February 2008 Archives

The role of the writer in society is one of a questioning dissent.

It is not enough for the writer to merely go along with the status quo or to live in the mainstream meme.

The nature of the director in any form -- movies, television, stage, radio -- is to serve the spirit of the script. 

A director is not the master of the script -- the director must be a slave to the written word in order to understand the greater purpose of the writing.

Many directors believe they are co-authors of a work and that is wrong. 

Weak authors create strong directors and that wrongful power dyad is always terrible for the script.

A script is not a blueprint or an architectural dream.

A script is the bones, sinew, muscle, heart and being of any project.

For anyone other than the author to change the work in situ or to re-arrange established ideas on the page is to threaten the very core of the project that risks creating the common and the ordinary failure that reeks in the marketplace and is immediately forgotten by those in the audience who writhe and yearn for meaning in their escape into entertainment.

The popular way today to release software without accountability is to toss it into the wild as a "Beta Test" -- and then invite the public to break their machines to give you feedback in testing you should've done yourself.

Google made their bones on this unaccountability by continuously "beta testing" what are really fully released products. 

Google does not have to provide support or explanation when things go awry or blow up because, after all, "It's only beta!"

The question then becomes how long must something remain in beta in order to be tested and not viewed as taking-advantage-of those doing the testing?  Is a year enough of a beta test?  Two years?

Gmail has been in beta since April 1, 2004.  Will Gmail forever be beta?  Or will Gmail one day get the Google stamp of approval that it is ready to stand on its own without the beta backdoor bailout?

When it comes to selling on the internet -- a book, an idea, a jacket, a bucket of flowers -- is it the power of cognition, the quality of the work, or the advertising scheme that sells the product?

If a product does not sell -- does one blame the producer, the product, or the sales pitch?

The false charges against Barack Obama from the Clinton campaign claiming plagiarism is laughable on the surface and ridiculous in the depths.

The bane of plagiarism, however, is a serious matter and it deserves more discovery and I will more formally address that topic in a future article.

Writers should have no Muses, honor no myths, and follow no Sirens.

The job of the author is just that:  A job. 

There is a necessary pedantic dreariness to the writing process that must be honored and consumed on a daily basis. 

In a recent comments stream on another blog post, I said this about the book writing process:

You just have to sit down and do it and get it done. There's no inspiration involved. No big thoughts. Just words on a page. There is too much danger of never writing another word if the process is too romanticized. That's what's so great about writing four blogs -- I need to come up with something good fast even if I don't feel like it -- that training comes in really handy while trying to pound out a book on a hard deadline.

If we hope to be authors, we must hone that craft -- notice I said "craft" and not "art" -- all day every day with formal, public, writing that is open to feedback, criticism, and future indexing by the search engines.

Only that forced guarantee of "published" writing will keep us cogent, on point, and forever improving --  because the future, and the history, we make each day requires hard judgments against our best intentions.

My newest book, written with Janna M. Sweenie is titled Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 and you can now buy it directly from Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble and from your nearby bookstore!

Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 is our second ASL book that employs our "Deaf Way" of Hardcore ASL teaching. 

We have a DVD bundled with the book so you can learn ASL with us in real time!

The most inventive measure of our new book is the "Pick and Say Rubric" that leads you to create quick -- "three idea" -- sentences constructed in ASL. 

You just pick one or more words/ideas from a RED column, a GREEN column and a BLUE column and then sign them in sequence. Easy!

Using that rubric method you can forge more than 27,000 American Sign Language phrases by learning only 90 words -- and getting to understand how to "Pick and Say" takes less than 10 seconds.

I know you'll love the book.  You can use the book as a base for understanding Deaf Culture and for learning an exciting foreign language. 

If you have any thoughts or feedback, please find me and share your mind!

The Writer's Guild strike is over after a measly 100 days.

What was gained? If you strike, you don't strike to win parity or a cast off breadcrumb.  You strike to win big.  You strike to take the ball back. Did the WGA win big?  No.

Some believe the strike cost $2 billion dollars to the Hollywood economy in lost production, catering closures, florists dying, valets being laid-off, hotels churning empty rooms, restaurant workers waiting on nobodies and costume-houses going dark. 

The WGA gobbled up a breadcrumb concession on payments from online entertainment.  That's it.

On December 7, 2007, the Guild was rightfully demanding the unionization of Animation writers and Reality show writers as well as the right to Sympathy Strike.  On February 11, 2008 -- when the strike ended -- they won none of those demands.

