250 Words on Criticism & Editing

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

One of my breakthroughs in becoming a professional writer, back when I was a cub reporter, was learning to not take criticism personally. The closer your art is to your heart, the harder it is to stand by while a colleague or editor rips into it, but sometimes that’s the job. 

My advice: don’t react right away. Sit with it a while. If it’s from someone you respect or in a position to pay you, consider the possibility that they’re right.

Here are some things NOT to say:

“I meant to do that.”

“You’re not reading it right.”

“It’s not finished yet.”

“It’s not my good stuff.”

I understand the defensive impulse to pre-emptively disparage yourself before your reader can. Beat them to the punch. But if your work’s not clear, not finished, or not your good stuff, why are you wasting their time with it? Show them nothing but your best and have the confidence to stand behind it! 

If someone does you the favor of giving feedback on your work, shut up and listen. Don’t explain, make excuses, or argue with them. If two or more people get hung up on the same point, they’re right, you’re wrong, and you have to fix it. 

When my book editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman, has a question about my work, we talk it over but he always leaves the solution up to me. He makes me better without leaving fingerprints. I think that’s a gift that all good editors share. 

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The Kohoutek Effect

A front-page article in my hometown paper today, written by a reporter from the Sacramento Bee paraphrasing another article from Forbes, describes the cosmic wonders readers can look out for in July. 

For example, did you know that the Milky Way will be visible in July? And that the sky will be dark, and the Moon "largely invisible to the naked eye"? Also, a comet will pass by Earth on Tuesday, and in late July you'll be able to spot Saturn's rings through a telescope.

I won't embarrass the reporter by naming them, but I can only imagine them sitting in high school science class whining, "But when will I ever use any of this stuff in real life?!" Today is that day.

The article contains kernels of truth but they're garbled into incomprehensibility. 

The Milky Way is visible year-round. The kernel of truth is that the summer is a nice time to see its bright core, but there's nothing special about July. Just get far away from city lights and look up.

The July sky will be as dark as usual and the Moon will be as visible as ever. The kernel of truth is that the next full Moon will happen toward the end of the month, on July 29. That is not newsworthy.

The comet, named "10P/Tempel 2," is passing closer than usual to Earth but will still be tens of millions of miles away and invisible to the naked eye. 

Saturn's rings are visible through a telescope anytime Saturn is up, which it will be all summer and into the fall. The visibility of the rings varies as we see the planet from different angles in its orbit, and on rare occasions they seem to disappear when we view them edge-on, but they will look very impressive for several years to come. 

I think articles like this do real harm, and not just the pain they cause me when my eyes roll too far back into my head. People who read this will go out expecting to see these marvels and be disappointed. Their trust in mass media will erode (appropriately, in this case) and their interest in stargazing will plummet.

Which is too bad, because there are infinite marvels to be seen when you know where, when, and how to look, and have a trustworthy guide.

(This post's title, "The Kohoutek Effect," comes from my astronomer friend Sherwood Harrington, who remembers the widespread disappointment in the 1970s when the "Comet of the Century!" turned out to be something of a dud. I remember!)

250 Words on Adulting

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“Adulting” is a newish word for an ancient concept: growing up, shouldering responsibility, making your way in the world. Most of us ease into it, some have it thrust upon us, others never get the hang of it. 

I notched an adulting milestone one night my car broke down as I was driving back to college. In those pre-cell-phone days, I found a house that would answer a stranger’s knock after dark and called my Dad.

“Well, you have AAA,” he said. “Take care of it.”

I don’t know what I expected him to do, but his unwillingness to charge to my rescue was a shock! Then I took care of it. I don’t actually remember how I solved the problem; probably had the car towed to a mechanic. What I never forgot is that it was my problem to solve, and I did.

Similar rites of passage might be taking out your first loan, making your first major purchase, deciding on a big move, accepting or leaving a job. As my daughters grew into women, I saw how difficult adulting could be. They always knew that their mother and I had their backs, but some of my proudest moments as a parent came when they solved a big problem that we only learned about afterward. 

