Letter from a past generation

This letter, from Will Schoder's grandfather, reminded me of my grandfather. It's something he would have written, probably even did. I'm just not fortunate enough to have it stored in a box.

I'm not a big fan of downing the Millennial generation because, mainly, most of what I hear is unfair and biased. There is probably truth in the criticism, just as much as there is error, and I'd rather focus on the things I can control. Myself. Just like this grandfather here. He can articulate his frustrations with some of his fellow countryman, and articulate it well, but it doesn't drive him to hate or ridicule others. Rather, he pursued his wife, he fought in a war, and he lived his life; he changed himself. 

This letter crosses all times and boundaries and is a good reminder on how to live life: honestly and admirably and fully in the moment - "with our whole being" and with little or "no need to fear the future." 

Thank you, Barry, for the sweet reminder. 

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-N- Stuff  :  On Living  :  Will Schoder

Serbia's Burning Platform : Not to punish, but to help

On New Year's Eve in 2000, Popovic and his friends organized a celebration in Republic Square. They lined up the hottest Serbian rock bands and spread the word that midnight would feature a live concert by the Red Hot Chili Peppers - an international sensation and a huge hit in Serbia. Thousands of people packed the square in Belgrade, dancing to the local bands and buzzing with anticipation about the main event. One minute before midnight, the square went dark and people began counting down. But when the clock struck twelve, no famous rock band appeared.

The only audible sound was depressing music. As the audience listened in shock, a psychologist named Boris Tadic delivered a clear message from behind the stage. "We have nothing to celebrate," he said, asking them to go home and think about what action they would take. "This year has been a year of war and oppression. But it doesn't have to be that way. Let's make the coming year count. Because 2000 is the year."

 . . . When Harvard professor John Kotter studied more than one hundred companies trying to institute major change, he found that the first error they made was failing to establish a sense of urgency . . . "Without a sense of urgency, people . . . won't make needed sacrifices. Instead they cling to status quo and resist." . . . when {Otpor!} announced, "This is the year!" it was clear to the Serbians that there was a pressing need to act immediately.

. . . To counter apathy, most change agents focus on presenting an inspiring vision of the future. This is an important message to convey, but it's no the type of communication that should come first. If you want people to take risks, you need first to show what's wrong with the present. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, and anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss. "The greatest communicators of all time," says communication expert Nancy Duarte, start by establishing "what is" here's the status quo." Then, they "compare that to what could be," making "that gap as big as possible.

. . . Once commitment is fortified, instead of glancing in the rearview mirror, it's better to look forward by highlighting the work left to be done. When we're determined  to reach an objective, it's the gab between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us. In Serbia, as the Otpor! movement drew a loyal following that was no longer frozen in fear, it was time to show them how much distance they had yet to travel.

That's why Popovic and his friends halted the concert and sent the citizens of Belgrade home on New Year's Eve. In the span of less than two years, Otpor! had accumulated more than 70,000 members in 130 different branches. But to actually overthrow Milosevic, they would need millions of votes. A few years earlier, Milosevic had agreed to a relatively democratic election - and won. His minions controlled the ballot boxes. Even if Serbians could vote him out of office, would he concede? Popovic and his allies understood that they needed intense emotions to propel action across the country. It was time to destabilize the status quo and turn on the go system by reminding them that there was nothing to celebrate because the present was intolerable. "Instead of courage," Tom Peters recommends fostering, "a level of fury with the status quo that one cannot not act."

 . . . {However,} venting doesn't extinguish the flame of anger; it feeds it. When we vent our anger, we put a lead foot on the gas pedal of the go system . . . venting doesn't work even if you think it does - even if it makes you feel good. The better you feel after venting, the more aggressive you get: not only toward your critic, but also toward innocent bystanders.

. . . {because} one of the fundamental problems with venting is that it focuses attention on the perpetrator of injustice. The more you think about the person who wronged you, the more violently you want to lash out in retaliation. "Anger is a powerful mobilizing tool," Srdja Popovic explains, "but if you make people angry, they might start breaking things." On New Year's Eve at midnight in 2000, when Otpor! shut down the concert, turned off the lights, and played sad music, only one sight was visible: a gigantic screen, on which a slide show of pictures was being played, none of which featured the despised Milosevic.

The images instead were of Serbian soldiers and police officers who had been killed under Milosevic's rule.

To channel anger productively, instead of venting about the harm that a perpetrator has done, we need to reflect on the victims who have suffered from it. . . activat{ing} what psychologists call empathetic anger - the desire to right wrongs done unto another. It turns on the go system, but it makes us thoughtful about how to best respect the victim's dignity. Research demonstrates that when we're angry at others, we aim for retaliation or revenge. But when we're angry for others, we seek out justice and a better system. We don't want to punish; we want to help.

When Otpor! displayed the images of dead soldiers, Serbians were pumped with empathetic adrenaline and broke out into a chant: "Let's make this coming year count." They weren't going to get excited about actually taking down the dictator, but they could feel enough righteous indignation that hey were determined to do so. In Popovic's words, "There was an energy in the air that no rock band could ever re-create. Everybody felt that they had something important to do.

