Over the past year, I took a TV writing course as a part of my MFA in Creative Writing through the University of British Columbia. During that course, we studied the art of writing teleplays, and during the course we produced a spec script, and an original pilot spec. A spec script is a TV writer's calling card, as it is what shows the agents and TV execs that you can actually write, and write well. A spec is a script is also based on an existing television show, and the reason for this is that if you can show that you have captured the tone and feel of a show that is not yours, then you can theoretically write for any show.
I don't believe I'll ever be a TV writer, as much as I'd like to be, because family commitments prevent me from trying to climb that ladder. But still, I found I enjoyed writing this form.
What follows is not fan fiction, I want to be clear about that, but is my own original spec script for the show Monk.
INT. SUNNYLAND RETREAT NIGHT
KEN is in his room, madly scribbling in his journal. He is VISIBLY AGITATED, muttering to himself, and sweating. He is sitting at a desk, with one lamp on, and the rest of the room is dark. He hears the SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS near his door, and the jangle of keys in the lock. He rips the page he had been writing on out of his journal, rushes over to the dresser, pushes against it, and slips the page under. The sound of a creak is heard as the door opens, and he whips around, trips and falls on the floor only to see TWO SHADOWS APPEAR. The shadows are still, inches away from Ken's face, now fully bathed in the light from the hall. Ken LOOKS UP.
VOICE (O.S.)
I hear you've become quite the detective.
KEN is motionless with fear. His voice quavers as he speaks.
KEN
I know what you did. I know what you're doing.
A SHADOW steps forward menacingly.
VOICE (O.S.)
And what do you think you know?
KEN
You won't get away with it.
The light illuminating Ken's face is replaced by shadow.
VOICE (O.S.)
And who are you going to tell? Where are you going to go?
KEN starts shaking. His voice is almost a whisper.
KEN
Please. I'm sorry. I won't tell.
VOICE (O.S.)
That's right. You won't.
FADE TO BLACK
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Internal Dialogue
Your fingertips curl around
the long dark threads of spun
satin of impenetrable black
the one finger spins this hair
absently innocently
when fingers grasp greedy and vicious
forcing his head down closer inside
an insistent command unspoken he finds
impossible to belay
his head held fast in thrall, locked
in a vise like grip
that continues tightening slowly
inexorably
With a soft voice experienced words
experienced hands your objections he had
pushed aside overruled in the court of your
darkest self where denials start as no
change and end in
Yes
escaping your lips in a hoarse rush
as fingertips brush lightly against
and again travelling upwards
and down with a will then away
purposefully moving
creating an aching separation
you pine longing after but a
moment tensing, wishing
silently pleading for a
return to that feather’s brush
so delicate
powerful
so fully intended for one purpose
amasterful pattern repeated
seemingly endlessly
tortuously holding back at
just that moment when a slight shift away
brings a protesting breath
anguished
languishing
in a moment eternal
Refusing to be a toy to be
plucked, played at another’s whim
your fist closes and pulls
making
forcing him
to act upon your whim to act
as any obedient to your will should
yet
after spasms rippling through and
unconscious screams of that final
release
you realize that though locked in
held
unable to move
your mastery is only a pretense
when you then let go
an unexplainable euphoria
envelops you as you
close your eyes finally
giving in to your
darkest self
the long dark threads of spun
satin of impenetrable black
the one finger spins this hair
absently innocently
when fingers grasp greedy and vicious
forcing his head down closer inside
an insistent command unspoken he finds
impossible to belay
his head held fast in thrall, locked
in a vise like grip
that continues tightening slowly
inexorably
With a soft voice experienced words
experienced hands your objections he had
pushed aside overruled in the court of your
darkest self where denials start as no
change and end in
Yes
escaping your lips in a hoarse rush
as fingertips brush lightly against
and again travelling upwards
and down with a will then away
purposefully moving
creating an aching separation
you pine longing after but a
moment tensing, wishing
silently pleading for a
return to that feather’s brush
so delicate
powerful
so fully intended for one purpose
amasterful pattern repeated
seemingly endlessly
tortuously holding back at
just that moment when a slight shift away
brings a protesting breath
anguished
languishing
in a moment eternal
Refusing to be a toy to be
plucked, played at another’s whim
your fist closes and pulls
making
forcing him
to act upon your whim to act
as any obedient to your will should
yet
after spasms rippling through and
unconscious screams of that final
release
you realize that though locked in
held
unable to move
your mastery is only a pretense
when you then let go
an unexplainable euphoria
envelops you as you
close your eyes finally
giving in to your
darkest self
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Americanised Cricket
Roger Bate, in The American, came out with an interesting argument regarding the comparative similarities between baseball and cricket, and how the differences in the game signify differences in national character.
As the sub-title in the article says, says "Cricket and baseball are twin brothers, separated at birth." If so, they've long been twins of the Danny Devito / Arnold Schwarzenegger sort, as the nature of the games, though similar in some respects, were as different as Euchre and Bridge.
But, I'd argue, they've been re-united at long last, with age ironing out the differences. I'd also argue that Roger Bate was more than a bit off the mark about how differences in the game signified differences in national character.