That said, I have my own definition. When the toilet paper roll is down to its last square of tissue and you replace it instead of leaving it for the next person, you’re adulting. 

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250 Words on Cursive

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I hear that schools don’t teach cursive anymore. Nobody needs to handwrite when everybody types. Dump your quill and parchment in the dustbin, Pops! 

I strongly disagree but can’t back up my opinion with a rational argument, only an aesthetic one: I like cursive. I remember learning cursive and feeling it rewire my brain, so that writing became less like typography and more like sketching. Letters swooped and looped and interconnected; writing in cursive changed the way I conceived and transmitted ideas. The medium shaped the message.

I also appreciate how handwriting changes over time. Anyone who’s read the Constitution knows that the so-called “long S” used to look like a tall “f” (“Congrefs”), but you don’t need to go back centuries to see orthographic evolution. When I learned cursive, capital “G” was a loopy-cornered block, “Q” was a big number “2,” and “S” looked like a treble clef. When my daughters learned it a few decades later, they were all streamlined to more sensible modern forms.

Cursive has life and personality. One glance at my mother’s instantly recognizable handwriting transports me decades into the past. A person’s signature represents commitment and gravitas. It becomes their avatar, which speaks for them when they can’t speak for themselves.*

I confess I’m judgmental about people who can’t write cursive. If you’re an adult who still block-prints like a seven-year-old I will think less of you, and I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. We failed you, even if I can’t quite explain how.  

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* To discourage forgery, I actually have two signatures—one I use to sign books and another I use for real life—and it’s like they’re two different people. Book-Brian is more fun and outgoing than Real-Life-Brian. I can see it in their handwriting.

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Deep Quake Thoughts

SCIENCE! We got a couple of blaring earthquake alerts on our phones at 8:10 this morning, braced for impact, and felt nothing. It was a 5.6 temblor about an hour north of us, and although news reports said it did some damage up there, we felt nothing. 

However, 20 minutes later, Karen noticed that the quake had been detected at our locale after all--not by our puny human senses, but by the grandfather clock by our front door, which stopped at exactly 8:10 a.m. Its pendulum happens to swing north and south, and I imagine a seismic wave rolled down from the north and hit it out of phase at just the right moment to halt it. 

We've seen evidence of earthquake waves in our house before, including a pretty big quake that left books on a shelf arranged in a sine wave pattern. I witnessed them myself during the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, when I saw cars bobbing up and down on a blacktop parking lot like boats on an ocean. 

Everything is waves, man. Light's a wave, gravity's a wave, atoms are waves, Earth is a wave, I'm a wave, you're a wave. I didn't expect to find myself thinking such deep thoughts when I got up this morning. 

250 Words on Public Speaking

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Surveys say people dread public speaking more than death. I do a fair amount of it, occasionally to large groups or via mass media, and don't fear it. In fact, despite being an introvert, I enjoy it! Some perspective that might help:

Unless you’re a comedian fending off hecklers, the audience is on your side. They’re spending their time, and maybe money, because they want to hear what you have to say. You are the expert.

If something does go wrong, acknowledge it and own it. If you can, be graceful and funny about it. "Oops, that was not supposed to happen!" Surviving a disaster will really put the audience on your side.

"Fake it until you make it" is real. If you feel you don't have the courage to face an audience, then pretend you're someone who does. Adopt a persona. Be an actor playing the role of a confident speaker. With experience, you and the role will become one.

While I don't feel fear, I do still feel nerves—a little jitter in the gut—especially if the event is important or the audience is large. I interpret that as excitement and energy that I can take with me on stage and direct back toward the audience.

All that said, after nearly every event I lie in bed thinking, "Oooh, I wish I'd said that differently." That's part of the job. I promise: the audience never noticed or has already forgotten it. Just make different mistakes next time.

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250 Words on A.I. Art

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

A meme I like* compares who write with A.I. to someone who wants to run a marathon but realizes that training takes too much time and effort, so they catch an Uber to the finish line then demand to be called a runner.

