The day in which we choose to celebrate the new year, here in the west, is almost completely arbitrary. There are no actual events in the heavens or on the earth that it commemorates, nothing celestial or secular. It is not an equinox or a solstice. Not the first day of spring or winter. It doesn’t even sit exactly in the middle of any one season, but happens somewhere in the first part of the first third of one of them. No great religious, philosophic or political leader was born on that day, unless you count someone like  an important leader.  (Okay, there were also some Popes and artists born on that day, but well after we had decided it was the beginning of the new year.) It’s not even the day the swallows come back to Capistrano.

The closest I can come to an explanation of how it was chosen was that it was the Eastern Orthodox Feast of Circumcision. According to the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Christ was circumcised eight days after his birth and named Jesus on that day. This, of course, assumes He was actually born on December 25th, an assumption about which there is much debate among both Christian and secular scholars, since there is very little indication whatsoever in the Bible as to the actual date. Many place it some time in September, when shepherds actually did “abide in the field”, before it got too cold to do so. It also should be noted that, on different calendars, the Feast of Circumcision was celebrated anywhere form what is now January 1st to the what is now January 14th.

That all being said, we do hold the beginning of the new year on January 1st. It has become a symbol of the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, and symbols are important to the existence of societies. We often use this symbolic time to reflect on the previous 365 days and make “resolutions” about what we will change in the upcoming 365. I stopped making these resolutions years ago because 1) they seemed sort of silly and 2) I know of no one in my personal circle of acquaintances who ever kept one much past January 15th.

I do think that taking stock of what has transpired can be a powerful exercise, however, and any time is a good time to do it. In taking stock, it might be effective to see what didn’t work and find ways to do less of that and see what did work, and find ways to do more of that. That is why, this year, I will make a New Year’s Resolution: I resolve to continue what works. The fact the beginning of the new year is sort of stuck in there on a completely inauspicious day in a completely inauspicious time of year might even be a benefit for that kind of resolution. One day just leads from the previous into the next, and I will continue to do what I do to fill my days with the contemplation, tasks and creativity that enhances my life and the lives of those around me.

So, this year, on January 1st, I wish you all a happy and prosperous Feast of Circumcision and may the coming 365 days be filled with joy and productivity.

It’s December again. What does that mean, boys and girls? It means sparkly decorations. It means ribbons. It means garish inflatable Santas waving their arms like banshees. It means that people will be decrying the  war being waged on Christmas.

Well, our Christmas tradition is to be the ones actually waging that war.

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Have a wonderful Chris… Holid… um… Have some gum!

I took a drawing class once, not sure from whom, I was in high school at the time, where the teacher said, “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.” After a moment to process this, my drawing improved unbelievably quickly. I was drawing a face at the time. I had put a nose where I knew noses were supposed to be, eyes in their proper place, a mouth down below. After that comment, I looked to see what was actually on the face I was drawing. It wasn’t nose, eyes and mouth, it was specific shapes and shades of light and dark in specific relationships to each other. The drawing I produced was the best one I’d ever done to that point. Amazing what a simple adjustment in perspective will do.

There is a similar process in writing. People often write what they have been trained is there rather than what really is there. Rather than looking at the sky, they type blue. It’s rarely just blue. Right now outside my window, it’s a pale blue graduating toward dusky grey at the horizon. Rather than imagining the whole of something, people will parrot what they have heard others say. The cat doesn’t just purr, she softly vibrates with pleasure, her eyes closed and her body relaxed, swaying back and forth gently to the slow rhythm of her breath.

Do you have to use all those words when you write? Do you have to describe every subtle detail? No. That would make your writing very tedious for you and for your reader. But when you really look at something, in your view or in your mind, you will know which of all those words to use that will most communicate it. Even if you end up just writing, “the cat purred”, because you have first really looked, it will inform what comes before and what comes after and will make the word picture you’re painting much more compelling.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a29)

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Having to write rather than wanting to write can be a marvelous thing. Having to write whether you want to or not. I’m not talking about some person shaking a finger at you and making you sit at your computer, I’m talking about the powerful obsession where every cell in your body screams out that you need to sit down and compose words, that anxiety that makes everything you do that isn’t writing feel wrong. It is a magnificent compulsion and I am loath to deny it.

It isn’t always like that for me and I have trained myself to produce even when I don’t have that inner, throbbing drive, but I love when that drive kicks in. It often happens after I’ve had an idea for a new project and have done some of the background work for it. All those bits and pieces have been swirling around in my head and begin to coalesce into some alchemical gold.

I will be washing dishes or driving to the store and the story will suddenly insist on grabbing my attention and grabbing hard. When it happens at home, I run and start taking notes. When it happens on the road, I repeat the phrases I’m hearing in my brain over and over until I can get to a place to write them down. It is almost a completely automatic reaction that I don’t consciously control.

