiness that "True Detective" had in its most unsettling moments.
3 - Pay attention to the "last time on" previews at the beginning of the episodes. They don't just catch you up, but they clue you in about what's going to happen next.
4 - Pay attention to the imagery in the opening credits. It isn't all random.
5 - Have your Shazam app ready to go in case a great song gets played over the closing credits.
6 - Respect the story arc. Not every episode will be jaw-dropping, but they all work together to build the bigger picture.
7 - Prepare yourself for disturbing moments to occur right at the end of most episodes.
8 - Don't read anything about the show online when you aren't watching it. When I read the finale of "True Detective" had crashed HBO's online streaming server I knew there was a reason, but I didn't want to know what it was.
9 - Remember that the story is going to end and the absence of these characters you've spent so much time with will leave a bit of a hole in your life for awhile.
10 - Have the next thing ready to go so you can plug that whole. I've got a Lydia Millet book on my nightstand ready to go, but I've got three months of "True Detective" online theories and articles to catch up on first....
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Return to the Cosmos
This week brought the first episode of “Cosmos” featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of a very small number of celebrity astrophysicists in the world today. Now, I'm a huge nerd, so I’ve been looking forward to this series since I first read it was in production. I was in the earliest of my teen years when I saw Carl Sagan’s original version, some of it broadcast on PBS and some in my ninth grade science class (it didn’t occur to me until years later that showing “Cosmos” in class was a great way for my science teacher to steer around writing lesson plans). Watching the series in ninth grade would have put me right in the time gap between “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” and my young Star Wars-addled mind would have attached itself to anything related to outer space that was even semi-interesting. But Carl Sagan’s version of “Cosmos” was far beyond interesting, so perhaps you can imagine the excitement I felt when I learned the National Geographic channel was going to rebroadcast the entire original series in preparation for launching the new version. My weekend binge was set.
As fun as it was to revisit the original, so many things about it seemed dated, far beyond the back-of-the-classroom film projector look much of it had: references to the Viking landers on the surface of Mars, along with so many assumptions about Mars made back then that have either been proven or disproven since; the inclusion of Pluto as a planet; the idea of analog sound recordings being sent on the Voyager probe. Planetary photos transmitted back to Earth from Voyager were represented as a high point in technological imagery for the time, though such images were in their infancy when compared to the visual majesty routinely captured by the Hubble telescope. Hearing references made to the World Trade Center coming from a time before the terrorists who attacked it had likely been born only magnified the tragedy of its destruction.
The more episodes I watched, the more of my original fascination came back to life. Even decades later “Cosmos” was more than able to blow my mind, and did in many notable ways:
1 -- Carl Sagan’s description of what the Library of Alexandria must have been like made me wish I had studied the Humanities with more depth so I could’ve had a greater appreciation of its place in history.
2 -- He used a “cosmic calendar” as a metaphor for the period of time between the Big Bang and modern days, and pointed out how everything that has occurred in human history would have taken place in the final seconds of December 31.
3 -- There was a first person to discover tangible proof of the existence of air. Seriously. Think on that for a bit.
4 -- Saga told a story of a variety of crab in Japanese waters that fishermen will throw back since their shells look like the faces of Samurai warriors, and described how this action over time spawned an evolutionary change.
5 -- Someone had been the first person to realize the infinite nature of the universe. I remember reflecting on that more than once as a child, overwhelming myself into occasional sleepless nights as I tried to grasp how it was possible.
6 -- Toward the end of one episode as he told about the eventual death of our sun, Sagan said, “Some five billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth.” Imagining that was beyond me.
7 -- I remembered one scene that briefly focused on some variety of wild grass growing on a Grecian mountainside, and for a moment I was able to see its existence possessing the same elegance and complexity as a massive star more than 100 million miles away.
After getting through most of the original series, I was more than primed for the reboot. Everything about it was flashier, focusing as much on entertainment value as raw science. I was already a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, so when I first heard he was going to be the new host I couldn’t think of a better successor. He himself highlighted this fact at the end of the first episode, telling about a time back when he was seventeen years old and had been invited to meet and spend the day with Carl Sagan. He showed how Sagan had signed a book for him with the inscription, “To a future astronomer.” It gave me chills, and just cemented my opinion there could not be a better caretaker for the mission of using the media to keep scientific curiosity alive.
