Why the Internet Makes Brainstorming Great

When I was in 2nd grade, my class took a field trip to a rural garbage treatment plant. While on the tour, we were told that the smokestacks of the plant were equipped with an electric grid of some kind that essentially knocked the more harmful particulate matter out of the smoke, resulting in a cleaner exhaust from burning garbage. (How accurate this statement was, I never did find out.) But in my 2nd-grade brain, I hatched an idea: If an electric grid could make exhaust from burning garbage clean(er), why not build a smaller version of that technology on the tailpipes of cars, thereby reducing the pollutants in their exhaust. I mentioned this to my teacher, who suggested I write a letter to an automotive company asking them this same question. I don't think I ever did write that letter. But cut me some slack; I was in 2nd grade.

This idea I had in 2nd grade possibly could never go anywhere. Did the technology the tour guide described at the plant really work the way he described it to us? Would such a thing work on a car? Could it be cheaply replicated on a miniature scale? I have no idea. And because I did not go into mechanical engineering, nor did I amass a large amount of money that I can use to fund random research projects, I am not really in a position to contribute to this idea. Also, even if I had written that letter as a 2nd-grader, chances are it would have never made it to the desk of someone in a position to investigate it.

But the really great thing about living in an age of global communication is that all the current 2nd-grade-children in the world can throw these ideas out in a public forum, where they could be seen by any Net-connected person in the world. Suppose I had been able to post my idea online in 2nd grade. Maybe it would have been picked up by someone searching for information about reducing auto pollution and who, unlike a small boy in rural Wisconsin, would be in a position to either directly investigate such a possibility or to pass it on to some engineer. Or maybe the electric-grid-on-tailpipes idea really is not feasible, but to the right person it contains the spark of an idea that could result in a useful new technology. This simple question from a person not in a position to carry it any further might be a catalyst for something worthwhile.

The Internet makes brainstorming great. Don't get me wrong: brainstorming is always great, but the Internet makes it transformative on a much larger level. Brainstorming is how we approach any problem--from "How do we feed the world" to "What should the monster look like in my horror story"--and a good brainstorming session is the first step to coming up with solutions. Not every idea in a brainstorming session is useful, but gather enough ideas and some of them are bound to be good. So just imagine the possibility of billions of people brainstorming ideas to address social problems, new technology, or even new art forms. Lots of bad ideas will get created, but more than a few good ideas are bound to come out in the process.

So what kinds of things might make Internet brainstorming useful? I have a few ideas:

1. People should write often about their skills, interests, and dilemmas. They should write constructively, but also they should not be afraid to pose questions or toss out crazy ideas. Doing this in some kind of publicly accessible forum (like a blog that can be retrieved in Web searches) boosts the possibility that an idea will drift across the right person's screen. More to the point, people should contribute to the global discussion on issues in which they have either particular knowledge or particular interest.

2. People working on a solution to a given problem should--with some regularity--do Web searches that might put them in touch with the brainstorming blog posts. Over time, people will innately standardize their language so that such posts get picked up more easily. Working on research for neural mapping? Why not do the occasional Web search for "neural mapping" and "brainstorm"? Over time, people might start seeing the terms appear together more often and start using them to get noticed. Granted, this is setting the incautious researcher up for a lot of Web results that lead nowhere. But researchers are good at finding needed information, and over time they can figure out more efficient ways to spot good ideas.

3. Websites that serve as idea banks could make Web brainstorming a new social networking phenomenon. Suppose someone created a wiki-style idea bank for automotive technology. It could have categories for different topics (Alternate fuel sources, Efficient engine design, Automated cars), and users could contribute their ideas. The site's operator could vet ideas to catch the inevitable spam and troll-ish comments.

In fact, I think the "Web idea banks" idea is great. I wonder whether anyone has thought of it....

The Worldview Shopper App

I've been thinking lately about ways that computers can help make us think better. This idea is appealing to me in part because it seems so scary to some people. The idea of having computers think for us is fodder for countless science-fiction stories, but why not have computers leverage their computational skills to do some things for us? I mean, I've yet to meet the person who fears using a calculator because a computer cannot be trusted with the precious mental activity of arithmetic.

One idea that came to be is for a program that uses recommendation systems to help us make more informed and socially responsible purchasing decisions. I started with a phrase I first heard working at Whole Foods--"You vote with your dollars"--which I have taken to heart. Every time I choose to buy Product X, I am endorsing that product and, implicitly, the model with which it is made. At the same time, every time I do not buy Product Y, I am rejecting that product and its means of production, even if I am not consciously boycotting it. For example, say I buy a pound of coffee that comes from a large corporation, is chemically treated for flavoring, is grown on former rainforest land that was clear-cut, and is prepared by workers who are paid less than a living wage. I am supporting this model, even if I am intellectually sympathetic to a rival system, like a fair-trade, organic coffee grown in small cooperatives.

I might buy (and not-buy) against my conscience for lots of reasons. Maybe I don't know about the practices of the companies involved. Maybe I don't have enough money to buy everything from companies that support my worldview. Maybe I've heard that just buying organic isn't enough and I should also consider the relative value of a local product with fewer standards in place. Too much confusing information makes it hard for me to make any kind of informed choice, and easy to just go with what is cheapest or most readily available. And I know that, in the process, I am propping up the kinds of business models I disagree with, but I don't have the ability to process all these details to shop smarter.

However, who does have the ability to process all those things? My computer. So here's my idea for a "worldview shopper" app:

When I first sign in to this app, I fill out my profile. It includes information like where I live, how much I am willing to spend each month on different types of goods (food staples, beverages, toiletries, transportation, etc.). Then it gives me a questionnaire to determine my social view. The questionnaire might include things like "I think small, worker-owned businesses are better than large corporations," or "Buying local products is more important than buying organic products," and I can agree or disagree. All of these choices are things I can go back and revise at will.

Then the program collates this information and gathers recommendations on products I should buy to support my worldview. It can do this because the participating companies have tagged their products according to a set of business models, and those tags have been verified by an external agency. The program shows me which products support my ideals in a ranked order, so I can see what will be the most effective item to purchase. It even includes a pseudo-shopping cart, where I can plan out, say, my grocery shopping so I know I am not overspending in the store. And I can sort items by price as well as fidelity to my worldview. I can buy the one good that is 100% in line with my beliefs, even if it costs more, and save money on something that is 80% in line with my beliefs but is on sale.

My worldview shopper app does not force me to buy one thing or another, it just helps me make sense of a bunch of information I would probably never bother to learn on my own, but that if I did know, I would clearly use. And it could evaluate many different factors (organic vs. conventional prep, how the company treats its employees, maybe even which political or social groups the company donates money to), and show how close the aggregate of these details is to my beliefs. If Netflix can tell that I like horror movies with a strong female lead (and I do!), then my social shopper app could also show how my spending can support companies that promote diversity in the workplace.

Postscript: It is entirely possible that someone has already built an app along these lines and I have just not seen it yet. I originally called this my "social shopper" app, but I see that term is already in use for apps that make shopping easier in the age of social networking. I did not want to cause confusion.

Scare a Driver, Save a Life?

Yesterday I was riding my bicycle on the near West side of Madison, which required sharing the road with motorists in a few places. Madison has an excellent bike path that crosses the city (and links up with an interstate bike trail), and it has bike lanes on a few streets, but in other places I have to share the road with cars. This latter scenario always makes me nervous, but yesterday I was noticing how much it seemed to make drivers nervous, too. Even though I was staying in lanes, signaling before changing lanes, and otherwise behaving in a predictable and legal manner, it seemed like just my presence on the road was enough to make drivers slow down and behave more carefully. And that was when I realized what a great thing it is to scare drivers.

Here's the thing: Normally I am afraid to share the road with drivers because I anticipate that they will be reckless, will drive too fast, will not pay attention to me, and will possibly hit me. And all of those things do sometimes happen to bicyclists. (And, in defense of drivers, I have seen almost as many reckless bicyclists as I have reckless motorists.) But it seems like more often, drivers actually drive slower and are more aware when they see bicyclists in lane. A few times I have had drivers try to zip around me, but as long as I stay in a lane like a vehicle--which, on the street, I am--most drivers seem to treat me like a slow-moving and more easily breakable vehicle. They drive respectfully, and we all get where we're going in a reasonable time.

This is an all-around public good. My fears of being hit by a reckless driver depend in part on my perception of the roads as a place drivers will not share with cyclists. But I also realize that such an unsafe environment is supported partly by a shortage of cyclists using the roads. If drivers seldom encounter cyclists on the road, they will have less experience with them and will treat them more like an intrusion into their space. On the other hand, if drivers frequently see cyclists, they will have to adjust their driving accordingly. This means they will drive slower and pay closer attention to their surroundings, which will in turn make the cyclists safer, and that will make it easier for more cyclists to use the road system.

But this does not only benefit cyclists. Most traffic accidents are the result of drivers going too fast or paying too little attention. Pedestrians in crosswalks are also at risk when drivers behave badly, but so too are the drivers and their passengers. Inside a car it is easy to feel isolated from the rest of the street, but that sense of isolation is what leads to bad driving and accidents. If seeing a bicycle on the road makes the driver nervous and he accordingly pays closer attention and drives at a responsibly speed, he will be protecting himself and his passengers as much as the cyclist.

