A Universal Story Plot (Quotes)

In Musings and Meditations, Robert Silverberg describes “the essential story themes that underlie nearly all fiction:”

A sympathetic and engaging character(or an unsympathetic one who is engaging nevertheless), faced with some immensely difficult problem that it is necessary for him to solve, makes a series of attempts to overcome the problem, frequently encountering challenging sub-problems and undergoing considerable hardship and anguish, and eventually, at the darkest moment of all, calls on some insight that was not accessible to him at the beginning of he story and either succeeds in his efforts or fails in a dramatically interesting and revelatory way, thereby arriving at new knowledge of some significant kind.

Later in the book, Silverberg continues on this theme:

Joseph Campbell, in his classic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, showed how all tales of heroic struggle fulfill the terms of what he called the “monomyth,” the basic story of stories: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

The Creative Person (Quotes)

I am finding the book Making a Living Without a Job by Barbara J. Winters very inspiring. Below are two quotes about creativity from her book:

The creative person takes the material at hand and begins to see it in a new way, to make connections and observations that others miss. The creative person looks for inspiration rather than waiting for it to magically appear.

Like everyone else, you will have ideas that are marvelous, some that are mediocre, others that are ahead of their time, and still others that are worthless. How do you know which are which? The truth is, you may be the worst judge of your own creativity; therefore, it’s up to you to keep acting on your ideas and see what happens when you do.

New Year’s Resolutions (Quote)

I found this quote in Words that Matter which is taken from Oprah Magazine.

Instead of waking up New Year’s morning and saying, “I’m going to do X now,” then berating yourself a month later when that resolution didn’t work, remember: You’re doing nothing less than rewiring your brain. Approach change as if you’re learning a new language or new instrument. Obviously, you’re not going to be fluent or play symphonies instantly; you’ll need constant focus and practice.

Rebecca Skloot

Solve the F@#*% Problem, Please

Has the United States become a country of judgers and critics, rather than a nation of problem solvers? When James Cameron offered to help BP control the oil spill in the gulf, many, many, many people left negative comments on the internet. What I didn’t see were comments of curiosity, surprise, or even delight. I would have liked to see a collective light bulb go on across the country. A good director knows how to solve problems, particularly the hard ones. He knows how to find and enlist experts who can contribute to his project. He has experience with not taking no for an answer, but rather challenging people to go beyond their current level of what they think is possible. He knows how to think outside the box and draw from diverse disciplines. He knows that any great project is a collaboration, not the work of one person or one company. This is the type of thinking that is needed to solve the oil spill problem quickly and with as few long term problems as possible. I am not talking about James Cameron the man as much as the way of looking at a problem that he represents. That is what we need.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if twenty years from now a little girl told her teacher, “we are called the ‘United States’ because we are really, really good at solving problems together?” Wouldn’t it be better if it were true, if the US was know for its problem solving expertise the world over?

Failing and Succeeding

I was brought up on a steady diet of “Don’t make mistakes,” “Don’t fail,” “Don’t do anything foolish.”

Seth Godin writes in his December 21st 2009 blog entry: “Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants--we all fail far more than we succeed. We fail at closing a sale or playing a note. .… But we succeed far more often than people who have no ideas at all.”

A similar discussion between Mary and Lurt takes place in Humans, by Robert J. Sawyer, a story about discovering a parallel universe where Neanderthals are the “human” species. Mary, a human as we know it, falls in love with Ponter, a Neanderthal.

…when your life is ending, will you regret not having tried to make a relationship with Ponter work? .... Listen carefully to my question, friend Mare. I am not asking if you would regret not pursuing this relationship if it were to succeed. I am asking whether you would regret not pursuing it even if it fails.

Lurt goes on to tell about trying to become a fiction writer and failing at it.

But I do not regret having tried and failed at fiction writing. Of course, I would have preferred to succeed, but on my deathbed I knew I would be more sad if I had never tried, never have tested to see if I might succeed at it, than I would be had I tried and failed.

Changing my thinking about success and failure has been like trying to turn around a team of a dozen Clydesdales. I am beginning to ask myself the question, “How can I increase my probability of succeeding?” Slowly, I am finding that I am changing my everyday behaviors.