Arguments vs. Fights

Words of wisdom from "Thinking with Flying Logic" by Robert McNally. This was passed along to me by my co-worker John Forbes.

"When we think of an argument, many of us envision scowls, angry gesticulation, and yelling. We imagine petty name-calling, a parade of unforgiven grievances, and other emotional power plays. Most importantly, we imagine arguing to get our way— to show that we are right and others are wrong. But such an interaction is not an argument— it is a fight. In a fight there may be winners, but there will certainly be losers, and injuries for all.

A real argument is a shared search for truth. In an honorable argument people can still be passionate, but they follow the rules of logic just as drivers follow the rules of the road. And even though people approach a situation from different perspectives and with different preconceptions, the positions they take should be seen as suggestions that are ultimately intended as win-win, even if they initially fall far short. Indeed, even such flat statements as, 'We’ll get along fine as soon as you learn to do things my way,' hint at a common objective: getting along.

When argument is viewed as a search for truth, it becomes possible to see adapting one’s position to new information and ideas not as weak or wishy-washy, but as a challenge to which only a mature, strong, and honorable person can rise. More pragmatically, all sides can begin to look forward to not merely getting their way, but getting something better in the form of a win-win solution."

It's OK to Play

Every now and then, I get an aha! moment. Not always at the most convenient times, but worth capturing and remembering even so. I got one of those last night as I was reading myself to sleep, and it woke me up again like a persistent toddler about 5AM today. And now, here it is almost 9PM and the idea still sounds good to me, so I'm passing it along to you.

I'm in an extended conversation these days with some fairly serous, highly educated folks, who want to nurture and develop their creative talents. Some do it for their own pleasure, and some as a way of expressing their deep, important capital-T Truths to those who come after them. The pleasure folks seem happy with craft projects and dabbling and just enjoying things in general. The capital-T Truth people are a bit disdainful of the whole thing, because you see, they are past that childlike stage and they must devote their time to perfecting their art. All that inner child stuff and writing with your non-dominant hand and representing your dreams in sand trays is all right if you are a blocked artist, or a mere hobbyist, or a beginner. Once you get past that stage, there is serious business to be done.

The aha! came as I was reading David Jauss' "Alone With All That Could Happen". The third chapter -- the one that talks about rhythm and flow. He starts out talking about the writing techniques of varying one's sentence lengths and cadences to influence the pace and fluence of the story, then moves on to the pacing and flow of chapters, sections, entire books. It's the kind of stuff that makes you want to go back to that short story with the ending that doesn't quite work and diagram it to death to see what's wrong with the danged thing.

But then. Jauss starts talking about the "musical unconscious". Stories that exist in a sort of pre-verbal language before the words form around them. Writers walking around going, "aah. aah." because the story has an aah in it, but they don't know if it's a cat or a camera or a hammer. Apparently, he has some scientific studies to back this up. The mind is equipped with an inborn "assembly language" (to lapse into computer-speak), an internal operating code that requires an interface to translate it into English, or French, or Navajo. A rhythm that you recognize but can't quite articulate.

And that's why we dabble and play and indulge the goofy thoughts, odd sound effects, warped observations, Dali-esque dream sequences. These are a way of speaking with and listening to the pre-verbal utterances that come from so deep within that we aren't even aware of it most of the time. Didn't you ever wonder why your best story ideas came at the oddest times and places? Why the title of someone else's play turns into your very different novella. Why your neighbor's whiskey bottle collection in his living room window grabs you by the lapels and forces you to remember something you dreamed 3 years earlier. Why that poem or book chapter seemed to write itself, relegating you to the role of stenographer?

Haven't you ever read prose where the technique was flawless, but it seemed flat, lifeless, derivative? The author has Tolkien's technique down cold, but the writing doesn't draw you into that magical world. The whole thing has a paint-by-numbers feel to it, and you can see the bits of technique poking out like outlines on a badly doctored photograph. Like a Beatles tribute band that gets all the notes right, but doesn't make you wanna dance like John, Paul, George, and Ringo did. Skim through the editors' preferences in Writer's Market and count how many times the phrase "writing class" is used in a snarky way.