And, in an era of massive budget cuts to public programs, communities should really support seeing more cyclists take on this role. If a cyclist on the street can have the effect of getting drivers to slow down and pay attention, then the cyclist is fulfilling a role similar to speed monitoring signs, or police officers in speed traps. But the cyclist does not cost the taxpayer anything. It's almost like a community speedwatch. (Which also exists, and is something I wish more neighborhoods would use.)

So the next time you see a cyclist on the road and he makes you slow down, be thankful that he is out there keeping you safe.

Archives: Research Assistants

Sometimes I manage to pick up extra money at my archive by hiring out as a research assistant for patrons. This is a task I jump at whenever I can because it gives me a chance to set my own rate, which is always much higher than I make as a public employee. I find that I can charge $25 an hour and most patrons hardly bat an eye. After all, anyone serious enough about a research project to pursue professional assistance probably recognizes that paying someone a few hundred dollars is a better deal than, say, buying a plane ticket to fly out to Madison, renting a hotel room for a few nights, and paying for food and drinks when not in the archive.

But the monetary advantage aside, I also enjoy research assistance because it gives me a chance to interact with the public. Most of my work involves cataloging new collections, which certainly affects the public because it creates finding aids to help people navigate to our collections. But I seldom get feedback on how helpful the finding aids are, what kinds of projects are bringing people to our collections, or what sort of information is needed but missing from the finding aids. These are all topics I can engage by actually getting in touch with people. 

So what kind of work do I do as a research assistant? Usually a lot of reading, searching, and photocopying. A patron might ask whether we have images in a film's production stills file that relate to the topic of her paper, or whether we have studio correspondence on censorship efforts related to a given movie. These are topics that our finding aids cannot really answer because they are arranged at the folder level. So the finding aid might say we have three folders of studio correspondence about a certain film, but not what the content of each letter is. And ordinarily, a patron would come in and look through the folders herself, find any letters of interest, and make photocopies. But if she cannot come for some reason, she can hire me, tell me what to look for, and let me do the searching and copying.

This is a relationship I want to encourage all around. Archivists, consider taking on research assistant positions whenever possible. Especially if you do not work directly with the public, in which case you can gain valuable reference time. Check with your institution's reference team to see whether they maintain a list of research assistants. This will look good on your resume, boost your profile at your institution, and maybe even get you a recommendation on LinkedIn. And researchers, consider hiring archivists as research assistants. If you are debating a trip to an institution, it might be a more cost-effective option to hire someone to do the legwork. And you will help that research assistant (who is probably an upcoming archivist) gain some valuable experience. Everyone wins.

Podcast Review: HPPodcraft.com

Some podcasts come and go from my normal listening rotation, but one has stayed among my favorites for more than a year now. That is HPPodcraft.com. For those not familiar with it, this is a weekly podcast devoted to the writings of weird fiction author H. P. Lovecraft. Most episodes are detailed plot summaries for each story, punctuated by a combination of excerpt readings, host banter, and interviews with special guests, typically Lovecraft scholars or members of the ever-growing creative community that translates Lovecraft's work to other media.

The two hosts - Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer - share a passion for all things Lovecraftian. They are clearly well-read not only in the official Lovecraft canon, but also in such useful ancillary writings as Lovecraft's correspondence and S. T. Joshi's critical essays. Their podcast accomplishes something noteworthy in that it is great for both new and veteran Lovecraft fans. Their summaries of his stories give a good sense of what all his writings are about (while sparing the more wary listeners from having to read, say, "Medusa's Coil" on their own). But also, the more experienced Lovecraft fan can find many interesting details about the publication histories of his stories, his literary influences, and different adaptations of his works.

Sometimes, they also commission a reading of a particular story, and these episodes are absolute must-listens. The production values are always top-notch, the readers are excellent, and the use of stereo sound in the music and effects virtually demands listening to them via earbuds, preferably alone and in the dark. These readings are usually tied to fundraising drives for the podcast, and they might be one of the best rewards anyone can ask for donating to a podcast. Three stories have been read so far ("The Haunter in the Dark," "From Beyond," and "The Picture in the House" - one of my favorites), and two more are currently in the works.

I cannot possibly recommend their podcast highly enough. As a pulp lit nerd, I dream about emulating this model for other writers (a "Robert E. Howardcast," maybe?). However, it would take serious talent for anyone to develop as good a product as HPPodcraft.

Part-time Work and Me

When I think about my future, I now see myself working a range of LTE jobs and contract positions. This is a situation many of my peers in the LIS field probably are also seeing, and it has its benefits and drawbacks. When we were in school, our professors often talked about the increasing possibility of a career made up of freelance work, but still they built up the expectation of finding regular work. And I certainly know several people who have found full-time jobs. But the less I worry about finding that full-time job, the more I feel like I can pursue and enjoy where I am now. But I digress. The pros and cons:

I like the prospect of working a range of jobs because I think I prefer some variety and uncertainty in life. The thought of a long-term job does sometimes make me nervous; any time I make a major decision I am prone to worry that I made the wrong choice. Also, I have a broad range of interests, so the idea of being able to work on projects that strike my fancy is appealing. Not that every contract job I get will be something I love, but I feel like I have more flexibility to pursue things I like, whether in archival work or in writing. And, to be fair, I am pretty capricious, so it is hard for me to focus on one project for a length of time. Knowing how easy it is for me to flit from one project to another has even helped me in jobs that have a longer term; I tend to keep several smaller projects running at once, so I can jump between them.

At the same time, uncertainty can be pretty frightening. I am fortunate in that my wife has a full-time job, which gives me the comfort to pursue jobs that offer no benefits, while still enjoying health care through her work. On the other hand, I feel guilty sometimes in that I depend on her for those benefits. What if she wanted to work contract jobs, too? Also, the learning curve for contract work can be a lot higher than for more steady work. I have a contract position right now, and sometimes not having something like an HR department to guide me through writing contracts and interacting with employers can be daunting. I am having to learn those things on my own, with mixed success. And I am not generally an assertive person, so self-advocacy is hard for me.

Having said all that, I am less worried about my job options now than I was at the end of grad school. Maybe I am recognizing that a lot of my friends are also in the world of multiple part-time or contracted positions. Or maybe I've come to find the good in such positions. But these days it seems more exciting than I would have thought before. I wish I lived in a country where I had an affordable health care option, thereby removing one of my biggest anxieties about freelance work. Still, I find myself more able to envision a career future that resembles my present.

Baby Motivation?

Soon, I will have a child. And sometimes I think that I am supposed to be more nervous about this fact than I actually am. Like, socially, I should worry about how a child is going to eat up all of my time and I will not get to do the things I want, or a child will consume all of my personality and I will communicate only in comments about theoretically cute things my child did. And, to be fair, these are probable outcomes for at least the first few months. But when I give the subject any thought, I actually feel like having a child might be an interesting test of my various interests.

First, if taking care of a baby eats up a lot of my time--and as I understand it, it will--I will have to use more discrimination in picking what I do with my spare time. Already, I try to restrict my spare time to specific activities I enjoy: playing a video game, reading a book, working on a story. I am not one to passively watch TV. But it is easy for me to pick the activity that requires the least energy. The mindless task is usually the winner. My hope, however--and this sounds like bodes poorly for my parenting skills--is that many of the daily childcare tasks will be my mindless tasks, and when I have to choose my hobbies more carefully to fit into my spare moments, I will pick the hobbies with the greater stimulation. No offense to video games, but they do tend to soak up a lot of down time because they require less mental energy than, say, writing a finding aid at the archive. On the other hand, changing a diaper is pretty much a rote, repetitive task: like a creepy, gross video game no one wants to play. As long as I have to play it, though, I can make it my mindless thing and save my mind for writing.

Also, a baby makes for a great captive audience. In our family plan, I will be staying home with the baby-in-question two days a week (two more days go to my mother-in-law, and one day to my wife). So for two days a week, I will be taking care of a perfect little captive audience for me to bounce story ideas off. Can the baby provide me with useful feedback? No, I doubt it. But half the point of bouncing ideas off a friend is just to hear your idea out loud and realize, "Oh, that's a terrible idea. Back to the drawing board with that one." And really, until my child learns to speak and its first word is, like, "reaver" or "necromancy," who's to know that my baby is my story consultant?

Third, kids apparently make people think about their legacies. And although I don't really think to much about what I want to leave behind, a child can be a good motivator for me to think, "Wouldn't it be cool if my child could tell his classmates about the fantasy story his pop wrote"? (Oh, that's right: my kid is calling me papa.) Or, "Hey, I'm taking our child to the H.P. Lovecraft convention next weekend!" And I have a whole new person to fill with information about the Cthulhu Mythos or tales of Conan the Cimmerian. A person, I might add, who will not have acquired the skills to politely brush me off.

So I am all over this parenting thing. Mainly because I see ways to make it benefit my nerdy self.

Writing and the "What-If" Game

When I get stuck on a story, I find that I like to play the "What-if" game with my stories. I think I arrived at this idea from a combination of different sources (I recall Orson Scott Card giving advice in a book on character that worked into it), but it has become a key tool in my own writing, and sometimes I use when criticizing other stories.