For cricket purists, the one and only form of the game is test cricket, where matches can span up to five days, and where often little happens hour after hour as cautious batsmen meet cautious bowlers, both with little incentive to take a chance, act bravely but rashly, or heroically.
Test cricket was a game well suited to the nature of upper class British society, a group able to while away the hours and days in idle or not idle amusement. But for the vast majority of cricket lovers, kids, teens, and adults who played the game then and now, there was never any question of spending five days for a test match. No, they played limited overs cricket. 10 overs per side, fifteen, twenty, whatever. But there almost always would be a some sort of limitation. Very few people then and now had or have wide open schedules.
Which all means that Bate has it a bit wrong. Cricket players played cricket the way baseball players played baseball. The games were shorter, and then people got on to their business.
Cricket playing countries aren't like Canada, where during the winter a community will spend a week at a bonspiel simply because there is little else to do on account of the ice and snow. Most cricket playing countries have very verdant climates, and there is almost never a lack of the need for a pair of hands to help out at something or other.
So cricket, as it was played in the back lots and on the street, never really resembled the way the game was presented on the international level. The way the majority play a game is the way a game "is." Street hockey looks a lot like ice hockey, just as pick-up basketball looks a lot like your average NBA game (minus the size and skill). Out of all the professional sports, only cricket, in it's official form, differs so greatly from the actual sport the players know and love.
cricket, then, rather than representing the "true" or "pure" form of cricket, has always ever been a bastardized form of the game. The real game has only really started being played recently, internationally, and that game is known as 20/20 cricket. That is, limited overs, a game started and finished in a couple of hours, just like a baseball game. And the result of this change is stadiums filled with people, billions of dollars being pumped into the sport, and an unprecedented global growth in recognition.
Don't agree with me? Just take a look at the half empty stands during the Ashes, the most prestigious cricket event in the world, and compare that with the screaming throngs during a normal IPL match, or even during the recent 20/20 World Cup in England.
As the sub-title in the article says, says "Cricket and baseball are twin brothers, separated at birth." If so, they've long been twins of the Danny Devito / Arnold Schwarzenegger sort, as the nature of the games, though similar in some respects, were as different as Euchre and Bridge.
But, I'd argue, they've been re-united at long last, with age ironing out the differences. I'd also argue that Roger Bate was more than a bit off the mark about how differences in the game signified differences in national character.
For cricket purists, the one and only form of the game is test cricket, where matches can span up to five days, and where often little happens hour after hour as cautious batsmen meet cautious bowlers, both with little incentive to take a chance, act bravely but rashly, or heroically.
Test cricket was a game well suited to the nature of upper class British society, a group able to while away the hours and days in idle or not idle amusement. But for the vast majority of cricket lovers, kids, teens, and adults who played the game then and now, there was never any question of spending five days for a test match. No, they played limited overs cricket. 10 overs per side, fifteen, twenty, whatever. But there almost always would be a some sort of limitation. Very few people then and now had or have wide open schedules.
Which all means that Bate has it a bit wrong. Cricket players played cricket the way baseball players played baseball. The games were shorter, and then people got on to their business.
Cricket playing countries aren't like Canada, where during the winter a community will spend a week at a bonspiel simply because there is little else to do on account of the ice and snow. Most cricket playing countries have very verdant climates, and there is almost never a lack of the need for a pair of hands to help out at something or other.
So cricket, as it was played in the back lots and on the street, never really resembled the way the game was presented on the international level. The way the majority play a game is the way a game "is." Street hockey looks a lot like ice hockey, just as pick-up basketball looks a lot like your average NBA game (minus the size and skill). Out of all the professional sports, only cricket, in it's official form, differs so greatly from the actual sport the players know and love.
cricket, then, rather than representing the "true" or "pure" form of cricket, has always ever been a bastardized form of the game. The real game has only really started being played recently, internationally, and that game is known as 20/20 cricket. That is, limited overs, a game started and finished in a couple of hours, just like a baseball game. And the result of this change is stadiums filled with people, billions of dollars being pumped into the sport, and an unprecedented global growth in recognition.
Don't agree with me? Just take a look at the half empty stands during the Ashes, the most prestigious cricket event in the world, and compare that with the screaming throngs during a normal IPL match, or even during the recent 20/20 World Cup in England.
Question & Answer
He sat seriously,
talking about
unhappiness,
disappointment,
confusion.
Happiness is a wind that just passes by.
You can't grab it, you know,
it just slips through your fingers.
Time and again,
he said,
it's a puzzle
with no answer.
How do you just make all this stuff
just go away? He asked.
In reply she cartwheeled.
He tried, honestly
but couldn't stop
from laughing
as he toppled to the ground.
talking about
unhappiness,
disappointment,
confusion.
Happiness is a wind that just passes by.
You can't grab it, you know,
it just slips through your fingers.
Time and again,
he said,
it's a puzzle
with no answer.
How do you just make all this stuff
just go away? He asked.
In reply she cartwheeled.
He tried, honestly
but couldn't stop
from laughing
as he toppled to the ground.