That autumn, Otpor! mobilized one of the largest voter turnouts in Serbia's history, defeating Milosevic and shepherding in a new era of democracy. Boris Tadic, the psychologist who had sent everyone home because there was nothing to celebrate, was elected president of Serbia for years later.

Quotes from Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (pages 231-242)

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Simon Sinek : Start with Why

Simon O. Sinek is a British/American author, motivational speaker and marketing consultant. He is the author of three books including the 2009 best seller Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Wikipedia

His books include:

Start with Why

Find your Why

Together is Better

Leaders Eat Last

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Simon Sinek  :  Ted Talks  :  Inspiration

Integrity and bar fights

Recently I've been challenged with integrity, and I've been challenged to truly live it. To submit to it.  But first, I need to understand it. 

I know the definition, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. Especially when no one is around, or when it's hard to do so. I've been told this since I was a young boy.

But recently, I've begun to wonder if it can also be something more. And not more as in better, but more as in more - more than what is commonly understood. In addition to.

Like this. Being a man or woman of integrity carries with it the understanding that one with strong moral principles or uprightness will not fail or make poor choices, because by the very definition of integrity, they wouldn't. That's why they have integrity. 

But what does it mean when people fail, when their moral principles crumble? Does that mean they are no longer men and women of integrity? That they are men and woman of fluid morals? Because, to be honest, although I try to live a life of integrity, of moral uprightness, I don't always. I don't commit any of the heavy hitters like cheat on my wife, steal money from my employers, or abuse the poor, but I do plenty of other bad things, some of which people are all to ready to point out but none of which even scrapes the surface. Because I'm good at secrets and putting on a tie and making people laugh. Sometimes.

So does that mean I am not a man of integrity?

When my friend struggles to keep his eyes from wondering and his fingers from clicking, does that mean he can no longer be trusted?  That he is a man without integrity? 

Maybe. I know my Mom would say so, but lately, I don't know.  And it's because of scenes like this:

A priest who gets into bar fights and who curses like a sailor could easily be described as a man without integrity. Yet, it is the very thing he accuses the young priest of - and it's the worst thing he could say about anybody!

What gives him the right for such an accusation? What sort of understanding does he have that I don't?

I wonder if its honesty. 

The older priest doesn't pretend to be someone he is not. He doesn't follow a bunch of religious rules because it looks good and puts him in good standing with the community (which is what I am often tempted to do), but does what he knows is right. Like apologize. 

Could a man or woman have integrity AND falter? Could their morals shake AND they maintain integrity?

I think so. I hope so. Because the men and women I respect most in this world are not the ones that do all things right all or most of the time, but the ones that have enough courage and humility and love to admit their faults, seek forgiveness, and try again tomorrow - with grace and understanding. With integrity. 

These men and women know what their looking for, they just find it hard to get there sometimes. They need help. And that is something I can relate to, and someone I want to follow.

If I'm honest.

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On Living  :  When Movies Get it Right  :  Humanity

Solution: #EatTogether

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Doubt and Gossip : Faith and Certainty, with Philip Seymour Hoffman

I can't stop thinking about this movie. Doubt, directed by John Patrick Shanley is a simple and chilling (literally) film that, unapologetically, exposes the hearts and minds of us all, warns us against pride and dogmatic practices, and pleads with us to be men and women defined by grace and kindness, not certainty. 

The story of Doubt is guided by a few choice sermons given by Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, Father Brendan Flynn. In or out of context, they are powerful and worth a watch.

His first is of the power and place of doubt within our lives:

Reminds me of the passage in Mark 9:24, "I believe; help my unbelief!" 

At the root of all humanity, doubt unites us all and should drive us toward a heart of compassion, not arrogance and piety. 

We all doubt. That's why faith is called, "faith," not certainty. 

The second sermon is on gossip:

"I know none of you have ever done this."

And may it never be. 

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Chris Paul : How to Live, Forgive, and Love

I came across this article almost six years ago. It was before school started, but the second I finished, I printed several copies and read with my then 7th grade English class then shared it with everyone I taught or coached or spoke with. When life shifted to China, I forgot about it. This morning, my brother in-law referenced it and I had to find it again.

In all of sports, this might be my most favorite story.

The lessons of Nathaniel Jones

by Rick Reilly - espn.com

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 : 

On the moonless night of Nov. 15, 2002, five young boys ran across a park, jumped a 61-year-old man, bound his wrists, duct-taped his mouth, and beat him with pipes until his heart stopped. 

All for his wallet.

That man was Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of future NBA star Chris Paul.

Today, those boys are men, sitting in prisons across the state of North Carolina, some serving 14-year terms, some life. On the TV sets in their prison rec rooms this week, the Hornets point guard has been wrecking the Los Angeles Lakers, averaging nearly a triple-double, the shiniest star of these playoffs.

The five are all about the same age as Paul, same race, same height, and from the same hometown. 

They have one other thing in common with Chris Paul: All six wish they were free.