No, technique and polishing and crafting all come later. You start with the 3AM idea, the bit of a song stuck in your head, the "aah, aah", the drumming of your pencil on your desktop. You go with the goofy, the skewed, the "where am I going with this". And you let it grow unhindered until it's strong enough to withstand your pruning and trimming. Would you prune a half-inch seedling?

Yes, you can try to emulate the masters. Learn from their success. By all means. But if you don't start with your very own inspiration, anything you do will look like a knock-off. They said it first, and they said it better. You start with your own stuff, and even if what you wind up with is a little rough around the edges, it's yours. Go back and look at those masters. Didn't they speak with their own voices? Wasn't that what made them great?

Back on the Radar Screen

The last month or so, I've been either working overtime or recovering from working overtime. Two conferences, bracketing Thanksgiving week, left me wishing I was rich enough to retire from the rat race and just spend my time blogging and writing novels. Someone has to pay my mortgage, so retirement will have to wait. And the novels will have to wait until I figure out a way to make enough time and energy to get the creative juices going again. So for now, blogging it is. I've got two followers now (an overnight doubling of my fan club!).

I'm going to try my hand at summarizing science articles for the general public in this space. If all goes well, I'll continue this theme, interspersed with the general musings that you have all come to know and love (well, Todd and Linda anyway). I did the science writing thing professionally a few years ago, and as soon as I figure out how to make enough money to stay afloat, I'm going to go back to that full-time again. Tell all your friends.

Oh what a beautiful morning

The results are in, and we have a new President-elect. The old divide-and-conquer strategy didn't work. People weren't so much scared of a guy with a funny name as they were worried about the way ahead. Survival skills gained in a Vietnamese prison camp or on the Alaskan tundra were not deemed as relevant to running our nation as community organizing skills gained on the south side of Chicago. There is not a "real" America and a "fake" America, there is only the United States of America. Please, please let us stop flinging mud at each other, roll up our sleeves, and get busy working TOGETHER to rebuild the good things that have been damaged and destroyed in recent years. Yes, we can.

So Now We Wait...

I arrived at my polling place at 7:15 this morning -- a civic sacrifice of significant proportions for this night person. I had intended to arrive at about 6:45 or so, but that was just too much to ask. Apparently, anyone who arrived at 7:00, when the polls opened, had the same one-hour wait that I did. Which is truly amazing, since the line stretched halfway down the block, down one hall inside the elementary school, down another hall, took a u-turn and snaked back down those same two halls, and only then did you get inside the school cafeteria where you could sign in and actually vote. Kudos to the poll workers who kept things running so smoothly. Montgomery County Maryland is firmly in the Obama camp, but we had four ballot questions to decide as well, plus our folks in the House of Representatives and a smattering of judges and school board members. Today was the last hurrah for touch screen-only balloting in our county. We will go to optically scanned paper ballots in 2010. After today's vote, we will know whether we can vote early (instead of merely absentee) next time as well. Just seeing all those good folks lined up to cast their votes this morning made it worth the wait. It's 5:00 PM, and the first exit poll results should be trickling out just about now. So now, we watch and wait...

And so it begins...

You've read my philosophical musings on the Washington Ethical Society email chat list (or not). you've been moved to write my editor about the scintillating articles I've written for Chemical Innovation, Today's Chemist at Work, and Modern Drug Discovery (or not). You've checked the "me too" box 'neath my pithy comments about numerous articles in the Washington Post online (or not). And now, you're reading the very first blog posting on The Word Chemist. Can you feel the magic? Maybe a tiny exotherm? A slight increase in your entropy?

Blogging was one of those things that I've been meaning to do for a while, but did I really have anything to say that hasn't been said in all the other squillion and one other blogs out there? Perhaps not, but it's all in the way you say it, isn't it? I was actually trying to resurrect a dusty old legacy Blogspot account (pre-Google) so that I could post a comment on my sister's blog, Still Designing Stuff. I got stuck in screen-cycle hell and the only way out was to start completely from scratch, which inolved setting up my own blog, which involved creating an initial posting, so here I am.

To follow: assorted detritus from an ever so slightly left of center mid-generation baby-boomer, living ever so slightly outside our nation's capital. (Our nation being the USA, for all my many fans around the globe.) And so it begins...