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About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
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Blogocentric Formulations
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics).
Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:
Thanks for stopping by! 
January 30, 2014 at 9:18pm January 30, 2014 at 9:18pm
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*Written as part of "Invalid Item" 
Prompt: Respond to the following quotes:
“I believe the term blog means more than an online journal. I believe a blog is a conversation. People go to blogs to read AND write, not just consume.”
- Michael Arrington
“The bottom line is that blogging is like sex. You can’t fake it. You can’t fake passion. You can’t fake wanting to engage with the public. If you do, it will ultimately be an unsatisfying experience for both the blogger and their readers.”
- Kevin Anderson
For me, these quotes embody two of the most essential elements of not just blogging, but of writing and even art in general: interaction (Arrington) and authenticity (Anderson).
Arrington could be referring to the fact that most blogs have functionality in place which allows readers to comment on a blogger’s posts. Whatever the platform, blogging is clearly intended to be an interactive experience, particularly since the default setting on most blogging platforms is almost always to allow comments; you have to manually disable the ability for people to comment in most cases.
But I think Arrington is actually getting at something a little broader in his comment, which is that blogs are inherently public. Unlike keeping a private journal, posting something online – regardless of access restrictions – implies that the material is intended for an audience of at least one other person besides the author. (Otherwise, why post it online at all when you can keep it securely on your hard drive?) And when you write for an audience other than yourself, you’re inviting interaction. Whether that’s between the author and his/her audience or different members of the author’s audience among themselves, an audience always has an opinion on content they’re presented with: like, dislike, interested, bored, etc.
Even if the author’s intent is not to engage in a conversation, that doesn’t mean his or her audience is content to sit back and merely read. People do go to blogs to both read AND write, whether or not the blogger solicits the interaction. Additionally, the conversation about a blog post is no longer relegated the comments section of the blog itself; blog posts are shared, favorited, retweeted, copied-and-pasted, and discussed in other forums. Television programs are even trying to draw live audiences back from the safety of their DVR-recorded programming by promoting live-tweeting opportunities to ask questions or interact with the cast of a show during its initial viewing. All of this is encouraging a culture where the content that’s posted online is meant to be discussed and disseminated, not merely read and discarded. There’s no question that blogging is not the passive pastime that keeping a diary or a private journal once was.
As far as the second quotation, I disagree with Anderson’s illustrative example (if he thinks sex can’t be faked, clearly he’s never been married.  Oh yes, I went there   ). All kidding aside, though, his point about having an honest, passionate experience is an important one. People may call it truth, honesty, earnestness... I prefer the overarching term “authenticity” to encapsulate the idea that the content one blogs about needs to connect with both the blogger and the audience. If it doesn’t, the experience won’t be a memorable one and I’d like to think that anyone who takes the time to create something has at least some hope of it being memorable or significant to an audience.
I know we’re talking about blogging here, but this is really a conversation about the larger medium of writing, and the even larger topic of art as a whole. The whole point of creating art is for an audience to interact with it and have an authentic experience. That’s not an easy thing to do.
It requires a lot of dedication and hard work.
It requires an understanding of your medium.
It requires an understanding of how an audience interacts with art.
If you’re insincere in your efforts, the end result is likely to have an inauthentic connection to your audience.
The bottom line is that if you want to keep what you write private, you probably shouldn’t post it on something called the World Wide Web. And if you are interested in posting something online, you shouldn’t just expect that there will be an audience for your work; you should embrace it. Don’t treat it as a medium where you write static words that are then abandoned; recognize blogging for the opportunity it is to meet and interact with new people. And while you’re at it, say something meaningful... because if you’re going to interact with someone, you might as well do it in an authentic way. |
January 30, 2014 at 1:40pm January 30, 2014 at 1:40pm
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 30 Prompt: Give me your best advice when trying something new. On the first day (yesterday), tell me the story of when you tried something for the first time and failed. What did you do after that? On the second day (today), tell me about a future plan to try something new (a New Year's Resolution perhaps?). We all know writing down our goals can help in motivating us to achieve them - so don't delay! Wink Your blogging peers will support you!