The "What-if" game is pretty simple in theory: Reading through my story, I look for things I imagine to be important, and I ask "What if things turned out differently?" Maybe Character A has wronged Character B and asks for forgiveness. Character B forgives him and the story moves on, but later I feel like the story is lacking in something. So I go back and ask, "What if Character B had not forgiven him? How would it change the story?" I then go to the appropriate notebook and start listing how I think the new scenario would change the story. Sometimes it is a great way to get over writer's block.

It can also work in the outlining phase of story writing. I have been working on one story for a while, and I used the "What-if" game to try all the different permutations of my characters. What if Character A was female? What if Character A was older? Not all of these decisions drastically affect my story; I would not, for example, assume that a female character could not do anything a male character could. But it might affect how I think other characters might respond, or how I think readers might respond. And when a given relationship seems too cliche, nothing helps like changing the characters' identities. And if I start out by imagining several different permutations for each character (instead of insisting that any character has to have a given set of traits), then I am able to outline several different scenarios and pick the one that interests me most.

The game is helpful when considering a different turn of events that has serious consequences on the plot. But what about where I cannot see a significant change to the story by changing a given detail? Well, that is a good sign that the detail I am considering is not too important, for one. Changing a character's gender might or might not change the course of the story (although it might have broader cultural implications); if a character could be male or female with no significant change to the story, I have no need to insist on one gender, beyond what I think is more interesting. But it could be kept in the background, or maybe even left to the reader's imagination. On the other hand, whether a certain character lives or dies probably will change the course of the story significantly. If it doesn't, I probably should not bother with that plot point at all.

The "What-if" game is a pretty basic writing tool, maybe, but I think it is good to keep in mind. If you are stuck in a story, try it out as a way to get creative. Even if you are not stuck, try it out and see whether it leads to any new ideas you like more. Our first ideas for stories often come from what feels natural, but that's not always the most interesting. Sometimes thinking of all the alternatives can help you find the great idea you would otherwise miss.

Emil's Hiatus

I am a world-class procrastinator. I can stall on work projects, returning phone calls, or even writing for great lengths of time. In fact, if I knew of a procrastination competition, I would probably apply for it. Tomorrow.

So in this case, I kept putting off updating my blog under the logic that I had nothing to write about. I told myself I would write tomorrow, and then the next day I said the same thing, and pretty soon a month had passed without me writing anything. Not that I didn't spend that month worrying about how I was not writing anything to my blog, I just lacked the gumption to actually change my situation.

So what did I do with this past month? I kept busy with work, holding down two part-time appointments at the archive and a third position doing freelance cataloging work. I got my apartment in order for the impending birth of my first child (three weeks to go!). I started learning how to drive a car, which is less terrifying than I remember from my ill-conceived attempt to learn it in high school. And I read a lot.

Several of these things are probably blog-worthy in themselves and will hopefully appear here soon, in some (entertaining, I hope) form. Also, I have much to say about my writing, ideas about writing and the arts in general, and my various vague goals for future projects. I did not want to write an apology post for not writing because that does not seem particularly interesting. But I wanted to give an update for now, and aim for a new and interesting post very soon!

After the Wisconsin Film Festival

It has been a long hiatus from blogging, but at last I am feeling the necessary amount of energy with which to write here. I have been busy with a variety of projects, including some apartment improvements, lots of processing work, and the Wisconsin Film Festival.

The last one has been the biggest consumer of my time ad energy in the past weekend, but it was worth all the long nights. This year I was a theater captain, organizing the other volunteers and generally making sure the films ran on time. I did many different tasks between Thursday and Sunday, worked a couple of nearly 15-hour days, and lived almost entirely on granola bars and Coke. The experience was draining, but also completely thrilling. I will, without hesitation, do it again next year.

I did get to see any movies in their entirety, but I did see parts of several, and many seem well worth a closer look. My biggest recommendation is Amy George, the debut film for Canadian filmmakers Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas. It is a comedic/dramatic story about a teenage boy, with all the hormonal and other emotional discomforts adolescence brings. It also has a fantastic musical score and looks beautiful. It deserves a big theatrical release.

I also saw parts of two great (and different) musical documentaries, Color Me Obsessed (about The Replacements), and Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone. Both got great audience audience reactions and are high on my "must-watch" list. When I'm not captaining a theater.

Tokyo: Megacity

This weekend I read Donald Richie and Ben Simmons' new photo book, Tokyo: Megacity. The photography is beautiful and Richie's descriptions of each neighborhood are concise, insightful blurbs as good for seasoned Nipponophiles as for newcomers. The cover photograph shows the mid-town area at dusk, leading toward a glowing Tokyo Tower.
After I read through the book, I was reminded of several things. First, Tokyo is a city I only just visited last November, but I can easily see its charms. Tokyo represents a certain kind of urban life, not built according to careful urban planning (like Kyoto), but no less interesting for its seeming haphazardness. I remembered a professor in Nagasaki making the comment that Nagasaki's road structure seemed like an overturned plate of spaghetti, rather than a stately grid. However, I find much desirable about cities like these, which feel more chaotic and quirky. Tokyo has many different faces, so seeing a few neighborhoods is never enough to get a feel for the whole city. Tokyo will always call me back because it will always have new places to explore.
Second, I remembered how much I love city life. Maybe this is because I grew up in a farming village, but for me, a cityscape - preferably lit at night - is one of the most exciting sights possible. It never fails to make me feel good on a deep level. Even a photograph of a cityscape at night is an instant mood enhancer. Although my current home city is quite small, it has a few spots downtown where I can feel just a touch of urban life, and every time I see that a new building of greater than three floors is coming in, I immediately get excited. Not that the final products always warrant that excitement. (Ahem, Hotel Red.)
Third, Japan's charms for me are really varied. I know many people who like Japan for aspects of traditional culture - samurai, Zen Buddhism, martial arts. And I know as many who like it for certain aspects of modern youth culture - anime and manga, Gothic Lolitas, J-pop. I like some of these things some of the time, but I get more pleasure from enka music, dive bars, used bookstores, fishing towns, and dinner parties with friends. Whenever I get the itch to go back to Japan and explore more, these things take up at least as much - usually more - mental room in planning my trip.

Uncovering Television Treasures at the Archive

One of the joys of my work at the film archive is coming across rare commercial films and videos. I should clarify that some of the material I process is non-commercial in nature, and therefore it is obviously rare. A person's home movies tend to be one-of-a-kind. But sometimes I get a find in the entertainment industry that is a real treasure. I love making these available to the public and fantasizing about the fan treatments they can finally receive.
Last year, I found the complete run of a British thriller series called Strange Experiences. This program ran on the British channel ATV in the Midlands in the mid-1950s. Each episode ran approximately 5 minutes and told a creepy, mysterious, or otherwise uncanny story. Some of the best are downright terrifying, proof that a short story can pack a big wallop. In writing the finding aid for our copy I got in touch with a colleague at the BFI and learned that they have at least a partial--probably a full--run of the series. But I do not know of other sources that have it. As far as I know, the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research is the only place in the US where this program can be seen.
Last summer, I also worked through the complete run of Spectreman, a Japanese superhero series from the 1970s. This was the precursor to more popular entries like Kamen Rider and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. The show apparently aired on American TV in the 1980s in a dubbed format, and now I can proudly say that our archive has every episode.
I continue to find rare gems on an almost regular basis. This is a source of no small amusement because, as an archivist, I am skeptical of the popular myth that "dusty archives shelves" are hiding all manner of hidden treasures. (I mean, sure, we have the Ark of the Covenant, but otherwise....) However, sometimes I feel like I almost weekly come across something truly amazing that deserves to been seen again, even if most of them appeal only to my cadre of like-minded nerds.

Wisconsin Film Festival

With the coming of spring, I am getting ready for the Wisconsin Film Festival. This year the festival is from March 30 to April 3, and tickets are on sale now. I have been attending screenings for several years and volunteering for a couple. This year I am stepping up to a larger role as "theater captain," which will keep me busy throughout the festival.

You, however, should go to see movies! If you have never been before, the Wisconsin Film Festival brings a large number (this year, 209) short- and feature-length films to Madison, shown over 5 days. The festival screens films from around the world, with special attention to new filmmakers, local talent, and shorts. (I especially love the short film collections because so few of these films will ever see release theatrically or on DVD.) The festival shows films in a range of genres; everyone can find at least one film she is dying to see.

The festival is also a great local event. Each year it brings thousands of people to Madison, where they can catch a few movies, enjoy our art museums and parks, have a beer at the Memorial Union Terrace, or eat a great dinner and go shopping on State Street. I love spending a day downtown, watching movies and having coffee or getting Nepalese food in between.

I strongly encourage you to look at the schedule and consider coming to the Festival. This could be your only chance to see many of the movies listed, which should speak to any cinephile. The atmosphere is always great; movie fans love hanging out and chatting, whether in a restaurant after seeing a documentary or in line for the late-night horror show. Besides, this year's robot-themed logo is priceless, and you can grab a commemorative T-shirt while in town. And maybe you'll even bump into me!