Friday, July 3, 2009
It's Better to Be a Hack
Whither the writer? That is, what should a writer do? With the market shrinking by leaps and bounds, and reading seemingly going the way of the General Motors car, all doesn't appear to be going well for our literati these days.
I had a few thoughts on this issue, but first I thought I'd mention that I recently came across an old column by Cory Doctorow that says it better than I can. Still, though it's been done better, I've got to give it my try.
Why Should Writers 'Give it Away'?
The idea that we should give something so personal, so valuable away for free is anathema to the spirit of every mama-san ever to drive off young men with a broomstick when they came sniffing around the garden. In almost every other endeavor in life, giving 'it' away for free, be it your labour, your time, or your virginity, has never been seen as the most astute business move. So why is it different with writing?
The basic notion is that you, the writer, are carrying on a conversation with your readers. You can't be a success if no one listens. Meaning that the biggest threat to any writer is not whether someone might steal your work, it is nobody knowing about your work at all. Obscurity is what should be feared.
You know, I think the publishing industry needs a Maple Music type company. Maple Music basically stepped in and became the distributor for independent musicians and groups in Canada, and has, since its inception, gone on to become one of the major players in Canadian music, benefiting the artists enormously. They mostly distribute online, saving in production and distribution costs, with an on demand inventory system, and split the proceeds with the artists themselves. I think it's a 50-50 split, actually.
Why can't we do that as writers? Honestly, when you take a hardcover book, sold at $40, and subtract the cost of materials, distribution, shelf space, and marketing, and the cut to the publisher, what is left for the author? $1, $2 maybe? Imagine getting $5 for every digital copy someone purchased? Sell a few thousand, and that's a year's salary. That's a mortgage paid, and student loan debt serviced. Amazon and others sell the same books for $10, and guess how much of that is pure profit?
All those marginal writers who subsist on meagre earnings could suddenly increase their earnings very substantially this way.
Why is it that there needs to be an agent - publisher - editor - marketer - pr chain for books? If agents are the gatekeepers, selecting for quality, why can't they be the publishers also, or the editors, marketers, and PR people all in one package? The technology is there to radically alter the business, to make it cost efficient, and more effective.
I'm telling, you there's a massive market there waiting for somebody build the model and exploit.
It is stuff to think about especially with news out that Canadian publishing has not only hit hard times, but as the Calgary Herald says (via Bookninja)
Whither CanLit? Or should that be “wither CanLit”? Seems like the latter, after a new Harris/Decima poll came out showing that 50 per cent of Canadians surveyed do not know the name of any Canadian authors, and of those who do, only four were mentioned by more than four per cent of them.
And there is a good reason why this is happening.
Who are these writers? Where are they? For the average person, CanLit seems remote because it is remote. Authors take too long in between books. Then, beyond the book tour and a few readings, how much connection is there really with the readership?
Kids authors get a following. Murder/Mystery authors get a following. Science Fiction & Fantasy authors get a following. Even Oprah gets a following...
How does Oprah fit into this? Well, have you ever wondered why Oprah Book Club authors sell a gazillion copies? Not because everyone realized that author X is actually really good. Nope. They buy the books because Oprah says they are good, and they care about Oprah. She converses with them every day on television, and every month in her magazine. She cares about them, and they care about her, and they care about the things she says they should care about. Thus the books that she features are forevermore placed in a marketable genre. They become Oprah books, and they sell massively to a massive Oprah audience.
I think CanLit needs to become a real genre. When I go into the bookstore, there is "literature" which takes up most of the space, with gads of books on the shelves, and maybe one or two people shuffling past on the way to the tiny cramped little genre shelves that are packed with people shifting around each other to look at the meagre sampling on offer.
There is no equivalent "literature" section for movies. If a film is independent or foreign, it is marketed as such and directed at a crowd who specifically like independent or foreign films. Those are genres, every bit as much as a genre as horror, romantic comedy, or action. They reach audiences because an audience has been created that is receptive to films created for them
But when it comes to CanLit, what do you get? You don't know. The book could be a family drama, it could be about a murder, or a mother's quest to know her son. Who knows. There is no targeted audience, so when the reader looks at the "literature" shelf, there is no expectation, and no expectation, overall, is a bad thing.
Think about it. When you turn on the TV, or go to the cinema, you ask whoever you are with what they "feel" like seeing. If you go alone, you'll think about what you "feel" like seeing. Then you will choose the film that will fit that feeling. You will know the genre of the film, and thus have an expectation about what you will encounter. But with CanLit, is there an expectation? No. It's a mixed bag, and while you might find a gem, it's often a better bet to play it safe and get the latest James Patterson on the shelf.
In order to thrive, CanLit authors need to become regular genre writers. A few years back I spent some time with Robert J Sawyer at his penthouse condo in Mississauga. I was there to interview him, and while I was there, I got to see his massive, gold plated Hugo Award. It was like I was touching the Holy Grail. Well Robert has long had a site filled with freebies for his audience, and he has built up his readership by being there, on the ground at signings, at Word on the Street, at conventions, by writing on blogs, publishing magazines, and beating the war drum for his own books. One of his novels, Flashback, was optioned and is being filmed for ABC as a pilot for a series. His career has been incredibly successful, and while he will never hit J.K. Rowling levels of wealth, he won't ever be worrying about needing a day job for the rest of his life.
