Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 99

Is TECHNOLOGY Clouding Your Mind?

The 1930's character, The Shadow, possessed the power to cloud men's minds so they couldn't see him.


Any stage magician will tell you that there are 
blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, 

so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. 

Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano.



1.) CLOUDING METHOD ONE
IF YOU CONTROL THE MENU, YOU CONTROL THE CHOICES

 Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. 

Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, 
while we ignore how those choices are manipulated upstream by menus we didn’t choose in the first place.



This is exactly what magicians do. 
They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. 

I can’t stress enough the importance of this insight.

When people see a menu, they do not ask:

WHAT'S NOT ON THE MENU?
WHY AM I GIVEN THESE OPTIONS AND NOT OTHERS?
WHAT ARE THE PROVIDER'S GOALS?
Say you're out with friends having a meal and a good conversation.

You want to keep it going so you ask Yelp for nearby recommendations and get a list of bars.

Yelp substituted the group’s original question (“where can we go to keep talking?”) 

with a different question (“what’s a bar with good photos of cocktails?”) all by shaping the menu.






 While looking down at your phones, 

you and they don’t see the park across the street with a band playing live music. 

They miss the pop-up gallery on the other side of the street serving crepes and coffee. 

 Neither of those show up on Yelp’s menu.



2.) CLOUDING METHOD TWO
 Put a slot machine in a billion pockets.

How do you keep people hooked on an app?

COVERT IT INTO A SLOT MACHINE.
The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. 

Why do we do this? 
Are we making 150 conscious choices?
 The #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines:
Intermittent Variable Rewards
Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.
 Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parkscombined!
 If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action with a variable reward.


 Oh, but you don't play slot machines you say.
Wrong
Several billion people have slots machines in their pockets.

When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re playing a slot machine to see what notifications we got.
 When we pull to refresh our email, we’re playing a slot machine to see what new email we got.
 When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’re playing a slot machine to see what photo comes next.
 When we swipe faces left/right on dating apps like Tinder, we’re playing a slot machine to see if we got a match.
 When we tap the # of red notifications, we’re playing a slot machine to what’s underneath.


3.) CLOUDING METHOD THREE
 Another way apps and websites hijack people’s minds is by inducing a “1% chance you could be missing something important.”
 If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities —
 it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — 
because (aha, I win) you might miss something important.
 * This keeps us subscribed to newsletters even after they haven’t delivered recent benefits 
(“what if I miss a future announcement?”)
*  This keeps us “friended” to people with whom we haven’t spoke in ages 
(“what if I miss something important from them?”)
*  This keeps us using social media 
(“what if I miss that important news story or  fall behind what my friends are talking about?”)
NEWSFLASH!
 We’ll always miss something important at any point when we stop using something.
Remember:
We don’t miss what we don’t see.
HAVE YOU HAD YOUR MIND CLOUDED BY THE INTERNET LATELY?

MOTHER Is Not a 4 Letter Word

Though you might think it a term of profanity 
from our modern movies.

Sadly, the full term is used more and more lately.

In fact, it is the duct tape that binds Samuel L. Jackson's dialogue together!


Yet, MOTHER is a name that is so complex depending upon the situation in which you hear it 

that it is a many-faceted gem of many colors and nuances. 


The young woman hearing that she is soon to be a mother 

may hear the term with hope, despair, or fear of being like her own hated mother.


The teenager yelling "Mother!" may feel unloved, controlled, or ignored.


The man sitting by the death-bed of his mother 

may whisper the name out of a wellspring of loving memories 

or from a dark pit of having never been understood.


Mothers are only human:

 some saintly, some devilish, most somewhere in between.


We train our children in schools on how to do everything senseless but not how to live well.

Shouldn't we have classes on how to parent?  

How to deal with stress?  

How to manage a budget?


Mothers make it up as they go along.


Sandra, my best friend, had a son, Drew, 

who was forever fiddling with the electric wall sockets close to the floor boards.

She finally put covers on all of them.

Sometime later as she did her business' books on her computer, she heard a Fittzz and saw the lights go dim.

She turned to the sound of faltering steps.

