The Writer's Poke

Based on this video, I'd say Obama has the women's vote locked up. :)

A special happy birthday to one of my favorite writers, Ms. Octavia Butler (god rest her soul).

For Writers: She and her kid sister took a road trip to Ohio one summer to catch three Def Leppard shows. This was 1987, and the band was at the height of its popularity. The kid sister was 16, and she was willing to do anything to meet the band. By the third show, the roadies had taken notice of the two young women, and one offered the girls backstage passes. When they went backstage after the show, the band was nowhere to be found, but the room was filled with assorted roadies and hopeful groupies. “Take your tops off,” one roadie said, “and you’ll get to meet the band.” This was the initiation price all prospective groupies had to pay for the chance to meet the heavy metal heartthrobs. The 16 year old was willing to strip down, as were most of the girls in the room. The older sister refused to take her top off, however, as the thought of a bunch of 40 year old roadies pawing at her chest repulsed her. In the end, the roadies failed to keep their end of the deal, selecting only the ...

For Writers: I hadn’t seen or heard from her in over three years, and then one summer, she sent me a letter. The reasons for us losing touch are too complicated to note here, and may not matter anyway. In short: she had graduated from college and moved on with her life. Her letter was handwritten, which is a nice touch in the age of word processors and emails, and she briefly filled in the gaps of my knowledge. She was preparing to adjunct at a local college, and her wedding was set for that December. Interestingly enough, I was beginning my teaching career as an adjunct at the same college that fall. Seeing her a few weeks later at the teacher orientation session, I noticed that she hadn’t changed that much. On the surface, her look was more professional than it had been as a student, but otherwise, I found it difficult to acknowledge the passing of three years. And though we were friendly to one another that semester, we were by no means close friends. When she wasn’t teaching, she w...

We put the crib together yesterday, and guess who has already made herself at home? Our white fur ball. (Click on the picture for a bigger look)

For Writers: When I graduated from college, it was a hot August day in Illinois . The gym didn’t have air conditioning, and my silk shirt was completely soaked after the first ten minutes. The ceremony lasted for over two hours, and then I went out to eat spaghetti with a couple of friends. Yawn. Graduating is one of those events that people would instinctively put on a personal highlight reel. But at least in my case, the event – the ritual – was an uncomfortable and mundane experience. Symbolically, it represented three years of my life, but it’s hard to capture three years by walking across the stage, shaking a few hands, and having a few pictures taken of you. In life, we often try to capture the culmination of experience through ritual – whether it be a baptism, a wedding, or a graduation. Human beings need rituals, but are ritualized events really the highlights of our lives? Today, consider your own personal highlight reel. What would you include on it? Would rituali...

For Writers: It’s a hip thing to do, to get a tattoo. The idea of joining the inked masses has crossed my mind on a number of occasions, but at this point I’m still ink free. The main reason for that: I haven’t found anything so soaked full of meaning that I wanted to leave an indelible mark on my body with it. Over the past decade, however, many people have started getting tattooed as a kind of fashion accessory. Statistics indicate that over one-third of people in the 18-29 age range now have at least one tattoo. Why? One of the main reasons given is to feel “sexier.” The non-tattooed majority still hold prejudicial thoughts against folks with tattoos, though, with opinion polls indicating that those without tattoos find those with tattoos to be less intelligent, less sexy, and overall, less attractive. Nevertheless, fully one-third of the 100 sexiest women, as determined by FHM magazine, have tattoos. At the moment, tribal tattoos are the most en vogue, followed by crosses, ...

For Writers: When my wife and I visited Hawaii for the first time a few years ago, we both thought that this might be the place. Stepping out of the airport, the first thing to greet us was a rainbow, and the temperature stayed at a constant 80 degrees for our entire visit. I have an aunt that claims it takes an artist’s eye to see the many variations in the shades of green in nature, but then she’s never been to Hawaii . Hundreds of shades of green were growing everywhere. Paradise is easier to imagine than to experience, just as anticipation often times trumps attainment. I would assume that it is hard-wired into each of us to be difficult to please, but how can a place like Hawaii start to get old after just a few days? But it did, and we were ready to go home. Home might not be paradise, but the paradox is, it doesn’t need to be. What is your idea of paradise? Try to describe it in physical terms. Is it a place you’d want to live, or is it a place just best to visit? C...