Libraries Are Important to Communities

Whenever I hear conservatives talk of the need to reduce government spending--which, by the way, I hear often--I get nervous because it seems like so many things I like are at the top of the list of "services to be reduced." When I was a student, the talk always seemed to turn to music and the arts. Now that I am older, I hear it come to libraries and archives. Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that many other things are also facing severe budget cutbacks. But where defunding music and the arts hit me hard as a student, defunding libraries and archives hits me even harder as an adult. Taking away music and arts education in schools is not the same as forbidding music and arts, but many children who cannot afford to study those things on their own, or who do not already have an inclination to do so, will now not get a chance to learn about them. Similarly, taking away a library from a community might not matter as much to the people who, say, have an Internet connection at home and can afford to buy whatever books or movies they want, but many other people will be left behind.

Libraries are important to so many different groups of people, and for so many reasons. I use my library constantly. At any given time I have probably several dozen books, DVDs, CDs, and video games checked out. I read voraciously, I go through movies very quickly, I love listening to new CDs on my iPod at work, and I sometimes want to try out new video games. I frequently recommend the library purchase new materials that interest me, much more than I buy such things myself. In theory, I could buy all these things myself, but I would probably wind up spending hundreds of dollars every month on things I am seldom likely to pick up again. (Also, I really cannot afford to buy books at anything close to the rate at which I read them.) And even though I am pretty liberal about lending or giving away my things, for the most part all the stuff I buy would still just sit around my apartment, used by no one but me. So instead, I contribute my time to help keep my local library going, and I treat it as if I get to share all these great materials with everyone else. I take care of whatever I check out because I know others will want it too. When I request a purchase and the library gets it, I love to see how many people are waiting to pick it up. That "25 out 25" request position never looks better!

Libraries are a great resource for me to get the books and movies I want, but I also see my library performing many other tasks for the community. Elderly patrons who have a hard time understanding e-mail come in and get help writing to their relatives. Parents with new children come in for storytime and play groups. Tax documents are kept on hand. I even see my library function as a general information kiosk: People who are visiting the area sometimes stop in to ask for directions or get a recommendation on a place to eat.

When libraries have less money to work with, all these services get threatened. I can always buy a book I really want if the library cannot afford to purchase it, but not everyone who uses the library can say the same. If the library closes, I can still check my e-mail from home, but some of the grandparents in the neighborhood do not have the same luxury. When I think about the loss to my community if our library ever closed, I think about much more than just my own inconvenience.

Why 1950s Domestic Murder Stories Are Good for Us

Watching the Thriller episode "A Third for Pinochle," I am reminded of how much I love light-hearted domestic murder stories. These were a common feature of several anthology suspense programs in the 1950s; I am pretty sure that more than half of the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents are about one spouse trying to murder the other. This was also a common setup for stories in the E.C. horror comics, much to the dismay of noted spoilsport Dr. Frederic Wertham.

One reason I find these stories so interesting is that I feel like they speak to a common tension in 1950s American domestic life. As I have gotten older, I have become more skeptical of any Utopian worldview, and I have come to regard the view of the 1950s I had learned as just such a fantasy. I grew up in a conservative environment, and I was always given the impression that the 1950s were a magical time when people had sex only in the confines of holy matrimony (and, of course, only with each other), no one ever had a serious domestic argument, and divorce would never even be considered. Well, you know, maybe among those people such things might happen... (I never did learn definitely who "those people" might be, I think they were just the exception to prove the rule.)

This was the view I was given of 1950s home life, and it theoretically makes everything that comes after seem positively bleak. Sometime after 1959 people suddenly discovered hedonism and divorce and the country fell into moral decay, or some such thing. This attitude was usually caught up in the implication that all good Christian children should want to grow up and recreate the 1950s-era conservative heaven-on-earth, doing away with any sort of marital strife or--God help us--awkward feelings. The anxiety to live out someone else's difficult fantasy is a tremendous source of pressure, and I pretty much grew up in terror that I would somehow fail to become this paragon of morality.

As an adult, however, I had an epiphany: If domestic life was so blissful and problem-free in the 1950s, where did all those TV shows with domestic murder plots come from? What about all those issues of Tales From the Crypt? Don't get me wrong; I did not suspect that couples in the 1950s really were murdering each other in droves. But these were popular TV shows and popular comic books. If "everyone" in the 1950s really did live relatively untroubled domestic lives, why would they be willing to watch one story after another where a husband shoots a nagging wife, or where a wife poisons her philandering husband? What if people in the 1950s did have the cultural expectations to live these picture-perfect domestic lives, and they had few venues to openly talk about their frustrations, but they still had frustrations and needed some sort of catharsis. What if all these stories were acting as a sort of cultural release valve, to take the pressure off these all-to-human people.

Another noteworthy detail of these domestic murder plots: they are often played for laughs. Gallows humor, to be sure, but they feature a high degree of comic music, silly plot twists, and wry jokes about death and murder. The killer often gets his or her comeuppance, but always in a way that makes me chuckle and think Oh, you almost got away with it.... This added to my interpretation of these stories as a fun catharsis in a time of moral stodginess. People had anxieties they cold not express, they probably had moments when they would think of awful actions like murder, but probably also would have felt tremendous stigma if they told other people about it. Someone who imagines a murder--we often conclude--must be plotting a murder. Even though we ourselves might get so frustrated by an argument or bad customer service that we think Oh, I'd like to get my hands on you. So here is a body of fiction meant for entertainment, taking those subliminal wishes and turning them into a whimsical, harmless, series of crimes.

The comic domestic murder plot is, to me, a mark of social progress, like enjoying violent video games in place of watching gladiators in a literal arena. Bloodlust is a pretty common human emotion--or so I hope; my success as a writer might depend on it!--and virtual bloodshed is better for us all than literal bloodshed. Enjoying a story about poisoned tea or a faked car accident is always preferable to letting stress and isolation lead people to turn such stories into nonfiction. The upbeat music and humor reminds us to sit back and enjoy, and let our fantasies play out in a safe, sane, arena.

More on Pulp Adaptations (Pt. II)

Sorry to break up my train of thought. I was writing my last entry in a cafe before a meeting, and suddenly realizing I had only a few minutes to dash to my appointment, I had to abruptly end what I was writing. This also means I will probably re-read what I wrote and shake my head at its lack of revision. Not that I do much revising on my blog.

So, picking up...

3. Room for creativity?  Adaptations of existing works seem to suffer on two fronts. On the one hand, they require sufficient fidelity to their source material that fans will be satisfied. On the other hand, the need to appeal to non-fans can pull characters in odd directions. Although it is kind of unfair for me to judge a movie I have not yet seen, the reviews I have read for the recent Green Hornet movie lead me to believe that it suffered from a little of both, particularly the latter. But sometimes, too much devotion to the source material can be its own problem.
I wrote before about my concerns about a possible Shadow reboot, and one frustration I had was that it seemed likely the movie would include snippets of both the radio and pulp Shadows. He would have to be invisible and have his costume and fire guns all the time. Each of these seems like a necessity because it is a detail fans recognize. Problematically, these details come from two canons (this strangely sounds like a religious argument), and they do not work well together.
Of all the existing Shadow movies, I actually have a soft spot for the strangest of the lot, 1938's International Crime. It is not a great movie, but it is an interesting contribution to the Shadow mythos because it takes the character in a different direction. In it, Lamont Cranston is mainly a radio show host whose on-air persona is The Shadow. In that capacity, he exposes criminal activities, making it hard for (the mainly white-collar) criminals to hide. The story has my attention because it takes what I know about The Shadow--he is a "costumed" crime-fighter--and interprets it in an entirely new way. The fact that Cranston uses a radio to expose criminals feels like a clever nod to the character's tenure in radio drama.
Few movie adaptations of classic characters get to be so creative. Sure, the occasional TV series gets translated into an uncomfortably formulaic action movie or comedy, but developing a knowing take on the existing stories is a different kind of adaptation. To use another example, I love Neil Gaiman's graphic novel Marvel 1602. It tells the stories of various Marvel Comics heroes in an alternate scenario, where they are in early 17th-century England. It is clever, exciting, and rewarding for fans. It can also be appreciated by non-fans. If only movie adaptations could follow this route.

To be fair, I have nothing against movie adaptations. I tend to get excited whenever I hear about a new adaptation of a classic character. I just also tend to become skeptical, then cranky, very quickly. The best thing about a movie adaptation of a pulp character, to me, is that it will lead new fans to discover the great stories that built the character. The worst thing about a movie adaptation is that it not every pulp character makes a good movie character. Sometimes, the charm of a character has as much to do with the author's prose as with the character concept. Too often, I feel like movie adaptations miss that point.

More on Pulp Adaptations

I have been giving more thought to the question of movie adaptations of popular pulp heroes recently. The combination of upcoming comic book adaptations and rumors of new pulp adaptations (Conan? Doc Savage? The Shadow? John Carter of Mars? "At the Mountains of Madness"?) has given me reason for both optimism and skepticism. Some of these could be pretty good. Others might have more of a stretch. So I am trying to work out why I am less trusting of some projects than others.

