creativiti project

A few names added to the sidebar.

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:48:00 +0000

I just added Stephen's Lighthouse, and heart of innovation (link is to 100 ways to increase creativity at work - for the current page, look at the sidebar). Shelly Terrell -whose blog I follow, but don't appear to have noticed this post from a year ago - is also worth mentioning.

From 100 simple ways to be more creative:
3. Tape record your ideas on your commute to and from work.
8. Go for a daily brainstorming walk.
22. Transform your assumptions into "How can I?" questions.

43. Ask yourself what the simplest solution is.

44. Get fast feedback from people you trust.

45. Conduct more experiments.

45. Ask yourself what the market wants or needs.

46. Ask "What's the worst thing that could happen if I fail?"

47. Pilot your idea, even if it's not ready.

97. Make drawings of your ideas.
Other on the list are varieties of brainstorming and ways to improve collaboration. I approve of both, but chose to list ten that were more unusual to me.
Terrell focuses on goals for the year and works up some interesting and very specific ones. Here are here for creativity:

Goal
Short-term- Have a lesson where your students are allowed and encouraged to explore several options and discuss which one was a success and which not so successful.

Long-term- Support an art, music, or drama, or other creative program in your school. If the school is lacking a program then help students create an event/club that supports creativity. For example, in my church we hosted monthly open mic shows and served coffee and snacks to raise money.

Caption Contest at Monster Island

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:43:00 +0000

Kushibo at Monster Island wants you to report Kim Jong-un's words as he climbs out of a tank.

My contribution was " What? This was my grandfather's hat."

Carving at camp

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 09:51:00 +0000

I'm at an ESL camp and using some down time to finish some carving that I had started and left for too long.

In the picture you can see some the nearly-done carvings, chisels, a small saw and Swiss Army knife... and a bandaid. The bandaid is every bit as important as the others! I nicked my finger finishing the wardrobe-elephant.

Below is the wardrobe elephant as it is meant to be used.

I don't know if I will ever finish the triceratops head, but the owl is about ready for sanding.

There is a lot of sawn-down trees. Perhaps it is time I tried carving in the round.

problems with creative students

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 23:37:00 +0000

Two links from economics blogs today*.

From Marginal Revolution, comes a retelling of a problem I reviewed last year: "Teachers don't like creative students". I'm quoting from Alex Tabarrok, who is quoting from someone else and Blogger won't nest quotes inside other quotes, so let me quote in blue:

My experience as a parent is consistent with the idea that teachers don’t like creative students but I try not to blame the teachers too much. Creative people, for better and worse, ignore social conventions. Thus, it can be hard for teachers to deal with creative students in a classroom setting where they must guide 20-30 students en masse. As Jonah Lehrer puts it:

Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem? The point is that the classroom isn’t designed for impulsive expression – that’s called talking out of turn. Instead, it’s all about obeying group dynamics and exerting focused attention. Those are important life skills, of course, but decades of psychological research suggest that such skills have little to do with creativity.

The article offers a link to a "good review paper" on the subject. Creativity: asset or burden in the classroom.

Freakonomics offered a quote with this comment: Creative types are more likely to cheat. The link goes to Time Healthland:

Creative people think “outside the box,” a gift of psychological flexibility that, it turns out, may also apply to their ethics, according to the latest research from the American Psychological Association. Creative types, in other words, may be more likely to cheat.

The article quotes Dan Ariely, who is well worth reading on a variety of subjects. I tend to trust what he has to say, but I wonder.

“Dishonesty and innovation are two of the topics most widely written about in the popular press,” wrote the authors. “Yet, to date, the relationship between creativity and dishonest behavior has not been studied empirically. … The results from the current article indicate that, in fact, people who are creative or work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas.”

Perhaps I am using my creativity to rationalize unethical behavior, but I wonder if we are seeing a rebellion against artificial deadlines and rules that are arbitrary and not-so-meaningful outside of school. If an explanation for the rules that the student felt made sense were offered, perhaps they would be less likely to cheat.

I must admit that in reading my paragraph above I see that I am confusing creativity with intelligence. I would like the two to be related but can't say for sure that they are.

--------

* Merry Christmas, everyone!

