250 Words on Flying Blind

[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’ve noticed more and more airline passengers taking entire flights with their window blinds closed. I don’t get it.

You’re sitting in a chair inside a metal tube hurtling through the sky, watching the ground pass miles beneath your feet, surfing the wind through towering atolls of clouds! It’s the closest you’ll get to being Superman! An eternal dream of humankind! A scientific miracle!*

Now, it seems that if any sunlight disturbs someone’s nap or reflects off their phone’s tiny screen while they’re watching a movie or playing a game, they pull down their shade.

How could anybody get so bored and jaded? I never take flying for granted.

Back when I was a newspaper reporter, the U.S. Air Force hosted a junket for press to fly across the country and back in a KC-135 Stratotanker. I forget why; I think they were trying to rally public support to save airbases that were slated to close. KC-135s are flying gas stations that refuel fighter jets using a winged boom that hangs from the back of the aircraft—a steerable gas pump nozzle. Operators guided the boom lying on their stomachs while looking through a window in the belly of the plane.

USAF photo.

As we flew toward the West Coast at sunset, my photographer Randy and I stretched out in the boom operator’s cold cubbyhole, nothing but glass between us and the Southwestern desert mesas and canyons painting long shadows across the orange earth directly below. 

We were flying. It was magical.
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*I do know comedian Louis C.K.’s routine about how blasé everyone has become about flying, but didn’t care to quote or link to it. I’m just noting that here to forestall everyone from pointing it out!

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250 Words on Storytelling

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

It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand the importance of storytelling. I may have been in my 30s before I got a handle on it. 

Storytelling is hard to define; start with what it’s not. 

In comics, storytelling isn’t just a matter of combining nice words with pretty pictures. Many people can create wonderful words and pictures but have no idea how to tell a story. On the other hand, a great storyteller can make you laugh or cry using simple dialog and stick figures. 

Which isn’t to say that craft doesn’t matter. A cartoonist skilled at writing and drawing has more tools in their toolbox: broader options, better techniques, a larger library of inspirations. All things being equal, I’d still encourage artists to master their disciplines. But it’s a mistake to overlook stories just because they appear simple or crude. 

I’m pretty sure that stories are how humans understand the universe. Narratives, metaphors, analogies, histories, myths, songs. Even a physics equation tells a story about a worldview in which science describes how reality works.

Every decision I make when creating a comic centers on storytelling. I use composition, design, rhythm, character, color, and the other tools in my toolbox to guide your attention and emotions through the story I’m trying to tell. If I do it right, you’ll never notice.

Whenever I review a young cartoonist’s work, I’m not primarily judging how well they write or draw. I want to see if they can tell a story.

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250 Words on a Collector's Duty

[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 once had a collection of several hundred comic books—including a complete run of The Avengers—and had begun to think about what to do with them so my kids wouldn’t have to.

I touched base with a reputable comic-book broker who told me my collection had maybe a dozen “key” issues that were worth a lot of money and scores more that weren’t. Only another collector or expert would know the difference. Of course, even the unimportant issues retail for much more than he said he could offer me. Then they all burned. 

My father-in-law collected coins. We urged him to compile an inventory of them, or even just show us his most valuable pieces. He replied that it would be our problem to figure out after he died. It was. While I think we found an ethical coin shop that gave us a fair price for his collection, we weren’t numismatists so we’ll never know. We did our best.

I have a decent little collection of original comic art, some from cartoonist friends and others by historically notable cartoonists. I’ve made a list of them all, documenting what I paid for them (if they weren’t a gift or trade), estimating what they're worth and, for the few really good ones, suggesting how my heirs could auction or donate them.

I believe that’s the very least a collector owes to those they leave behind. Or sell your collection yourself and give them the cash. They’d probably appreciate that.

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250 Words on Before and After

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

Some experiences are so momentous they divide your life into “before” and “after.” Everything changes in an instant. Your old life is gone and a new, uncertain life awaits. Whether good or bad, they transform you forever.