I'm not sure that this classifies as 100% new because I've attempted it before, but I really want to write more poetry this year. For the most part, I'm a prose writer. Screenplays, articles, short stories, novels... I like stringing together sentences and tend to shy away from more poetic forms of expression simply because I don't really have a background or any real experience with it. In writing up my blog entry last night , though, I realized that I want poetry to be more like my screenwriting and less like my guitar-playing. Which means that I need to enter contests and practice, practice, practice rather than giving it a weak initial effort then shoving my rhyming dictionary into a closet for another six months only to dust it off and repeat the process all over again.
It may not be pretty, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail (likely a whole bunch!), but I'm hoping that by giving poetry a legitimate shot, I can look back at the end of 2014 and be both proud of what I've written, and proud of where I'm at with my poetic writing ability.
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January 29, 2014 at 9:30pm January 29, 2014 at 9:30pm
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 29 Prompt: Give me your best advice when trying something new. On the first day (today), tell me the story of when you tried something for the first time and failed. What did you do after that? On the second day (tomorrow), tell me about a future plan to try something new (a New Year's Resolution perhaps?). We all know writing down our goals can help in motivating us to achieve them - so don't delay! Your blogging peers will support you!
When it comes to trying new things, I only have two rules:
1. Embrace the challenge.
2. Don't be afraid to fail a few times.
Granted, I don't always heed my own advice, but I think it's important to remind yourself that you don't have to be perfect when you're trying something new, and - perhaps more importantly - that you should have fun and enjoy the experience. First time cooking? That souffle probably isn't going to come out so great. First time trying the Viennese Waltz? That waltz is probably going to be a little clunky and awkward. Even if it's something within your own wheelhouse, a different application could bring new challenges. First time writing a novel? Even if you're a proficient short-storyteller or blogger, chances are that first novel is going to need more than a little work. The important thing is not that your first attempt be anywhere close to perfect; it's that you immerse yourself in the process, allow yourself to enjoy it, and don't get hung up on the finished product. It's about the journey before it's about the destination.
When I first started writing screenplays, I was in high school. I had only read a couple before, and really didn't know what I was doing in terms of format, content, structure, characterization, etc. I thought I could just start with "Fade In:" and write until I felt like ending it with "Fade Out." It was a terrible, awful script and as much as I was tempted to just give it up, I instead wrote another screenplay. And another. And another. And have continued writing them for nearly fifteen years now.
When I first started trying to play the guitar, I was also in high school. I didn't really have any musical training or experience with music other than as a listener, but I thought it would be neat to learn how to play the guitar. ('Cause chicks dig guitar players, right?  ). The first few times I tried to learn the chords and the finger positions, it was a disaster. Much like my terrible screenplay, I had no sense of what I was doing or how to even go about getting better. I stopped trying to learn how to play the guitar in frustration.
And now, fifteen years later, I'm a fairly decent screenwriter (if I do say so myself!) who has actually made money from his writing and is sought after for his insights on story and character problems in other peoples' scripts. I still do not know how to play the guitar.
You have to stick with it if you want to learn something. Through the point where you have no idea what you're doing. Through the point where you know what you're doing is terrible. Through the point where you manage slight glimpses of competence and grow frustrated at your inability to repeat them. Through the point where you're competent on a regular basis, but frustrated because you have a few moments of brilliance that you can't always seem to replicate. Learning something is a gradual process for most of us, where proficiency (and subsequently excellence, if we're lucky) is learned through lots and lots of trial and error. And you'll never have all those moments of trial and error if you're afraid to fail and/or don't embrace the challenge of learning something new.
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January 28, 2014 at 6:40pm January 28, 2014 at 6:40pm
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 28 Prompt: A genie has granted your wish to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What's it like?
