Mark E. Mitchell's Blog, page 3

library jungle

I remember the scene from "Mary Poppins," where Bert has just received Jane, Michael and Mary Poppins on the roof. He points out to the sea of roofs, and he says, "look at it. A trackless jungle. Just waiting to be explored."
The other day, when I was in the library, I had the same thought. The stacks upon stacks of books, many of them filled with rca's,(really cool adventures) frightening things, happy things, sad things, thrilling things, amazing things and memorable things, are trackless jungles just begging to be explored. A book unread is full of potential energy, a book read can be full of kinetic energy. How can we resist opening the first page and finding out what hitherto unknown thing it has to offer us? How can we resist? How do we ever decide on which book or books we're going to check out from the library? How can we help but learn, grow or find delight.

Slurp and burp

That's the name of a restaurant my brother once had aspirations to establish. If I saw a place with that name, I think I would eat there.
But that also describes the feeling I have when I read a real page turning book. I am taking it in as fast as I can, not wanting it to end, but skimming over parts that don't seem to advance the story. I am just like dogs eating something they really like, almost swallowing it whole. (Of course, in that process, it would be impossible for them to not swallow a lot of air, so the burp afterward is inevitable)
I don't believe I have ever written a book that gripping. I don't even know if I have it in me. After having made that confession, the only thing I find comforting about is that the best books I've read were not page turners. They were books that have affected me all my life, they are books I love to quote, and to savor in my memory. Page turners most often are also forgetters. Still, they sell well...

An Itch I can't scratch

I remember watching people that could put one hand over their shoulder and the other hand behind their backs, and join their hands. Incredible flexibility, with an amazing side effect: They never needed a wall to scratch their backs!
So, I've made it a goal to do the same thing. So far, my two hands are about a foot apart. Every time I stretch, I am trying to get them closer. The way things are looking, I'm going to need a sharp wall to handle my itches for quite a while yet.
I've also made some writer's goals: I am going to add intensity, disappointment and betrayal into my stories, and try to hold them longer. I won't be an effective writer until I do it.
Maybe the two goals will be realized at the same time. Maybe not too, but if I have to choose one or the other, I guess I can live with using a wall...

I Gotta Learn to Grieve

I just learned something I already knew. I have always admitted I don't do conflict very well. I am, as my wife says, an insufferable optimist, and writing real opposition and evil into stories is very difficult for me.
And that is what separates the great from the good, or perhaps the good from the mediocre. I have a wonderful imagination, better than most, but I am average at best in keeping tension, in prolonging suspense. This makes for sappy writing, or conflict resolution before the reader is able to acknowledge it as feasible. (Thank you, Tara)
This is so true in my own life as well. Even in seasons and situations where I have every right and even obligation to grieve, I find some way to find joy, to discover the bright side, and thus I rob myself of the true opposition that would make me a much deeper person. It seems cowardly, and perhaps that is exactly what it is. I don't like to think of myself that way, but maybe it is true...

Reading is a form of hypnosis

In my work sometimes, I have the opportunity to use a little hypnosis on people, to help them overcome phobias, anxiety, panic attacks, obsessions, undesired habits, etc. With almost every person, they say something like, "I don't think I can be hypnotized."
This is how I usually reply: "Have you ever been so engrossed in reading a book, that you were living it, not aware of turning pages, not even aware of reading, just experiencing the story as it were happening to you?"
I can't really imagine any person that is a member of Goodreads answering that question with anything but a 'yes.' And not just one 'yes,' many, many 'yeses.' As many 'yeses' as ninety percent of the books you've read. (Maybe eighty if you've been unlucky in your choices)
Hypnosis is nothing more than applied concentration. And every single one of you is a great candidate for it. Got any bad habits you want to get rid of?

How do you say anything that isn't a cliche?

