Steven Barnes's Blog, page 90

What was your best "good deed"?

As the holiday season approaches, I find it pleasant to consider ways that I've "earned my air"--in other words, tried to make the world a better place. Good deeds done for those who cannot benefit us, casting our bread upon the karmic waters, is an example of this.

I recently recalled one of my very favorite ones. It happened about 30 years ago.

I was living with my girlfriend Toni in a duplex near LACC, and was alone in the apartment. The doorbell rang, and there stood a small, frightened white lady who began to babble at me in a language I couldn't understand and didn't recognize. Clearly, she was lost, and terrified, and begging me to help her. Not knowing what in the world to do, I asked her in and brought her a glass of water. She seemed so frail and terrified, it was easy to imagine that she had been seeking a relative and/or traveling the strange city and gotten off a bus at the wrong stop...or something. Good lord. It was 4:30 in the after noon, winter as I recall, and in a couple of hours the sun would be down, the temperature drop, and this was going to get ugly.

I got her to talk, mentioning the name of the city "Los Angeles" and using hand signs to encourage her to tell me where she came from and who she was. From what seemed to be her name, and the name of a city or state or province she came from, I guessed she was from some Slavic country, and got an inspiration. I looked up the phone number for the Yugoslavian trade counselate, which shared offices with several other central European countries. Perfect.

Got them on the phone, and asked if there was a multilingual translator there, and explained the situation. My poor little house guest's eyes bugged out when I handed her the phone, and she began pouring out her heart to the lady on the other end. After a couple of minutes, I spoke to the translator, and she said that my guest had been trying to find her daughter's house and gotten lost. I got the daughter's address, bundled the lady into my car and drove her there, about two miles from my house.

The expression on the daughter's face, and the hug and grateful tears from my guest as she said good-bye have remained with me for decades. A small kindness, to a lost stranger.

That day, I earned my air.

Steve
www.diamondhour.com

Increase your "Erotic Intelligence"?

Five weeks ago, I conducted a workshop in Phoenix on Erotic Intelligence. Luckily for me, I co-taught it with Amara Charles, one of my dearest friends, a lovely, brilliant and creative instructor in numerous sensual disciplines. The fascinating thing was that we simply couldn't come to a solid agreement on what we would teach and what our precise definitions were...which we interpreted as representative of the core difficulty men and women can have communicating about sex...and life itself.

So we did something unique: we simply never used the exact same definitions, allowing those differences to play out in "real time" in front of the audience. They loved it. They raved. That conversation is recorded and transcribed and will be the cornerstone of a new course, but I've convinced Amara to come on Saturday's "Diamond Hour" show to discuss five ways to increase, integrate, share and utilize Erotic Intelligence in your own life.

Just for fun, a little hint: Think And Grow Rich speaks of Sexual Transmutation as a core element in life success. Basically, that the most successful men and women Napoleon Hill studied had VERY high sex drives. They used that to motivate themselves, reward themselves, clarify their minds and values, protect their health...and much more.

But Hill, of course, had limited practical knowledge in the techniques of actually doing these things, so while he was WAAAY ahead of his time in observing and defining a phenomenon, there was a limited amount he could do in terms of direct suggestions.

Well...Amara has no such problems. For over twenty years, she's specifically taught these secret arts to students all over the world. More to the point, I trust the human being she is, and feel comfortable sharing her with my students, who trust me to take the very best care of them.

Amara is one of the best. Join us?
Diamond Hour December show. -
 Saturday, December 8, 2012,
1:00 PM Pacific Standard time (4:00 PM Eastern)
http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/77111
Connect via phone or VoIP (Skype, etc.)
(724) 444-7444

www.diamondhour.com

"Cradle To The Grave" application

A reader reached out to me with genuine issues, and it occurred to me that this is a perfect opportunity to both help her and illustrate an instance of the "Cradle To Grave" (yeah, probably a terrible name, but it's what I'm working with right now) meditation technique.   I'd recommended five "Sixty Second Breathing Breaks" during the day in a previous note, and she replied:
###