Honestly, my response for the dream house prompt ("Day 25: "If you build it, they will come"" ) a couple days ago probably covers this topic too, or at least the parts about having a home office and a space with a view. I need to be comfortable when I read, but I also like to change things up, so a variety of comfortable chairs would probably be ideal. And I need quiet when I work, so some kind of a home office with a door I can close would be ideal in that situation. But other than that, I don't have a whole lot of needs.
I imagine my dream house would probably be ideally suited for reading and writing, since my wife also loves to read. It'd be great to have a comfortable couch in the family room, maybe a nice recliner in the living room, a loveseat in the den... a variety of spaces where we can cozy up with a book/Kindle/iPad/whatever-they-come-up-with-next and get lost in a piece of writing. Obviously, there would also have to be wifi across the whole space so I could read and write stuff on Writing.com as often as possible. 
I suppose that in order to customize my dream house for maximum reading/writing benefit, the location would be more important than anything else. Somewhere quiet, obviously, but it'd be nice to be some place relaxing and scenic too, so those times when I need to rest my eyes from the computer screen can be spent staring at some kind of natural beauty. With that in mind, my perfect reading space would probably be somewhere tropical (Hawaii is a favorite of mine), lush and green (Pacific Northwest), or metropolitan with a lot of character (London, Paris, Rome, etc.).
Since we're talking about genies, though, how about an interdimensional house that defies the laws of physics and has a western Hawaiian exposure, a northern Pacific Northwest exposure, an eastern Venetian exposure, and a southern Los Angeles exposure? Yeah, now we're talking!
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January 27, 2014 at 3:21pm January 27, 2014 at 3:21pm
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*Written as part of "Invalid Item"
Prompt: Think about your journey as a writer. Which novel do you think represents or most relates to your journey? Why? Which book do you want it to be like?
If the prompt didn't specifically say "novel" and "book," this prompt would have been a no-brainer. It'd be a combination of the "Return of the Kane" episode of television series Veronica Mars (season 1, episode 6) and the movie Adaptation. As a quick summary, the Veronica Mars episode is about a student election where rich, popular kid Duncan Kane is nominated for class president (against his wishes) by friends who want him to win against an outcast kid who is gaining support from the rest of the school for her commitment to abolishing school policies that favor the rich kids. Duncan resists the idea of running for class president and actively tries to discourage people from voting for him. He ends up winning, and Veronica tells him that she's disappointed that he's just cruising through life and not taking a stand for or being passionate about anything. Her pep talk convinces him to find a happy medium where the school policies stay in place but where the rest of the school is also eligible to participate. In Adaptation, Nicolas Cage plays a writer struggling to write a meaningful, significant screenplay based on a book, with a subplot where his brother finds success writing generic action movie fare.
I can honestly say that I relate to both characters equally well. I've been Duncan Kane for a very long time (minus the whole popular and rich part ), kind of drifting through my writing career, never really taking a stand for anything or investing in anything. I haven't really struggled all that much in my life. School came relatively easy for me, work comes relatively easily for me, and writing comes relatively easy for me. If I just show up and give it a little bit of effort, the results are usually good enough to get by. I haven't often had to really apply myself, dig in, and give something 100% of my concentration and effort (yes, I was the kid who didn't study but could walk in, take the final, and walk out with a B+/A- ). I know that's resulted in a bit of an apathetic approach to life (and writing) where, like Duncan, I'm often guilty of "coasting" rather than really deciding what's important to me and taking active steps to achieve it.
At the same time, I share Charlie's (Nicolas Cage's character) struggle to want to do something great, and his feeling of disappointment at the results of his work, especially while others around me are finding success with their own projects. Like Charlie, I've accomplished a bit with my writing in the past, and people tell me I'm a good writer. So it's a constant struggle to try and replicate that success; to feel like I'm living up to the expectations that what I write must be good and isn't allowed to disappoint. Charlie and I are often trapped in a repeating loop of doubt and uncertainty that they thing we're working on just won't measure up to what others want it to be and - more importantly - to what we want it to be.