A 7 year-old's view

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:38:00 +0000

Two images involving my son today. First is a wall mural we are working on together.

This mural will eventually reach across to the right about four more B5 pages worth. Click to enlarge, if you wish. You will find a variety of animals and objects and some are obviously poorly-drawn by me and others may be well-depicted elements from my son's imagination. The whole mural is a fun project but also a contest of wills for whose creative vision will predominate.

Next, my son drew a picture of the living room in our apartment:

The thing is, this picture is a 270 degree view. Leftmost, is the entrance to the bathroom and moving right: our fridge, sink, rice cooker, kitchen table, bookshelf and sofa. If you can see into the bathroom, the kitchen table would be directly behind you and the sofa behind and to your left. I don't know what this means in my son's artistic or cognitive growth, but it is interesting enough that I want to keep a record of it here.

Being a writer in Korea

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:39:00 +0000

IfIhadaminutetospare has written a series of articles on being and becoming a writer in Korea.

I guess offering them by date would be easiest: November 24, December 4, December 4, December 7.

From the first article (On Becoming a Writer in Korea):

This week, I started a distance learning journalism course with the London School of Journalism. I suppose it’s a way looking in the right direction for becoming a real writer, as opposed to an unreal writer. It was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, as journalism is probably the most realistic and recognisable way of making a living out of writing, which is actually a, ahem, dream of mine....Don’t ask me where writing came from. Maybe it was from one of those awful aptitude tests they force on you where you find out that you are actually incapable of being good at maths so why bother trying? In fact, I know I was good at spatial relations, but that’s nothing to do with writing (although I do like my page to look neat and organised…)...So anyway, one day I decided I’d give it a shot. I bought a pen and a notebook and decided to scribble down a few things I saw, and I even attempted a poem. I got a lot of satisfaction from this and basically continued on with it.
One drunken night, I spoke with my friend Keith and showed him my notebook. Keith, a bit of poet himself, was more than impressed and encouraged me to keep writing and to keep trying. Then word got around to another friend of mine, Jeremy, who was even more of a poet, and next thing I knew I believe I was being taken under their wings and essentially became some form of an apprentice.

Nanowrimo is over

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:16:00 +0000

Not complete, but over. I did not get close to the goal of 50,000 words.

I did enjoy the process and do plan to keep writing the story I started.

In many respects, I approve of the idea. The core concept is to pour out as many words as you can without slowing to edit yourself. Editing is important, but brainstorming comes first. Churn out ideas, then throw out the bad ones.

On the other hand, my unfiltered ideas were clearly crap. If I had reached 50,000 words, I would have needed to use them as notes and write an entirely new 50,000 good words to make a quality story.

Years ago, I read a description of what a plot needs by James Blish. As I recall, the problems had to be solved directly and specifically through the action of the protagonist. He said something like, "A lightning bolt cannot kill the villain in the last act, saving the day." In my story, there were a few scenes where violence occurred and in one of them, a villain was unlucky enough to be struck by lightning. It made a little sense in the context, but still was not thrilling.

I liked the location I placed the fight in but will need to tear out all the action and replace it.

Nanowrimo became for me, a sort of wasteful and high intensity first draft of -not the story- but the plot. I understand the need for multiple drafts but feel horrified that if I finished my Nanowrimo story, it would be draft 0.5.
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I wrote much of my story using Ommwriter on my iMac and found that to be everything it claimed. Ommwriter is a word processor that has few settings - it is only available as full-screen - and is intended to reduce distractions. I like it. Still, I also wrote away from the apartment and so used Google Docs often. I know the goal is unrestricted production, but I found accessing Google Maps and occasional searches helped me produce.

Also fun to type in is Written? Kitten! For every one hundred words (you can adjust this number) you type, a new photo of a cute kitten is shown.
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I have started following John T. Spencer's blogs and books. I really enjoyed Pencil Me In.
He also started nanowrimo - and is probably finished now. This is what he had to say early in the month:

I am starting the process of writing a novel in a month. It's part of the National Novel Writing Month. You can check out the description here. I plan to edit it throughout December and release it sometime around the first of the year. I'll be posting the chapters to this blog and to a Google Doc. It's the first time I've ever been so open with the writing process.