As Cory Doctorow says, "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet." And why do readers care? Because they know the writers, they speak to them, see them at conventions, read their blogs, go to their writing workshops, etc, etc.
I think CanLit writers need to take page from the the genre hacks.
I had a few thoughts on this issue, but first I thought I'd mention that I recently came across an old column by Cory Doctorow that says it better than I can. Still, though it's been done better, I've got to give it my try.
Why Should Writers 'Give it Away'?
The idea that we should give something so personal, so valuable away for free is anathema to the spirit of every mama-san ever to drive off young men with a broomstick when they came sniffing around the garden. In almost every other endeavor in life, giving 'it' away for free, be it your labour, your time, or your virginity, has never been seen as the most astute business move. So why is it different with writing?
The basic notion is that you, the writer, are carrying on a conversation with your readers. You can't be a success if no one listens. Meaning that the biggest threat to any writer is not whether someone might steal your work, it is nobody knowing about your work at all. Obscurity is what should be feared.
You know, I think the publishing industry needs a Maple Music type company. Maple Music basically stepped in and became the distributor for independent musicians and groups in Canada, and has, since its inception, gone on to become one of the major players in Canadian music, benefiting the artists enormously. They mostly distribute online, saving in production and distribution costs, with an on demand inventory system, and split the proceeds with the artists themselves. I think it's a 50-50 split, actually.
Why can't we do that as writers? Honestly, when you take a hardcover book, sold at $40, and subtract the cost of materials, distribution, shelf space, and marketing, and the cut to the publisher, what is left for the author? $1, $2 maybe? Imagine getting $5 for every digital copy someone purchased? Sell a few thousand, and that's a year's salary. That's a mortgage paid, and student loan debt serviced. Amazon and others sell the same books for $10, and guess how much of that is pure profit?
All those marginal writers who subsist on meagre earnings could suddenly increase their earnings very substantially this way.
Why is it that there needs to be an agent - publisher - editor - marketer - pr chain for books? If agents are the gatekeepers, selecting for quality, why can't they be the publishers also, or the editors, marketers, and PR people all in one package? The technology is there to radically alter the business, to make it cost efficient, and more effective.
I'm telling, you there's a massive market there waiting for somebody build the model and exploit.
It is stuff to think about especially with news out that Canadian publishing has not only hit hard times, but as the Calgary Herald says (via Bookninja)
Whither CanLit? Or should that be “wither CanLit”? Seems like the latter, after a new Harris/Decima poll came out showing that 50 per cent of Canadians surveyed do not know the name of any Canadian authors, and of those who do, only four were mentioned by more than four per cent of them.
And there is a good reason why this is happening.
Who are these writers? Where are they? For the average person, CanLit seems remote because it is remote. Authors take too long in between books. Then, beyond the book tour and a few readings, how much connection is there really with the readership?
Kids authors get a following. Murder/Mystery authors get a following. Science Fiction & Fantasy authors get a following. Even Oprah gets a following...
How does Oprah fit into this? Well, have you ever wondered why Oprah Book Club authors sell a gazillion copies? Not because everyone realized that author X is actually really good. Nope. They buy the books because Oprah says they are good, and they care about Oprah. She converses with them every day on television, and every month in her magazine. She cares about them, and they care about her, and they care about the things she says they should care about. Thus the books that she features are forevermore placed in a marketable genre. They become Oprah books, and they sell massively to a massive Oprah audience.
I think CanLit needs to become a real genre. When I go into the bookstore, there is "literature" which takes up most of the space, with gads of books on the shelves, and maybe one or two people shuffling past on the way to the tiny cramped little genre shelves that are packed with people shifting around each other to look at the meagre sampling on offer.
There is no equivalent "literature" section for movies. If a film is independent or foreign, it is marketed as such and directed at a crowd who specifically like independent or foreign films. Those are genres, every bit as much as a genre as horror, romantic comedy, or action. They reach audiences because an audience has been created that is receptive to films created for them
But when it comes to CanLit, what do you get? You don't know. The book could be a family drama, it could be about a murder, or a mother's quest to know her son. Who knows. There is no targeted audience, so when the reader looks at the "literature" shelf, there is no expectation, and no expectation, overall, is a bad thing.
Think about it. When you turn on the TV, or go to the cinema, you ask whoever you are with what they "feel" like seeing. If you go alone, you'll think about what you "feel" like seeing. Then you will choose the film that will fit that feeling. You will know the genre of the film, and thus have an expectation about what you will encounter. But with CanLit, is there an expectation? No. It's a mixed bag, and while you might find a gem, it's often a better bet to play it safe and get the latest James Patterson on the shelf.