Dear Steven,
Thank you so much for your advice. I think I should clarify things a bit:
- I am currently working with a therapy program in XXX, but increasingly anxious to finish my time with them so I can move back home to New York. I miss my home terribly.
- I am holding down a part-time job, which I've had for a year, but of late I have become very worried about finding new employment when I leave XXX. I've been making a tentative effort to find a new interim job while here, but I find the effort very stressful, and perhaps ill-conceived; I'm working with a career counselor back home in New York (phone sessions) to better plan my next move, and I understand that a lot of this sudden need comes less from necessity and more from a feeling of panic and self-doubt.
- I am a recovering anorexic and suffering from a bad bout of ulcerative colitis. I'm due for an examination on Thursday, and I'm seeing a dietitian about diet, exercise, and daily caloric needs, but dealing with the health issues is also difficult. I hope they can get sorted out very soon.
Does all this make sense?
I'm very sorry if you feel like I'm trying to solicit your services. It just seems like you're a really good person to ask for advice about some things, and at this stage I am very grateful to have a range of perspectives available. Your 'breathing breaks' idea sounds very good - I perform 20-minute meditation sessions daily, but this seems like an excellent way to supplement that.
#####MY ANSWER:
 Sweetie, there is nothing wrong with asking for help and perspective. Don't apologize, just be honest and understanding if the askee hasn't the time.
8:54am
Steven Barnes

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The breathing breaks idea can be life changing. You're in a stress spiral: emotional affecting physical which then affects the emotional...and if you don't break it, you'll go down the drain. My understanding of anorexia is that it is a distorted body image syndrome, and those are often the result of powerful emotional storms and abuse issues. The perfect approach for you would be to take those five breaks a day, minimum of 60 seconds each. One can be your current 20 minute stretch. Visualize three "energy balls" of light: one at the "Belly brain", one at the heart center, one at the head. See how clear and bright you can make the light, but if it is foggy or muddy, that's fine. Begin to visualize your youngest self, as if pregnant with a child, in your belly brain. You can visualize this as the oldest "you" that existed prior to damage: might be eight years old, or two, or an unborn fetus. Or fertilized egg. Doesn't matter. What DOES matter is the establishment of connection.
Steve
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The Last Novel That Changed Your Life

I remember reading books that changed my life when I was younger.   And while I've read MANY books that expanded my thinking, in terms of fiction none have really altered my perspective since my early 20's.  Nonfiction, sure.  But the last book that popped me open was a pulp SF novel called "The God Machine" by Martin Caiden ("The Six Million Dollar Man.")   In this book, a supercomputer takes over the world, and figures it can't be beaten, because the only route in to its innards is protected by a lethal radiation belt.    The book's hero is defeated and stymied until an old poker player beats his pants off, saying that the kid is an excellent technical player, but hasn't learned an important axiom: in order to win everything, you have to be willing to lose everything.  That, more specifically, a man totally willing to die can accomplish anything.  I wrestled with that one for some time, and came to the conclusion that I shouldn't aspire to anything that I wasn't willing to die for.   Changed my life, and it was the last fiction book to do so.  I was wondering...what was the last FICTION book that taught you about the world, or yourself, in a powerful way...and how old were you when you read it?

www.diamondhour.com

Morning Zen

This morning, looking at a book on my shelf, Jason asked me what "Zen" was. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Have I ever been waiting for THAT one.

I started with a basic thought:

"where your mind goes when the words disappear, but you're still thinking about something. A perfect throw. A perfect kick."

"Can kids do that?" He asked.

 "Kids are born knowing this. It's adults who have to learn it again."

You can study Zen academically, but that's like taking a cooking class without ever eating the food. Better to find that delicate balance of "Focus and Flow" in any activity in which you have achieved excellence, or wish to. Zen mind is an odd, non-linguistic combination of "Beginner's Mind" and "Expert's Mind". It is both the end state of the continuum between "Unconscious Incompetence" and "Unconscious Competence" and process of that journey. Both noun and verb.

In meditation, seek moments of calm centeredness, and then ask where you have achieved similar moments during times of excellent action, especially under stress. I promise you: you have had them. Collecting them, examining without attachment, is a route to automatic duplication of such glorious moments. They are your legacy. Claim them!

Steve
www.diamondhour.com

Brain Freeze and Easter Eggs

Brain Freeze and Easter Eggs

Had a fantastic meeting with my film producer the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He invited me to his lovely home in Beverly Hills, we talked life and politics and personal history before telling me that, aside from typos, he had no more notes for me. No. More. Notes.

So today I'll speak with him briefly to clarify some things, and then make those adjustments and send it off. And then...the fun begins.