On writing logically

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:22:00 +0000

My friend Kevin Kim has posted a description of how to write essays well. His talk doesn't necessarily cover new ground, but it does explain the concepts clearly and well. I think it is useful to remind me how to write - particularly my longer posts that do need better organization - and could be helpful to students of mine in writing classes.

lot of students will say something like, "But I don't like outlining. I just start writing and go with that." My response to this is twofold: (1) if you're mentally organized enough to produce essays and research papers that come out in beautifully organized form, then bravo! You've alreadymastered outlining, even if you're not writing your outlines down. But, (2) if you're like most other students, your initial attempts at "going with that" will result in mushy, disorganized writing-- arguments that start but reach no conclusion, or arguments with conclusions arrived at through no discernible logical process. My rule of thumb: better safe than sorry. Get into the habit of outlining your arguments and expositions before you even begin writing. It's hard work-- I remember disliking doing this as a young student-- but it's a valuable skill that will stand you in good stead later on, especially if you're planning to get through college, and maybe even graduate school.

What makes a good scientist?

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:43:00 +0000

This Scientific American article looks into the question but I also had a conversation with a publisher at a convention on the subject that I would like to share.

The clerk described the core of science as being good literacy. To be fair, she was at a conference for ESL teachers so the literacy angle was a marketable one.

I felt, and feel, that science is about questions and thinking. I can see that clear thinking is required and clear thinking is aided by clear unambiguous writing which is aided by being literate but we are a few steps removed from the core. Perhaps we are now in the mantle.

Being a science professional certainly requires good literacy as one must understand what other science professionals have done and write clearly ones further contribution to the field.

distraction and concentration

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:39:00 +0000

I have come to the conclusion that a creative mindset is reached by achieving a sort of controlled distractibility.

If you find you aren't focusing enough, perhaps these suggestion could help (tools for better attention & focus). Here are two of the ten offered:

2. TrackTime – Audit how you’re spending your time on your computer.

This good-looking app tracks everything you do on your computer, spitting back out a sort of "attention audit." How much time are you spending in Firefox? How many hours a day in your email client? What are listening to on iTunes? If you let TrackTime run in the background, it builds these patterns into a lovely rainbow-colored timeline of your online life. Its most effective use is as a sort of wake-up call: If your daily timeline shows you shifting between apps and tasks every 2 minutes or less, you know there’s a problem. For Macs only.

3. Concentrate – Maximize focus while shifting between different tasks.

Concentrate is great for shifting between tasks that require different mindsets. I have a variety of recurring tasks that require different tools: 1) Writing, 2) Social Media Management, 3) Event Planning. Concentrate lets me configure a different set of tools for each task. When I activate "Writing," the app automatically closes my email client and Internet Browser; blocks me from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; launches Microsoft Word; and sets my instant messaging status to "away". Then, when I want to concentrate on "Social Media Management," I can customize a completely different set of actions to happen relevant to that activity. There’s also a handy "concentration" timer. For Macs only.

time lapse of stop motion puppeteer

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:25:00 +0000

From Boingboing.

art from several personalities but also from only one person

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:24:00 +0000

Apparently, her ID gives her name as Kim Noble, but her dominant personality goes by Patricia. She was interviewed in the Guardian recently. She has more than 100 separate personalities and many of them create art.

I have always hid behind a 'manly and masculine lack of understanding of art' but the variety of media and content shown here do appear to be from different people.

Writers wanted at JetSettlers

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Via KoreaBridge, I found an ad for writers "to create a community of storytellers, reporters, reviewers, observers, and even vicarious expats that may never leave their borders—a place where the collective experience is being away from home."

From the JetSettler's website:

Need info? Want to write for JetSettlers?

If you’re an Expat who LOVES to write, then you could be our next writer! Here’s what kind of articles/expat writers we’re looking for:

Articles about daily expat life, foodies, entertainment lovers, thrill-seekers, book reviewers, movie buffs, photographers, and more.

Remember, this magazine is about ALL the different aspects of expat life. All voices are welcome and expats from all countries are wanted.

Let your voice be heard and share your world with the rest of us.