In order to thrive, CanLit authors need to become regular genre writers. A few years back I spent some time with Robert J Sawyer at his penthouse condo in Mississauga. I was there to interview him, and while I was there, I got to see his massive, gold plated Hugo Award. It was like I was touching the Holy Grail. Well Robert has long had a site filled with freebies for his audience, and he has built up his readership by being there, on the ground at signings, at Word on the Street, at conventions, by writing on blogs, publishing magazines, and beating the war drum for his own books. One of his novels, Flashback, was optioned and is being filmed for ABC as a pilot for a series. His career has been incredibly successful, and while he will never hit J.K. Rowling levels of wealth, he won't ever be worrying about needing a day job for the rest of his life.
As Cory Doctorow says, "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet." And why do readers care? Because they know the writers, they speak to them, see them at conventions, read their blogs, go to their writing workshops, etc, etc.
I think CanLit writers need to take page from the the genre hacks.
Parts of Speech
(Exclamation) off!, you (verb gerund) mother(noun)
What are you (adverb gerund ) talking about?
I don't care what that (adjective gerund) (proper noun) says.
(Pronoun)nut may think that McDonald's means
fine (adjective gerund) dining
but let me tell you this once,
(conjunction) once only.
If you take me to that (adjective gerund) place,
then I am getting right the (preposition) out of here.
And you can take a flying (verb)
(Adjective)head.
What are you (adverb gerund ) talking about?
I don't care what that (adjective gerund) (proper noun) says.
(Pronoun)nut may think that McDonald's means
fine (adjective gerund) dining
but let me tell you this once,
(conjunction) once only.
If you take me to that (adjective gerund) place,
then I am getting right the (preposition) out of here.
And you can take a flying (verb)
(Adjective)head.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Getting All A-Twitter
Twitter is a dichotomy. On the one hand it is the most vapid, pointless extrapolation of the useless small talk paradigm ever put into concrete form. On the other hand, it is the most powerful collaboration tool, and passive information retrieval system ever devised.
Say wha?
Simply put, if you are on your computer or your mobile phone, whatever device, you can tap out a small message of up to 140 characters and send it. That is your "Tweet." Your Tweet goes out there into the world, and finds it's place on your little online Tweet page. But, it can also go elsewhere.
Say you have a circle of friends who like to keep in touch or want to know what's up with you, they can follow you on Facebook by adding you as a friend, and/or they can follow you on Twitter. If they choose the latter, then every time you send a Tweet out into the universe, it will pop up on their computer, or phone, or whatever they use, letting them read what you have said.
Basically you broadcast some trivial thought out to the universe, and certain people who are tuned into that station will hear it.
"I just had some great coffee!"
"Gosh I hate being late to work!"
"These jeans make me look fat."
"Our plane is crashing into the Hudson river!...Wait. Sorry, False alarm. Sweet landing, though."
You get the idea.
So what's the big deal? It all sounds so stupid, really. Like, who would care to tap into the stream of consciousness of gads of people? Well, young people for one. Young people really love it, just as they love SMS. In some countries, Japan for instance, the ratio of SMSs to actual calls is higher than 1000:1. It's like passing notes in class, and eternal activity for youth.
But then, if that is what it is, why would adults, or the Guardian (please note the exclusion from the latter group) take this stuff seriously?
Because of the dichotomous nature of the service, and the sudden, overwhelming ubiquity of data rich portable devices like the iPhone, the Blackberry, and Palm's new Treo. Jeez, even the new Nintendo DSi can get in on this action.
On the part of the Guardian, it is an incredibly cheap and effective way of driving up page views. A small tweet with a clever headline and link can drive a lot of traffic to a specific page. On the reader's part, it's like a mobile news wire, so that you get word of a new story the instant it is up. On the part of the newspaper, they can sell ad space linked with stories carried out by this wire at a premium price since the consumer data being returned is so rich. Think about it like a marketer... say you want adults between 30 - 49 earning $75K+. How do you know those people are reading the Guardian (They're not...but this is just for pretend purposes here)? Normally you don't, since dead tree media doesn't tell any tales. Even a home IP won't give them much because there is no identifying demographic information of much use. But, since Twitter is optimized for mobile media usage, people who click on a link in a Tweet to go to a story, will leave behind a very remarkable footprint. First and foremost, The Guardian will be able to tell what type of device was used, and barring that, what OS or browser, which works out to the same thing. Did 60% of the page views come from Blackberries? Well, the correlation between Blackberries and high income earners is very high, so the Guardian can go to the advertisers and jack up ad rates for this service, with this very specific, concrete demographic detail.
But what about for adults?
Here, here is where Twitter gets good. And I mean, really good.
I'm going to tell a little story here. It's a true story, but a longish one. I just wanted to give fair warning...
I was at a conference two weeks ago attending a presentation on the educational uses of Twitter in tertiary institutes. Nice presenter, decent slides, but what she had stumbled upon just blew my mind.
I say stumbled upon because while the presenter was in EdTech, she had only learned of Twitter half a year earlier. But the incredible impact it had had on her teaching practice and professional development was extraordinary.
The way she put it was thus...
With Facebook, you connect with people you know. With Twitter, you connect with people you want to know.
Think about that for a moment. Imagine being that proverbial fly on the wall, and tapping into Einstein's thoughts? Or Hemingway's? Honestly...what would you give for that?