It's something Paul told me during a "Homecoming" episode once on ESPN, and every time I watch him play I can't get it out of my mind. Paul, now 25, said: "These guys were 14 and 15 years old [at the time], with a lot of life ahead of them. I wish I could talk to them and tell them, 'I forgive you. Honestly.' I hate to know that they're going to be in jail for such a long time. I hate it."

Whose heart has that much room? 

"Chris Paul hates it?" says Geneva Bryant, the mother of one of the five, Christopher Bryant. "Well, so do I. My boy is 23 now. He's been in since he was 15."

Chris Paul is overcome with emotion while talking about the death of his grandfather to students at West Forsyth High in Clemmons, N.C.

Her son has six years to go. Dorrell Brayboy, 23, has six years to go. Jermal Tolliver, 23, has seven. Two brothers -- Nathaniel Cauthen, 24, and Rayshawn Banner, 23 -- are in until they die.

Paul's attitude stuns one of the defense attorneys who appealed the verdict and lost.

"I've probably tried 30 homicide cases," says Paul Herzog, of Fayetteville. "It's very rare for a family survivor in a murder case to feel that way. You just don't see that ever. That's incredibly generous of Mr. Paul."

To understand how generous, you have to know how close Paul was to his granddad.

The man everybody called "PaPa Chili" was the first black man to open a service station in North Carolina and both Chris and his brother worked at it. PaPa Chili was known to let people run tabs when times got tough. Plenty of times, he'd hand people money out of the cash register to get by. Paul called him "my best friend."

The day Paul signed with nearby Wake Forest, the first person to put a Demon Deacons hat on him was his grandfather. 

The next day, he was dead. 

None of the five boys were particularly hardened criminals. Only Cauthen had been previously arrested -- twice for running away and once for stealing his mom's car. They decided they wanted to rob somebody. Around the corner, in his white van, came that somebody -- Jones. He'd closed the filling station and was now getting grocery bags out of his van. "Let's go get him," one of them said. They sprinted across Belview Park and jumped him. 

Using tape they'd bought that day at a drugstore, they bound his head, neck and hands and began a "relentless, remorseless, conscienceless" attack, according to the judge who sentenced them. Jones died in his carport. 

His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. And now he wants the murderers set free?

Paul, a high school senior, was so woebegone he was literally sick. Two days later, he scored 61 points for West Forsyth High School, one for every year of Papa Chili's life. He purposely missed a free throw at the end, then collapsed into the arms of his father in tears.

His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. 

And now he wants the murderers set free?

"Even though I miss my granddad," Paul told me, "I understand that he's not coming back. At the time, it made me feel good when I heard they went away for life. But now that I'm older, when I think of all the things I've seen in my life? No, I don't want it. I don't want it."

This is the kind of man Chris Paul is: He was president of his high school class all three years. When LeBron James' girlfriend had a baby, James made sure Paul was there. He's so humble that if you didn't know who he was, you'd swear he was the pool man.

So what can Paul do? 

He can appeal to the governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, and ask for their sentences to be commuted. North Carolina is not big on commuting murderers' sentences, but I'd put nothing past the powers of Paul.

This kid floors me. Not just with the way he can dominate an NBA playoff game at 6 feet tall in elevator sneakers. Not just for the way he can twist Kobe Bryant into a Crazy Straw. Not just for the way he'd rather pass through a doughnut hole than take the shot himself.

No, what floors me about Chris Paul is his humanity. If strangers had bound my weak-hearted grandfather, beat him for no reason and killed him for the cash in his wallet -- strangers who to this day have not shown a thimbleful of contrition -- I'd want them in prison 100 years after they were in the dirt.

Chris Paul once wrote that his grandfather "taught me more things than I could ever learn with a Ph.D."

One of them must've been love.

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The Best That Ever Was . . . a waste.

"If you have dreams of being a rock-star public speaker, pumping up an audience as you stride the stage and proclaim your brilliance, I beg you to reconsider. Don’t dream of that. Dream of something much bigger than you are.”  (TED Talks: the official TED guide to public speaking)

Matt Damon agrees.

"Imagine chasing that, and not getting it, and getting it finally in your eighties or nineties  with all of life behind you" or broken relationships or abandoned friends or ruined lives "and realizing . . . what an unbelievable waste." 

Because

"It can't fill you up. If that's a whole that you have, that won't fill it."

It's the difference between eulogy virtues and resume virtues; the BIG ME and little me.

“THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS IS: FIND SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE, AND DEDICATE YOUR LIFE TO IT.” – DAN DENNETT

Or as Chris McCandless wrote during his last days, "Happiness is only realized when shared."

A grim yet poignant reminder for those of us pursuing dreams.

The Process of Procrastination

Tim Urban has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. With wry stick-figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence, Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk (Ted.com).