A.I. (which isn’t really artificial intelligence at all, but never mind) is here and it has a role. If you need to scrutinize a billion stars to find those that have planets, or analyze medical imaging to detect early-stage cancer, A.I. is a priceless tool. In education and the arts, I’m afraid it’s a crutch that erodes both mind and spirit.

Many A.I. proponents and users confuse creativity and learning for the destination when they're almost entirely about the journey. When you view Monet's "Water Lilies," you're not looking at one painting but at the decades of technique Monet mastered and all the decisions he made to create it. Likewise, the point of writing a paper about zebras is only partly to learn about zebras; it’s mostly about learning how to do research, organize your thoughts, and communicate your conclusions to others. 

Art is a process. People consume art to experience the thoughts and feelings of other people. I like the meme because the purpose of running a marathon is never to travel 26.2 miles—there are many easier, faster ways to do that. It's to dedicate the time and effort to become the sort of person who can run 26.2 miles. That's what we celebrate.

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I also like this one:

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What Disaster Leaves Behind

Here's a podcast I did with my friend Jennifer Gray Thompson about the firestorms of 2017, which destroyed my home among many others and which I wrote about in my graphic novel "A Fire Story." 

Jennifer heads a great organization called After The Fire USA, which was formed as a direct result of our fires. The nonprofit goes to communities after they suffer large-scale disasters like ours to share what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we've learned in the meantime to help them toward recovery. It also lobbies for legislation to help disaster survivors, and is in general a good resource for anyone who's been through something like we experienced.

Many thanks to Jennifer for having me on her podcast, and to her and After the Fire USA for the important work they continue to do! 

Maybe the Kids Aren't Alright

Old people love to complain about young people, and I always defend them. The kids I encounter are almost always smart, caring, involved, and everything you’d want future citizens and stewards of the planet to be. I have no qualms about turning the world over to them.

Well, most of them. I collected two data points on a train ride Karen and I took today that tempered my optimism.

Data Point One: The train was crowded and two 13-year-old boys stood in the aisle beside us. Their conversation went like this:

“This train is moving so slow.”

“I could run faster than this.”

(Editor’s note: the train was going about 50 mph.)

“Could not!”

“Humans can run as fast as a cheetah.”

“No they can’t!”

“Humans can run 45 miles per hour. Cheetahs run 75.”

“Forty-five isn’t as fast as 75!”

“It’s almost as fast.”

"Not even close!"

“I think I could catch a cheetah.”

Several minutes later, they moved to get off at the next stop. I caught their eyes and said, “Hey guys. Twenty-eight miles per hour.”

“Huh?”

“Fastest human on Earth, Usain Bolt. Twenty-eight miles per hour.”

One slugged the other in the arm and said, “See! I told you!”

Data Point Two: On the return train trip, a young man maybe 17 sat across the aisle from Karen and me, his phone on speaker and turned up for everyone to hear. He and a buddy were making plans to get super wasted smoking pot and then go ocean kayaking, which even he seemed to realize sounded like a bad idea. 

Then the kid on the phone said, “You ever bang any chicks?”

“Not for a while. But I've banged chicks.”

“It’s hella rad.”

“Yeah,” our trainmate agreed. “It’s hella rad.”

At that point, the conductor came by and told him to shut it down, which seemed to make some fellow travelers happy. Not me. I wanted to find out where this conversation was going. Instead, I nudged Karen with my elbow and in my most sultry, seductive voice whispered into her ear:

“Hella rad.” 

250 Words on Star Pitching

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

In the 1980s and ‘90s, the Star Trek spin-offs were unique in that they would consider story ideas from anyone. Other TV shows required writers to have an agent or be on-staff, but the Trek series—The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine, and Voyager—let outside writers submit scripts.

I discovered that policy in the sixth year of TNG’s seven-year run, and quickly sent off two screenplays. I heard back: they couldn’t use them, but they liked my ideas enough to invite me to pitch others. Over the next several years, I pitched approximately 40 stories to writer/producers of all three shows. I never sold one but learned much about storytelling.