Gord Sellar on learning the movie biz by doing

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:15:00 +0000

Gord recently began making a horror film based on a Lovecraft story but set in Korea.

To see what he's been up to, start here, then go here and here.
updated on Oct 5:

Gord's remarks on what he learned: Day 3 and Day 4.

I've got to scale back.

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:02:00 +0000

Not in the amount of content I produce but in the locations I place it. I try to niche blog but find my interests to widely varied to fit in one blog. Right now, I have nine blogs. Five or six are classroom related - for communicating with students, two are general slice-of-Korean-life blogs and this one is about my attempts to learn about creativiti.

These days, I find myself writing only a few posts in a month. Luckily, they tend to be long so I am producing some content, but I could do better. Nanowrimo is coming and I have to get ready for that.

Boingboing has a post about setting a goal of 1000 words a day for your blog(s). It is something I need to aim for.

This word count is not impossible. It’s about two pages of standard paper a day. At first, do not surpass this word count. This is an endurance race, not a sprint. The recommended dosage of 1,000 words a day is doable by the average writer, is a concrete number for you to strive toward, and is about as much as your audience can read in a day. Do not do less, either. This is a regimen. You need to get used to producing this much content quickly and without complaint. Consider using a speech recognition tool: you’ll be pounding out words without pounding on the keyboard. In fact, you’ll find that by speaking your posts you often write more than you originally intended.

This also brings up an important point: writing for blogs is conversational.

ghj

Missed my chance

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:52:00 +0000

I had a little accident in the bathroom at work and when I returned to the office, I tried to tell the story to maximum comedy effect.

After nearly a minute of opening my mouth, stopping and looking away, looking around, speaking the first word of a sentence... I just told my coworker. Turns out, the story didn't need much build-up anyway.

"My glasses fell off in the bathroom. The good news is, I was brushing my teeth at the sink so I only had to rinse and dry them before putting them back on."

My coworker just said, " At first, I was surprised that you were still wearing the glasses."

That would have been a good start to the story. " First, note that I am still wearing my glasses. They fell off in the bathroom and got all wet and splattered..."

links aplenty

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:22:00 +0000

Anger can encourage creativity, briefly. You should probably calm down before you start ranting. That doesn't help anyone.

...angry people produce a higher volume of ideas, as well as more creative ones than their non-angry counterparts. The study’s authors reason that anger is usually accompanied by a feeling of intense energy and a less-structured style of thinking, two factors that lead to creative forms of brainstorming.

More on the subject at Scientific American.

I've described in the past that teachers claim they like creativity but also that creative students can be annoying as heck. Freakonomics has more in a similar vein.

The irony is that as a society, we’re constantly talking about how much we value creativity. And yet, the study implies that our minds are biased against it because of the very nature of its novelty. The authors point out that we often view novelty and practicality as inversely related. We generally value practical ideas because they’re familiar and proven, while the more novel an idea, the more uncertainty there exists about whether it’s practical, error-free, or even useful.

Original research here.

At Boingboing, Doctorow discusses self-publishing.

Mainstream publishers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades learning and re-learning how to get people to care about the existence of books. They often do so very well, and sometimes they screw it up, but at least they’re methodically attempting to understand and improve the process by which large masses of people decide to read a book (even better, decide to buy and read a book).

I firmly believe that there are writers out there today who have valuable insights and native talent that would make them natural successes at marketing their own work. If you are one of those writers – if you have a firm theory that fits available evidence about how to get people to love your work – then by all means, experiment! Provided, of course, that you are pleased and challenged by doing this commercial stuff that has almost nothing in common with imagining stories and writing them down. Provided that you find it rewarding and satisfying.

scientific data collection and 14-year-olds

This active, hands-on approach to science is in keeping with Levi’s firm belief that "the most effective way to learn is through the apprenticeship model." "There’s no reason why you can’t get meaningful scientific data from 14-year-olds," he says. "Science is about hard work and endurance. It doesn’t matter what age you are."

The colors of good and evil in comics:
At colorlovers (via Boingboing) they have made an infographic that:

has a bunch of quirky facts about how certain colors can give more insight into their personalities and hero type. Another neat aspect that I think you'll like is how the infographic discusses the different color schemes for DC and Marvel and shows how they set the trend for future comics.

hkjhhj

brainstorming at Dongseo U.