According to Tim Urban, his responsibilities include:

• Writing posts every Tuesday every Wednesday about his psychological shortcomings
• Picking a topic for the week’s post before realizing it’s icky after diving in and thinking “if only I were doing that other topic it would be so much easier”; switching to that other topic and realizing it’s incredibly icky too
• Opening three Chrome windows with 42 research tabs in each, just short of getting to that stressful zone where you can’t see the icon on the tabs anymore
• Pacing around in his underwear hating himself
• Drawing stick figures at a 2nd 4th grade skill level
• Drawing head circles ten times before finally drawing one that looks normal
• Not being an expert on things he writes about
• Getting yelled at by people who think he thinks he’s an expert on things he writes about
• Getting scolded by people for using profanity in writing
• Passionately underestimating how long each post will take to do

You can read his full dramatic nightmare story of what it was like to do a TED Talk

Key (Missing) Attributes of a Hero

Joseph Campbell wrote the blue print for the hero's journey, and it's almost spotless, but for one specific yet life-altering moment. A moment that separates the hero present from the hero past and what differentiates an adventure-seeking journey from the hero's journey. And he missed it.

According to Campbell, The Hero is the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization and endures the following stages:

1.        THE ORDINARY WORLD.  The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma.  The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history.  Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

2.        THE CALL TO ADVENTURE.  Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.  

3.        REFUSAL OF THE CALL.  The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly.  Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

4.        MEETING WITH THE MENTOR.  The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey.  Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

5.        CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.  At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.  

6.        TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES.  The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

7.        APPROACH.  The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

8.        THE ORDEAL.  Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear.  Out of the moment of death comes a new life. 

9.        THE REWARD.  The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.  There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

10.      THE ROAD BACK.  About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home.  Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

11.     THE RESURRECTION.  At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home.  He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level.  By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

12.       RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR.  The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

The critical moment for the hero is in #8, but Campbell's stroke is too broad to see it. Christopher Vogler gets a little close when he writes, "The hero endures the supreme ORDEAL."

This is the moment at which the hero touches bottom.  He/she faces the possibility of death, brought to the brink in a fight with a mythical beast.  For us, the audience standing outside the cave waiting for the victor to emerge, it’s a black moment.  In STAR WARS, it’s the harrowing moment in the bowels of the Death Star, where Luke, Leia and company are trapped in the giant trash-masher.  Luke is pulled under by the tentacled monster that lives in the sewage and is held down so long that the audience begins to wonder if he’s dead. 

This is a critical moment in any story, an ordeal in which the hero appears to die and be born again.  It’s a major source of the magic of the hero myth. 

It's not facing the possibility of death and surviving that creates a hero, it's the actual death. They're self, their glory, and their personal achievements must be laid down at the alter. Then and only then can they embrace humility and become the hero.

THE JOURNEY SHOULD LOOK LIKE THIS:

1. 8a Failure: The hero must fail, he/she must realize that they cannot fulfill the task alone, that they need help to continue. Often, this is the hero's deepest and darkest moment. It is the climax of the conflict, and because such, it is the most revealing (which is the purpose of conflict - to reveal truth).
2. 8b Ownership: When the hero encounters this great of conflicts, they will be confronted with absolute Truth. To move on, they must take ownership and admit their faults, or as K.M. Weiland says, they must acknowledge that they've knocked down the first domino. 
   1. It's when Peter Parker realizes that, although he didn't pull the trigger, his inaction killed Uncle Ben.
   2. It's Andy Dufresne admitting that he killed his wife, by "driving her away" because he didn't know how to show his love. "She died because of me."
   3. It's Ivan Ilych admitting much too late that the way he had lived his whole life had been wrong, and he blames no one but himself.
3. 8c Restoration: After the Truth has been revealed and the hero no longer sees themselves as innocent, the helper shows up and restores the hero. The helper, or supernatural power, reminds and affirms the hero of their role, their task, and what still needs to be done. They pull the hero from the ashes and breath new life into them - the hero is then reborn. But he/she still needs direction.
4. 8d Humility: In Humilitas: a lost key to life, love, and leadership, John Dickson explains that humility, true humility, is not thinking lowly of oneself. Rather, it is the full acknowledgement of one's gifts, abilities, and strengths, but the choice to use them (or withhold them) for the benefit of others. 

It is this moment, this attribute, that has changed most since the ancient heroes and that Campbell never acknowledges. It's the difference between Odysseus and Batman, Achilles and Nelson Mandela. 

Heroes no longer return home for personal glory and family fame, they return home to save and protect the people - even if it means bearing the shame or enduring great loss. Because they can take it, because of the journey, and because that's what heroes do.

The reward then, in #9 isn't anything of great monetary value, it's a responsibility. And there is always danger in losing that because once the hero no longer lives with humility and for the benefit of others, they live for self, willing to sacrifice others for personal gain.

When they return home, they are resurrected - completely new and transformed. They've learned something and they have brought it home, "bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed."

“The heroes of all time have gone before us,” Campbell writes in his concluding paragraph of the prologue, “the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path.  And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with the world.” 

Writing and Life, and the Advice We're Misusing.

K.M. Weiland work has been posted in the past and probably will be in the future, because it's just good stuff.

Her latest post, "6 Bits of Common Writing Advice You're Misusing," is another great resource for writers, but it's also a great resources of life.

Here are a few most notables:

1. Write a Likable Character

You hear it all the time. If you don’t create characters readers like—and especially a protagonist readers like—why would they ever want to read your story? Stories are made or broken on the strength of their characters, which means you must get readers invested in your main character right from go.