There stumbled poor little Drew, his hair looking like Einstein's, holding his trembling right hand high.

"Mama right.  Mama right!"


From that time forward, Sandra would counsel Drew when he felt compelled to do an unwise thing. "Mama right."

Usually, Drew would later sadly confide to her with a wry, hurt smile.  

"Mama right.  Mama right."


May we all have had mothers wise enough for us to follow their counsel.








Happy Mother's Day 
to All My Friends 
For Whom This Day Applies!

HOW TO CLIMB TO THE TOP OF THE SLUSH PILE

"You are not judged by the heights  to which you have risen,
but the depths from which you have climbed."
- Frederick Douglass


And the 19th century abolitionist should know.
He began life as a slave to become the "Lion of Anacostia."
And how did he begin that climb?

Reading.

The wife of his owner taught him the alphabet, then the beginnings of how to read.

His owner put a stop to that, saying that if he learned how to read, he would become dissatisfied with his lot.

"The first anti-slave lecture I ever heard," wryly said Frederick later in his life.

Later he would learn how to better read from the white children in the neighborhood and from the writings of the men with whom he worked.

Reading opened a whole new world of thought to the young boy.
He read newspapers, political essays, books of every kind, and the New Testament --

which he taught other slaves to read at a weekly Sunday school.

It lasted six months before other slave owners, armed with clubs and stones, broke it up.
Why?
They feared their slaves being able to read.





To read.

It is an awesome ability we often take for granted.

And writing?

We who take up that task must understand its power. The power of the word to touch one human soul, beginning a rippling effect whose end none but The Father knows.

But before we can do that we must climb out of the dreaded slush pile.

And Scaling Mt. Everest was a cinch compared to climbing out of the slush pile.

Just ask any unpublished writer. Ask me. Ask the marines.

So how do you climb out of the slush pile?

You tackle the task like a professional. Agents are business men and women. You must approach them as such.

In essence, approaching an agent for representation is like approaching a bank for a loan.

Mark Twain said that banks were like those folks who were willing to lend you an umbrella when it was sunny.

When you don't need the money, banks will loan it to you. Why? Because they know you can pay it back.

Often it feels as if agents are silently saying with their rejections, "If I don't want your autograph, then I don't want your manuscript."

If you're Stephen King, agents will kill to represent you. Well, maybe not. But then again, one never knows.

But you're not Stephen King. So what do you do? No. Identity theft is out of the question.

Think bank loan. What do banks want from you? A good credit rating for one thing.

And what does an agent want from you? Credentials. Like what you ask?

Awards or achievements. Professional associations. Education. Related work experience.

How do you get those?

Attend local writers' workshops, taught by professional writers.

Politely get to know as many professionals there as you can. Very, very diplomatically ask them if you may use their names when inquiring of an agent.

Hey, all of them were where you are now. Most of them are quite kind. I will help you bury the rest.


{Just checking to see if you were paying attention.}




Have your novel FULLY completed. I saw a friend lose her shot at a great agent because she submitted it only half done.

He wanted to see the full. She had to tell him the truth. End of a wonderful window of opportunity.

Have the first 30 pages so polished and suspenseful you would bet your life on them. You are certainly betting the life of your career and of your novel on them.

Write a killer query letter.


How?


Show her something that she very seldom sees.

Brevity.

Be Hemingway in your query.

Give yourself three sentences to convey the plot, characters, themes, and emotional impact of your 400 page novel.

IMdB is a good source to see how summaries of classic movies are written in three sentences.

Be an adverb stalker.

Stalk them and send them packing. No adverbs allowed. Or darn few.


No first names for your target agent. No self-depreciating comments allowed either. People tend to take you at the value at which you place yourself.

We are drawn to confident people because we unconsciously accept that they have something about which to be confident.

If they are sure, it sets us at ease. They are competent. And who doesn't want a competent person at their side?





You're applying for a loan here. Be professional.

Be aware of the requirements of the specific agent that you're approaching. See you from her side of the desk. What is she looking for?

For one thing:

a novel that is unique but born of what is selling for the publishers.