1. Serial characters. Like comic book heroes, the pulps created an enduring series of memorable characters. Also like in comics, these tended to be characters with a few shallow traits. Conan is a strong warrior-king, Doc Savage is a brilliant scientist and crime-fighter, The Shadow is a mysterious vigilante. On a certain level, their stories are pretty uniform, putting each character through the same sorts of challenges in each installment. But, as with comic book characters, the nuances of the stories are what gave the characters depth. Conan might repeatedly fight villains who want to usurp his throne, but in his interactions with other characters, we learn more about him. In a way, the plots that made the stories marketable to the pulps take a back seat to the slow build of character. Because he faces similar problems, watching nuances in Conan's actions helps us see him as more than just an archetype.
However, movie adaptations tend not to achieve this goal. A Conan reboot has been rumored, but this would be one movie. It would probably feature an origin story as its plot, with a representative adventure for the hero. To me, this is the equivalent of reading one Conan story: it might be satisfactory on its own, but it really does not have time to develop its character. Accordingly, the characters will have to remain at their broadest.

2. Mass-market appeal. Speaking of broadness, a movie adaptation has to reach a broad audience, including people not well-versed in the character's mythology. This can be a good stimulus for screenwriters to try to develop a good story independent of canon, but it also means the screenwriters cannot rely on what people might already know about the character. They have to fit everything they think is relevant into the movie. Going back to the Conan example, adapting a later story like "The Tower of the Elephant" or "The Hour of the Dragon" would be difficult because, in addition to all the action and character details inherent in the story, the movie would also have to broadly explain who Conan is to newcomers. Because a movie tends to stand alone (unless some sort of series has already been announced), not explaining the origin of the character can make the story feel shallow. But focusing too much on the origin of character limits the type of story that can be told. Young Conan is interesting, I guess, but I tend to more so enjoy the stories where he is older and losing his grip on his kingdom. They have the pathos of seeing someone who has relied on his own power starting to lose that power, and needing the help of others more and more. I think that would make an interesting Conan story to film, but without first filming (yet another) origin story, I fear that audiences would shrug it off.


(More to come.)

On Job Interviews

After months of applying for jobs and receiving only rejection letters, I have finally reached a point where I am getting interviews. This seems to be familiar to many of my friends in the LIS world, and it is probably familiar to most people in general. Interestingly enough, I did not really have the same problem prior to grad school. In college, I usually landed the first student worker or part-time job I tried for; after my undergrad I got into retail, and then later into technical writing, with little difficulty. It sometimes feels as if more education makes me less desirable. On the one hand, this idea can be discouraging, but I also try to remind myself that I am now applying for jobs that demand a higher number of skills and tend to draw large pools of similarly matched applicants. That might not have been as true in the past. Not to take anything away from my summer job as a clerk at a video store, but that was a less challenging position.
I have had a range of interviews, some good, some pretty frustrating. And I have a few thoughts about interviews based on what I have encountered so far. Hopefully some of these ideas are helpful or encouraging, or just familiar, to you.

1. Getting a job interview is a great ego boost. I apply for so many jobs and get so many rejection letters--often after I have nearly forgotten that I even applied for the job in question--that when someone calls or writes to set up an interview, it feels like a personal win. And, when I think about it, it really is. In having follow-up appointments with my interviewers, I sometimes learn that I was competing with people who have been working in archives for much longer and have more specialized skills than I do. So making it as far as the interview is already an accomplishment. After several interviews, I have found that the worst thing I can do is start to expect that, once I have landed an interview, I am sure to get the position. When I apply for jobs, I never expect an interview; therefore, when I get an interview, I feel encouraged. If I expected every application to yield an interview, I would be disappointed often. I try to remind myself to take the same approach with interviews. Some will be successful, but many more will not. But I prefer the ego boost of a positive interview to the sense of failure from not getting what I expected.

2. An interview that does not land a job can still be a good thing, especially if you follow up on it. I had an interview that was very positive, made me feel more confident in my abilities, and still did not result in the job. However, I made a follow-up appointment to go over the interview with the interviewer, and I was able to get her insight into my strengths and weaknesses as an interviewee. This information is useful for my next interview. Not only that, following up has kept me on her radar. Future positions can always open up, the person chosen in my place might suddenly leave, and now I have the experience of the interview, useful feedback, and the networking value of staying in touch with a potential employer.

3. Asking questions as an interviewee is a good tactic. My questions at the end of the interview vary, but they often include a few handy generic queries, similar to what I get asked. What are the major long-term goals for this position? What would you say is the biggest challenge a person faces in this position? What will be most rewarding about it? Can you give me examples of institutions whose work you would like to emulate? Many interviewers have responded positively to these questions, and I find that they serve the same purpose for me that they do for the interviewer: If the interviewer responds to my questions with disinterest, has no long-term goals for the position, mentions no real challenges, or has no models for future development, this is probably not a job I would like. At that point, I feel less concerned about whether I get the job.

4. In contract jobs, asking questions is essential. I am finding that contracts with individuals or small groups are a growing work area for archivists, and they are a type of interview where I think I really shine. I can show off my expertise best by asking the interviewer about her specific goals, what she wants the final project to look like, and then tying her responses into my knowledge. Yes, I can see where you want this collection of papers to be easier to search through; here is what I find works best in an archive for that purpose...

The best advice I have in interviewing for positions is not to give up hope. I have had good and bad interviews, landed jobs--especially contract jobs--and not. Every time I have an interview I remind myself that I might not get the job, but I also might. The probability of getting a job might be low for any given interview, but it is already much higher than had I not applied in the first place.

Characters and Self-reflection

The more stories I write, the more I find I am learning about myself. And not only in terms of writing--although I am learning a lot with literally every story I write--but also in terms of how I feel about the world around me. This is something I suspect everyone who writes fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter) has experienced. I have added this to the reasons writing is important to me.

When I develop characters, I have to use some notion of common human experience to create them. If I want to make a character into someone a reader can understand, I have to make that character's reactions to the world around him what, I assume, most people would feel in the same position. The thing is, I am just objective enough when I am wearing my Editor Emil hat that I can read what I have written and recognize that maybe not everyone would feel the same way.

For example, in a recent draft of a story, I have a character motivated by a sense of loss. He has lost a friend because she gained an intense drive to pursue her own goals, without him. (Sorry about the vagueness; this is still a work-in-progress, and I do not want to divulge too many things that might change, should the story ever go anywhere.) This motivates him to go to almost any length to get her back, even if it means destroying her sense of motivation.

For this story to work, a reader would have to sympathize with this character. I figure we can all relate to losing a friend because that friend changes, and the desire to win a friend back for selfish reasons can lead us to sabotage the happiness of others. Those are valid concepts. But the way I wrote the character, I had given him very little that seemed sympathetic, from the outside. From the inside--as I was first drafting the story--he seemed like someone I could be. But with even a modicum of distance, I could see that I had not written a sympathetic character, I had written a selfish jerk that believed himself to be sympathetic. The lesson I think I learned: We can be sympathetic in our own minds even when others would say we look out only for ourselves. Also, it is easier to spot selfishness in others than in oneself.

I should amend what I wrote a moment ago. It is not that writing helps me learn about myself; writing and then editing helps me learn about myself. No matter how much planning and outlining I do, the moment I start writing a first draft of a story always feels like a leap of faith. I worked hard on my notes and then I set them aside and just plunge in, headfirst. So much of what comes out of it is how my experiences say others should act and react, with the assumption that everyone is like me. The real beauty of writing comes in editing and revising, when I can read those barely-conscious thoughts and see what they say about how I respond to the world. My stories can grow from that, and hopefully I can, too.

Labor Pains

Much mental space is occupied by the assault on labor rights for state workers in Wisconsin this week. I try to muster energy to work on other things, but I have not been able to go for more than 15 minutes without some reminder of the current struggle popping up. It is a passionate issue for people on both sides. My friends and I are mostly state workers and are facing a dearth of job openings in state and are increasingly hoping to leave for greener pastures. (Or at least for pastures where the right to collectively bargain is not stripped away.) Between this, preparing for my baby to be born this spring, and the few job interviews I do have coming up, I am feeling a lot of stress and little relief.

Still, whenever I find just ten minutes to work on writing, I feel much better.

Smith, Jobs, and Boris

Today was a generally good day. I started out with a book of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories at one of my favorite cafes. I had not read "The Enchantress of Sylaire" before and was pleasantly surprised by its ending. Always a good start to a day.

I also continued apace on several archival collections. For the past week or so I have been working on smaller collections of short films distributed through mail companies, such as Castle Films. Some of these were excerpted from larger features--as in the abridgments of Universal horror movies--and some were created exclusively for the home viewer. They were the precursor to home video and represent a world of film creation and consumption that is all too seldom considered today. I am excited to get the finding aids for the collections out for public consumption.

I also got positive news on anther job application, with an interview to come later this week or early next week. It would be a part-time cataloging job, for nearly twice the pay of my current positions. In these days of considerable budget cuts for Wisconsin state workers, that could be a significant boost.

And now, I have several discs of Thriller to enjoy. (This is the Boris Karloff 1960s Thriller, not to be confused with the British 1970s Thriller.) Having the chance to at last see the full sweep of the series is interesting; when I was younger a few key episodes alone were available of VHS: "The Grim Reaper," "The Incredible Doctor Markesan," but curiously enough, not the most famous episode, "Pigeons From Hell." (That's right, from the Robert E. Howard short story.) Now I have finally seen the episode I heard about since I was quite young, my dad's favorite. In fact, a comparison of the episode and the short story might make an interesting future topic. But for now, back to Thriller...