I’ve had two: one very good, one very bad.

My daughters’ birth was a leap into a new and better world. I barely remember what my “before” life was like. How did we fill our time? I couldn’t believe the hospital just let us take home babies without a license or instructions. How anyone feels ready for that obligation befuddles me, but we thought we were and it turned out we were right. Becoming “Dad” was a responsibility I relished and the achievement I’m proudest of.

The firestorm that destroyed our home in 2017* was a leap into a different, darker world. My wife, Karen, and I still sort events into “B.F.” or “A.F.”: Before Fire or After Fire. Its legacy is PTSD and loss, seasoned with a pinch of resilience and grit from surviving. It’s a shadow that never strays far from our minds. 

I’ve had other significant life deflections, including marriage, career changes and the deaths of family members, but they didn’t rearrange my brain the way parenthood and the fire did. Those made me a different person.

Sometimes, willingly or not, you cross a threshold from one world into another, and there’s no going back. All you can do is press on and create the best new world you can. 

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* It's hard to believe that disaster was nine years ago this week. Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago, other times it seems like last month. 

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250 Words on Liminal Creativity

[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 his book Backstage at the Strips, cartoonist Mort Walker told an anecdote I love about James Thurber's wife, Helen, catching her husband staring into space at a dinner party. "James!" she scolded. "You're writing again!"

Some time ago, cartoonist Raina Telgemeier wrote that "The very earliest stages of writing a new project very much resemble 'doing nothing' and feel incredibly unproductive, but…I at least know this is important and worthwhile and that I can trust myself. Or so I hope."

One morning my wife, Karen, awoke before dawn to find me propped on the headboard, staring into the dark. "What are you doing up?" she asked. "Writing," I said.

I figure I get more than half of my best creative ideas lying in bed immediately after waking up. I believe cartoonist Lynn Johnston said the same in one of her books, and ascribed it to being in a relaxed semi-dreamlike state. 

I think that's right. Ideas inspired by actual dreams are usually too random and unstructured, and never as good in the light of day. But right after I wake up, my brain is often in a fluid state I can guide to my creative advantage.

I keep a notebook by the bed to capture these flickering embers, which are almost always useful and usable. What I do with them in daylight—the refining, writing and drawing—is just mechanics. The heavy lifting is done before I get up. I've learned to trust the process.

Or so I hope.

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250 Words on Work Families

[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 once worked with a woman who poured her heart into her job and believed our boss's assurances that the company was one big happy family—until she got sacked without warning and escorted out by HR. The shock of losing her job was much less traumatic than being cast out by her "family," which she grieved for a long time.

It was a bracing lesson for me. The people who hire you may be good and kind, and coworkers may become close friends, but a company is not your family. Businesses always take care of themselves first. You are expendable. You owe your employer a full day's work for a fair day's pay; any more may be appreciated and rewarded, but could also be taken advantage of.

I think my perspective is clear-eyed and practical rather than cynical, but I’ve seen it taken too far. I once supervised a person who left punctually at 5 p.m., no matter what he was in the middle of, because that’s when his commitment to the company ended. As a result, the rest of us would have to stay overtime to complete his work. He was not well-liked, nor was he ever promoted. Being a team player often enhances your value and reputation. 

Still, my advice is to seek your deepest meaning, identity, and fulfillment outside of work. True loyalty is a two-way street and, unless you’re self-employed, it’s a mistake to be more dedicated to your bosses than they are to you. 

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250 Words on Home Design

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

Houses are like trees: their age is revealed by the layers that accumulate within them. 

You can walk into most homes and tell which decade they were built in based on their floorplans, features and fittings. Trends that were once smart and hip grow old and tired. Taste and lifestyle pendulums swing. 

Hardwood was covered by linoleum that was covered by carpet that years later was pulled up to reveal hardwood. Walls were demolished to create open floorplans, then later rebuilt to create separate living spaces. Big bathrooms, big kitchens, big closets—each had their time to shine and then fade. 