It may not surprise you to find, then, that the book I think best represents my writer's journey, at least in theme, is Catch-22. Joseph Heller's novel introduced the title into our modern vocabulary, and is defined as:
1. A problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule; or
2a. an illogical, unreasonable, or senseless situation.
- Merriam-Webster
When I'm being totally honest with myself, I know my inner Duncan Kane vs. my inner Charlie Kaufman are at odds. I desperately want to write something meaningful and significant, but few writers (and I'm definitely not one of them) are capable of writing something meaningful and significant without a whole lot of trial and error, whether that be writing and rewriting the same manuscript or always working on something new and pushing your own boundaries. I'm definitely in a "problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by an inherent circumstance," and I totally realize the unreasonable senselessness of it. As long as I'm Duncan Kane, I'll always be Charlie, merely wanting to achieve the remarkable without actually putting in the hard work to get there.
So which book would I want my writer's journey to be like?
Is this where I say "Harry Potter for the book sales and the merchandising and the theme park rides and the movie deals!" or "The Bible for the number of readers I've reached and affected!"?
Nah, those both seem a bit presumptuous to me.
If I wanted my writer's journey to be reflected in a book, it would be The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Obviously the wealth would be awesome, but I'm particularly drawn to that book for Dantes' near-mindless dedication to his cause. He will not be dissuaded; he will not be denied. He's motivated and has the means and ability to see his plan through. For a "coaster" like me there's something appealing about someone who is so single-minded in his focus that he'll allow nothing to get in his way. Where Dantes needed wealth to carry out his plans, I don't need fourteen long years in the bowels of Chateau d'If to happen upon the tools I need; I already have the ability to write. Now if only I could develop his commitment and laser-focus...
Maybe being locked away with nothing to do for fourteen years is worth considering... then again, I enjoy fresh air and open spaces, and I don't think my wife would approve, so I might have to find an alternative method.
And hey, I even have an analogue for the whole "revenge" element! When I was in high school and had finished writing my first screenplay, I - being a naive teenager - immediately sent letters off to all the major studios and agencies in Hollywood, asking how I could go about about becoming a screenwriter. Most didn't reply... others sent form rejection letters... but one respondent in particular not only sent a form rejection, but also included a very nasty handwritten note to accompany it, telling me to "do [myself] a favor and research on [sic] your future before bothering anyone again."
To this day, I still have that rejection letter saved in my work files and all I can say is, "Whoever you are, 'B.' from Universal Pictures, you're my Fernand and perhaps we'll meet again one day..." 
So, in a nutshell, my writing journey as viewed through some of the world's classic and most famous literature would be encapsulated as a very, very long time fighting a Catch-22, with future plans for a lucrative revenge plot a la The Count of Monte Cristo against all the doubters.
I wonder, though, does that include myself?
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January 27, 2014 at 1:38pm January 27, 2014 at 1:38pm
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 27 Prompt: Pick an article in the news that caught your attention over the weekend and tell us about it (or do a basic recap of the top news stories or bizarre stories of interest over the weekend).
Fair warning: I'm a sucker for bizarre news stories. Random facts and trivia tend to stick with me and while my wife will just roll her eyes whenever I spout off something I heard or read that day, just remember that you did ask for this.
I originally heard about this article on the Slate Political Gabfest podcast and it drew my attention to this USA Today article . Apparently a couple of researchers discovered that maple tree sap (a.k.a. maple syrup) does not necessarily have to come from fully-developed maple trees. Keep in mind that it's always been assumed that maple syrup needs to come from fully-developed trees; an assumption that dates all the way back to the very beginning of maple syrup harvesting (which predates European colonization of North America). However, these researchers found a maple tree missing it's crown (the top, leafy part) that still produced sap. Further analysis revealed that the sap doesn't actually come from the tops of the trees, but rather is drawn up from the roots, making it possible to produce maple syrup from much younger saplings rather than fully-grown trees.