Wildside Press

I love pulp literature. I love that some small publishing houses are doing their parts to keep pulp lit in print, and sometimes in e-print, as it were. Wildside Press in one of my favorites.

Wildside first came to my attention as an e-book publisher. I bought several volumes from them for my Sony Reader and was pleased with the range of pulp authors I could find. Shortly thereafter, I started buying paperback editions of books from them as well. The print books frequently have great original cover art and a good, easy-to-read font. (As much as I can appreciate fidelity to the multiple-column look of classic pulp mags, sometimes I also like to give my eyes a break.)

I have found that Wildside not only reprints classic pulp novels and collections of short stories, they also publish a variety of modern science-fiction and fantasy novels. Additionally, they are involved in the modern publication of "Weird Tales," the great weird fiction magazine. I am a regular subscriber, and I can hardly wait for the each new edition.

If I have one point of dissatisfaction with pulp reprints through Wildside, it is that OCR-type mistakes tend to pop up in the text. An "o" might become a "p" if the original scanned copy had a smudge in the wrong place, for example. To be fair, some of these might have been errors in the original text. Pulps could have their share of typos, certainly. I have had this experience pull me out of a story a few times, but never has it been so frustrating as to give up entirely.

If you are looking for a good place for classic pulp lit, I recommend Wildside Press. They have a sizable number of Clark Ashton Smith's stories in print, which should be required reading for any pulp fan. They also recently published some of Achmed Abdullah's horror stories as Fear and Other Stories from the Pulps. (Abdullah is perhaps best known for his version of The Thief of Baghdad.) Whether in print form or as an e-book, Wildside has affordable versions of many good books. But you should buy the print forms for their attractive covers.

Writing Today, Interview Tomorrow

I managed today to write a first draft of a story I had been outlining this past week, which is a nice cap to writing work for the last week. Now it needs a little break for me to come at it with different eyes, and the revisions can start. I like the overall structure of it and I think the characters came out well. It needs a few structural changes that I can think of now, and I am sure a good half-dozen other ideas will come to mind once I start in on it. But that also frees me up to start working on the next outline will the first story simmers.

The more I write, the more I feel like a cooking analogy is helpful for me, even though I tend not to cook more than simple dishes. When I make a dinner with, say, three dishes to it, I have to prepare all the initial dry ingredients, get the first dish to a point where something is baking or boiling, and then do part of the next dish. I move back and forth as each dish gets to a point where I am ready for it again. I have started feeling the same about my writing. Some things are at an outlining point, then when the outline is ready I can write a draft. Then the draft needs to "bake" while I start the next outline, but I also have to remember to get back to the first story before it becomes a burnt mess. Good cooking and good writing require a common mentality.

I also have a job interview, of sorts, tomorrow morning. It is a contract job in arrangement and possibly cataloging, though I am not yet clear what scope the contractor has in mind for my work. It would be a nice break in my daily work routine, however, and something theoretically higher paying than my current cataloging post. I am thinking contract work can be a good way to get established in Madison because a number of individuals and smaller institutions apparently send requests to the Historical Society for individual help. With a good referral, I can perhaps acquire more of these contracting jobs. No benefits would come from them, but I could get a decent wage and possibly have more time to write. And in the end, that feels like the most important thing.

Sick Day - Guilt Over Not Writing

So I spent the entire day at home with some sort of sore throat/general aches and pains-type illness. Accordingly, I got no writing done. (Well, I did fill out and submit a couple more job applications for archivist positions, but...). So now I am full of remorse about not writing.
On the other hand, tomorrow is a new day, and I am pretty well engrossed in a couple of short story outlines. I have been reading some of John D. Swain's short stories and feeling positive about my writing. I have read with skepticism that, in writing a short story, it is always best to start the story as close to the climax as possible. This is an idea I tended to chafe it, but when I looked at several stories I enjoyed with this idea in mind--Swain's "Robbing the Roost" is a good example--I see how that idea works in practice. It has helped me out already with building my outlines. So: more reading tonight, and more outlining tomorrow!

Learning From My Own Bad Writing

One important idea I have learned while writing is that, sometimes, a story just does not go anywhere. I sat down recently and hammered out a first draft of a story that does not really have much of a future. However, I do not consider the time I spent writing it to be wasted, and I am glad I wrote the story from beginning to end because it wound up teaching me a little about how I should not write.
First, I tried writing without any outlining beforehand. I know a few writers claim to write without outlining, but I find that, for me, this is a recipe for disaster. I started out with a blank piece of paper and decided I was just going to write and see what developed. If I started worrying along the way about "What exactly is this character's personality," or "Where is this plot going," I shelved those thoughts and kept writing. I trusted that everything would work out organically. It did not.
Without a clear sense of who my characters were, I wrote "people" who perform basic tasks but have no identities. This possibly seemed less glaring to me at the moment because characters like this seem to pop up a lot in horror/fantasy stories. Then again, I could not even say that I had written archetypes; no one was the "final girl" in my story.
I also spent no time planning a story arc, instead trusting that I could build it from scene to scene. And to my credit, when I re-read the draft I did feel like the forward momentum from scene to scene was pretty coherent. But, again, nothing of substance was happening. My story might have developed organically, but not into anything I would enjoy reading had someone else written it. It had its share of plot points that got dropped as it went along, and it thundered toward a pretty "Meh" ending.
Still, even if no amount of revising ever turns the story into something publishable, I feel better for having written it. For one, I taught myself to always outline beforehand, or else my stories will stagger randomly forward. Also, take the time to really plan out who my characters are, rather than allow them to reveal themselves as I write. Third, sometimes I write poorly, but seeing it through as far as I can still gives me a sense of accomplishment. Even if the story never makes it through another full revision, I set out to write a beginning, middle, and an end, and I accomplished my goal. So always, always, keep writing.

I Miss Anthology TV

I love anthology television series. This is a format that seems to have been left by the wayside, but I wish it would come back. An anthology series would usually belong to a genre (science fiction, horror, and Western were especially popular), and each week's episode would be an independent story with a cast just for that episode. Most anthology series were essentially all guest star affairs. It is a type of programming that lends itself well to adapting short stories, or giving new writers and actors a break.
I think the best argument I could make for bringing back anthology series is, strangely enough, the sense of unevenness they seem to always carry. When I look back at The Twilight Zone, Science Fiction Theater, Thriller, or Death Valley Days, they were all shows were some episodes were great, some were okay, and usually a few were pretty bad. But they were shows worth watching every week because of that promise that the next episode might be one of the great ones. I did not have to tag along with characters I did not find interesting--or try to puzzle out a plot that was too convoluted--because nothing in the narrative carried over. Granted, this also meant I could not pick a favorite recurring character (unless Rod Serling himself counts), and maybe this is part of why anthology TV seems not to get made any more. But assuming I liked the overall genre of a show and its general tone, I always had a reason to watch another episode. Even as syndicated shows, I still love to watch anthology TV, and I find I am more likely to sit through an entire run of something like Thriller on DVD, where the mediocre crime episodes surround the horror gems.
Two valiant, if not entirely successful, horror programs in this format did appear relatively recently--Masters of Horror and Fear Itself. Each had its moments, but sadly did not stick around. I keep hoping for an anthology hit, a Twilight Zone for the 2010s.

Convention Wishlist

I have been looking at the various pulp-lit/fantasy/horror conventions around the country (and beyond!) with greedy eyes for months now. As the year rolls along, the convention sites are starting to post their schedules, and I wish I could go to them all. Sadly, I am not wealthy enough--nor schedule-flexible enough--to do that. One day, I will get to do the convention circuit. For now, here is my convention wishlist:

1. Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. April 15-17 in Chicago, Illinois.
2. 15th Annual Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale. May 14 in Missiaugua, Ontario.
3. PulpFest. July 29-31 in Columbus, Ohio. 
4. The H.P Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon. September 16-17 in Los Angeles, California.

To Your (Mental) Health!

I have been in therapy for about two-and-a-half years now. I began seeing a therapist after a particularly bad series of panic attacks at the start of grad school nearly kept me from leaving my apartment. Therapy was something I had considered for a while: I have suffered off and on from panic attacks since my undergraduate days, at the turn of the century. (I love using the expression "at the turn of the century" with regard to things that happened in my life.) But I also grew up in an environment where therapy "was not done," if not outright maligned.
Having gone to a therapist now for several years, I can strongly recommend the specific experience of therapy and the general experience of addressing mental health. I feel like mental health is still a stigmatized issue in many communities, and the sad result of this is that many people who might benefit from therapy do not attempt it, and in turn they can become worse. I am going to make a generalization and say that every single person alive today could make use of therapy at some time. But more so, every single person deserves access to mental health resources and should use them just as readily as they would any other health resources. Anyone who he thinks he will never need mental health care is, in fact, totally crazy. And he therefore needs mental health care.
So why is mental health care so important to me, and why do I think you need it too? Here are a few reasons, in no particular order:


1. Like a friend, but better. In many cases, a therapist can be like a friend, but better. You know that one feeling has been bugging you all week, and you really want to talk to your friends about it, but you are afraid that they will think ill of you if they heard about it? Well, a therapist will listen without thinking ill. Or, remember that time you got really upset about something involving a friend? You wanted to say something about it to a mutual friend but were afraid it would get back to the first friend and strain your friendship? And then you let it fester until you were really resentful? Would it not have been better if you had another person you could safely describe the situation to and get an independent opinion? A therapist is that other person.
And remember that friend you spilled your guts to, but he is really bad at listening and giving advice, so then you wound up feeling worse? A therapist is literally trained to listen to you and give advice. That experience will not happen. And if you have a therapist you do not like? Just get a new therapist. It is much easier than saying to a friend, "You are bad at giving advice. I will now replace you."