Look, I've published over three million words of fiction and non-fiction, and written about two dozen television scripts. I'm still so excited I can barely control myself. To be honest, early in my career I developed a pattern of writing a dynamite first draft, and then freezing when it came to rewrite time. Freezing. By brain just locked up. Why?

Well...hard to say. It could have been emotional stuff (oh my Gawd! What if I fail!) or mental stuff (how do I integrate these notes!) or even spiritual stuff (if I succeed, I will change my life. My self-image. That is ego death, of a kind.)

But in time, I learned to ease into it. To integrate notes without really noticing I was doing it. Here's the pattern, so far as I can figure.
1) Take all notes given by the producer.
2) Wait a day, and then copy them into a central file.
3) Re-read the project, noting locations where the notes might be addressed.
4) Think through the notes, finding those that seem most reasonable and logical and easiest to do.
5) Consider that "low hanging fruit" and see which ones could reinforce my theme and strengthen the story. Unless I have a STRONG objection to them, try to integrate, making notes in the manuscript.
6) Keep remembering my closing images. Every action, line of dialog and plot turn has to reinforce those images. They are the "meaning" of the work.
7) If at all possible, find some little thing to tweak, adding a line or image somewhere. I've found that it's fun to give the producer or story editor something new to read, something to keep it fresh, a little "Easter Egg" to reward careful reading.

That last one is just something that I've learned over the years, and every time I've done that, things have worked out well. So...today is another threshold. Can't wait!

Steve
www.diamondhour.com

It's Not That I Don't Love You...

Yeah, I haven't been in touch as much. November has been pure travel, teaching, vacation and intense business. Quite scrambled. Just flew in from Phoenix and Los Angeles last night. But what I want you to know is:

1) Today we're doing a book signing today with Blair Underwood at Spelman College. Juggling hats!

2) Had possibly the best business meeting of my life last Wednesday with the producer of my new screenplay. I've had a ton of success writing for television, and novels...but movies not so much. Oh, I was creative consultant on "The Secret of NIMH" and created the "bible" for the "Sakura Ninja" series of Swedish ninja movies starring Chuck Conners (The Rifleman! No kidding) but that's not enough, if you know what I mean. I can't wait to share more about what this project is...hopefully soon! What I'll say is that it is more personal to me than anything I've ever written, and has an autobiographical aspect that has never existed in my work before. It is sexy, funny, PACKED with action, and deals with issues so close to my heart that I don't dare let myself get too caught up in the possibilitites.

Two days ago I drove from L.A. to Phoenix and collapsed into my hotel bed. The next morning, I had a breakfast meeting with Amara Charles prior to hitting the airport. We discussed the upcoming "Erotic Intelligence" course, and how excited we were to be editing the transcript and making this available. The most fabulous thing about it is how boggled each of us were by what the other presented. My attitude toward the two-hour presentation we made earlier this month (to a VERY enthusiastic audience!) was that I didn't care about coming to "total agreement" on every aspect prior to the presentation. In fact, I considered that the "rough patches" simply represented the different ways we thought about the same issue--sex, power, beauty, male and female energies and attitudes. The lovely thing is that I agreed with everything she said...but about 50% of what she said I would never have thought of saying. Even more, as I went through hte transcript, I kept thinking: "gee, I don't remember her saying that...I don't remember her saying THAT..."

And realized what had happened. Simply put, every time she said something that hit hard, that seemed to represent a deep and important truth, my mind began to consider the implications, and in that consideration, missed the next thing she was saying. Wow.

More on that thought later. But at one point we discussed the film project, and she remarked that she knew I was deliberately preventing myself from getting too excited. That is the truth. The implications for my life and career are simply too large for me to take it too seriously. "People who get excited get depressed," I said. "And I can't allow that." That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the positive events in my life. Anyone who knows me knows that would be nonsense. It is that I try to maintain perspective, and not get too caught up in it all.

November has been great, just spectacular. I've been to Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona and Florida. The Orycon SF convention the Tantric Meetup in Phoenix, the Miami Book Fair, and Loscon. Saw my daughter kick butt in "Avenue Q" (she plays...Gary Coleman! If you don't know the play, that won't make sense. But yep, THAT Gary Coleman), created a new project, set up to make my original Tai Chi video available (stay tuned!) and much more. It will take me days to sort through it all, and I'll share as soon as I can.