Why is this significant? Because current maple syrup harvesting relies on existing forests full of fully-grown maple trees. Harvesters can only get about 40-50 gallons of syrup from a square acre of natural forests at present, which is why all those "real maple syrup" varieties at the grocery store are $6 to $10 for a little teensy bottle. With this new development, though, saplings can be planted and harvested like other crops. And since they can be planted and cultivated like an orchard or a vineyard with a much shorter "wait time
| Standard maple trees are first "tapped" for syrup production around 30-40 years of age, while this new discovery means saplings could be tapped after just 3-5 years of growth |
Obviously not everyone is pleased; there's a woman quoted in that USA Today article who seems a bit displeased at the idea that just anyone could make maple syrup... but hey, if it means $2-$3 maple syrups from all over the country, I think "The Maple Revolution" (note to self: look into trademarking that...) could be an interesting time for all of us.
ADDED BONUS: In addition to being a sucker for random news and bits of trivia, I'm also a sucker for a good click-through or related item, and I certainly wasn't disappointed because at the very bottom of that USA Today article, there was a link to this story about a "brazen $18 million maple syrup heist." I won't ruin the article for you, but it's short and it's worth reading. HINT: It may (or may not) surprise you to know that these syrup thieves were Canadian.
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January 26, 2014 at 11:30pm January 26, 2014 at 11:30pm
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 26 Prompt: Blog. Tell us about your week. Include your favorite blog entry from your fellow challengers from the preceding week and, most importantly, why.
"Busy" seems to be the word that best describes the first few weeks of 2014. I had Monday off work for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, but as short work weeks so often go, the other four days were stressful and unrelenting as we tried to cram five days' worth of work into four. Once again, I'm grateful for the group of people I work with, because the anxiety that comes with a packed work schedule is so much easier to bear when you like and get along with the people who are stuck in the boat right alongside you. My wife and I did have a very nice three-day weekend, though. We got caught up on our rest and the extra day off really helped us feel relaxed. I'm convinced the extra day of rest is what gave us the energy to get through the arduous week.
Around WdC, I've been keeping busy as usual. A relatively new member of the "Invalid Item" approached me about advice for starting his own unofficial newsletter group, so I've been advising him about what items to create, how to go about writing and distributing the newsletter, etc. We decided to collaborate on a one-off short story contest as a way to promote his new group, so we created "The Superpowered Erotica Contest" , which is open for entries through February 15th. Other than that, I'm finishing up the Winter Blogging Challenge over at "Blog Harbor" , and in the semifinals of "Invalid Item" , facing off against Annette  for a spot in the finals against either brothernature or blainecindy. I'm going to need all the help I can get if I'm going to beat two of these three excellent bloggers!
As far as my favorite blog posts of the week, I really enjoyed "Invalid Entry" by {suser_id:}, but I think Prosperous Snow celebrating  wins the week for having two of my favorite blog entries this week: "Wildcard Monday: Youth in the Age of Transition" and "Opinion Thursday: 90% of the world population" . I really enjoyed the "90% human extinction" prompt; I think it required the most thought and that a lot of people answered the question particularly well.
Other than that, I'm just getting ready for the week ahead, including a UENG newsletter that's coming up, as well as our book club activity that we're trying for the first time. As usual, just trying to keep active!
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January 26, 2014 at 12:02am January 26, 2014 at 12:02am
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 25 Prompt: You are the architect of your dream house - describe your creation in detail.
Way back in the day, before I knew I wanted to be involved in the motion picture business, I thought about being an architect. I took a mechanical drawing class in junior high which included learning how to draw all kinds of technical schematics, but the project I really latched onto was when we had to first do a blueprint of our own house and then come up with our own floorplan for an imaginary house for our final exam. I suppose that was the origin of my "dream house" even though it's changed form over the years.