For Writers: People are busy, and acknowledging that fact, I hate asking anyone for favors that will eat away their precious time. As I know from personal experience, writing a reference letter can be a chore, and needless to say, the person doing the requesting always needs it written and sent out immediately. The sense of urgency is probably a good thing, though, because if given an ample amount of time – two or three weeks would certainly seem helpful – it would just be far too easy for the reference writer to procrastinate and forget. When I first started asking people for references, usually professors to support my applications to graduate schools, I would often write the letters myself. Sometimes my professors would look at me like I was crazy to hand them a completed reference letter that I had written for them to sign; but I’m sure that some of them simply signed their names at the bottom, secretly glad that they didn’t have to take the time to write anything themselves. What ...

For Writers: Over the years, I’ve been asked to write reference letters for a number of students and faculty. The secret to writing a good reference letter is to add specific key words that pop off the page. To help them “pop,” I think it’s even okay to put such words in bold – words such as innovative or leader . No one really reads references with the intent of savoring every word. After all, the reference letter has a certain form and follows specific, mutually-agreed upon criteria. Actually, most readers of reference letters are simply looking for what you don’t say. Death by omission. I’ve found that the hardest references to write are the ones for people I don’t know that well. A surprising number of students ask instructors for a reference letter after just a semester (and sometimes not even that long). And, as a direct supervisor of faculty, I sometimes need to write a reference letter for someone that I haven’t observed teach. How can I tell someone that Dr. X is a good teache...

For Writers: My friend Patrick called me up and asked me to jump out of an airplane with him. He and two other friends had decided it would be fun to hurdle toward the ground at great speed, and they wanted to include me in the fun. I asked him where they planned to go to do the jumping, and he named a local parachute club. Although his offer was tempting, I begged poverty as an excuse. I simply didn’t have the extra money to join them, I said. While it was true that I didn’t have the money, any fear I might have of jumping out of an airplane I kept to myself. None of them plummeted to their deaths that day, and all of them came back telling heroic stories of daring. Once they had returned safely, I felt bad not going. The experience had bonded them in such a way that I would forever be excluded from the “Three Flying Musketeers.” I promised to jump with them the next time they went, but they never jumped again. My opportunity to become the fourth Musketeer never came. Today, make a li...

For Writers: We all have those “what should I do?” moments in our lives. When I have one, I like to consider all of my options in minute detail. Sometimes I become so overwhelmed in looking at the pros and cons of each option that I find it impossible to decide what to do. For weeks I might go over the options again and again in my mind, only to find that the problem has resolved itself over time. Either the options that I once had are no longer options, or the problem has changed so much that I have to start the thinking process of “what should I do?” all over again. I often find myself feeling guilty for having a mind. Why can’t I be more impulsive? Why can’t I act and live life without so much planning? Isn’t it worse being a prisoner, locked behind my own personal mind field? Write about a time in your life that required you to make an important decision. What emotions did you feel as you thought about what you needed to do? Were you able to act and make the decision, or did you le...

For Writers: Hanging on the wall over my computer desk is a print of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” The emotions Munch captures in that simple painting often match the way I feel when I sit down at the computer to write. If I’m not feeling any creative juices flowing in my veins, I want nothing more than to go to the nearest bridge and scream. Sometimes screaming actually helps. It releases tension and bad energy, offering writers the chance to purge the emotions that keep them from producing quality work. While a certain level of stress might be necessary to write, feeling too much stress cripples writers into becoming non-writers. True writers know they were born to write. Screaming has the ability to unlock the creative energy necessary to write, to tell the story that needs to be told. Writers were born to scream. Today, think about what story you’re dying to scream to the world. What has kept you from telling that story? Have you tried to tell it before, but somehow refused to infus...

For Writers: When we were in the market to buy a house, our Realtor didn’t plan to show us the small ranch-style house we eventually ended up buying. My wife saw a picture of it on the office’s bulletin board, and we had to convince Sam to take us out there. After driving way out into the middle of nowhere, past graveyards and the local garbage dump, we finally arrived. The house was only six years old, but it hadn’t been lived in for three years. Layers of dust and animal droppings covered everything. What we were to find in the back bedrooms, though, was what certainly caught our attention the most. The woman who had lived there before like to paint, and she had made the walls of the bedrooms her canvas. One mural was of the sword Excalabur rising out of the lake. In the room that would become our bedroom, she had painted a magical forest, with a huge unicorn as the central focus. It almost looked like it was running straight out of the wall. After we purchased the house, we set out ...