 But meantime, here are three tips for you:

1) In rewriting, keep in mind the last major image in your writing. This is the "meaning" of your piece, and everything else you do has to support this image. Every word and action has to increase this emotional charge, or else it is pointless.

2) Plan on a slow, steady "uptick" in your day to day emotional responses. Keep a sense of humor about news, either positive or negative. Don't let the external world control your mood. A steady positive evolution is vastly superior to swings between depression and exultation. The "Five Minute Miracle" approach to maintaining calm (five sixty second "breathing breaks" during the day) is perfect for this.

3) The most important element of your physical training program is joint mobility. Five minutes of "joint rotation" exercise, slowly and carefully warming up your body in the following order: neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, trunk, hips, knees, and ankles--is a fabulous beginning or close to any day. This was a life-saver on the road!

I'll be back at it tomorrow. Tons to talk about, and sorry I haven't been in touch.

Can't wait!

Steve
www.diamondhour.com

Take a deep breath (five times a day!)

So I'm finally beginning to edit the transcript for the Erotic Intelligence workshop with Amara from last weekend, with an eye toward creating our new product. There will be many many things to talk about in connection with it, but the first to pop up was the following quote, dealing with one of the "third rails" of the human body-mind: the survival instinct.

"And you can get in touch with your survival simply by slowing down your breathing to the point that carbon dioxide builds up in your blood and the panic button in the back of your head goes off. It’s great because the disciplines that slow your breathing down like that are teaching you to relax through stress. It’s beautiful. These things are not just esoteric. They’re also extraordinarily practical."

So much that could be said here. But one of the most important ones is just the question of clarity. There are so many different aspects of life that attract our attention, so much complication and so many petty, tangled motivations. You can worry about your mortgage, your receding hairline, your crabgrass and/or who your co-workers are giggling at behind your back. It can be difficult to apportion our limited human energy, and one of the first things to do is clarify your priorities. There are two basic ways that work:

1) Survival first.
2) Love first

Slowing your breathing down until you are below about three respirations per minute will, as said, increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. Cardio-respiratory distress is a fear response, and if you continue you will begin to feel the alarms going off in your head. Relaxing decreases muscle tension, which burns less oxygen (thereby easing the stress) but also teaches you to relax under emotional stress.

Relaxing under emotional stress is a very positive habit, allowing one to maintain a balanced perspective, from which you can see the available options more clearly. Stress/strain creates tunnel vision, as well as rigidity of thought. PRECISELY the wrong responses in a life-and death situation, or running a business, or writing a term paper, or negotiating a family argument.

The law of requisite variety basically says: If a system is to be stable the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled" or to put this in more human terms, in any situation, more potential options tend to be better for problem solving than fewer.

(There are exceptions, of course. A famous story about a fox with a thousand ways to escape the hound pack, and a cat who had but one comes to mind. When the hounds arrived, the fox couldn't decide which of his thousand to use, and the cat ran up the tree. Oh, well...)

But at any rate, learning to control the breathing is a powerful, generative activity with near-infinite depth. But just on the surface, problems lead to stress lead to panic, leads to a narrowing of perceived options, leading to more problems.

And conversely, if one adds controlled breathing to the equation, then stress leads to an adaptive breathing response, which triggers both energy AND relaxation, which leads to sharper more flexible thinking, which leads to solutions, leading to growth.

All from a little conscious breathing. I can't wait until Åmara and I can conduct our full workshop, and actually teach and integrate all of the different basic aspects of human existence from the dozens of different world traditions that have explored this.

And for my half, it will happen from survival "up" and from the heart "out." And never, ever, ever from the head down.

Steve
www.diamondhour.com

Young, hot, and dead

Young Adult Zombies

Tomorrow, I leave for the Miami Book fair, where Tananarive and I will be sitting on a YA book panel, talking about our zombie series DEVIL'S WAKE. She just finished her final read-through on the book, which will be out next February, and of which we are very proud.
  
But we've been asked: why is this book "young adult"? Why create a "horror" novel and suggest it is appropriate or even valuable for teenagers?

 Well, first of all, it isn't a "kids book." It is a book in which the lead characters are kids, and we decided that it would be smartest on all counts to set the level of sexuality and violence at a PG-13 level. That if we cared about these characters, and believed in this situation, we didnt need buckets of guts to create genuine fear and excitement.