I actually still have the pre-sketch of that floorplan somewhere in my home files, done with mechanical pencil on a piece of graph paper. I looked for it hoping I could scan a copy and upload it into this blog entry, but alas I've squirreled it away into some box and it'll take a much larger-scale excavation endeavor to recover it. For the most part, I've transitioned over the years from both wanting a huge mansion (doesn't every kid? ) to wanting nothing more than simple home that's large enough to accommodate my immediate family and a few guests. My wife and I both have relatively simple tastes and have whittled our dream house down to really little more than a list of "wants" that would be wonderful to have in our home.
Here's the current list:
 Stairs. After living in apartments for more than ten years (hey, it's expensive to buy a house in Los Angeles!), I really want my dream house to have stairs. I miss having multiple floors, going upstairs to go to bed, or downstairs to get something out of the kitchen. My wife likes ranch-style houses so this might become an issue, but for my money, I'd love to have a house with an upstairs and a downstairs.
Master bedroom upstairs. To go along with the last item on the list, I want the master bedroom to be upstairs. The house I spent the first twenty years of my life growing up in was extremely poorly laid out; the master bedroom was downstairs directly underneath the family room and kitchen upstairs, so my parents heard everything whenever they went to bed and we stayed up, had friends over, fixed something to eat, etc. I want a master bedroom that's upstairs and out of the way of the normal flow of household traffic.
Soaking tub and two sinks in the master suite. Another downside to apartment living is that there aren't a lot of luxury upgrades. Every master bathroom we've ever had has only included one sink and the smallest shower/tub combo they can find. When my wife and I shared a one-bathroom unit, it was a constant struggle to get ready to go out. Now that we have a two-bathroom unit, we actually use separate bathrooms just so we can get ready at the same time. In my dream house, I'd love to have two different sinks and a separate shower with a soaking tub. Jacuzzi jets would be nice, but I'd settle for one large enough that my wife and I can share at the same time without limbs awkwardly hanging out because it's only built for one.
Open concept. I love to cook and I love to entertain. The apartment we're currently in has an open concept where the living area and kitchen and dining room are all open and separated only by a kitchen island... and we love it! I can be whipping something up in the kitchen while still seeing the television, or participating in the conversation with people in the living room. My dream house would have the same kind of layout, where people can talk to one another even if they're in different rooms.
Enough bedrooms for everyone in my family everyone in my immediate family, plus a guest. I used to want a huge estate where I could have a bedroom for every member of my extended family and they could all come for Christmas and have their own rooms... but now that I've had to be responsible for actually cleaning a house, that seems like a lot of wasted space (that needs to be cleaned regularly!) just so we can have family over once or twice a year. So instead, I'd like enough bedrooms for our immediate family and maybe another extra one, maybe two for guests and to use as a home office. And for those holidays where everyone wants to come over, we can just break out the futons, sofa beds, and inflatable air mattresses!
A view of something. Another downside to apartment living is that there's rarely a view of anything except streets, other apartments, and building walls. I'd love to be able to look out my kitchen window and see the ocean, or even just out the bedroom window and see a backyard with some trees or something.
Basement. This will be incredibly difficult to find in Los Angeles, but I'd love a basement. Hey, since it's a dream house maybe I can buy a plot of land and build my own from the ground up! I think it'd be great to have the extra storage area a basement can provide... and maybe I can even turn it into one of those "man cave" things!
Secret passages. Okay, I'm really not joking. I'd love to have some kind of cool secret feature in the house. Maybe not necessarily "pull the third book from the left out of the shelf and find the secret vault" kind of thing, but maybe something along these lines: http://hiddenpassageway.com/.
A pantry. Another casualty of apartment life (seeing a pattern here?) is that there's very little storage for food. Just a couple cupboards to hold all of our utensils, cookware, food, glasses, etc. It'd be great to have a nice roomy pantry so we can actually shop at Costco and store the stuff somewhere other than the garage! To go with the aforementioned secret passages, one of the things I always through would be cool is a pantry with a door through it on the other side leading down to a wine cellar or basement of some kind. Maybe not "secret" so much as a "hidden" space that isn't clearly visible.