With Twitter this is possible because it's a stream of consciousness service. It's useful only for short messages, and so easy to use anyone can use it almost anywhere. Following someone's Twitter feed is almost like tapping into their stream of consciousness.
There are amazingly brilliant people out there that you or I will never be close to, will never have a chance to get to know, and would never be able to stand next to for long enough to learn the tiniest fraction about what they think. But with Twitter, you can.
This presenter had identified 50 or more colleagues or authorities in the same field who were at the top of their form. They did stellar work, and were well respected, for good reason. Also, they were all on Twitter. So instead of going to a yearly conference to learn the new and amazing things these scholars dug up, she attended a virtual conference every day. A Tweet would pop up on something mind blowing, and would be incorporated into the next day's lesson plan. What's more, by sending a direct message to the poster of a particular Tweet, she was often able to arrange for an impromptu video conference (via Skype) where the researcher could expand on their finding for her class.
Using this paradigm, she was able to transform her whole program, and make it effective in a way that had never happened before. At first she set her graduate students into research groups using Twitter as their key collaborative tool. But it also became the key to getting them to write. To understand this, I'll give a little background.
Her students are from an area where students do not learn how to write in their own language. They learn grammar, sure, and the mechanics of writing, but not "how" to write. That is, in the Arabic world, writing isn't something students really do. They never write any essays, book reports, or what have you, because that has never been a part of the educational model here. In English class they are expected to write, but with no experience at it whatsoever, in their native tongue, attempts at it in a second language are almost always very poor. I face it every day with my students who had never written anything longer than 100 words before going to high school. The presenter I met faced the same problem, and just was not able to drag any substantive writing out of her students. 3000 words? Forget. Even 500? Not a chance! They just wouldn't do it, and school authorities would back the students up on that. So what to do?
It was obvious to her that her students did write, and wrote a heck of a great deal. In fact, her students, as mine are, are inveterate communicators. They are forever posting on bulletin boards, sending IMs, SMSs, emails, and more. Via writing, they communicate more, I daresay, than any generation in human history. But they don't think of it as writing. This is why Twitter was the key.
A limit of 140 characters is not much. Two sentences, three max. She got her students to buy into posting messages to a group Tweet, and responding to posts. As the project wore on, from what she said, it sounded like these students had tapped more words through that one collaboration than at any other point in their career. They were posting gads of messages each day. Back and forth. Posting, commenting on posts, commenting on comments. Every time someone found an interesting link, they posted it, which set off a flurry of other Tweets as the group looked into the information.
The experiment succeeded beyond any of her expectations.
Which leaves us back at the beginning of this post.
Like with Xerox or the VCR, there are good uses and bad uses. Twitter can be trite, but it can also be transformative. Part of the hype around Twitter right now is that many have sensed just how powerful this tool could be. As newspapers die, and media models crumble, there is a mad scramble for the next model, whatever will arise out of the ashes, and Twitter is in very good shape to make a run at that. During the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the world learned through Twitter long before Reuters got wind of it. When that plane went down on the Hudson, word of it was on Twitter even before anyone walking by as it was happening had thought to take notice. Major news wires have reacted by hiring staff who only monitor Twitter, and pick off breaking stories from there.
For writers , I would say that Twitter is a tool we can all use. Most of us share thoughts, findings, and ask questions of each other here, in the spirit of true colleagues. When we graduate, that will be over for us, but it doesn't have to be. The ability to collaborate with talented people in your field, who you respect and admire, is a precious and valuable thing. Even just to be able to get glimpses of what they are thinking and doing can be informative or inspirational. I've learned a great deal in the short time I've been allowed to frequent these boards, and I am sure that in the next few years as I stretch my time in the program to the allowable limit (you know...budget constraints), I will continue to do so. But hopefully, using some other method like Twitter or what replaces it, I'll be able to continue to do so.
Say wha?
Simply put, if you are on your computer or your mobile phone, whatever device, you can tap out a small message of up to 140 characters and send it. That is your "Tweet." Your Tweet goes out there into the world, and finds it's place on your little online Tweet page. But, it can also go elsewhere.
Say you have a circle of friends who like to keep in touch or want to know what's up with you, they can follow you on Facebook by adding you as a friend, and/or they can follow you on Twitter. If they choose the latter, then every time you send a Tweet out into the universe, it will pop up on their computer, or phone, or whatever they use, letting them read what you have said.
Basically you broadcast some trivial thought out to the universe, and certain people who are tuned into that station will hear it.
"I just had some great coffee!"
"Gosh I hate being late to work!"
"These jeans make me look fat."
"Our plane is crashing into the Hudson river!...Wait. Sorry, False alarm. Sweet landing, though."
You get the idea.
So what's the big deal? It all sounds so stupid, really. Like, who would care to tap into the stream of consciousness of gads of people? Well, young people for one. Young people really love it, just as they love SMS. In some countries, Japan for instance, the ratio of SMSs to actual calls is higher than 1000:1. It's like passing notes in class, and eternal activity for youth.
But then, if that is what it is, why would adults, or the Guardian (please note the exclusion from the latter group) take this stuff seriously?