We built a house from the ground up a few years ago, and even at the time I knew every design decision we made would someday scream “2018!” Nine-foot ceilings. Six-inch baseboards. Warm gray walls. Recessed LED ceiling lights. Plastic rocker power switches. USB and HDMI ports. Floors of laminated hardwood, concrete tile, and “luxury” vinyl. 

It’s a very nice house that is inescapably of its time.

Our insight from that process is that you don’t design a home for unknowable fashions yet to come or to maximize its future resale value. You design it for the life you want to live. Now. Ideally, you build in enough flexibility to change with the times—walls can be repainted, floors can be redone—but its bones should be timeless enough to last. If its next owners find it old-fashioned, they’re welcome to reshape it to their own needs and taste. 

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250 Words on Back to the Future

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

(You may remember this as something I posted on social media last year. Afterward, I squinted hard and thought, “That looks like it’s about 250 words long!” So, with some editing, I repurposed it. If you read it before, I hope you enjoy it again!) 

After 36 years, today is the day I get something important off my chest.

There’s a scene in "Back to the Future Part III" (1990) in which time-traveling inventor Doc Brown, trapped in the year 1885, shows Marty McFly an enormous clanking machine whose purpose is a mystery until it deposits a few dirty ice cubes in a bowl. It's an ice maker! Very charming and funny.

My beef: artificial refrigeration had already been invented and was widespread by 1885. Commercial ice plants were operating in most major cities, including Los Angeles, which couldn't have been far from Doc and Marty's fictional Hill Valley, Calif. (which was also somehow within walking distance of Monument Valley, Arizona, but never mind). If Doc Brown wanted ice, he could have copied existing technology or had blocks of it shipped from L.A. on the train he later hijacked. 

I can only reconcile it by thinking of the ice-making scene as a character bit, like how in the first "Back to the Future" movie Doc built an elaborate Rube Goldberg device to feed his dog and cook breakfast. Maybe his Wild West freezer was the same sort of thing: an unnecessarily complicated creation to accomplish something that could have been done much easier but less cinematically or fun.

Otherwise, it's the one piece of the "Back to the Future" trilogy that shatters my suspension of disbelief. Or, as a disappointed Ant-Man realized in "Avengers: Endgame," "So 'Back to the Future' is a bunch of bullshit?!"

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250 Words on the AP Stylebook

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

On my first day writing for a newspaper, I used a serial comma (also known as an Oxford comma), which goes before the “and” in a series like “tea, scones, and jam.” My boss, a crusty sportswriter who’d been on the job for decades and would continue for decades more, deleted it. 

“I think that comma’s optional,” I smart-mouthed back. Without a word, he walked to a shelf, opened a blue-covered spiral-bound book to a dog-eared page, and slapped it on the desk beside me. It was the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, the Holy Bible of the newspaper industry, and it forbade serial commas (unless required for clarity).

I read it cover to cover the same day.

Some of my favorite newsroom memories are arguments about tiny details of journalistic style. I still use the AP’s convention of writing out the numbers zero through nine (one, two) and using figures for multi-digit numbers (10, 137), except when they begin a sentence (Two hundred rhinos rampaged…) or are part of a sequence (Act 1, Act 2…) or have a decimal (3.14159) or or or…

There are many exceptions. You might imagine how fast you can get lost in the weeds. 

When I began working with Abrams Books, I was dismayed to learn they follow the competing Chicago Manual of Style, with very different, equally arbitrary, rules. One adapts. Still, decades after I last wrote for a newspaper, AP style remains my default setting. That job hammered it into me.

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250 Words on Riding the Rails

[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’ve taken four lengthy train trips, all aboard Amtrak in the western U.S. It’s a special way to travel, following routes laid down by wagon trains through landscapes you couldn’t see any other way. 

