Steven Barnes's Blog, page 34

The Escrow Caper

Here’s a view of my process, regarding the new story: “The Last Adventure of Jack Laff: The Escrow Caper. (As transcribed by Steven Barnes)”   1) First I started with a social issue I wanted to comment on (I was specifically asked to write an “if this goes on” story) 2) Then I roughed out, on index cards, a potential story. 3) Then I created a 1-3 page outline of the story. 4) Then I transferred that outline to Writer Duet. 5) I broke it down and expanded it in script form, five...

A Spoonful of Sugar

“In every job that’s to be done, there is an element of fun. Find the fun and SNAP! The job’s a game!”–M. Poppins.

Mary Poppins – A Spoonful Of Sugar (from “Mary Poppins”)

The most successful people in the world consider their work to be a game.

 

 

I love fantasy and SF films, and movies in general.    Storytelling. I consider it “meat and potatoes” of human society, not “frosting.”    I believe that artists should remember that they are BLESSED to be able to “play” to make their living, tha...

The power of honest emotion

Jordan Peele talked to us about “The Sunken Place”, the hypnotic abyss into which Chris sank in “Get Out”.

 

It is a place of darkness and shadow, from which Chris screams, unable to affect his own life.    Terrifyingly…it resembles a movie theater seat.  Jordan stated that the scene relates to his feeling about the Prison-Industrial complex, where a disproportionate number of black men and women are stripped of rights and the ability to speak and act with freedom.

 

That when he wrote this s...

Philes and Phobes and FB Friends lists

Another in my series of explorations into the question: when you you know you’re talking to someone who is either asleep, or a snake? In other words, that you are wasting your time and you need to realize that every moment they can suck out of your life on useless arguments THEY ARE WINNING.

Love yourself (enough to protect your time) Love another person (enough to protect theirs as well. Time spent talking to sleeping people is time away from your loved ones) Study history to develop a theo...

“Liberalism damaged black people more than slavery”

Afrofuturism creates a vision of the future for the children of the Diaspora. But it also seeks to explain the past in an attempt to contextualize the present moment.  To do this, we also have to examine the mythologies created to OBSCURE that reality.  This one came up yesterday, and I have to comment.

This whole “Liberalism did more damage to the black family than slavery” thing is so bizarre I can hardly grasp the logical structure, see how anyone can say it with a straight face.  I can on...

Have questions for the director of “Get Out”?

We have our interview with Jordan Peele scheduled. Would SUNKEN PLACE students please PM me with their questions? We get started in just 9 day! If you haven’t signed up yet, but wanted to, we have a new time payment option. Check it out at: http://www.realblackhorror.com

Filed under: Autobiography

How to motivate anyone

One of the core signs of maturity is the ability postpone gratification, to accept temporary discomfort in exchange for some future benefit. The inability to do this is, then, a sign of adolescence. It is what adults have to learn to do, in whatever arenas: to tolerate the boredom or discomfort of daily writing for the pleasure of seeing a finished book on the shelves.  To limit purchases today so that you can buy something large and expensive at the end of the year, to push through a tough w...

Rules for 2018

One thing I’m promising myself in 2018 is that I’m going to recognize more rapidly people who should not be taken seriously, or are trolling, or have sufficiently different views of reality or humanity that argumentation cannot lead to a useful conclusion.  Over 2017 I tested a bunch of them, and I’ll be discussing them over the next days.

 

Here’s one:   When people say “human beings are bad” in some specific way: dishonest, evil, sick, etc, I ask a simple question: “are you including yourse...

So legal pot is really here…now what?

So California is starting to sell legal, recreational pot, with an adult able to purchase an ounce a day.  This is a serious threshold, and I think a very good thing for the legal system, which had been warped by users of other drugs  into “guilt projection”, allowing the sick spectacle of people drinking and smoking at “just say NO” fund-raisers.  Ugh.  As of today, in California, I have just a little more respect for that system: it is saner than it was a year ago.

 

But there are still con...

Afrofuturism and Cinematic Genocide

We haven’t done a video show during the holidays, and I wanted to give you something special. I thought this essay, which I’ve been researching for a year, might fit the bill.  YMMV of course.

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Why is Afrofuturism important?  Well, lets start with what it is, at least the literary aspect thereof: the SF, Fantasy, and Horror of the African Diaspora.

 

Black Americans may be the only people in the world whose dominant mythology was forced upon them by their oppressors.   Colonized Africans,...