 The interesting thing about zombies (of whatever variety) is that they have no individual personalities. We can't romanticize them, or save them, or reason with them. They are simply death and disease and corruption, come to bring flesh to our fears.

 The enduring value of such stories, from my POV, is the examination of human response. Remember that all we have to write about (from one valuable perspective) is "what is true?" and "who am I?"

 In writing terms, this is "what are human beings?" (as expressed in characterization of individuals and society) and "what is the world?" (as revealed in the way physical and biological structures and forces respond to effort, as well as the "ethical structure of the universe" in terms of how fate responds to human effort. The writer's philosophy is revealed by the way these two things interact.

 A human being's maturity and awareness is revealed by the way they navigate these two. Someone with a totally accurate map of external and internal reality would never set a goal they didn't meet. 

Someone aligned between conscious and unconscious drives would never act contrary to their own interests. A person aligned more deeply would be satisfied by life as it is...but still blossom and evolve as a being.

 If you know yourself, you aren't surprised by the behaviors of others. The more honest with yourself you are, the easier it is to detect the "gaps" between what people want you to believe, and what they actually are.

 The young characters in DEVIL'S WAKE and its sequel, DOMINO FALLS, are thrust into a living nightmare, in which they must trust themselves, and each other, and decide very very gingerly who they will trust in addition to that core family.

 And they must also test every group, situation, and culture they encounter, constantly adjusting expectations and ideas about what human beings are, who they are, "what is true" and how to best test one's ideas.

 Isn't this what growing up is about? Learning who we are, and what the world is, and how to refine and strengthen the connection between our dreams and our reality? How control our emotions and refine our reality maps?

 Once upon a time I defined an important line between childhood and adulthood as the point where you can focus your attention, energy, emotions and intellect to create goods and services you can trade legally to produce the resources necessary to put food on your table and a roof over your head.

 In other words, hunt, gather, and shelter. Maslow's most basic level. The beginning of Self awareness.

 Zombies just make it more fun.

 So...what exactly happens in the next installment of the Devil's Wake saga?

 I could tell you, but then I'd have to bite you.


 Steve
www.diamondhour.com

Why the Hero's Journey?

Why the Hero's Journey?

In the Lifewriting Year Long course, I dive deeply into the concept of story structure, offering several different models of this thing called "story" while making it clear that none of these models are "the thing itself" but rather approaches, perspectives, tools to manage the different thematic and incidental aspects of their work.

I like the Hero's Journey for a variety of reasons:

1) It is universal. You cannot find a story recognized as "story" by any significant number of people (in other words, any television episode ever shown, any movie ever generally released, any novel that achieved even moderate success or longevity, any story that has lasted more than a generation) that cannot be explored through the HJ.

2) It not only diagrams story itself, it diagrams the PROCESS of writing a story.

3) Not only does it diagram a story, but it also diagrams the process of life. Every life. Everything you've ever attempted to accomplish in your entire life.

Therefore, if you will chose subjects for your writing that actually affect your own life and express your own values, EVERYTHING YOU LEARN MAKES YOU A BETTER WRITER, AND EVERYTHING YOU WRITE MAKES YOU A BETTER PERSON. And that's pretty cool.

In philosophical terms, there are basically two questions in life worth asking: "Who am I?" and "What is true?" In writing terms, these two questions manifest as "what is the world?" and "what are the human beings who experience it?" A spiritual version: "what is Man that Thou art mindful of him?" And it goes on and on.

Human beings. The world. You. Your perspective. The more you see the connection, the more you seek to explore your sense of human psychology, philosophy, science, politics, interpersonal dynamics and so forth...

The more you seek to find a spark of truth in every work, seek to trigger the "ah! Life is just like that!" response that automatically raises your work above the level of "pulp" and gives you the opportunity to create art...

In other words, the less you try to be "clever" and the more you simply attempt to find truth...

The better your writing will be. There are certainly other story patterns, but I know of none with this specific strength. You may well choose to go another way.

1) Do you think you can name a non-experimental film that doesn't follow this pattern (there are "art house" films that specifically seek to subvert this pattern. But by being in reaction to standard story, they remain bound by it)

2) If you don't like some version of the HJ--what pattern DO you utilize?

3) If you avoid pattern altogether, how DO you organize your work?

Important questions. Answers, anyone?

Steve
www.diamondhour.com