A yard. The last item on my list that also comes from living in an apartment is a yard. It doesn't have to be big, but I would love a bit of land so that I can look out at some landscaping rather than other buildings all the time. Maybe even some trees to hide the property lines. One of the things that I lament about modern housing developments is that they practically build the houses right to the property lines, maximizing interior square footage at the cost of landscape square footage. I'd love a house on a lot that's big enough to allow my future kids and pets to run around.
There are probably some other items I'm leaving off the list right now, and while I think that it's probably a long lists of "wants," I'd like to think that they're simple ones and not all that much to ask for. Still, a decent home in a decent area of Los Angeles still goes for $500,000 to $750,000, so I'm going to have to save up for a while before we can afford to get any house, let alone our dream house! |
January 24, 2014 at 9:58pm January 24, 2014 at 9:58pm
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*Written as part of "Invalid Item"
Prompt: In high school my friend pointed out to me that humans can never create anything new; everything they create is a product of other created things. For example a unicorn is just a horse with a horn on it's head it isn't truly new, she argued. What do you think about this concept? Do you think she's right or wrong? How does this apply to you as a writer? (Remember that every story is just a different combination of 26 letters!)
I've always had a problem with the argument that "everything's been done before." Sure, maybe that's technically true if you break a story down into its simplest and most general narrative form, but then by that logic there's no such thing as a unique human being either, since we're all just the same basic molecules of carbon and merely different combinations and sequences of the same cytosine, guanine, thymine, and adenine (a.k.a. DNA) building blocks.
I suppose the real issue here is that while the idea of creations being merely different reconfigurations of already existing things may be true in a literal sense, it's not necessarily true in a figurative sense. The law of conservation of matter (that's right, I'm getting all physics-al on you! ) states that matter and energy can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed; it must always remain constant. In fact, I'm pretty sure the last time anyone actually created something from nothing dates back to the whole, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" thing... And so, in that sense, it's true from both a scientific and faith-based standpoint that you literally cannot create something new; the best you can hope for is a different combination of what's already in existence. Which I suppose is exactly what you get when Baz Luhrmann puts his own personalized stamp on the adaptations for Romeo & Juliet or The Great Gatsby, and what you get when Jay-Z and Linkin Park do a mash up of "Numb" and "Encore" for their 2004 collaboration album Collision Course.
However, there's also a pretty hefty weight on the other side of the scales. Well, maybe not as much as a law of physics and the power of God, but if nothing new is truly new... why does copyright law allow content creators to register their works as new works? When Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith re-imagined Shakespeare's classic The Taming of the Shrew as a high school story that eventually became the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, it was registered as a new work. They didn't need Shakespeare's permission to write it; they certainly don't have to pay Shakespeare a license fee or a royalty from their earnings!
"But Jeff, Shakespeare's work is in the public domain!" You say. Okay, fine. Look at any of those books that reference a specific, limited number of narrative plots in existence: Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots, Georges Polti's The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, or the very simple four conflicts (man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. himself, man vs. society) referenced in Judith Simpson's Foundations of Fiction. According to those books, there are a finite number of plots out there and yet multiple examples of how each of these has been explored in different ways. At their heart, Stephen King's book The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the film The Day After Tomorrow, and the current television show Revolution are all inherently a 'man (or woman) vs. nature' story, and yet the United States Copyright Office has ruled that each of those stories is unique, original to their respective authors, and none of them are guilty of plagiarizing each other or any similar works that have come before them. Copyright law considers them original, unique works despite having similar themes and/or conflicts.
So is someone who says "no one ever creates anything new" correct? Technically, on a very broad and generic scale, I suppose it is true. But that's not how creativity is viewed in modern society, including by the laws used to define intellectual property. Maybe the person who proudly proclaims no new creations can ever be created will win at the game of Pointless Semantics, but most people - including and especially professional writers - live in a world where originality is a legal concern, not a semantic one.