Common writing advice says your protagonist must be likable. But don’t confuse likability with perfection. Readers love flawed characters.

What Writers Sometimes Think This Means:

The problem is that writers sometimes think this means they must write a character who is an utter saint. If he makes a mistake, if he speaks in anger, if he’s selfish, if he sins—readers will instantly judge him, hate him, and drop him. Instead of creating a realistically flawed (andinteresting) human being, these writers end up with either a

a) a self-righteous goody-goody

b) a self-flagellating goody-goody

The irony here is that “perfect” characters are hardly ever likable characters.

What This Bit of Writing Advice Really Means:

Because we often equate other people’s ability to like us with our ability to avoid of messing up, we think the same must apply to our characters. But (aside from the fact this is an utterly false paradigm) consider some of your favorite characters. I’m willing to bet most of them are egregiously flawed. And don’t you love them the more for those flaws?

When you’re told to “write a likable character,” what you’re really be told is to “write a realistic, compelling, relatable, interesting character.” So give him a relatable motivation and pile on the sins, because readers have a high capacity for forgiveness.

Application to Life:

We love flawed fictional characters because they are relatable. Characters that are to goody-goody become distant because we know ourselves. We know that, try as we might, we are deeply flawed and fully sinful - that we have ghosts. 

When we read the struggles and failures of fictional characters, we see ourselves, and we have compassion, and we end up loving them more.

Characters like Cora who kills a white boy while trying to escape North, the adulterous John Proctor in The Crucible, and lying, scared, and over emotional disciple, Peter.

But not so much with the non-fictional characters of our daily workplaces, the family members that gather around the Thanksgiving table, and the members of our churches. Their faults are not lovable but deplorable. They drive us apart, they seep into our thoughts while driving or washing the dishes. They're the subjects of our cryptic blog posts. 

Suddenly, the realistic, compelling, relatable, interesting characters that are so lovable in books are our enemies in life.

Patrick Lencioni refers to this as the Fundamental Attribution Error, "The tendency of human beings to attribute the negative or frustrating behaviors of {others} to their intentions and personalities, while attributing their own negative or frustrating behaviors to environmental factors" (The Advantage).

Reading and writing stories can remind that, just as we and our favorite characters are flawed, so to is our neighbor. And that makes them realistic, compelling, relatable, and interesting . . . if only we choose to keep reading and not close the book.

4. Flesh Out Your Minor Characters

Your protagonist may make or break the show, but the supporting cast is just as important to the success of his story. If your minor characters are boring, flat, and clichéd, your entire story will suffer. This means you must lavish just as much attention on the little people as you do your shakers and movers. Even your smallest of walk-on characters need to strike readers with just as much realism and charisma as your larger-than-life protagonist.

Common writing advice says you must flesh out even your minor characters—and you should! But you must do it artfully, using only story-pertinent details.

What Writers Sometimes Think This Means:

Every character is the hero of his own story, right? And that’s exactly what some writers seem bent on doing: writing an entire story for every minor character, however insignificant they actually are within the plot. When you end up telling a minor character’s entire life story just to “flesh him out,” you know you’ve gone too far. In fact, even just sharing a single detail about this character if it is not pertinent to the story is a bridge too far.

If you introduce your walk-on taxi driver with a lengthy conversation about his large family, you’re telling readers this man and his family are important—to the plot, to the protagonist’s development, or to the thematic premise. In short, every minor-character detail you include had better be doing double or triple duty, rather than simply serving to tell readers, “See, look, this guy is a real human being! No, really!”

What This Bit of Writing Advice Really Means:

By all means, bring your minor characters to life. But do it deftly. Do it in a way that creates irony and subtext—and most importantly moves the plot forward.

Application to Life:

"You must lavish just as much attention on the little people as you do your shakers and movers." And how much more this applies to life.

How we treat those who can do nothing for us, who can provide little or no return, defines our character more than anything else. Being kind to those who are kind is easy. Being kind to those who are undeserving, who are cruel and seemingly fully selfish, is not. But it's what makes a "successful story."

In life, there are not minor or flat characters, there is only people - humans who want and love and fail and feel just like the rest of us - who want to be the hero. Lavishing attention on the "little people," those who cannot speak for themselves, fight for themselves, or think for themselves, is the mark and beauty of the best of humanity - it's humility. It's the mark of a hero.

People like Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, and those whose names will never appear in blogs or headlines because they didn't do what they did for attention, but because it was the right thing to do. And at the end of their lives, their funeral parlor is full.

5. Add Conflict to Every Scene

Here’s one you hear a lot these days: conflict, conflict, conflict. Without it, you have no plot and no story. If characters aren’t fighting, struggling, overcoming in every single scene, the forward momentum of the plot will founder, and readers will grow bored and give up on the book. More than that, conflict is directly related to the pertinence of any scene within your story. If something isn’t happening to push the conflict forward, then chances are high that scene can and should be trimmed from the story.

Common writing advice says you must include conflict in every scene—and you should! But you must make sure it is story-driving conflict, rather than random arguments.