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:43:00 +0000

I like everything about this. People have a place that is both open and private - passers-by don't interrupt the proceedings. But, if they take the effort, they can climb up and observe. It all works and it is elegantly done.

Article for BusanHaps on Libel

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:25:00 +0000

Below is a somewhat lengthier version of an article I wrote for Busan Haps. One of the Haps' editors asked for it and told me I could also put it on my blog. I handed it in just over a week ago and told him I would put it up on my blog on Sept 5. Here we are but I don't see it there.

The article was supposed to be around 800 words but, after vigorous cutting came out at about a thousand. One thing I did not include in the article was my opinion of what should or could be done. I don't like Korea's libel laws - or the UKs, etc- but the article was mostly a review of problems without any solutions offered.

Let me discuss my conclusions first for people who came here from the Busan Haps article Below that is the article itself.

Blacklists: Blogger McPherson tried to warn ESL job seekers about the school he worked at and was sued for his trouble. I follow McPherson's blog and have met the man; I trust what he says and if he told me to stay away from a position, I would do it. I can't that for everyone though. Blacklists can become a way for crappy teachers to get back at their schools. Also, a way for crappy schools to punish teachers.

I think Dave's ESL Cafe (does anyone still go there) had a blacklist but can't find one now. I did find this exchange:

[Cazador 83 asked:] Is there a thread on this website or is there another website that lists all the hagwons that are blacklisted? I tried searching but the search function on that site isn't so great.
[And Provence replied:] The main problem with creating a thread that blacklist hagwons in Korea is that it is illegal. I would love to warn everyone about my hagwon but I am worried they will find out it is me since I am the only foreign this school has had in 3 years. It wouldn’t be hard for them to figure out who blacklisted them. Basically they can blacklist you but you can't blacklist them, welcome to Korea.

The Marmot discusses blacklists by hagwons of teachers here:

Marmot’s Note: One wonders how long this is going to last before it runs into legal problems. I mean, I know teachers run their own blacklists of hagwons, so what’s fair is fair, but my understanding is that in Korea, printing names like that could be problematic even if the accusations are true. The other thing is that the list is being composed by hagwon recruiters based on claims made by hagwon owners, two groups not known for their business ethics....
UPDATE 2: In our comments section, a real live lawyer says:

The blacklist is quite unlawful. Not only is it a criminal defamation violation under the Criminal Code, but the Labor Standards Act forbids employers to share blacklists. These teachers ought to complain to the prosecution.

Chris Backe in South Korea also warns against starting a blacklist here.

I'm on the fence. A single blog post or newspaper article on a company or product, explaining why it is bad, a post with supporting evidence offered, seems appropriate. A wide-open list of products or companies that a similarly wide-open variety of authors dislike, for whatever reason offers less valuable information. In short, blacklists are as useful as your knowledge of the person writing the information - caveat lectorem.

Another concern I have is with people charged-but-not-yet-convicted of various crimes. Atthe Asian Correspondent, Nthan Schwartzman translated an article about a (Korean) teacher molesting students. At first, I wanted to know the name of the teacher especially as the parents wanted the teacher transferred. If he is transferred, I really want to know his name. Then, aware that even the suspicion of such a crime is poison, I realized that no one wants the name published until after a trial - at which point I hope they do publish it and not merely transfer the teacher.

I guess that although I do not like Korea's libel laws, they certainly are defensible. Play differently, lose differently.

--------Busan Haps article on Libel, by Surprises Aplenty-------

If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. -Thumper’s Mom

A commenter at KoreaBridge wrote: "if you have an understanding of the American Constitution, you will have heard of freedom of speech. He is quite free to write whatever he wants..."

Thinking you have the legal rights freedoms here you would have if you were elsewhere is a good way get in trouble. Indeed those legal freedoms, as relate to libel, aren’t so broad as you may think, in Korea or elsewhere.A friend who has recently returned to Canada after more than a decade here adapted quickly to local libel laws by taking a toy store to task. It appears he has since taken his post down (I think this was routine, he typically removes personal content after a week or so) but in it, he named the store and its specific location -just outside of Toronto with the recommendation that people not shop there.