And with that distinction made, if someone still wants to tell me that the idea for my next piece of creative writing is basically a re-imagining of Faust in an updated setting, or that my song is basically just "Canon in D " in a slightly different chord or register, I would kindly remind you that (as long as it's not outright intellectual property theft), the powers that be in the world of intellectual property disagree with you. And as long as they see it as original and as long as the people paying me to write it see it as original, that's good enough for me. 
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January 24, 2014 at 7:43pm January 24, 2014 at 7:43pm
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*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"
Day 24 Prompt: What is the most absurd or ridiculous thing that has ever happened to you while traveling?
If we're talking absurd in terms of expectations, the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened to me was when my wife and cousins and I went on a trip to Spain and thought the time change wouldn't affect us. We woke up at 4AM Los Angeles time (thinking we'd exhaust ourselves and sleep on the plane, which left at 11AM). Unfortunately, we were too excited to sleep, so we spent ten hours between two flights wide awake (at this point we'd been up for seventeen hours), and we landed at 7AM local time in Spain. We then proceeded to try and stay up for the entire Spanish day and readily agreed to go visit my cousin-in-law's parents' (with whom we were staying) school to see their play at 3PM. By the time 3PM rolled around, we had been up for 25 hours straight and were literally falling asleep at the play. I can only imagine how horrible all these Spanish parents were that such rude Americans came to see their children perform a play and were literally falling asleep in our seats!
But jet lag is hardly an "absurd or ridiculous" situation, so I think the travel experience that really takes the cake would be the year that my wife and I went to Vegas for Thanksgiving. We decided to forego the family obligations that year (see "Day 22: "There's No Such Thing as Fun for the Whole Family"" for a general understanding as to why ) and headed to Vegas to see a concert and spend a few nights at a fun hotel.
To fully appreciate this story, you have to understand that a normal trip to Vegas, even with moderate traffic in Los Angeles and Vegas... is a three-and-a-half to four hour drive tops. On a really bad traffic day if there's an accident or something, maybe five hours.
So we decided to beat the holiday traffic and head home early in the morning on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. While people were still enjoying their breakfast buffets and asking for late checkouts, we'd already be putting some miles on 'ol odometer. Unfortunately, we ended up taking a while to get packed up and ready to go, so we left around mid-day like everyone else.
Eventually, traffic ground to a complete stop. Like, people getting out of their cars and walking around the gridlocked highway kind of stopped. After waiting for two hours in the desert heat (this was during a time when I had a car with no air conditioning), things started rolling again and we eventually passed the cause for the traffic: a Japanese tour bus that had literally caught on fire. By the time we got there, all the passengers were (thankfully) out of the bus on the side of the road, but the bus was taking up one of the two lanes of the highway and was down to nothing but a charred frame. I have no idea how that happened, but thank goodness everyone was okay!
We went on for a few miles at normal speed, then hit another slowdown. Apparently one of the few stops along the long desert had some kind of commotion going on and traffic was backed up for miles and miles. My wife had to use the restroom and it took us over an hour to move the two remaining miles to the off ramp where she could use a restroom. We at least got to stretch our legs and see what the problem was (some overturned car or something), then prepared to go the rest of the home. The highway patrol officer at the on-ramp, though, diverted us to a detour, indicating that we couldn't use the regular on-ramp. That detour ended up looping everyone back onto I-15 going the other way (back toward Vegas), so we - along with several other irate motorists - had to drive 30 miles back toward Vegas, turn around at the first available off-ramp... then go 30 miles back through the miserable traffic in order to get back to the place we stopped to use the restroom in the first place.
After that, it was regular holiday stop-and-go traffic headed into Los Angeles.
Remember early on when I said a regular trip to Vegas was a 3.5 to 4-hour drive, maybe 5 with bad traffic? That night, the drive back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas took us over 10 hours. By the time we got into the regular Los Angeles traffic, my wife and I were literally so zoned out and dead that I don't think either of us spoke for an hour at a time. It was easily one of the most ridiculous, absurd travel situations I've ever experienced. |
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