2. Check-ups are good! Are you the kind of person who avoids doctors like the plague, until you get the plague and have to go to get better? No, probably not. I am guessing you go to a doctor now and then for a check-up, to get a sense of your overall physical health and make sure you have no particular problems that need addressing. You probably check your blood pressure and weight, mention any strange pains or fatigue you might have felt, and as you get older, probably more tests start figuring in to check-ups as well. When you agree to go to a check-up, it is not because you have a specific problem, but you are just keeping an eye on any issues that might become problems if not cared for.
Now, many physical health issues develop over time, and most people I know understand that they can do things to prevent illnesses. For example, exercise and diet can help many people avoid certain heart problems. We have mostly moved past the idea that illness occur suddenly, and without prompting, like magic curses. But I feel like in the world of mental health, this idea is still somewhat controversial.
People who suffer from depression do not suddenly become afflicted with it, like a switch had been flipped. It can develop over time, for a variety of pathological and contextual reasons. Can anything be done to mitigate it, if not outright prevent it? Sure! You could talk to someone whose job is to look for early signs of depression, and that person could recommend exercises (often actual gym-based exercise, for example) to help head off worse health problems later. Preventative care is a good index of a sophisticated medical practice. A society that not only treats the symptoms of existing illnesses but also works to prevent future illnesses is a forward-thinking society. This is true for preventative mental health care as well.


3. Support now what you might need later! But maybe you think, "I do not need any mental health care now. Maybe when something bad happens, but why should I bother ahead of time?" Even if you do not subscribe to the idea of getting an emotional check-up, you might feel that you would like to have mental health care options available in case something awful happened in the future and you really needed it. The best way to guarantee future health care for when the unexpected happens is to promote the same health care now. If hospitals see regular usage of a specific department, they will probably try harder to support and enhance that service. If employers see that employees routinely take advantage of a specific benefit, they will be less likely to take that benefit away during a time of budget-tightening. Many people buy insurance against workplace accidents, even if they do not think they are likely to have an accident any time soon. Why? They might reason that, if they have disability benefits and something bad does happen, then they are covered. I would add that employees buying into disability benefits makes sure that coverage continues to exist in the first place. It sends a message that employees want this benefit, and a good employer should provide it. The way to persuade employers to acquire and keep mental health benefits is to use those benefits.

4. Only crazy people need mental health care? I grew up in a time and place where the idea of therapy was still pretty hush-hush. Mental health care was either for people with singularly awful problems (the "crazies") or for whiny, liberal, city folk who could not just--I assume--shrug off their mounting senses of depression or anxiety and act as if nothing was wrong. This attitude developed from a lot of different ideas, but it seemed to often involve some sense of nostalgia for a simpler time, when no one went to therapy. It was a time when no one talked about such problems, therefore, they did not exist. I am going to call this time "the 1950s." (The quotation marks separate it from the actual 1950s, when surprisingly enough, people actually did have emotional lives, complete with problems.)

The problem I see in this distrust of mental health care is that it reinforces how strange one must be to seek help, thereby fulfilling its own thesis about how people and their minds work. Normal people do not need mental health care, the story goes. Therefore, if I seek mental health care, I am abnormal. I do not want to be seen as abnormal, so I had best not seek mental health care. I can further prove my normalcy by telling others that "Normal people do not need mental health care." This keeps the meme alive and discourages anyone from seeking mental health care.
So what if someone really is suffering from a serious emotional problem and needs help? This meme makes them afraid to seek help, replicating itself while leaving the person to silently suffer.
The only way to overcome the idea that mental health care is only for abnormal people is for enough people to treat it as a normal part of their health care. This is not the same as saying, "Everyone needs mood stabilizers," any more than I would say of physical health care, "Everyone needs anticoagulants." Rather, by saying that mental health care is a normal thing--something everyone needs sooner or later--we can develop the idea that it is okay to go seek help when you do not feel well mentally. You do not need to feel guilty about it, any more than you would need to feel guilty if you got cancer.

5. Mental health and aging. Even if it were true that a normal person in the prime of his adulthood has no mental or emotional problems that require expert assistance, most people as they grow older seem to develop one kind of problem or another. This seems to be because bodies do not work as well as we get older, and sometimes that means neurological functions also do not work as well. The idea that people require more frequent check-ups for physical health problems as they age seems pretty non-controversial these days. But I am not sure that the same can be said about mental health check-ups. We all fear that our relatives' minds will start to go as they age, just as we probably fear that they might fall and break a bone. But where many people seem inclined to make sure their aging relative eats a good diet, takes vitamins, and gets exercise to prevent slips and falls, I have not seen the same kind of preventative care plans to avoid mental health problems.
Every now and then I come across the suggestion that activities like reading or solving crossword puzzles can help keep the mind sharp as we age. But I have never heard a friend say, "The doctor recommends Grandma read for one hour each day and do a crossword puzzle, for her health." To be fair, some doctors might have a lot of different health ideas (diet! exercise! medication!) to get through, and mental health issues are still pretty novel. I think this is all the more reason for aging people to have special visits to address mental health, just like they might have cancer screens. And I think everyone should get a prescription that says "Read for one hour every day."



I get nervous around doctors, and I do not like the thought of needing surgery, or even a shot. And I am a pretty healthy person, overall. But I still go to the doctor for physicals, I get flu shots, and I try to get opinions on what I can do to get myself in better shape. I believe that a little preventative care is much better than a lot of palliative care, just like I believe that some careful saving and investment of money is better than a lot of debt-repayment later. When I think of preventative health care, I now include mental health care in that category. My brain needs a check-up just as much as any other part of my body.

In Which I Say Things That Would Make Past-Me Cry

So why was I thinking about The Shadow recently? With the rumors that Sam Raimi might be moving forward on the long-anticipated new Shadow movie, I have seen some fan discussion about what The Shadow should look and act like in the movie. And it seems like, if the movie were designed by the fans, it would include every element of The Shadow from both the pulps and the radio, and I suspect it would please no one. The Shadow would wear his trademark hat-and-cloak (the pulps) and possibly a red scarf (the cover art, but not the actual stories). He would use his "clouding men's minds" trick to turn invisible (the radio), and he would frequently draw his twin .45 automatics (the pulps), and not hesitate to "waste" the bad guys (the... actually, despite his tendency to spew bullets everywhere in the pulps, I am pretty sure The Shadow almost never actually killed anyone.) Each of these is a totally understandable characteristic for fans to want because it showed up previously in the "canon," but combining all of these elements is a recipe for disaster. And here is why.

1. The Shadow's Costume. In the pulp stories, The Shadow's costume was a function of how he investigated crimes. He kept his hat and cape concealed in a secret compartment in his attache case, and he slipped them on when he needed to slink around and hide from bad guys. This kind of made sense because all the black clothing (he also always wore black suits) would help him blend in with shadows. And this was a time when, say, warehouses did not have fluorescent lights or motion sensors. A fair amount of time in these detection scenes is spent describing where and how The Shadow is hiding, which works in a written story because it helps us imagine the scene as if we were with The Shadow. But I am skeptical of how this would work in a movie. First, it would have to take place in the same era so that The Shadow had lots of dark corners to hide in. Second, the most likely way this could be established in a movie would be if a scene had some bad guys talking in the foreground, then they leave the frame, then a few seconds later part of the shadows in the background stirs and reveals itself to be The Shadow. That might be a pretty neat scene. Once. But if it had to happen every time The Shadow was eavesdropping on someone, it would be boring.
Also, the red scarf was popular on the cover art because it added a splash of color to the pictures. And red evokes passion, blood, and danger, all ideas we associate with The Shadow. But if the point of his costume is to help him hide, why would he have a bright red scarf to risk giving him away? It would be counter-productive.