The Writers Guild was whupped by the producers, and in the bloodletting, thousands of people lost their jobs, a few lost their homes, and everyone lost their respect for a Writers Guild strike that turned out, in the end, to be spineless and pointless.

The last realm of the human mind is one of sexuality and gender identification. Are we our chromosomes? Or are we our genitalia?

What makes a boy? What makes a girl? What makes us universally human? Does gender conform to stereotypes -- or are our preconceived notions influenced by gender?

When one has "genital reassignment" surgery -- is one changing their sex or confirming it?  Does it matter that answering that question matters to some?

How can we remove gender bias in the human equation?  Is that a problem we need to solve?

Tending your brand online can mean changing a logo to keep the look of your public face fresh and receptive to new and tired eyes. I recently re-crafted a couple of my most important online logos -- one of them for this WordPunk blog, and the other for my Boles Books website. -- and I'm going to show you the why and teach you the how of the changes I made in my online branding identity.

What is the nature of a part time job?

It is to be a swing person that can work in a finger snap? Or is the nature of part time to be willing to work the shifts no one else wants?

As a youngster, I was involved in radio a lot and I loved the live medium.

I was a part timer that worked the weekends and the weekend overnights.  If someone took ill during the week, I had to sit in the chair and take over with less than an hour's notice. 

Wherever I was in the city, when the radio called, I had to go.  That dedication to work meant I missed a lot of weekend opportunities to spend time with friends and to have any sort of a social life.

Being on the radio raised no peer chits.  In fact, there was a certain resentment among my friends and associates that I was "too young" to be on the radio, and that I should be working as a waiter in a restaurant like them.

The moment of clarity about working on the radio hit me an hour after I had four wisdom teeth removed.  I was pumped up with codeine and not feeling good.  I could not speak.  I could barely open my swollen mouth.

The phone rang.

My mother answered.

She came downstairs to tell me my boss was on the phone and I had to be on the air in three hours.

I tried to mumble that I was unable to speak.

My mother told me if my job called, I had to go.

I told her I was hopped up on pain killers.

She reluctantly told my boss I just had dental surgery.

My boss told me to come to work anyway and to work through it.  If I couldn't speak, I was to play stingers and jingles instead.  The morning guy would come in a half-hour early to cover the start of Morning Drive.

When I began to protest I deserved a break because I was in pain -- it was then I first heard that phrase from my boss' lips, and it still rings today in my old ears.

"What?  You want for me to work that shift?" he shouted over the phone.  "That isn't my job.  That's your job.  That's the nature of part time."

I worked the shift -- but after that I became less convenient and more selfishly pliable in pulling private, personal, time of my own as often as I could without again tempting the loss of the nature of part time.

When you work as a freelance writer, getting paid on time is always a big problem because companies see you as they see themselves:  A monolithic monetary monster where paper replaces actual money in the bank.

How can the freelancer get the corporation mentality to understand the need to make rent and meet the payroll?  The answer is:  It cannot be done.  Contractual payment deadlines are only enforceable one way:  On the freelancer when deadlines must be met.

You cannot make an entity understand emotion or deadlines -- except when you are on the cutting end of both when it comes to handing in work for a pauper's price.

The power dyad between producer and creator will never be fairly subsumed -- except when the consumer's insatiable desire for the product forces the producer to fairly treat the creator.

Unless and until that craving for content becomes the norm -- the freelance creative force will always fall fallow to the whimsy and dismay of a punishing, corporate, mindset.

The only defense against the want for rent is easy access to credit cards and, if you're lucky, the safety net of a Money Market savings account.  Pleading the poorhouse only gets you more heartache and dismay as you are newly viewed as vulnerable and spastic.

In America we have, for some reason, come upon the notion that your boss must like you:  Your boss must be your friend.

The problem with that shallow thinking is friendships prefer equality over stratification. Friends don't like to take orders from friends.

A boss' job is to instruct, direct and lead and there are no co-boss companies that work well because the direction is divided and opportunity is split like Solomon's baby.

If your boss demands friendship -- be wary -- because at any time the friendship can be revoked while the master-and-slave dyad necessarily remains. 

If you wish to befriend your boss, immediately retire that notion.  You will be seen as cloying and clever -- and neither of those labels can ever overcome the emotion of friendship falsely offered.