Assorted Links

1. Is sectarian fighting inevitable in the Middle East? Thomas Friedman says no.

2. Big changes could be coming to Japan. Would not have guessed the average age of a Japanese farmer is seventy.

3. Interesting interview with Arata Fujiwara, the other so-called "indie" star in Japanese running.

4. Joseph Stiglizt believes, "inequality is not inevitable."

"If it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics. People get tired of hearing about Scandinavian success stories, but the fact of the matter is that Sweden, Finland and Norway have all succeeded in having about as much or faster growth in per capita incomes than the United States and with far greater equality."

5. More than two-thirds of American youths not ineligible for military service: And not all for reasons you might think.

The 30-day Novel Challenge

One of the hardest things I find about writing isn't starting but finishing (har-har ;)...). I struggle in other areas, too, but the lack of finishing is probably the most detrimental to my writing development. Elements like pacing, dialogue, plot, character-development, and grammar can all be practiced, honed, and improved. But without assembling drafts that have a beginning, middle, and end, we never really get a chance to practice the art and craft of story-telling broadly understood.

While I know little and less and about chess, I've heard that skilled players divide a match into opening- game, middle-game, and end-game. Some players are masters at opening-game and middle-game, but lose confidence when end-game arrives. Others are the opposite, growing stronger as the match develops.

 I think in writing I am best (but by no means great) at opening-game. I enjoy building a world and characters to populate it. I like following characters through their day, meeting their friends and seeing places they often visit--school, home, a local park; in short, getting to know them on a basic level of acquaintance. Excitement rises when their routine is disrupted, or some challenge comes into their lives requiring a bit of ingenuity and growth so solve. That can be good fun for a writer, if not always for the character.

As the story enters middle-game and end-game, I find the going harder. They're both different from open-game, so far as I can tell, and present different challenges. I struggle here for a number of reasons, but I suspect the most important is because I have so little experience working through them.

If all we study are openings, we'll never give ourselves the chance to sift through the complexities of middle and end.

For this reason, I decided I would give the National Novel Writing Month challenge a try. The idea of the challenge is to write 50,000-words of a novel during the 30-days of November. The time-frame is kept deliberately short as a way of keeping writers like me from bogging down early and throwing their drafts away. Quantity is stressed over quality, with the understanding that a finished draft is more useful than a polished opening-third of the same story one has been trying to tell for a decade. I agree with these premises, but having the itch to write at this moment, decided to start the 30-day challenge right away rather than wait until November.

 I'm about a week in now, and so far it's going well. The hardest part has been putting my "perfectionist" tendencies to the side, focusing instead on moving the story forward rather than correcting every minor detail in the opening sections; that can come later, when the middle-game and end-game have at least been given a first showing. Even if it turns out to be a bad showing, it will be worth the practice I expect (consider it an "investment in loss").

I'll try and keep the blog updated through the course of this project, which should conclude on 16 July. I admit the demands of writing a 50,000-word story in 30-days may limit what I have to say here, but I will try.

Wish me luck!

A Brief Review of Josh Waitzkin's, "The Art of Learning"

Today, I began re-reading a highly stimulating book by Josh Waitzkin entitled, "The Art of Learning" (2008).  Part biography and part treatise-on-pedagogy, the work is both well-written and rich with detail from the point of view of an observant, sensitive, and experienced individual competing at the highest levels of chess and tai chi chuan push-hands. In "The Art of Learning" Mr. Waitzkin manages to articulate a paradigm in which intuition and rote learning not only coexist, but nourish each other; what he calls "learning numbers to leave numbers," or integrating theoretical principals with instinctual, creative impulses.

Of equal interest is his attitude toward mastery, which focuses on process rather than innate ability. Indeed, very little is said about talent in this book, perhaps because the very idea of 'talent' is considered a distraction in the learning process--an abstract concept that weakens resolve in the face of adversity. The learner is at their best when attacking a challenge with a beginner's mind, focused and without ego.

There's much of interest in this book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning, teaching, and/or performance psychology. "The Art of Learning," is one of the best treatments on the subject I've yet read.

For more on Josh, here's a youtube interview with him, and his wikipedia page for more general reading.

Assorted Links

-From Business Insider, Eric Barker's "Six Subtle Things Highly Productive People do Every Day."

For those in a hurry:

         1.) Manage Your Mood
         2.) Don’t Check Email in The Morning
         3.)Before You Try To Do It Faster, Ask Whether It Should Be Done At All
         4.) Focus Is Nothing More Than Eliminating Distractions
         5.) Have A Personal System
         6.) Define Your Goals The Night Before

- From The New York Times, Thomas Friedman's column for today: "Iraq's Best Hope"

         In short, "More American universities, please — not just drones."

-From The Economist: Are monkey's better stock-pickers than humans?

-From Early Retirement Extreme: "The Forest vs. the Trees"

"However, often the focus is on the trees. Instead of thinking about how a method fits in with other methods, there’s too much focus on the particular method. Take cold showers, for instance. It’s not about the temperature. When there’s too much focus on the method, it becomes about saving $X in isolation. Side-effects are no longer considered. When people pick and choose—I’ll do this, but not that—the whole is not considered and thus a lot of benefits aren’t realized."