I believe his post contained useful information, was honest, the facts were correct and specific and was written to help other shoppers. If he posted it here in Korea, he could have faced a fine and possible deportation.
Generally, a written work is libellous if it defames someone identifiable and living, is given to people other than the victim and the victim reputation or income suffers. (Libel defined. And here.)

Usually, if the material is true, it is protected. Results of court cases can be described, for example. Satire can be protected...if it is blunt or obvious enough. Pubic figures, like politicians are less protected so discussions about them can be as free as possible, but media personnel and celebrities are also in this group. Opinions are protected, but as with satire, it had better be clear that you are stating an opinion.

To avoid libeling someone you could use a pseudonym or avoid using a name altogether. This is NOT a free pass, however. If the person can be identified by your description, you could still be charged with libel.

Why did I begin to care so much about libel that BusanHaps mistook me for an expert? Because of one apparent difference in the way libel works here: truth is not a defence in Korea. Well, that point plus the strangeness of the exceptions or loopholes that the media seems to follow.

As a moderator for KoreaBridge, I needed to judge a post about a recruiter that a new poster disliked. “beware of [Korean city][district of that city][English nickname], aged XX. ...doesn’t care about the teacher...JOBS SUCK!!" This post, with the raging ALL-CAPS ending, is clearly an opinion but far too descriptive of the recruiter. The owner of KoreaBridge confirmed we couldn’t accept the post as it was too specific.

Joe McPherson is a blogging acquaintance of mine who had some trouble with a hagwon he worked at. After considerable time and effort, he won a court case against them. To assist others, he blogged about his experiences and named the hagwon. Back to court for him, this time as the defendant. Read The Libel Trap at the Joongang for details.

These examples demonstrate the problem I have with Korean Libel laws. Although the first example is a little overwrought, the first two are attempts at public service announcements. These people are trying to help others avoid their mistakes. Apparently, you can't do that here. No blacklists. Also, be careful with satire:

Michael Breen was recently sued for libel by an organization that is too big and scary for me to name. Let me throw The Marmot under the bus. Breen was also interviewed here at the Haps in April.

Professional media sources know this and tailor their articles accordingly. Investigative journalism is toothless here.

Consider the 'Babyrose' scandal. Babyrose, a Korean 'power blogger' raved about an air sterilizer and many purchased the product. Turns out, the sterilizer had some unhealthy flaws and Babyrose pocketed money from every sale. Korean news outlets had a field day. Hats off to the Korea Herald which alone of the three papers I read included the blogger’s real name, but none of the papers named the unsafe sterilizer. That would have been a good thing to know.

In June, I read a news article about three 'bad' universities. Again, no names were given. The Joongangattempted good investigative journalism but the attempt is useless without the names.
So we know that at least one kind of sterilizer is unsafe and there are at least three bad universities in Korea. One is in Gangwondo and another in Jeju. The malfeasant institutions are relatively unharmed, but all in their niche are suspect.

To further confuse the issue, or maybe out of fear, newspapers have at least once hidden the identity of a person I don’t feel was protected.

Back in 2007, during the problems with US beef being imported, a man, presumably a Korean cattle farmer,threw cow manure over American beef at a Lotte Mart (original here). In the photo, you can see many photographers on hand: clearly this was a PR event and journalists had been invited. Look at the man throwing the manure. If he planned this event and invited the media, why is his face - and those of the other sash-wearers- pixellated?

Another complication is described by Chris Backe. He wants to know why the Anti-English Spectrum group has not been charged with libel. The AES has stated in the past that “that foreigners engage in “sexual molestation,” and that they “target children.”” Backe wonders who and how to sue:

Who is the guilty party, though? The AES as a whole? Naver, for not shutting down a website that is against the law / their own principles? The person / people whose posts are allowed to promote a racist / xenophobic agenda? The lawmakers who go on record with the same racist / xenophobic agenda? And how has a foreigner’s reputation been damaged? Both of those things would have to be figured out before a libel case could go forward.

In politics and crime stories, everyone knows what is happening in the US - often better than they do in their own countries or in Korea. I started this article with a comment from a person who seemed to think American freedoms are defended here. That commenter should also be careful in other countries.