And what sells? Primal. Primal appeals to the unconscious mind of the reader, including the agent.

Primal hungers. Primal dangers. Primal drives.

Sex. Money. Safety. And threats to all three.

Give the agent the first three lines of your novel. Make sure they are great hooks. Sentences that reach out and grab the reader.

They will more than likely be the only sentences any agent will ever read of your submitted manuscript before coming to a conclusion of the attractiveness and saleability {is that a word?} of your work.

Submit to the agent EXACTLY as she requests.

This indicates that ...


1.) You are literate and can follow simple instructions.


2.) You are a professional and are in this for the long haul.

If the agent asks you to change the ending or get rid of a character, remain calm.

This may simply be a test. Use some imagination, some deep-breathing exercises, and do what the agents requests.

She wants to see how you handle criticism. She doesn't want a temperamental prima donna on her hands.


The one she sees in the mirror is quite enough, thank you.

{Just checking if you're paying attention again.}



How you handle these requests will show her your degree of professionalism. These requests are a good sign.

She's interested. She's been around a lot longer than you in the business. Try it her way.

Write it her way.


Then, if the ending or character is pivotal in your thinking, present a reasoned, item by item defense.


But be flexible. It is better to bounce than to break.

I know. I have the bruises to prove it.


Good luck to all my fellow climbers out there.
***********

TEACH ME TO BE BAD

[Banner courtesy of McCorkle Creations}
The small palms by my poker table hissed through the shadows of Meilori's with their flaying leaves.





The ghost of Julie London swayed by on her way to the stage.

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again like a theater curtain.





The ghost of Raymond Chandler petted Midnight in his lap.  

"I know that trick, kid. That was supposed to make you roll over on your back with all four paws in the air.”

"Woof," I said.



Mark Twain chuckled, "God created women so that Man would learn seeing ain't always believing."

Stephen King smiled, drawing a card.  "And why was Man created?"



Roger Zelazny snorted, "So Taylor Swift would have lyrics to her songs when she broke up with one."





Hemingway puffed on his cigar.  "My post did well the other day, didn't it?"

Roger nodded.  "Surprisingly so since you nay-sayed their dream of slapping a novel together in a month."

Hemingway said, "Dreams alone won't fill libraries."

Roger looked off into the darkness.  

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”





Mark puffed on his own cigar.  

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”

Chandler sighed, 

"They are wasting a month hurrying a novel when they should be carefully crafting one.  But there is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

Roger nodded, 

"I always forced myself to sit down and write five pages each morning.  Then, each evening I would slash and hack those pages down into three."

He smiled sadly to me.  “No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”





He tapped his cards against his teeth.  "Here's a tip for you, Roland.

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something,

which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -

you just don't know which.

You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself.

Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.

Trust your demon.” 





Stephen King laughed softly, "I always do.  Roland, books are the perfect entertainment:

no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent.

What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.” 

An evil gleam shined in his eyes behind his glasses.  "While we're giving tips to you.  Here's a few:

 “Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.  Learn the strip-tease delay of good fiction, revealing as you go along.  Great fiction is the truth within the lie."





Chandler took a slow sip of his drink.  

"It all boils down to your hero, kid.  He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.

He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor --

by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. 

He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a hero at all.

He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job.

He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge.

He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure.

He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. 

If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”

"What about women heroes?" I asked.  "Ada Lovelace created the first computer program 100 years before the invention of the computer. 

Abigail Adams healed the rift between two U.S. Presidents. 

Alexandrine Tinne was a Dutch explorer who made the first female attempt to cross the Sahara.

  Aletta Jacobs was a Dutch doctor, a feminist, a pacifist, and a human rights activist."

Chandler smiled crooked, "That was then.  Now, we have Taylor Swift."





The ghost of William Faulkner shook his head.  

"That is your cynicism talking.  Roland, always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” 





Mark Twain lit another cigar.  “What would men be without women? Scarce, Roland...mighty scarce.” 





Stephen King gently smiled at me.  

"As with all creation, Roland, it begins with the Word.  But it must be the right word in the right way at the right time."