First: stories are all about characters. You might expect a science-fiction series to want weird aliens, space-time anomalies, starship battles, etc., but producers had little interest in those. However, if I pitched “Our hero faces Dilemma A, battles Complication B, and in the end resolves Conflict C,” I had their full attention. Audiences care about characters; the fantastical trappings are just how we get to know them.  

Second: ideas are common. Yours aren’t as original or outlandish as you think. I’d barely begun my first-ever pitch when the producer said, “I need to stop you. We’re shooting that episode this week.” When it aired, it was very much like the story I never got the chance to tell him.* Raw ideas are less important than how they’re executed. 

Third: nothing is a failure if you learn from it.
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*I saw it months later. If he hadn’t stopped me, I’d have thought they’d plagiarized it from me. 

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Chemophobia

It's 7 a.m. on a Sunday and I've already seen something that drew a deep sigh and eye roll from me.

This cartoon by Edith Pritchett in the Washington Post asks "How Many Chemicals Are In Your Food?" on a scale from "A Little" to "A Lot." I wouldn't normally pick on a fellow cartoonist, but one venturing into science shouldn't be so smug about being wrong.

ALL food is chemicals. I'm hard pressed to think of anything edible that isn't a chemical. An organically grown apple picked fresh off a tree contains the chemicals water, fructose, and sucrose. 

"Yeah, but you know what she means!" I do. But this cartoon reminds me of the stupid advice that you should never eat anything you can't pronounce, followed by a long list of scary-sounding chemicals. That organic apple has quercetin, catechin, epicatechin, and chlorogenic acid--natural antioxidants that are all good for you. 

To answer the cartoon's question: Your food is pretty much 100% chemicals. And so are you.  

The Mandalorian and Grogu and Storytelling

Karen and I saw "The Mandalorian and Grogu" a couple of days ago. I don't usually review movies, but this one inspired me to share some thoughts on storytelling.

We agreed that the movie was fine. Glad we saw it. A friend told me ahead of time that it felt like two TV episodes stitched together, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's literally what it is: Mando and Grogu go on one adventure for the first hour of the film, then go on a second adventure for the second hour. It has aliens and spaceships and explosions, so if you like that stuff you'll have a good time.

The question that occurred to me walking out of the theater was, "What was it about?"

The best stories have text and subtext. There's a plot, and then there's a deeper story that's often the reason we care about the plot. 

For example, "The Wizard of Oz" is about a kid on the verge of adulthood who yearns to leave her dull ordinary life and, with the help of colorful and sometimes magical companions, overcomes obstacles to earn her place in the larger world. That's also what the first "Star Wars" movie and many Disney Princess movies (Cinderella, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, Moana) are about. Different texts; similar subtexts.

I have no idea what "The Mandalorian and Grogu" is about. Nothing, as far as I could tell. Mando and Grogu make a fun team and are devoted to each other, but we already knew that. Grogu is adorable but we already knew that, too. Neither character grows or changes, we don't learn anything new about them. They are assigned a mission--which they have no personal stakes in--then they complete the mission, and then the movie's over. 

Not every movie has to have deep meaning. I can appreciate a "summer popcorn flick" and, as far as it goes, "Mandalorian and Grogu" is a fine enough one. But if you ever walk out of a movie wondering why it felt flat or empty in a way you can't quite put your finger on, ask yourself that question: "What was it about?" If nothing comes to mind, you have your answer.

Squirrel Ahoy

Squirrel! 

For years, I've said that I'd know our neighborhood had recovered from our 2017 firestorm when I finally saw a squirrel in my yard. Squirrels require infrastructure: decent-size trees, stuff to eat, places to hide from predators. Barren land doesn't offer them much, but a suburban maze of fences and mature foliage is a squirrel paradise.

Today, 3,158 days after the fire, we saw a squirrel run along our backyard fence. So I guess we're all good now. Right?

(Photo is not of the squirrel we saw--it scampered away too fast--but it looked just like it.)