What Writers Sometimes Think This Means:

In their determination to include the magic story elixir of conflict, writers sometimes end up manufacturing it. The result is random conflict—arguments, obstacles, and even physical altercations that actually do nothing to move the plot.

Turns out, conflict all by itself is not a surefire indicator of a scene’s plot-progressing necessity. Too often, writers feel their story is lagging (particularly in the Second Act), so they throw in a random argument between allies—or the neighborhood bully attacks—or there’s a car wreck—or who knows what else. The result is, at best, melodrama. At worst, readers will be just as bored as if the characters really were doing nothing.

What This Bit of Writing Advice Really Means:

It’s not enough to throw in a random argument to spice things up. Every bit of conflict in every scene must function as part of the overall plot, creating a seamless line of scene dominoes—one knocking into the next—that progresses your story from beginning to end.

Just as importantly, every bit of this conflict must pertinently impact your character’s arc and your story’s theme. If it misfires on any of these three levels—plot, character, or theme—it risks irrelevance and must be reexamined to strengthen it into something with the ability to truly power your story.

Application to Life:

Saying that a story without conflict is boring and will cause the readers to lose interest is perhaps true, but it is also shallow at the least - inaccurate and unhelpful at most because it doesn't relate to life. Try telling a middle school child struggling with the harshness of an overwhelming bully that it's what makes his life - his story- interesting. Tell a father whose searching for answer after losing his job or a wife and mother of three who has recently discovered that she a widow and must carry the burden alone that this is what moves their story along, "from beginning to end," and see if they are comforted. 

It won't. Because the purpose of conflict is not to move the story along. 

Conflict and hardship is a part of life, we know that. But how we interpret conflict can change how we view life.

"It’s not enough to throw in a random argument to spice things up," Weiland writes, and that is true, and it's probably good advice for writers. But in life, there is no "random argument" because, to paraphrase Weiland, every bit of conflict in every moment of life functions as part of the overall story, "creating a seamless line of scene dominoes—one knocking into the next."

The argument with a loved one that seemed to spawn from nothing and that ended nowhere is part of the seamless line of dominoes that was knocked, sometimes days or even years prior.

A blowup is never just a single isolated blowup. Somewhere, someone has pushed a domino. 

Knowing this can remind us perhaps of a few things.

1. Patience - because if we love that person, we want to know what's really going on. We want to lay a domino on its side and stop the progression.
2. Empathy - because we know ourselves and that really, when we are frustrated over a dirty kitchen, there is really something bigger we're wrestling with. So we listen.
3. Forgiveness - when we are close to someone, we are the ones they fall on. And sometimes,, they can't do anything about it - they've just been pushed over. So we bare it.

Thank you K.M. Weiland for the post, and thank you for reading!

Hemingway's Cocktail for Rough Times

Eighty years ago, Ernest Hemingway invented the perfect cocktail for the times.

“Death in the Gulf Stream,” as he called it, was Hemingway’s salve for 1937—a dark year marked by an economic recession in the US, Joseph Stalin’s wrenching Purge Trials, a new war between China and Japan, and the Spanish Civil War which he covered as a journalist for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

War corespondent Ernest Hemingway, 1937.(AP Photo)

That year, the then-38-year old Farewell to Arms writer was emerging from a creative slump. He published To Have and Have Not, a novel about a desperate fishing-boat captain forced to engage in contraband operations between Key West, Florida, and Cuba in order to make ends meet. Hemingway devised what he called a “reviving and refreshing” gin based highball that “cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life.”

Hemingway describes it as a cocktail to be enjoyed from 11:00am on.

Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice.

Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple splashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill glass almost full with Holland gin…

No sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter—but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases.

We don’t add sugar to ale, and we don’t need sugar in a “Death in the Gulf Stream”—or at least not more than 1 tsp. Its tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm.

Hemingway’s recipe was documented in Charles Baker’s 1946 compendium, The Gentleman’s Companion, An Exotic Cookery and Drinking Book. It’s also included in a book of cocktail recipes compiled by Colin Field, the head bartender of the Ritz Hotel Paris, who created a themed bar in honor of the Nobel Prize winning writer.

From Quartz.

Let's Just Talk, Like Dr. Maya Angelou

"Vulgarity is vulgarity" no matter the color of mouth.

or 

"I might like you actually, or you might like me actually. Or I might not. But I will certainly treat you fairly."

She is one of the best.

Good Fiction : Good Life

The best fiction writers write like they’re in love—and edit like they’re in charge.

First drafting should be a wild and wonderful ride, full of discovery, dreams and promises. But at some point you have to settle down and make the book really work. You need to approach your manuscript with sober objectivity and knowledge of the craft.

Having reviewed hundreds of manuscripts over the years, I’ve identified the five mistakes that most regularly turn up. Start your revision by addressing these, and you’ll immediately change your story for the better.

This is the introduction from a Writer's Digest post entitled, The 5 Biggest Fiction Writing Mistakes (& How to Fix Them). In it, James Scott Bell does exactly what the title suggests, he identifies the 5 biggest fiction writing mistakes and shows how to fix them.

