Steven Barnes's Blog, page 36

On some things, I don’t bend

There are things I bend on, and others I don’t.     When it comes to helping people, there is a door they must walk through, which demands they accept a few principles.  If they are writers, its “a sentence a day, 1-4 stories a month.”  Why? Because it works. IT WORKS.  So far, no one who has followed this path has made it past 30 stories without publishing.    Not ONE.   I like those odds. People can twist, and turn, and argue, and get mad at me, and I sit back and whistle.  Don’t like it? ...

The Morning Ritual, revisited

Here are the basic points of the Morning Ritual, which is one of the three most important pieces of the puzzle, the others being the “Five Minute Miracle” and “The Ancient Child”.  It can be done for 5-30 minutes, but let’s say you’re doing it for 20 minutes.  Scale the times up or down as you wish.

 

WHILE MOVING (Tai Chi is my own.   Walking, running, Tibetans, Rebounding…lots of possibilities) do the following.  Speak, move, and hold your posture to project confidence and joy: CHANT  ALOU...

Special Holiday AFROFUTURISM Sale!

Happy Holidays, whichever ones you cherish.    We’re doing our best to help by slashing the price on our Afrofuturism class by 60%!  This is the beautiful thing about digital information: once we’re into the black, we can make deals like this available to everyone who wanted the class but couldn’t afford the full $297.00 price.

 

This is NOT a stripped-down version.  It contains EVERYTHING the full class offered:

1)The Six-Part “Afrofuturism: Dreams to Banish Nightmares” class

The full “Self...

Going deeper on Walter Scott

https://www.justsecurity.org/49119/incomplete-justice-officer-killed-walter-scott-life-bars

 

A very good article that goes further than most.   I thought I’d just comment on what I think the problems are.

 

What the black community fears is not “rogue cops” but rather that the system itself, and the people who created it, are antagonistic.  That our lives are not valued as highly, and therefore in that split-second of judgement this twin reality results in higher unjustified fatalities. The...

Candyman Sweet Candyman: Victim as Monster

Candyman Sweet Candyman: Victim as Monster

 

We just scored TONY “CANDYMAN” TODD as a guest in January’s THE SUNKEN PLACE class, so things are exploding.  Today we’ll be talking about the heart of horror on LIVE! With Tananarive and Steve.

 

All art stems from core emotions like fear and love, and when you see it and feel it, you can appreciate, teach, and create art more honestly, as well as have the emotional power to practice and refine your craft.  So whether you are a fan, a writer, film...

Don’t cheat someone you love

You can begin your growth/healing process from the root up.  This means to take actions in the real world designed to move away from pain and toward pleasure. In the process you will learn everything you need as you move from child to adult, and from sleeping to waking.

 

Or: you can start with your heart, love yourself, and begin to extend that love and compassion to others. Either works fine.

 

What doesn’t work is to create a mental map of the world before you have actually experienced it,...

Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities

My latest story, MOZART ON THE KALAHARI is in the book, Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures.  It is a co-production between Arizona State University and NASA.     http://csi.asu.edu/books/vvev,   features links to the book in various formats, full-resolution versions of the beautiful illustrations, and more.

Formats: The book is available for free in PDF, and in EPUB and MOBI (for Kindle e-readers) e-book formats. We also have a print-on-demand book available...

The Sacred In The Mundane

A beautiful article on the spiritual lessons in the most universal of human experiences: death.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/12/7/16690024/buddhism-health-care-death-mindfulness-spirituality

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Twenty-five years ago when my father was dying of cancer, I was horrified by the degree to which it withered and ate him alive.  I could feel how strongly I wanted to turn away, not take in the sight of it.

 

Then I remembered something a Native American friend of mine had said. That his...

Be the hero in your own journey

 

A student who recently sold her first story also got a painful rejection just a few days later.   It HURTS, and boy, am I glad she reached out and shared her pain!

 

Let’s peek under the hood of the Lifewriting System, the thread of meaning and purpose baked into everything I do.

 

The Hero is Confronted with a challenge: To become a successful, published writer.

Rejection of the challenge: If you are not currently published, there may well be emotional or strategic blocks between you and t...

The Basic Three

The goal is to balance several aspects: child/parent/grandparent, male/female are essential human aspects.   Black/white is less essential in a pure sense, but critical to understand American society, or to live within it if you are impacted or interested in racial issues.

 

I got seriously knocked off balance in the first two (child/parent/grandparent, male/female) when we were in Atlanta.   I couldn’t figure out what to do to get myself back together, until a coach reminded me of the Mornin...