The romance of the rails is real but also wears thin. Amtrak rents track access from the freight lines that own them and claim priority, which means you can spend hours sitting on a siding in Utah waiting for a 200-car train to rumble through. 

It’s nice to be able to wander around a train but there aren’t many places to wander to. On three of my trips we reserved rooms in sleeper cars, whose seats fold flat into beds. Those tickets also grant access to the dining car, whose offerings have declined from midcentury banquets to marginally upscale airline food. Still, it’s terrific to sit at a table, order off a menu, and watch the landscape roll by. 

Tiny toilets and showers are down the corridor, and sometime around the end of Day Two the experience starts to feel like camping. It’s fun, but you’ll be ready for a real bed and bathroom when it’s over. 

All that said: I’ve loved every trip. The other passengers usually include a character or two, and there’s always an amateur historian in the observation car happy to tell tall tales about the country you’re crossing. 

Why take a train when an airplane will get you there faster and cheaper? It’s not about the destination, it’s the journey. Patience.

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250 Words on Accessible Style

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

When I set out to write and draw my first graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer, more than 20 (!) years ago,* I faced a decision.

My first thought was to render it in a Gothic scritchy-scratchy crosshatched art style saturated in grays and blacks. I can draw like that if I want to, and darkness seemed apt for a cancer story.

My second thought was to do the opposite. I realized that gloomy art would repel the readers I was hoping to attract. Instead, I drew it open and light, with panel layouts that were easy to follow. I wanted it to feel familiar, comfortable, like an old comic strip. I’d lure readers in and then hit them with my family’s story. 

(Incidentally, Mom’s Cancer is in landscape format because it began as a webcomic. Each page had the proportions of a computer monitor so visitors could read it without scrolling.)

If I’d ever had any doubts I made the right stylistic decision, they would have been erased at this year’s Graphic Medicine International Conference in Baltimore. More than two decades after I created Mom’s Cancer, medical schools still teach it and academic papers still cite it. When I thanked those teachers and scholars for using my work, many of them said something like:

“It’s so accessible.” “It’s a comic I hand to people who don’t read comics.” “It’s a great introduction to graphic medicine.”

To which, if I’m being honest, I can only reply, “Thanks. I did that on purpose.”

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* And I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that the 20th anniversary edition of Mom’s Cancer, featuring the entire original story plus 22 new pages, as well as new introductions and end notes, can be bought or ordered from your heroic local independent bookseller today!

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250 Words on Netiquette

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

An anonymous commenter on a recent post scolded me for not writing about a subject that’s very important to them. Anon seemed to consider my lack of interest an intellectual and moral failure, replying (with what I imagine to be a sneer), “OK, back to writing the Dave Barry stuff. Don't strain.”

For the record, I wish I could write the Dave Barry stuff. Unfortunately, Dave Barry has the market cornered. 

Occasionally, something I write gets a lot of attention. I’ve noticed that once a post catches on, unfamiliar commenters* swarm the discussion with so much nastiness that I have to restrict commenting because I can’t keep up with it. 

Different people have different reasons for being online. Mine is a mix of business and pleasure. It’s a way to keep in touch with friends and family, share my writing and cartooning, and otherwise promote my work. 

I regard my web homes—my Substack platform, Facebook page, and personal blog—as casual parties at which I hope to cultivate friendly and thoughtful interactions with interesting people. Commenters are welcome to critique or disagree with anything I post, but a crasher who poops on the rug, insults my guests, and demands that I cater to their whims will be escorted from the premises. 

I’m not infringing on your free speech. Say whatever you want on any of the hundreds of outlets available to you. Why pick a fight with me? I have no time for your nonsense. Host your own party. 

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* Yes, I know they’re probably bots, automated to attack anything vaguely political or socially relevant. Sometimes I look them up out of curiosity. It’s amazing how many pretty girls in bikinis or hulky special forces veterans have strong opinions on the issues of the day that they share with their five friends and followers. 