For Writers: I find it difficult to change. For years I have told myself to stop biting my fingernails, but unless I wrap all of my fingers in bandages, nothing stops me from gnawing away. Although I know better, I seem helpless to stop. From time to time, I convince myself to exercise and eat a healthier selection of foods, but it never lasts. Soon enough, I fall back into the habit of eating powdered donuts and watching TV all evening. The exercise equipment in the back room remains silent from disuse, and the apples in the refrigerator rot. Human beings are slaves to routine. The daily grind of life wears us down after a while, and the way we cope is to fall into the security of habit and routine. Habit and routine don’t necessarily need to be bad things, but it’s a lot harder to break a bad habit than it is to break a good one. Today, think about one of your bad habits. Can you pinpoint why you fell into that habit? Is there any way you could quit? Change your routine? Outline an a...

You might have noticed that for the past few days I've been posting "Invitation to Write" posts. My belief is that some people would like to write, but the blank page can be more scary than a dentist's chair. The idea behind my invitations is to help people prime the pumps of their imaginations. So, take me up on my invitation. Read my "opening remarks," and join the conversation. And, I'd love to read what you come up with. Send your insights to bret.fuller@roch.edu

For Writers: Who are the shadow people? One well-known radio talk show host who specializes in the paranormal describes them as the ghost-like images of people we might catch glimpses of in our peripheral vision. To me, though, shadow people have little to do with anything we might consider paranormal. Shadow people are quite normal, quite real. Whatever happened, for example, to the people you knew in high school? What happens to people we were once close to but no longer see? These are the people who live only in memory. They are the real shadow people. Every once in a while, we run into one of these individuals in the flesh. Sometimes seeing someone we haven’t seen in years can be shocking. We might know they are still alive, but as far as their place in our every day lives goes, they might as well have passed on to the other side. Encountering shadow people can feel like making contact with the dead. Today write about shadow people. Think about someone you’ve lost touch with, and a...

For Writers: Writers must believe in the power of words, but where does the power come from? What gives words strung into sentences the force to change reality? Of course, some might choose to argue that words don’t change reality. Some might say that words can describe changes in reality, but reality itself simply “is.” In an age inundated with constant visual images, some have claimed that the power of the written word is a thing of the past. Authors of the postmodern age believed that language itself was “exhausted.” And yet, without words to communicate their philosophy, how would we have ever known what they were thinking? Words, of course, work on various levels. They can be spoken or written, saved or forgotten, true or false. Human beings have a natural ability to learn words at a very early age, and anyone who has ever spent any time with small toddlers must be impressed every time they hear them add a new word to their vocabularies. Words are magical. Whole worlds are contain...

For Writers: We’ve all seen and joked about the tags on pillows that warn us not to remove them under penalty of federal law. When I was young and ornery, I would tear the tags off every pillow I would run across. Secretly, I thought about federal agents kicking down my door, catching me with tags in hand. These “pillow police” would throw me in a cell with only a pallet for a bed – and no pillow. No one on pillow patrol ever came knocking on my door, but my mom was never happy when I would tear the tags off her favorite pillows. She knew the practical reason for leaving the tags alone: tear off the tag and risk tearing the lining of the pillow. It never stopped me, though, and soon enough I had graduated from pillow tags to tags on T-shirts. More than one shirt developed a peep-hole that allowed others to see the back of my neck. Unlike pillow or shirt tags, other things cannot be so easily ripped off without serious consequences. These are the things that really need warning tags. Th...

For Writers: On lazy summer afternoons in the park, I like to look skyward at the friendly, puffy-white clouds. Something about cloud gazing centers me, making me feel as though the world and I are one. Sometimes the imagination wanders, and clouds take the shape of animals, faces, or other objects. Sometimes clouds are not puffy white at all. These other kinds of clouds are black, mean, and menacing. What I remember most about my first airplane ride as a child is the unique experience of looking down on the clouds. Clouds, as I found out, are not the top of anything at all. They simply rest between the earth and eternity. Write about clouds today. What is the most unusual cloud you have ever seen? Why does the image stay with you? Do you tend to remember the “friendly” clouds or the “mean” clouds more? Explore why that is. “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief?” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet