what writing is

Horror is probably near the bottom of my list of favorite genres. I don't like being scared or jumping at sudden noises or imagining the more terrifying scenarios possible. But I do appreciate good writing and I've always appreciated Stephen King's sensibilities as a novelist, probably more than any other modern story-teller. So when I heard about his book, "On Writing: A Memoir", I jumped at the chance to read it. The book is, to put it bluntly, bloody brilliant. I loved so many things about it, but this is probably my absolute favorite section. It's near the middle of the book, a few pages entitled "What Writing Is," and it's made me rethink the whole novel-writing business. So here it is, for your own enjoyment and edification:

******

Telepathy, of course. It's amusing when you stop to think about it—for years people have argued about whether or not such a thing exists, folks like J. B. Rhine have busted their brains trying to create a valid testing process to isolate it, and all the time it's been right there, lying out in the open like Mr. Poe's Purloined Letter. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation. Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but even if I am we may as well stick with writing, since it's what we came here to think and talk about.

My name is Stephen King. I'm writing the first draft of this part at my desk (the one under the eave) on a snowy morning in December of 1997. There are things on my mind. Some are worries (bad eyes, Christmas shopping not even started, wife under the weather with a virus), some are good things (our younger son made a surprise visit home from college, I got to play Vince Taylor's "Brand New Cadillac" with The Wallflowers at a concert), but right now all that stuff is up top. I'm in another place, a basement place where there are lots of bright lights and clear images. This is a place I've built for myself over the years. It's a far-seeing place. I know it's a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction, that a far-seeing place should also be a basement place, but that's how it is with me. If you construct your own far-seeing place, you might put it in a treetop or on the roof of the World Trade Center or on the edge of the Grand Canyon. That's your little red wagon, as Robert McCammon says in one of his novels.

This book is scheduled to be published in the late summer or early fall of 2000. If that's how things work out, then you are somewhere downstream on the timeline from me...but you're likely in your own far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages. Not that you have to be there; books are a uniquely portable magic. I usually listen to one in the car (always unabridged; I think abridged audiobooks are the pits), and carry another wherever I go. You just never know when you'll want an escape hatch: mile-long lines at tollbooth plazas, the fifteen minutes you have to spend in the hall of some boring college building waiting for your advisor (who's got some yank-off in there threatening to commit suicide because he/she is flunking Custom Kurmfurling 101) to come out so you can get his signature on a drop-card, airport boarding lounges, laundromats on rainy afternoons, and the absolute worst, which is the doctor's office when the guy is running late and you have to wait half an hour in order to have something sensitive mauled. At such times I find a book vital. If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library (if there is, it's probably stocked with nothing but novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books, ha-ha, joke's on you, Steve).

So I read where I can, but I have a favorite place and probably you do, too—a place where the light is good and the vibe is usually strong. For me it's the blue chair in my study. For you it might be the couch on the sunporch, the rocker in the kitchen, or maybe it's propped up in your bed—reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.

So let's assume that you're in your favorite receiving place just as I am in the place where I do my best transmitting. We'll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem; if we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and (with the help of a footnote or two) Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000. And here we go—actual telepathy in action. You'll notice I have nothing up my sleeves and that my lips never move. Neither, most likely, do yours.

Look—here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.

Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary variations, of course: some receivers will see a cloth that is turkey red, some will see one that's scarlet, while others may see still other shades. (To colorblind receivers, the red tablecloth is the dark gray of cigar ashes.) Some may see scalloped edges, some may see straight ones. Decorative souls may add a little lace, and welcome—my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out.

Likewise, the matter of the cage leaves quite a lot of room for individual interpretation. For one thing, it is described in terms of rough comparison, which is useful only if you and I see the world and measure things in it with similar eyes. It's easy to become careless when making rough comparisons, but the alternative is a prissy attention to detail that takes all the fun out of writing. What am I going to say, "on the table is a cage three feet, six inches in length, two feet in width, and fourteen inches high"? That's not prose, that's an instruction manual. The paragraph also doesn't tell us what sort of material the cage is made of—wire mesh? steel rods? glass?—but does it really matter? We all understand the cage is a see-through medium; beyond that, we don't care. The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room...except we are together. We're close.

We're having a meeting of the minds.

I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. Not mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. I'm not going to belabor the point, but before we go any further you have to understand that I'm not trying to be cute; there is a point to be made.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

I'm not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.

so now i guess i'm a photographer...

Well, for some reason, people think I am more than qualified to take their pictures because 1) I work at a photography studio and 2) I have a nice camera. This, however, does not guarantee a most excellent photoshoot. But apparently, that's not stopping people from asking me to take their pictures and (despite my own misgivings) it's not stopping me from accepting their money for such services. Which brings us to...the wedding of Keri-Lynn and Jeremiah.


Keri-Lynn is an old childhood friend of mine and we recently reconnected. Long story short, she found out about my job, asked me to take their engagement photos, and then asked me to take their wedding photos. Thankfully, I was acting as a secondary photographer, so it wasn't nearly as scary as it could have been (yikes!). But overall, the experience was good. I obviously am not a great photographer, but I had fun with it and was relatively pleased with the results.


I was extremely glad for the experience, especially since I was asked to another wedding in a few weeks (eep!). We'll see how that one works out!

things i have (not) done since september 2009

I have:

* not written a single blog post (big surprise there).
* lost one extremely boring desk job and gained a much more interesting photography job.
* met some amazing people.
* moved into a house with two awesome roommates.
* wished I could get a dog...or at least, a teacup pig (have you even seen these guys? They are stinkin' cute. Them and those adorable petite giraffes...hehe)
* joined a gym.
* gotten several haircuts.
* bought an expensive camera.
* baked a cake.
* grew potatoes and way too many carrots in my backyard.
* shoveled WAY too much snow.
* joined a second Bible study.
* traveled within a very limited vicinity.
* nearly been thrown out of a corn maze.
* watched "Inception" at the Imax.
* read the "Hunger Games" Trilogy and loved it...except for the third book. Not as much love there...more of a "like", really.
* kicked butt at playing Dutch Blitz.
* celebrated a few birthdays.
* met a CFL football player...or, in truth, I just told him where to stand.
* taken pictures of a transvestite and (during a completely different session) a naked family...fun times.
* gone camping
* been extremely negligent when it comes to calling my far-away friends.
* enjoyed my life.

Things I may do after this date:

I might start writing in this blog again. I've been promising myself that it might be a nice thing to do once in a while instead of once every 2 years. But we shall see.

words make me happy...especially made-up ones

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Intaxication:
Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation:
Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone:
The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy:
Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration:
The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti:
Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm:
The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8.Inoculatte:
To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis:
Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis:
A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon:
It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon:
The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido:
All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect:
The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit:
The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug:
Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor:
The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus:
A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

new music

Favorite songs of the summer are (in no particular order):

Heartbreaker -- MSTRKRFT. Music video here (and it made no sense to me either. Perhaps there's a deeper meaning to the video but I didn't see anything significant).

Old Enough -- The Raconteurs. Weird whispering at the beginning of the music video, but I like the song. A lot. It's my kind of country (and being an avowed country music hater, that's saying something).



Going On -- Gnarls Barkley. My feel-good song of the summer. I just get real happy when this song plays. Unfortunately this video only has part of the song. Drat.



Single Ladies -- Beyonce. Not really the biggest Beyonce fan out there, but this is a catchy tune. Much better than the other songs I've heard from her latest album (for example, "Halo" drives me up the wall).

Let's Break Up -- Hayden. Another "I can't believe it's country-ish" song. Very fun.

Her Morning Elegance -- Oren Lavie. Pretty much addicted to this song. And the video.



Other honorable mentions are 15 Step (Radiohead), Funny The Way It Is (Dave Matthews Band), U2 and Coldplay's newest albums, Mykonos (Fleet Foxes), Syndicate (The Fray), and for some reason, Led Zeppelin.

Summer, in other words, has been great.

for love of billy collins

I was never a poetry person. Sure, I dutifully read my two poems every night, as per Nate Wilson's orders (poor NSA freshmen...we had it so hard). But it was generally out of a sense of obligation or (more to the point) a desire to remain current with my assignments that drove me to the massive volume of poetry at 11:55 pm each night. Aloud, I read them quickly but never truly saying them, never really hearing the sounds bounce off the walls and imprinting the images into my imagination, never savoring the sweet rhythms that lay hidden on every line, just waiting to be enjoyed. That is, until I read Billy Collins. I think it was his poems that made me appreciate poetry, its sounds and smells, its stories and syncopations. And this website just reawakened my love for his works. Ahhhhh.....

ignatius: a satirical look at youth pastors

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

death and tacos

Waiting in line at a taco stand for my number to be called
I started talking to a six-year-old kid kicking his little foot against
A curb and waiting for his dad to come out of the bathroom.

And he said, “Why do you cough so much?”
And I said, “Because I have cancer.”
And he said, “Bummer.”
And I said, “Yep.”
And he said, “Does it hurt?”
And I said, “Only when I breathe.”
And he said, “Why don’t you hold your breath?”

And I puffed out my cheeks like Lois Armstrong and
Let him see it and held it for as long as I could
Before exploding into a hacking eruption of
Stupid sounds and saliva.

And he laughed.
And I coughed and laughed.
And he said, “Feel better?”
And I said, “A bit.”

And I showed him how much better with my
Thumb and index finger. And pointed at a green thread
of mucous that had dribbled out onto my chin
He said, “Gross.” And wiping it off
I said, “Yep.”