All of that heavy thinking in such a concentrated amount of time left me wondering about the nature of things. What is the purpose of life? To travel and discover and experience, or to play whatever small role we’re responsible for in the evolution and existence of life, or simply to be? “Cosmos” highlighted so many monuments and ideas that have outlived their creators by centuries. I think some form of happiness in life and the attainment of knowledge are worthy goals, but I also think many people would hope to leave behind some proof they were here and did something with their lives to make them worthwhile.
But if the atoms that make up the iron in my bloodstream today are predestined to someday fuel a distant star, maybe the idea of any kind of legacy that extends beyond the short-term (cosmically speaking) is just a special kind of hubris. Maybe I’d be better off eating some potato chips and playing a few rounds of Candy Crush on the iPad instead, and leave the serious thinking to the astrophysicists of the world.
As fun as it was to revisit the original, so many things about it seemed dated, far beyond the back-of-the-classroom film projector look much of it had: references to the Viking landers on the surface of Mars, along with so many assumptions about Mars made back then that have either been proven or disproven since; the inclusion of Pluto as a planet; the idea of analog sound recordings being sent on the Voyager probe. Planetary photos transmitted back to Earth from Voyager were represented as a high point in technological imagery for the time, though such images were in their infancy when compared to the visual majesty routinely captured by the Hubble telescope. Hearing references made to the World Trade Center coming from a time before the terrorists who attacked it had likely been born only magnified the tragedy of its destruction.
The more episodes I watched, the more of my original fascination came back to life. Even decades later “Cosmos” was more than able to blow my mind, and did in many notable ways:
1 -- Carl Sagan’s description of what the Library of Alexandria must have been like made me wish I had studied the Humanities with more depth so I could’ve had a greater appreciation of its place in history.
2 -- He used a “cosmic calendar” as a metaphor for the period of time between the Big Bang and modern days, and pointed out how everything that has occurred in human history would have taken place in the final seconds of December 31.
3 -- There was a first person to discover tangible proof of the existence of air. Seriously. Think on that for a bit.
4 -- Saga told a story of a variety of crab in Japanese waters that fishermen will throw back since their shells look like the faces of Samurai warriors, and described how this action over time spawned an evolutionary change.
5 -- Someone had been the first person to realize the infinite nature of the universe. I remember reflecting on that more than once as a child, overwhelming myself into occasional sleepless nights as I tried to grasp how it was possible.
6 -- Toward the end of one episode as he told about the eventual death of our sun, Sagan said, “Some five billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth.” Imagining that was beyond me.
7 -- I remembered one scene that briefly focused on some variety of wild grass growing on a Grecian mountainside, and for a moment I was able to see its existence possessing the same elegance and complexity as a massive star more than 100 million miles away.
After getting through most of the original series, I was more than primed for the reboot. Everything about it was flashier, focusing as much on entertainment value as raw science. I was already a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, so when I first heard he was going to be the new host I couldn’t think of a better successor. He himself highlighted this fact at the end of the first episode, telling about a time back when he was seventeen years old and had been invited to meet and spend the day with Carl Sagan. He showed how Sagan had signed a book for him with the inscription, “To a future astronomer.” It gave me chills, and just cemented my opinion there could not be a better caretaker for the mission of using the media to keep scientific curiosity alive.
All of that heavy thinking in such a concentrated amount of time left me wondering about the nature of things. What is the purpose of life? To travel and discover and experience, or to play whatever small role we’re responsible for in the evolution and existence of life, or simply to be? “Cosmos” highlighted so many monuments and ideas that have outlived their creators by centuries. I think some form of happiness in life and the attainment of knowledge are worthy goals, but I also think many people would hope to leave behind some proof they were here and did something with their lives to make them worthwhile.
But if the atoms that make up the iron in my bloodstream today are predestined to someday fuel a distant star, maybe the idea of any kind of legacy that extends beyond the short-term (cosmically speaking) is just a special kind of hubris. Maybe I’d be better off eating some potato chips and playing a few rounds of Candy Crush on the iPad instead, and leave the serious thinking to the astrophysicists of the world.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Contests!
Time for another contest folks! Let's see how this one works out.
Contemporary middle grade fiction? Check.
First 150-200 words? Check.
Log line? Check.
Two mentions in social media? One tweet already tweeted, so as of posting this link -- check.
Dear Lucky Agent 14
Fingers crossed....
Contemporary middle grade fiction? Check.
First 150-200 words? Check.
Log line? Check.
Two mentions in social media? One tweet already tweeted, so as of posting this link -- check.
Dear Lucky Agent 14
Fingers crossed....
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