Because of the dichotomous nature of the service, and the sudden, overwhelming ubiquity of data rich portable devices like the iPhone, the Blackberry, and Palm's new Treo. Jeez, even the new Nintendo DSi can get in on this action.
On the part of the Guardian, it is an incredibly cheap and effective way of driving up page views. A small tweet with a clever headline and link can drive a lot of traffic to a specific page. On the reader's part, it's like a mobile news wire, so that you get word of a new story the instant it is up. On the part of the newspaper, they can sell ad space linked with stories carried out by this wire at a premium price since the consumer data being returned is so rich. Think about it like a marketer... say you want adults between 30 - 49 earning $75K+. How do you know those people are reading the Guardian (They're not...but this is just for pretend purposes here)? Normally you don't, since dead tree media doesn't tell any tales. Even a home IP won't give them much because there is no identifying demographic information of much use. But, since Twitter is optimized for mobile media usage, people who click on a link in a Tweet to go to a story, will leave behind a very remarkable footprint. First and foremost, The Guardian will be able to tell what type of device was used, and barring that, what OS or browser, which works out to the same thing. Did 60% of the page views come from Blackberries? Well, the correlation between Blackberries and high income earners is very high, so the Guardian can go to the advertisers and jack up ad rates for this service, with this very specific, concrete demographic detail.
But what about for adults?
Here, here is where Twitter gets good. And I mean, really good.
I'm going to tell a little story here. It's a true story, but a longish one. I just wanted to give fair warning...
I was at a conference two weeks ago attending a presentation on the educational uses of Twitter in tertiary institutes. Nice presenter, decent slides, but what she had stumbled upon just blew my mind.
I say stumbled upon because while the presenter was in EdTech, she had only learned of Twitter half a year earlier. But the incredible impact it had had on her teaching practice and professional development was extraordinary.
The way she put it was thus...
With Facebook, you connect with people you know. With Twitter, you connect with people you want to know.
Think about that for a moment. Imagine being that proverbial fly on the wall, and tapping into Einstein's thoughts? Or Hemingway's? Honestly...what would you give for that?
With Twitter this is possible because it's a stream of consciousness service. It's useful only for short messages, and so easy to use anyone can use it almost anywhere. Following someone's Twitter feed is almost like tapping into their stream of consciousness.
There are amazingly brilliant people out there that you or I will never be close to, will never have a chance to get to know, and would never be able to stand next to for long enough to learn the tiniest fraction about what they think. But with Twitter, you can.
This presenter had identified 50 or more colleagues or authorities in the same field who were at the top of their form. They did stellar work, and were well respected, for good reason. Also, they were all on Twitter. So instead of going to a yearly conference to learn the new and amazing things these scholars dug up, she attended a virtual conference every day. A Tweet would pop up on something mind blowing, and would be incorporated into the next day's lesson plan. What's more, by sending a direct message to the poster of a particular Tweet, she was often able to arrange for an impromptu video conference (via Skype) where the researcher could expand on their finding for her class.
Using this paradigm, she was able to transform her whole program, and make it effective in a way that had never happened before. At first she set her graduate students into research groups using Twitter as their key collaborative tool. But it also became the key to getting them to write. To understand this, I'll give a little background.
Her students are from an area where students do not learn how to write in their own language. They learn grammar, sure, and the mechanics of writing, but not "how" to write. That is, in the Arabic world, writing isn't something students really do. They never write any essays, book reports, or what have you, because that has never been a part of the educational model here. In English class they are expected to write, but with no experience at it whatsoever, in their native tongue, attempts at it in a second language are almost always very poor. I face it every day with my students who had never written anything longer than 100 words before going to high school. The presenter I met faced the same problem, and just was not able to drag any substantive writing out of her students. 3000 words? Forget. Even 500? Not a chance! They just wouldn't do it, and school authorities would back the students up on that. So what to do?
It was obvious to her that her students did write, and wrote a heck of a great deal. In fact, her students, as mine are, are inveterate communicators. They are forever posting on bulletin boards, sending IMs, SMSs, emails, and more. Via writing, they communicate more, I daresay, than any generation in human history. But they don't think of it as writing. This is why Twitter was the key.
A limit of 140 characters is not much. Two sentences, three max. She got her students to buy into posting messages to a group Tweet, and responding to posts. As the project wore on, from what she said, it sounded like these students had tapped more words through that one collaboration than at any other point in their career. They were posting gads of messages each day. Back and forth. Posting, commenting on posts, commenting on comments. Every time someone found an interesting link, they posted it, which set off a flurry of other Tweets as the group looked into the information.
The experiment succeeded beyond any of her expectations.
Which leaves us back at the beginning of this post.
Like with Xerox or the VCR, there are good uses and bad uses. Twitter can be trite, but it can also be transformative. Part of the hype around Twitter right now is that many have sensed just how powerful this tool could be. As newspapers die, and media models crumble, there is a mad scramble for the next model, whatever will arise out of the ashes, and Twitter is in very good shape to make a run at that. During the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the world learned through Twitter long before Reuters got wind of it. When that plane went down on the Hudson, word of it was on Twitter even before anyone walking by as it was happening had thought to take notice. Major news wires have reacted by hiring staff who only monitor Twitter, and pick off breaking stories from there.