In the UK, the reporter Simon Singh let slip the word ‘bogus’ in an article about chiropractic. He lost his first court case but eventually won.

“Simon is likely to be out of pocket by about £20,000. This – and two years of lost earnings, which he can never recover, is the price he has paid for writing an article criticising the BCA for making claims the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled can no longer be made. In the game of libel, even winning is costly and stressful.”

Indeed, the UK is known for libel tourism. “one of the favored venues for restrictive and chilling judgments is England, where libel laws are heavily weighted toward the plaintiff, placing on the defendant the entire burden of proving that a statement was not false and injurious.”

In Canada, Dr Jeffery Shallit from the University of Waterloo, describes ‘libel chill’ in this article. “...if the court finds you told the truth but your intent was malicious, you might lose anyway.”

At The New Republic, libel in China and Singapore is mentioned, mostly as a tool used by the government to control dissent.

In the US, it does seem you are well protected from libel; at least senators are. Jon Kyl seems to be fine after claiming 90% of Planned Parenthood’s business comes from abortions. The correct number is 3%. The Colbert Report had fun with this one.

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www.surprisesaplenty.wordpress.com, www.creativitiproject.blogspot.com

Traditional publishing =1 year...

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:14:00 +0000

What does it take to get it to Kindle ? The short answer is 72-96 hours

The benefits of Direct to Kindle publishing.

The post offers plenty of details, including some formatting issues. It reminds me of an ebook I recently read that included the word 'chapter' somewhere in the text. The sentence ended abruptly and the next page began with 'CHAPTER' in all-caps on it's own line, with the remainder of the sentence below.

Nick Cave is not in a creativity competition.

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:50:00 +0000

Fifteen years ago, Nick Cave won MTV's best male artist award but declined to accept it. His letter includes sincere thanks and some mystical discussion of his muse.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OF THE OPINION THAT MY MUSIC IS UNIQUE AND INDIVIDUAL AND EXISTS BEYOND THE REALMS INHABITED BY THOSE WHO WOULD REDUCE THINGS TO MERE MEASURING. I AM IN COMPETITION WITH NO-ONE.

Nick Cave Online via Kottke.

Moorcock on how to write

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 00:13:00 +0000

I read a lot of Michael Moorcock in my teens. Many of his books had similar plots, but he explained as a quirk of his hero's place in every frame of his multiverse. I don't know if I would enjoy those books now but that is true of a lot of what I read as a teen. And, I might: I've had a craving lately for pulp.

I didn't notice how formulaic his novels were at the time, but I did notice the wild imagery and ideas. Elric and others lived in worlds far more brightly hued than our own.

At Wetasphalt, via Boingboing, comes "How to write a book in three days" - lessons from Moorcock.

From wet asphalt:

In 1992, [Moorcock] published a collection of interviews conducted by Colin Greenwood called Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle, in which he discusses his writing method. In the first chapter, "Six Days to Save the World", he says those early novels were written in about "three to ten days" each, and outlines exactly how one accomplishes such fast writing.

This is not the best way to write every novel, or even most novels. Moorcock used it specifically to write sword-and-sorcery action-adventure, but I think it could be applied more-or-less to any kind of potboiler. ...

So all of the quotes below are from just the first chapter of the book. I cannot recommend enough for fiction writers to hunt themselves down a copy (it's sadly out of print) and studying it, especially if you want to understand the purpose of form and structure in fiction. If you want to think of this post as a naked advertisement for this brilliant book, I'm okay with that.

To be clear: This is not my advice. This is Michael Moorcock's advice. I have never written a book in three days. I am planning on making the attempt, however, on the weekend of September 18th, which is Jewish New Years (Rosh Hashanah), and the next time in my calendar when I'll have three days straight with nothing else to do.