2. Clouding Men's Minds. When The Shadow made the jump from pulps to radio, he gained what might be the second-most famous part of his character, next to his costume. According to the prologue to each episode, he learned "the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds, so they cannot see him." This sounds like a neat trick--he cannot actually turn invisible, only keep people from seeing him. From a pure story-mechanics perspective, it was necessary to resolve a problem with translating The Shadow to a new dramatic medium. If he slunk around as in the pulps, every scene of bad guys talking would require a line of narration, something like "Unbeknownst to the villains, The Shadow was hiding behind a stack of crates." So instead, The Shadow gained a neat skill that let him hang out anywhere without being noticed.
This also changed the character of The Shadow in a significant way. Where before he mostly stayed quiet and gathered evidence against the bad guys, now The Shadow began tormenting them, as if they were being haunted by their crimes. This is the single most interesting idea in the entire body of Shadow stories, because it makes him a vigilante who fights crime not by physically assaulting anyone, but by mentally assaulting them. Not surprisingly, The Shadow in the radio play never used--nor even seemed to carry--his handguns. Why would he need them? His modus operandi was to drive villains crazy. This is what makes the pilot episode so great. The Shadow keeps needling the villains, insinuating that he has found a key piece of evidence they overlooked and that soon they will get the electric chair. This torments them until they slip up and reveal their crime to the authorities.
When the mid-1990s Shadow movie came out, it tried to reconcile this "The Shadow is invisible" idea with the image of The Shadow as a punching, shooting superhero. It was not a successful combination. What advantage does it give The Shadow that he can turn invisible and hide among the bad guys if all he is going to do is unload a hail of bullets or start swinging? Why couldn't he just sneak up on them and then shoot them? (It was made even worse by a special effect where The Shadow briefly materialized each time he was about to shoot or punch someone, for no clear plot reason. Does he lose his invisibility every time he performs an action?) Of course, an action scene in an adventure movie calls for violence, so if the movie had lots of scenes where The Shadow's disembodied voice mocked the bad guys while they spun around in confusion, audiences would become bored.


3. Shooting! In the pulps, The Shadow fired his guns all the time. Although he mostly clung to shadows and spied on people, he did sometimes fire a hail of bullets at them. But usually his shooting seemed to serve no purpose other than to scare them away. I was totally caught off-guard the first time I read a story about the similar pulp character The Spider, who also fires handguns at bad guys often, but always with shockingly gruesome results. As I said before, I cannot remember The Shadow ever shooting someone to death, let alone a slow, painful death.
The guns did kind of serve a metaphorical value, I think. Because The Shadow slunk around in the shadows and could spy on anyone, it was as if he could be anywhere. By firing his guns in the direction of bad guys who were out of his physical reach, it was as if he could also "touch" them anywhere. He never really needed to kill people because he usually brought them to justice. So he could instead use his guns to, say, shoot the tires on a getaway car, reinforcing the idea that no one can escape The Shadow.
A movie in which The Shadow shoots at people all the time but never actually kills anyone would ring false, because audiences understand the basic danger of shooting bullets at people. Also, the image of people being killed by guns is pretty common today. So no one would be as bothered if The Shadow would shoot people. But then, why would The Shadow kill people? If he can turn invisible, he can sneak up on bad guys and knock them out, then hand them over to the police. He doesn't need his guns to keep them from getting away. And even if a given villain was likely to beat the charges against him, The Shadow could just haunt the guy until he went insane. Justice served, with no need for death.
One inference I have made from the fans' insistence that The Shadow must keep his classic costume is that fans fear The Shadow might go the way of the X-Men or G.I. Joe, bound up in some kind of tight-leather outfit for a modern reboot. This rankles their cherished image of The Shadow, and it makes him less distinguishable from all the other properties in action movies. As per the question of The Shadow using guns to shoot every bad guy who tries to get away, I feel exactly the same. The only thing that makes The Shadow stand out from the many vigilante characters in movies today is that he uses fear and guilt as his main weapons against crime. Why skip over that more interesting idea in favor of guns?

So given that a Shadow movie is sure to be made, and that I have grumbled about nearly every detail of The Shadow, do I have any ideas as to what might make a good Shadow movie? Eh, kind of. But I am feeling worn out from talking so much about The Shadow, so I will save that for another day.

In Which I Grumble About a Childhood Hero

When I was a child, I was really into "The Shadow." One summer my family had gone to visit my grandparents in Illinois, and in a store near them I had found two episodes of the classic crime-fighting radio play on cassette tape, through a company called Radio Spirits. I listened to these two episodes so many times that the tapes gave out. (I learned the extent of my obsession with them when one of the two episodes--"Death From the Deep"--showed up on an OTR podcast I listen to and I caught myself reciting every line as it was being said.)

At that time, these two episodes comprised my total understanding of The Shadow as a character. Well, I also had the flashy illustrations o the cassette cases to inform me that, when Lamont Cranston was in his vigilante alter ego, he wore a slouch hat, red scarf, and a cape. But from these two stories I was able to imagine a limitless "gee-whiz" world of adventures where the hero fought crime by turning himself invisible and basically just screwing with bad guys' brains. Also, I was still young enough to be entertained by common Shadow scenarios, like:

(Bad Guy fires his gun several times)
Bad Guy: Ha! Take that, Shadow!
(The Shadow laughs)
Shadow: Nice try, but now I'm over here!

It seemed so clever when I had only a couple stories in which it happened, before I understood that this plot device would occur with scant variation approximately one hundred ba-jillion times over the course of The Shadow's adventures.

As an adult, I had access to new and exciting technologies (the Internet!) and services (a good public library!) that allowed me to listen to almost all of the episodes of "The Shadow." Also, I finally got a chance to read some of the classic Shadow novels and pulp stories, as written by Walter B. Gibson. Initially this seemed like the fulfillment of some long-dormant childhood dream. What I soon realized, however, was that I was not actually that interested in the further adventures of The Shadow. They were basically the same adventure, over and over. A few episodes of the radio play stood out--if you are interested in The Shadow, I recommend listening to the pilot episode "Death House Rescue"--but for the most part, each story had the same plot arc, and I could be sure that The Shadow would never encounter a problem he could not solve himself, using his innate expertise at every single skill he would ever need. The stories have no tension for me and accordingly, no real interest. By contrast, one of the happiest surprises of my pulp nerdiness was when I finally started reading Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. Unlike Lamont Cranston, who has a ridiculous James-Bond-level mastery of every talent and every scrap of information he could ever need, Conan has all kinds of limitations. He does not know anything about magic, he has no real skill at diplomacy, his temper makes him careless... even in the one domain where he does have the upper hand--the liberal application of swords to bad guys' faces--Howard constantly comes up with clever ways to temporarily disable him, forcing Conan to beg for help, work with people he does not entirely trust, and generally try to think up novel solutions to his problems.

I never would have thought it earlier in life, but I can now say that I prefer Conan the Barbarian to The Shadow as a hero because he is way more plausible, and therefore more interesting.

Why I Should Buy Small-Press Books (As Should You!)

I am a big supporter of public libraries. In fact, if I want to read a new book, watch a new movie, or listen to a new CD, I almost always get it from the library first. If the library does not have what I want, I request the library to purchase it. This practice makes me feel good for several reasons. I feel encouraged to peruse a range of materials, so I am more likely to give a look to something that seemed only slightly interesting, sometimes pleasantly surprising myself. I also feel less guilty about reading part of a book that I am not really enjoying because I have not cost myself anything. (Well, aside from the time I spent reading an uninteresting book and thinking "Maybe if I stick it out for one more chapter....") Also, I feel like this gives me a greater stake in the continued survival of the public library, which in turn makes me more inclined to volunteer my time at libraries, and makes me feel more like I am performing some sort of civic duty. Really, I can make a short series of connections from reading the latest horror novel to feeling like a humanitarian.

Having said that, I do sometimes feel guilty about not buying certain things. See, because the library is always there and has all the books I persuaded them to purchase, the incentive for me to buy my own copy of a book tends to diminish. After all, I have so many things I want to read that I am not likely to come back to a book within a year, or two, or three. And I can always check it out again from the library if I want to read it again. (Assuming the library has not since weeded the book for lack of circulation.) So why spend what little money I have on a book I can get for free from the library? For the most part, I see no reason. But thinking about small presses has made me adjust my thinking.

I do not think of myself as a very eager capitalist, but I do get interested at the idea that in a consumer-driven society, people "vote with their dollars." I think that this idea can be used as a shaky justification for not developing certain kinds of products (ahem, clean energy technology? More complex dramatic TV series?) on the grounds that the "market" does not already exist, therefore production is too risky to attempt. On the other hand, I also think that logic makes it all the more important for me to support small projects I like, with my money. I might feel less compelled to spend money on a wildly popular product, but I should feel more compelled to spend money on a fringe product.

For example, if a major author like Stephen King puts out a new book, I can buy or not-buy it. Book sales will justify his publisher's investment, and if no one really bought his newest book, he might have a harder go the next time. But his books are very popular and will already sell many, many copies. My decision to buy or not-buy his book will affect sales, but not very much. (Of course, if every person felt that way, his books would not sell, and that would be sad. So please buy Stephen King's books; he is a talented writer and I want to keep reading his books.) By contrast, say a small publisher like Wild Side Press puts out a re-issue of a pulp novel that has been out of print for decades. Their print run will probably not be in the millions, and they will be affected more by my decision to buy or not-buy their book. If I like the work of an author or a company that does not have the same resources as a major publishing house, I can do more to keep them afloat by buying their book. To use another major author example, if I do not want to buy Glenn Beck's thriller--and I do not, I really do not--my refusal to buy it will hardly crush his novelist's dreams; plenty of other people will buy it. But if I refuse to buy a book by a first-time author who just barely got her book published, my not-buying will take a much greater toll.

However, I still feel like trying to get the library to buy small-press books. I might not be wealthy, but I can afford the occasional book. Many other people cannot, and I want them to be able to enjoy the same books I do. And besides, they can already get that Glenn Beck book for free, so I have to give them some healthy alternatives, right?