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250 Words on 26,000 Words

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

Today begins my third year of writing and posting one 250-word essay per week. Because each is exactly 250 words long, the math is easy: 2 years x 52 weeks/year x 250 words/week = 26,000 words.*

That adds up to a respectable novella’s-worth of whatever’s on my mind. As I wrote a year ago, when I only had half as many pieces under my belt, each may be a bite-sized appetizer but they add up to a surprisingly robust meal. 

As probably one of the few who read all three thick volumes of Mark Twain’s autobiography (honestly a bit of a slog), I appreciated that he structured it as a series of short essays he dictated to his secretary. Some were anecdotes from his life and times, others were reflections on random current affairs that caught his eye. His notion, as he explained in the introduction, was that a reader would get to know him much better that way than they would through a dry recitation of biographical dates and events.

I didn’t set out to do likewise, but it has occurred to me that my 250-word pieces cumulatively serve the same purpose. I try to space out the topics so I don’t post two pieces in a row on comics, or writing, or science, or pop culture, or memoir, or whatever. But sooner or later, everything I know and care about will make an appearance. 

It’s an exercise I’d recommend to any writer—or, really, anyone. Thanks for reading!

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* I also did one post promoting the release of my newest book, the Mom’s Cancer Anniversary Edition, but I don’t count those 164 words. Also, footnotes (like this one) don’t count. My house, my rules. 

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250 Words on Options

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

When a movie studio wants to adapt a writer’s work they “option” it, which means they pay you to NOT make a deal with another studio while the project is in development. 

Options aren’t terribly rare in the graphic novel world. Studios troll long-form comics for stories. Visuals already provided! Pre-packaged storyboards! I know cartoonists who’ve had their work optioned. Very few resulted in actual movies. 

Each of my books had a studio sniffing around it at some point, although only Mom’s Cancer was formally optioned. They flatter you with praise and bedazzle you with suggestions of which famous actors might play your characters, and promise to get back to you soon. Then they don’t. 

My favorite story: a producer with 20th Century Fox contacted me about my book Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? I, the world’s worst promoter, replied, “I don’t think it’d make a very good movie, it doesn’t really have much of a plot.” He reassured me they were enormously interested so we arranged to meet at Comic-Con International a few weeks later,  whereupon he said, “We’re going to pass. It doesn’t really have much of a plot.” 

If only someone had warned him.

While you can’t help drafting your Oscars speech when Hollywood calls, I’m jaded. Occasionally I’ll see a young cartoonist announce to the world that their story was optioned, gushing about scripts and casting, and think, “Oh, bless their heart.” Until the movie start shooting, it’s best to keep it to yourself.

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250 Words on Notable Quotables

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

Sometimes a particularly memorable quotation makes its way into everyday conversation. Mine come from TV and movies rather than literary classics because I’m bourgeois. Some favorites I actually use:

“Everybody remember where we parked,” said by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. It’s both a sensible thing for a parent to say in a parking lot and for a Starfleet captain to tell his crew when disembarking from an invisible time-traveling spaceship in 1986 San Francisco. 

“Important safety tip, thanks Egon,” said by Venkman (Bill Murray) in Ghostbusters after Egon (Harold Ramis) warns that they might disintegrate themselves. Useful for both dire and trivial hazards.

“I’ll alert the media,” said by the stuffy butler Hobson (John Gielgud) to his man-child employer Arthur (Dudley Moore) in the eponymous movie, after Arthur announces his plan to take a bath. Distilled sarcasm for any occasion. 

“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” –Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 “A man’s got to know his limitations.” –Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force.

“Have fun storming the castle!”—Billy Crystal, The Princess Bride.

“You sit on a throne of lies!” –Will Ferrell, Elf.

 “Hang onto your wigs and keys.” –David Letterman.

“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” –Super Chicken.

A good quotation can delight listeners when they get the reference and mystify them when they don’t. The challenge of working one into a conversation is that it’s hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. 

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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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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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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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