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Part of Moorcock's advice:

"If you're going to do a piece of work in three days, you have to have everything properly prepared."
"[The formula is] The Maltese Falcon. Or the Holy Grail. You use the quest theme, basically. In The Maltese Falcon it's a lot of people after the same thing, which is the Black Bird. In Mort D'Arthur it's also a lot of people after the same thing, which is the Holy Grail. That's the formula for Westerns too: everybody's after the gold of El Dorado or whatever." (Cf the MacGuffin.)
"The formula depends on that sense of a human being up against superhuman forces, whether it's Big Business, or politics, or supernatural Evil, or whatever. The hero is fallible in their terms, and doesn't really want to be mixed up with them. He's always just about to walk out when something else comes along that involves him on a personal level." (An example of this is when Elric's wife gets kidnapped.)
"There is an event every four pages, for example -- and notes. Lists of things you're going to use. Lists of coherent images; coherent to you or generically coherent. You think: 'Right, Stormbringer [a novel in theElric series]: swords; shields; horns", and so on."
"[I prepared] A complete structure. Not a plot, exactly, but a structure where the demands were clear. I knew what narrative problems I had to solve at every point. I then wrote them at white heat; and a lot of it was inspiration: the image I needed would come immediately [when] I needed it. Really, it's just looking around the room, looking at ordinary objects and turning them into what you need. A mirror: a mirror that absorbs the souls of the damned."

---
The post also links to a wikipedia article about the Doc Savage series, also very 'pulpy'. There, I found this asserted quote: [For Dent] the Doc Savage series was simply a job, a way to earn a living by "churning out reams and reams of sellable crap", never dreaming how his series would catch on.

Forget 'nanowrimo', we need a nation novel writing long weekend - NANOWRILOWE.

How to make comics!

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:42:00 +0000

You're welcome!
A flowchart of how James Turner makes comics:

Follow the link to see the rest.

Lovecrafts 'commonplace' book

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:38:00 +0000

Apparently 'commonplace book' is another name for notebook, used by authors to store their writing ideas. 15 months ago, I wrote about Agatha's Christie's Notebooks. I guess they were notebooks because she used them for everything - recipe's shopping lists, story ideas and more. I have read a few Christie novels and enjoyed them but I have never gotten the feeling that she was a literary writer as perhaps Lovecraft was (was considered -by me- to be literary).

Anyway, Via Boinboing, I have learned a little about Lovecraft's commonplace book.

From Wired:

This book consists of ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction. Very few are actually developed plots—for the most part they are merely suggestions or random impressions designed to set the memory or imagination working. Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on. —H. P. Lovecraft

Presented to R. H. Barlow, Esq., on May 7, 1934—in exchange for an admirably neat typed copy from his skilled hand.

1 Demophon shivered when the sun shone upon him. (Lover of darkness = ignorance.)

2 Inhabitants of Zinge, over whom the star Canopus rises every night, are always gay and without sorrow. [x]

3 The shores of Attica respond in song to the waves of the Aegean. [x]

Note the "May 7, 1934". The list of ideas, which totals over 200, also includes dates and 1935 is listed. Now, that is spooky.
---------------------
Not really related: Rudy Rucker has published his notes and ideas for Mathematicians in Love (PDF). These notes were collected, I presume, after he published the book and clearly collected after he had the main ideas for this book. It is not a commonplace book as I understand (poorly) the term as the notes comprise the time after 'the light turned on'. Still, it is interesting to see how he put the book together.
I have not read the book, but some people (I forget who) at Boingboing love him. I suspect the PDF has spoilers so it might be wise to read the actual book first. Mathematicians in Love at Amazon (published in 2008 with no Kindle edition available for me -I'm listed as Canadian - but perhaps for Americans?)

Two from Boing Boing

noreply@blogger.com (brian dean) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:22:00 +0000

Most authors disapprove of fan-fic - fiction written by fans in the universes created by established authors. J.K. Rowling probably doesn't want you to make your own Harry Potter stories.

Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, thinks otherwise. He approves of fan-fic.

Fan-fiction writers aren’t guys who live in their parents’ basements. They aren’t even all guys. If anything, anecdotal evidence suggests that most fan fiction is written by women. (They’re also not all writers. They draw and paint and make videos and stage musicals. Darren Criss, currently a regular on Glee, made his mark in the fan production A Very Potter Musical, which is findable, and quite watchable, on YouTube.) It’s also an intensely social, communal activity.

The buildings in Bolivia are an eye-full:

This photo is from Boing-boing, and they found it on MLandivar's flickr page.