He looked away from me and into himself.  

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them --

words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out.

 But it's more than that, isn't it?

The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried,

like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away.

And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way,

not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.

That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” 

For a time, my friends and I were lost inside our own secret hearts.
 

GARDEN & GUN

http://subscribe.gardenandgun.com/
So there I was at Pumpelli's Tire and Auto Repair 

waiting for the kind mechanics to replace my dead alternator.





I looked across at the man waiting for his own repairs 

and saw him reading a glossy magazine that looked like BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS.

The name of the magazine suddenly hit me: 


I was intrigued.  
What kind of articles would such a magazine have?  

I started making up its table of contents to pass the time:


SHOT INTRUDERS MAKE  THE BEST MULCH
PIRANHAS NOT OVER-THE-TOP  FOR YOUR FOUNTAIN
MINED BACKYARD:
 PERFECT TILLING  FOR YOUR VEGETABLE GARDEN
HIDE THOSE PESKY  IMPROMPTU GRAVES  WITH ROSE BUSHES
BE A CONSIDERATE NEIGHBOR;  USE SILENCERS  FOR LATE NIGHT BURGLARS 
The real articles, of course, were much different!
Garden & Gun is a magazineabout the sporting culture, food, music, art, and travel of the Southern United States.
I think the namesof my articlessound more interesting!
WHAT FUN ARTICLES CAN YOU COME UP WITH? 

Would You Spend the Night in a Museum?

Yes, there are museums  that will let you spend the night!


AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY:
In 2014, the New York museum hosted its first adult-only sleep-over ...
complete with a champagne reception with live jazz music ...
fossil fact-finding by flashlight and cots under the 94 foot long model of a Blue Whale.
The next grown-up slumber party is June 22 of this year.
Get your reservations in early!
Cost $350!  Ouch!!

NATIONAL ARCHIVES MUSEUM,  WASHINGTON, D.C.
Pack your pajamas and pillows for a night of heroes and history ...
resting your head in the Rotunda near the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The fall sleep-over is October 13th of this year.
But you must be from 8 to 12.  Rats.  Cost: $125

BALTIMORE NATIONAL AQUARIUM
Shark fanatics and budding oceanographers will have to part with $120 
to spend the evening with experts and brave the shark catwalk.
Comes with a buffet-style dinner and light breakfast.  
Ages 8 and up.

CARNEGIE SCIENCE CENTER,  PITTSBURG
Want a sleepover for the whole family?
You can engage and educate parents and children alike for only $39!
Last month's event on the 27th centered on electricity.  
This May 18th will have the theme of chemistry.
You will enjoy educational activities, a movie in the new Rangos Giant Cinema, 
laser shows, snacks, breakfast, and free admission the following day!
Reservations are accepted up to 5 days prior to the event date.
Ages 4 and up.
There are at least 11 others museums that offer sleep-overs.  
Check to see if one is near you.

WOULD YOU SPEND  THE NIGHT  IN ONE?

What if GAME OF THRONES and FIREFLY had a love child?

It's the story of real people fighting for their small corner of the universe day after day. 

(A world where water is scarce and air is rationed isn't that hard to envision right now.) 

And that focus on human behavior allows the show to explore issues like 

empathy, martyrdom, poverty and how fear can dictate one's actions. 


 At its core, The Expanse is all about people responding to fear – 
fear of the other, fear of the new, fear of inequality, fear of death.

In the tradition of great Noir, every character has a past that they would rather not talk about.

They've lived tough lives and are struggling to make their way without compromising their values too much

or to regain those values they compromised long ago.


There is a moral ambiguity that haunts all the characters 

with choices that seemed right at the time, but have since proven to be disastrous.


There is an epic sense of scale, a realistic class warfare, and cultures that grow out of their environments.

Be prepared to root for three dimensional characters 

who strive to be better than they were 

and witness the machinations of those who think their way is the only way.


 I don't often recommend a TV series, but this one is not to be missed.