But what if these truths were applied to life? Truths such as:

1. Happy People in Happy Land

Chief among the most common problems, in first chapters especially, are scenes presenting characters who are perfectly happy in their ordinary worlds. The writer thinks that by showing nice people doing nice things, readers will care about these pleasant folk when the characters are finally hit with a problem.

But readers actually engage with plot via trouble, threat, change or challenge. . .

Yet, most of the time what we say we desire most is to live a happy life in a happy land. Yet, when it comes to stories, happy people living in happy lands bore us . . . because it just isn't all that relatable. Like a good story, there needs to be adventure.

2. A World Without Fear

The best novels, the ones that stay with you all the way to the end—and beyond—have the threat of death hanging over every scene.

Death comes in three forms. Physical death is a staple of the thriller, of course. But there’s also professional death, where the main character is engaged in a vocation and the particular matter at hand threatens that position: A cop assigned a case that may mean the end of his career. A married politician falling for a young staffer. A devoted mother losing the child she loves to drugs. Your job, if it’s vocational death overhanging your novel, is to make whatever problem the protagonist is facing feel so important that failing to overcome it will mean a permanent setback to his main role in life.

There’s also psychological death (“dying on the inside”), most often emphasized in character-driven fiction. This is where the romance genre comes in. It has to seem as if the lovers must end up together or their lives will forever be less than what they could have been.

Regardless of which form you use, you must put death on the line so fear may be felt throughout. Fear is a continuum—it can be simple worry or outright terror. You can put it everywhere. And you should.

Once the story is underway, scenes where fear isn’t present in some form mean the stakes are not high enough or the characters aren’t acting the way they should in the face of death.

Achilles says the same:

3. Marshmallow Dialogue

Dialogue is the fastest way to improve a manuscript—or to sink it. When agents, editors or readers see crisp, tension-filled dialogue, they gain confidence in the writer’s ability. But dialogue that is sodden and undistinguished (marshmallow dialogue) has the opposite effect.

Pro dialogue is compressed. Marshmallow dialogue is puffy.

Pro dialogue has conflict. Marshmallow dialogue is overly sweet.

Pro dialogue sounds different for each character. Marshmallow dialogue blends together.

Fortunately, the fixes are simple.

First, make sure you can “hear” every character in a distinct voice. . . 

Second, compress your dialogue as much as possible, cutting fluffy words, whole lines or even entire exchanges. Here’s an example:

“Mary, are you angry with me?” John asked.

“You’re damn straight I’m mad at you,” Mary said.

“But why? You’ve got absolutely no reason to be!”

“Oh but I do, I do. And you can see it in my face, can’t you?”

The alternative:

“You angry with me?” John asked.

“Damn straight,” Mary said.

“You got no reason to be!”

Mary felt her hands curling into fists.

Finally, when writing dialogue be sure to include some sort of tension in every exchange. Remember fear? At the very least you can have some aspect of it (worry, anxiety, fright) going on inside one of the characters so that communication is partially impaired. Try playing up the different agendas each character has in a scene. Let them use dialogue as a weapon to get what they want.

Perfect for life, right? When speaking (in real life) speak clearly and don't fluff, be honest not sugar coated, an original (confident) not an echo, and be a great listener. 

The Chinese character for "listen" is this:

When engaged in a dialogue, listen with your ears, your eyes, and heart. Treat the speaker like he or she is king. Which means although we are honest and original, we are also respectful.

Beautiful.

4. Predictability

Readers like to worry about characters in crisis. They want to tremble about what’s around the next corner (whether it’s emotional or physical). If a reader knows what’s coming, and then it does in fact come, the worry factor is blown. Your novel no longer conveys a fictive dream but a dull ride down familiar streets.

The fix is simple: Put something unexpected in every scene. Doing this one thing keeps the reader on edge. . .

Life is unpredictable. No matter how many lists we create, plans we make, or details we check and recheck, we are not in control. 

Dull rides that lead us down familiar streets are safe, but boring. As Bilbo says, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to" or what what you'll discover. 

A life that is unpredictable is Life. 

5. Lost Love

As I said up front, writing a book is like falling in love. Outlining and planning are the wooing. Drafting the novel is your commitment to marriage (which would make the opening scenes the honeymoon). But at some point, you and your book will likely need some marriage counseling. Because when you lose the verve for your material, it shows.

So how do you regain lost love? The surest way is by going deeper into your characters.

Start with backstory. Maybe you’ve already done an extensive bio for your main character. Try starting a new one. Keep the best of the old material, but put in plenty that’s new.

Focus on the year your character turned 16. Create an account of what happened at that crucial stage. What incident shaped her? What romances, heartaches, tragedies? Write those scenes in detail.

Do this for your antagonist, too, and your secondary characters. Soon enough you’ll be excited to get back to your story.

Also, try focusing on what your protagonist yearns for. We yearn because we feel a lack, a need, a hole in our souls. So yearning is about connection. This, in fact, is the power of mythology, some of the best storytelling of all time. Joseph Campbell taught that myths were a way of gaining connection to something transcendent, a life source, an essential mystery.