And he said, “My granddaddy had cancer before he died on the hospital.”
And I said, “You mean in the hospital?”
And he said, “Yeah on the hospital.”
And I said, “Oh, yeah?”
And he said, “He used to give me candy all of the times I ever saw him.”
And I said, “Sorry kid, I don’t have any candy.”
And, deflated, he said, “Are you gonna die on the hospital?”
And I said, “You mean in the hospital?”
And he said, “Yea, are you gonna die on the hospital?”
And I said, “Probably.”
And he said, “OK.”

And, upon giving that gracious consent, the boy’s dad came out and
The boy said, “Well, bye!” And I said, “See ya.”
And he ran off.
And, for a while, between the two of us,
Dying became so very ordinary, like candy or tacos or semantics,
And death itself suddenly just this obnoxious third-wheel
A pitiful nuisance with nothing better to do with his time
Than to tag along with me and this six-year-old kid.
And I sat smiling in the sun and imagining death at the moment,
A sad sack of lonely-self slumped somewhere in the distance,
As I waited for my number to come up.

- Nathaniel Whittemore

how to save the lost

From Slice of Laodicea:

I wonder if the 12 Apostles staged Greek-style wrestling matches to draw young men to Christ? No record of that anywhere in the Scriptures. Chariot races are also not mentioned anywhere in the book of Acts as a method drawing a crowd to hear the Gospel. All the Apostles had was the Holy Spirit who worked through their preaching to save the lost. That was all they needed.

Pastors today don’t believe in the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t exist to them. That’s why they behave like fools in ever more desperate attempts to draw a crowd. Here’s a pastor in South Dakota who says that the church is having a hard time attracting young men. That’s because the “church” was never intended to attract young men or anyone else. The Holy Spirit alone draws through Spirit-empowered preaching. Such preaching is absent today in our prayerless, man-centered churches, and that’s why pastors are reduced to becoming jesters and exhibitionists to draw a crowd.

words, words, words

An interesting observation about word definitions and their (mis)use...

Yesterday, I ran my first Articulate Seminar. It was tremendous fun and I found that talking about writing with people from different industries illuminated old problems in new ways for me. Andrew Yeomans came along from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and afterwards he sent me his delightful deconstruction of press release hype:

“This amazing, prestigious and sophisticated product is a quantum leap forward and performance is a greater order of magnitude, and will decimate the competition. The enormity of this tremendous advance indicates our commitment to servicing our customers in a forensically sound manner.”

Various dictionaries give:

• amazing 1. Causing distraction, consternation, confusion, dismay; stupefying, terrifying, dreadful.
• prestigious 1. Practising juggling or legerdemain; of the nature of or characterized by juggling or magic; cheating, deluding, deceitful; deceptive, illusory.
• sophisticated 1. Mixed with some foreign substance; adulterated; not pure or genuine. 2. a. Altered from, deprived of, primitive simplicity or naturalness. Of a literary text: altered in the course of being copied or printed. 3. a. Falsified in a greater or less degree; not plain, honest, or straightforward.
• quantum 5. Physics. A minimum amount of a physical quantity which can exist and by multiples of which changes in the quantity occur.
• magnitude 3. A class in a system of classification determined by size. a. Each of the classes into which the fixed stars have been arranged according to their degree of brilliancy. Now regarded as a number on a continuous scale representing the negative logarithm of the brightness, such that a decrease of five magnitudes represents a hundred-fold increase in brightness and a decrease of one magnitude an increase of 2·512 times.
• decimate 4. transf. a. To kill, destroy, or remove one in every ten of.
• enormity (-nôrmt) n., pl. e·nor·mi·ties. 1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.
• tremendous \Tre*men”dous\, a. [L. tremendus that is to be trembled at, fearful, fr. tremere to tremble.] Fitted to excite fear or terror; such as may astonish or terrify by its magnitude, force, or violence; terrible; dreadful; as, a tremendous wind; a tremendous shower; a tremendous shock or fall.
• advance \Ad*vance”\, v. t. 7. To furnish, as money or other value, before it becomes due, or in aid of an enterprise; to supply beforehand
• commitment \Com*mit”ment\, n. 4. A doing, or perpetration, in a bad sense, as of a crime or blunder; commission.
• service \Serv”ice\, n. 11. Copulation with a female; the act of mating by male animals
• forensic Relating to, used in, or appropriate for courts of law or for public discussion or argumentation.
• sound a. Meaningless noise. b. Thorough; complete: a sound flogging.

So the translation is:

“This confusing, dreadful, deceitful, illusory, adulterated, dishonest product is the smallest possible small step forward and provides less than half the performance, and will kill very few of our competitors. The monstrous evil of our releasing this dreadful product before it is ready demonstrates our crimes in screwing over our clients, see you in court where we will speak complete nonsense.”