HOW TO SING TO AN EMPTY HOUSE _ IWSG post

“The road to hell is paved  with works-in-progress.”
—Philip Roth
  Beware of advice—even this.”
—Carl Sandburg

Despite the daunting increase in my workload, I decided to do one last A TO Z challenge.
Because of that increased workload, 
I could not visit my other friends doing it, and so my visitors were very few.
I understand.  
To receive visits,  you must visit yourself.

 The blank page is a cruel adversary ... 

especially when no one is urging you to fill it.

I finished because it was a goal I set for myself, and I kept on to amuse myself with what I was writing.
Then, something occurred to me:
When you write something, you never know who it is going to affect, 
or how it could help someone who’s struggling and feeling alone, 
or how in a low moment in their life, desperately searching on Google for answers, 
they will come upon your words when they need them most. 

And despite what our culture  would have us believe: that metrics and stats  matter above all else, that the number of clicks  tells the whole story.
Somehow, in some cosmic calculation, 
impacting one human being has got to be worth more than all the Unique Page Views and Shares and Likes in the world.
WHAT KEPT YOU GOING  THIS A TO Z?
WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING  WITH YOUR WRITING?

THE HEALING OF BEING HEARD

"Nothing I say this day  will teach me anything.  So if I’m going to learn,  I must do it by listening.” - Larry King

In this #MeFirst culture, people speak a lot ...
about themselves.
Folks may listen,
but they often are merely waiting 
for us to pause for breath 
so they can jump into the conversation to speak about what concerns them most ...
themselves.

This is an isolated society, hemmed in by brick walls of  "Can you hear me?"
If everyone is texting, 
then no one is reading to pause for reflection 
to what has just been written 
and what it meant to the person sending.

When you truly listen, you tell the other person,  "This is important to me.   YOU are important to me."
When people feel heard, they feel validated ... 
feel as if they are of worth to someone other than to just themselves. 
You don't have to solve the problem, just wince at the impact of the blow to another.
You don't have to agree with the person. 
Merely acknowledge their viewpoint.

Truly hearing someone  is not a multi-task experience.  
If you are not focused on the person,  you are missing the point of  their speaking.
HAVE YOU TRULY LISTENEDTO SOMEONE TODAY?

The ZEN of Writing _ A TO Z

A New York Times essay recently stated that modern fiction has lost its faith ...

that Christian belief figures into literary fiction in our place and time as something 

between a dead language and a hangover.

I believe it is worse than that:  

many books seem to have lost touch with the soul, the wonder, and the magic 

without which our prose tales are shallow pursuits of sensory titillation.  


WE HAVE LOST THE MAGIC

There is a land not too far from where you sit right now.

Its velvet grasses miss the press of your feet.
The billowing clouds strain to see your body walk slowly up the rising hill.

The fragrant winds blow through the lonely tree branches, 


whispering your name as they seek some trace of you.

It is where the magic lives.

That realm is lonely, wondering where you have been.

And where have you and I been?

We have been caught up in the drudgery that writing has become. 


Burdened by life's duties and our own doubts, we have lost our way.

We have lost the magic.

Did we lose it straining for that first perfect sentence in our new novel?

Looking at the blank, impatient computer monitor 

did we forget the simple wonder of just writing the first simple sentence that occurred to us?

That creative power which bubbles so tingly at the beginning of our book quiets down after a time. 


The journey becomes slower and slower, the inertia of doubt steadily dragging our steps.

Do we continue doggedly on or do we stop to refresh ourselves?

The answer to that question determines whether we find our way back to the magic or not.

How do we refresh ourselves?

How do we refresh ourselves on a long wilderness walk? We stop by a stream and drink.

Drink of those poets and writers who sparked that love of the written word spoken in the lonely heart of the reader.

As a hiker takes shade under the canopy of a huge oak, 


listen to the music of those artists who stirred you to imagine images that you just had to write and make live in your own way.

Then, you shall write as a child writes ... 

not thinking of a result but thinking in terms of discovery as if you were hiking once again where the magic lives.

It is the Zen of writing: 

the creation takes place between your fingers and the keyboard, 

not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting.

The magic is there waiting for you. It will come if you but get out of its way and let it in.