Readers, too, yearn for connection—with stories they can get lost in and be moved by. Fix these five areas in your work, and your books can be among them.

Holy Crap. Think of all that could happen to relationships if we applied THIS truth? Sheesh.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!

Should we Say “And” Instead of “But”?

I stumbled across the following article and thought it worth storing away because I like the discussion it raises, or at least should raise. I'll ask the question at the end.

This post is from Nicole Francesca:

In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a “dialectic” refers to the idea of two truths being true simultaneously, even if they seem to oppose one another. It’s a practice in removing ourselves from black-and-white, either-or thinking, which is one of the greatest limiting factors in our collective ability to grow. We’re so used to seeing things as one-or-the-other and never as both-at-once that we unconsciously choose a side and live there. It needn’t be so. It’s not an easy transition always, but here’s the trick that I learned this first year in grad school to become a clinical social worker (which is a long way to say “therapist”):

Whenever you’re about to say “but,” replace it with “and,” or “and it is also true that.”

Fair warning: everyone that is very used to standing at the either-or edge of the both-and lake will not be amused by your commitment to swimming. They may have never even heard of such an outrageous idea, as I had not, of allowing both things to be true at once.

And for good reason. How can we rectify something good as also having bad elements, and vice versa? That makes the black-and-white territory quite gray indeed, and, my friends, we are fucking terrified as a people of the gray area.

It means we have to dig deeper to figure out how we feel about things, what our actual motivations are. The gray area removes the ease of simply choosing a side and leaving it at that. The other factor is this: anyone who has been on the receiving end of a “this truth, but this truth” knows that anything before the “but” is lost to oblivion forever.

I love you, but I can’t stay.

See how that works? We can’t even hear the shit before the “but,” and for good reason. “But” ends dialogue. It says, “the first truth is not nearly as important as the second truth.” Turning it into, “I love you, and I can’t stay,” opens a door for exploration, and values the first truth just as much as the second.

I encourage you to give it a try, and I’m going to give you some examples from my own life, because it took me a good while to commit to the both-and—and now I’m sold for life.

I am angry at the state of the world, and it is also true that I am in love with every small beautiful moment of each day.

I am confident, and sensitive.

Fully experiencing grief is the only way to move through it, and it is also true that grief hurts in ways that tear apart the very soul.

Being poor has made me resourceful beyond measure, and it is also true that poverty fucking sucks.

I’m the only one that can repair the damage incurred to me, without my consent, during my childhood, and it is also true that that’s really unfair.

The difference in how the statements feel when you remove the “but” has a palpable feel to me. Do they for you? It allows the reality of pain to exist without denying the reality of responsibility, or the reality of what seems to oppose the pain. It allows us some small measure of liberation without losing accountability.

The binary of either-or is a lie. As humans, we’re meant to swim in the both-and lake, and explore the deeper-than-surface shit. Joy can include grief, and pain can include beauty. It often does, without us even realizing it.

Side Note: I also want to make note that this can be used by people with nefarious intent and it’s important to be able to recognize that. Any tool for healing will be twisted as tool for control by those who need control, even if they don’t realize they desperately need it. For example:

“I hurt you, and my love for your made me do it.”

Be always sure to listen to exactly whom is taking responsibility for the gray area in which they wade.

So here is my question:

Does this mean we should never say "but"?  

I love this article because it does highlight how we are "so used to seeing things as one-or-the-other and never as both-at-once that we unconsciously choose a side and live there." And I think you would agree that we see this in most everything: religion, race, personalities, etc..

So again, does this mean we should never say "but"? And if not, where? When? On what topics, issues?  

Thank you Nicole for inspiring a discussion - even if it is only with myself.

Ditching Empathy is a Bad Idea

Paul Bloom, psychologist and Yale professor, argues that empathy is a bad thing—that it makes the world worse. While we've been taught that putting yourself in another's shoes cultivates compassion, it actually blinds you to the long-term consequences of your actions. In this animated interview from The Atlantic, we hear Bloom’s case for why the world needs to ditch empathy.

Video by  The Atlantic

1. Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. 

Bloom's misuse of empathy creates a problem, namely, that he's wrong.

Empathy, deep and real empathy, isn't done for the purpose of self, "to get a buzz out of it", but for another - to understand and share in the pain they are suffering. To connect with them, for their sake.  Not ours.

Perhaps the reason why we care about the baby in the well is because it's here, in front of us, and we can do something about it.  The war is over there, untouchable . . . what possible difference can we make? For many of us, not much.

But we can save the child in the well.

"Selfish moralizing" is an issue worth discussing and probably one we should be against, but not empathy.

Empathy breaks down the walls of diversity, allowing us to "understand and share the feelings of another." It asks us to think not of ourselves, but of others - which is never a bad thing.

But Blooms is right, "If [we] really want to make the world better, spend less time trying to maximize [our] own altruistic joy."  But then he says, "And in a more cold-blooded way think, 'how can I help other people?'" 

And the answer to that Mr. Bloom is this: by being warm-blooded, and empathetic.

The Millennial Question : Simon Sinek