As I review the blog posts that get read, it seems that the most outrageous titles might attract attention. The trouble is, nowadays outrageousness is becoming quite commonplace, which by definition it cannot be. (A delicious paradox) Stated paradoxes can also be interesting, but again, in the desperation so many of us have to get read somehow, even those are common enough that we can find a couple dozen of them with just casual searching. Our words are used so often, it is tough to write anything without it sounding cliche. This is quite a dilemma. I despise cliches, even the ones that I use. But even if, in my effort to communicate without cliches, I came up with some valid neologisms, they would (if they caught on) quickly become cliche as everyone tried them out in their mouths. At first, they would seem clever, then everyone would realize the writing as emerging cliche, and there we are again.
Ah well. I suppose it would be an honor to father a host of cliches. When they're first spoken, they are not cliche. Only after everyone copies the first utterance of a new word or phrase does it be.
Whose cliches do we utter the most in society? Who has contributed the most to our repetoire? I don't know where to find that out, but if I do, I'll show everyone, then make goal to beat that person..

Apathy immunity

One book I had tremendous fun reading was "Jinx On A Terran Inheritance" by Brian Daley. In one particular scene, the main characters have joined in a funeral wake on another planet as professional mourners, hoping to earn a little money. In describing the misadventure, the author "struck gold," because I cannot read that particular scene without laughing as hard as I did the first time I read it. Other writers have been able to achieve that same sort of intensity with pathos, joy, sorrow, outrage and other emotions, so that those scenes are immune to apathy, even when they are reread and reread.
I don't have that big of a spark. It is almost there sometimes, during the times I am in the writing "zone," but nothing I have written has reached the level of apathy immunity.
What does it take? I even think I know, but it requires a sort of leap out into a nothingness I do not want to explore.
Wait a minute! I am an adventurer, and if I would be true to myself, I have to make that leap.
I choose to be true to myself. I'll see you on the other side...

Earl and I went to Mars

Those are the first words of the earliest story I can remember me writing. It was in the second grade, and I'm fairly certain my story had no loyalty to the known facts about Mars, or to the fairly reliable premise that all stories need a plot.
I do remember a little about Earl Glenn though. He was my best friend, and somewhat of a ladies' man. I remember one day watching while six girls, all of them cute enough to have it count, pinned him down and kissed him. I of course, watched filled with envy, wondering why some guys got all the luck.
But all was not lost. When the girls decided Earl had had enough, (I have no idea how they arrived at that decision) one of them, Pam Someone or other, said, to me, "Now it's your turn."
I had to make a token effort to run away, which I did, and they caught me, and they kissed me, and there, in second grade, I had a noteworthy experience, one that I have kept in my memory far better than the words of the first story I wrote.
(Incidentally, in case you haven't already realized it, Earl and I did not go to Mars. It was just made up, for the sake of literary license)

I fell in the garbage

I remember one time, I was unloading a truckload of junk, and we had the truck backed up, so it hung over a garbage pit about ten feet down. The item on top was a heavy table, and from the side, I wasn't able to pull it loose, so I got at the end of it and started pulling. The good news was, I was successful in freeing the table from the back of my truck. The bad news was, when I got it free, I not only had nothing holding me up, I had a heavy table following me down into the garbage pit. The good news was, the garbage below me was reasonably soft. The more good news was, (and I'm not even sure people that do things that stupid have any right to divine protection) by the grace of heaven, the table missed me. I had the wind knocked out of me, but as soon as I got it back, I told my son, who was watching with some concern, that I never wanted him to do anything like that. So far, he hasn't.
What a painful analogy of life this is! How often do we seek so single mindedly to finish a task, that we do not take into account the pits over which we travel and into which we will fall if we complete the task? Fortunately for us, most of the time, some little warning buzzer inside our soul goes off, telling us the peril of what we are about to do. The only question is, do we have the spiritual ears to hear, the humility to hearken and the meekness to admit we were wrong? If we want to stay out of the garbage, we must.

Alternate usage for books

Sometimes, people get a painful lump on the back of their hand or at the place where the wrist joins the hand. It is called a Bible cyst, but it could just as well be called a dictionary cyst or any heavy book cyst. The nickname comes from the fact that this cyst can be cured if someone has the nerve to hit themselves square on the cyst with a book as heavy as an old family Bible. The sac of the cyst will shatter, and it will be cured.
So far, I've only had one brave soul that tried it. Magic. No more painful cyst. (In that case, I think we used an old boring textbook which might have seen its first good usage that day)
Generally, however, I would recommend the traditional usage of books: exploring their inner contents and finding joy in the universes of marvel inside...