For writers , I would say that Twitter is a tool we can all use. Most of us share thoughts, findings, and ask questions of each other here, in the spirit of true colleagues. When we graduate, that will be over for us, but it doesn't have to be. The ability to collaborate with talented people in your field, who you respect and admire, is a precious and valuable thing. Even just to be able to get glimpses of what they are thinking and doing can be informative or inspirational. I've learned a great deal in the short time I've been allowed to frequent these boards, and I am sure that in the next few years as I stretch my time in the program to the allowable limit (you know...budget constraints), I will continue to do so. But hopefully, using some other method like Twitter or what replaces it, I'll be able to continue to do so.
The Theory of Knowledge
What I knew is what I knew, not what I did not know.
If I knew then what I know, I'd know I didn't know.
I didn't know I did not know,
and now I know I did not know.
So now, you know,
I know I know,
and I knew you'd want to know.
You know?
If I knew then what I know, I'd know I didn't know.
I didn't know I did not know,
and now I know I did not know.
So now, you know,
I know I know,
and I knew you'd want to know.
You know?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Canada Day, Eh?
I heard some odd news coming out of my home and native land recently, specifically that Canada Day was canceled. Not everywhere in Canada, just in that part of Canada that most Canadians see as being only tangentially related to the country - Toronto
It seems that there is a rather large strike going on, with CUPE employees demanding to be allowed to keep being able collect unused sick days (days they could have played hookey, but decided to work instead), roll them over from year to year until, at some point, they could cash them in for a hefty sum. At 18 days per year, a twenty year veteran would have 360 days, more than a year's pay, saved up and ready to withdraw at any time.
Spread that out over 30,000 or so employees, it amounts to quite a bit of cash. If every employee earned $30,000 a year, this perk would amount to $2,200 per employee, per year. But most CUPE workers earn quite a bit more than that, and the "sick bank" is estimated to be at $140 million currently.
That is, the city has to set aside $140 million, out of its budget, during a recession, during a time when the city is massively in the red, so that an infinitesimally small percentage of the city population can walk away with a stack of cash that was not actually earned. It basically amounts to a bonus of 15% of the yearly salary just for showing up to work, at a time when scores of people would do anything for a job.
So the end result is that due to a lack of city workers, the annual Canada Day festivities were canceled. And, as far as I understand it, the strike was also threatening the annual Gay Pride parade, which is, to a socialist city council, by far the more important event.
Thankfully, for the Pride Parade organizers, they could depend on the open hearts and open wallets of Canada's conservative federal government.
It seems that there is a rather large strike going on, with CUPE employees demanding to be allowed to keep being able collect unused sick days (days they could have played hookey, but decided to work instead), roll them over from year to year until, at some point, they could cash them in for a hefty sum. At 18 days per year, a twenty year veteran would have 360 days, more than a year's pay, saved up and ready to withdraw at any time.
Spread that out over 30,000 or so employees, it amounts to quite a bit of cash. If every employee earned $30,000 a year, this perk would amount to $2,200 per employee, per year. But most CUPE workers earn quite a bit more than that, and the "sick bank" is estimated to be at $140 million currently.
That is, the city has to set aside $140 million, out of its budget, during a recession, during a time when the city is massively in the red, so that an infinitesimally small percentage of the city population can walk away with a stack of cash that was not actually earned. It basically amounts to a bonus of 15% of the yearly salary just for showing up to work, at a time when scores of people would do anything for a job.
So the end result is that due to a lack of city workers, the annual Canada Day festivities were canceled. And, as far as I understand it, the strike was also threatening the annual Gay Pride parade, which is, to a socialist city council, by far the more important event.
Thankfully, for the Pride Parade organizers, they could depend on the open hearts and open wallets of Canada's conservative federal government.
Karma
After sunrise
a coffee in hand
a man sat near
set up shop
took off his hat
set it down
ruffles his hair
sat down
and winked.
"So how about it," he said,
pointing at the ground
and an empty hat
"I'm busy," I replied,
"If you don't mind."
The man shrugged
pulled out a harmonica
and began to play,
oblivious to the scowl
and the offended dignity
wishing him away.
Later
after the sun had set,
the harmonica stilled.
Money jingled out of the hat
into his pockets,
as he took out a crumpled
five dollar bill
stuffed it in my pocket
and said
"Go get something to eat."
a coffee in hand
a man sat near
set up shop
took off his hat
set it down
ruffles his hair
sat down
and winked.
"So how about it," he said,
pointing at the ground
and an empty hat
"I'm busy," I replied,
"If you don't mind."
The man shrugged
pulled out a harmonica
and began to play,
oblivious to the scowl
and the offended dignity
wishing him away.
Later
after the sun had set,
the harmonica stilled.
Money jingled out of the hat
into his pockets,
as he took out a crumpled
five dollar bill
stuffed it in my pocket
and said
"Go get something to eat."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)