I first noticed this obsession back in college when I was learning acting. I would begin a new role for a new production and would start the homework, the work imagining myself into the circumstances of the person I was to be. Those circumstances would take hold of me and I would obsessively think about them all the time. When I started writing more seriously, the same thing happened but with a slight difference. Whole passages of the piece I was working on would appear as if by magic. It has happened in that moment before sleep and I’ve trained myself to force myself out of bed to get it down. Even if it’s really cold and I can’t find my slippers. It takes a long time for the computer to boot up, so I go over and over the imagery until I can get my word processor open and get it down. If I don’t do that, I’ll either not be able to get to sleep or I will have forgotten it by morning.

Either option makes me grumpy, and we don’t want that to happen.

When I don’t act on these obsessive moments, either by committing them to memory so I can get them down or getting them down right away, the obsession fades and when the obsession fades, it becomes difficult to get back to work. Also, when it fades, I feel like the sun has moved a little further away.

Why do I write? Because I have to. Because I love to. Because I can’t imagine not writing.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a28)

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You can’t eat the menu. That’s not original. I heard it years ago, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where. Another version of it is, “The map is not the road”. That which symbolizes something is not the thing itself. When stated like this, it seems obvious, but we often mistake the symbol for the thing.

Words are symbols. Plain, pure and simple. That’s all they are, really. The symbol can evoke the experience, but it is not the experience. The letters R, E and D, when put together, can make us see something very specific and distinct, but you don’t see the color in the word.^*

“Yes, Geoff,” you say, “this is true. But so what?”

I am a sucker for beautiful language. I love a well put together word image. The words “butterscotch-bright sunlight” evoke an experience for me of a particular type of bright summer day. However, when we create, if we are stuck simply on the beauty of the language, we miss the power of the experience. Like a menu or a map, the words point the way to the experience, but they are not in themselves the experience.

^*(Yes, I know, you can if the font color is red. Don’t be a pill.)
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a27)

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Where are you? Go ahead, look around. What do you see? What do you hear? What does the air feel like? Smell like? What are you touching, and what’s touching you? It feels real, doesn’t it? It should because it’s what we call reality.

Now, think of a place you’ve been – on vacation or in your neighborhood, anywhere you’ve been that you aren’t at now. Imagine what you saw there. What did you hear? What did the air feel like? Smell like? What were you touching, what was touching you? Pretend you can actually see, hear, smell and feel those things in your body. Does it bring back more details as you imagine further? Does it feel real on any level? This is what we call memory.

Now think of a place you’ve never been. It can be on this planet or on a different one. It can be now or in the past or in the future, real, partly real or completely fictional. Now imagine what you might have seen there. What you would have heard. What the air would have felt like. Smelled like. Imagine what you would have been touching or what would have been touching you. Give each sense a moment. Give each sense more detail to play with. Can you get a visceral sense of the place? This is what we call imagination and is the basis for much good writing.

Whether you’re writing fiction or reports, a letter or an article, if you need to create a rich environment to communicate something to your reader, the easiest way to do it is to first imagine it for yourself, imagine yourself in it. Even if it is an environment you are very familiar with, take a moment to let your body, your five senses, experience it. Take a moment to pretend you are there right now.

Much of your writing will take care of itself at that point, and it will be filled with rich detail that more easily communicates to your reader.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a26)

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I have often heard a variation of the comment that someone doesn’t trust or can’t accept praise. A good friend recently went as far as to say, “Don’t tell me I’m special, I don’t want to hear it.”

There are many reasons to have this attitude:

• Not believing you could be special
• Thinking that whoever is praising you has some hidden or not so hidden agenda
• Believing it unseemly to tout one’s own accomplishments
• Not wanting to “Raise One’s Head Above the Crowd” for fear if it being lopped off
• Not wanting to get a big head
• Acute embarrassment at being singled out
• Acute embarrassment at it having taken so long to be singled out
• Not wanting to appear arrogant
• Really, really liking the praise and being fearful that, if you let people know that, they’ll stop praising you.
• etc.

I have also been uncomfortable with praise. I’m sure for me it is a combination of any number of the above reasons, depending the day, the event and my circadian rhythm . Oddly, though, I have also always desperately sought praise. You’d think I’d be happy when I got it, but that would be too emotionally stable. The mental dissonance that praise often sets up can be very disconcerting and can itself cause the fear of it. The many separate thought waves that the praise sets in motion often momentarily overtake our ability to reason.

So. How do we strive for excellence if we fear praise? Praise is not a great reason to pursue excellence, but is a natural by product of it.

I have seen people who have a very gracious way of dealing with praise. They accept it. They don’t add to it or try to diminish it or comment on it or make any judgements about the praise giver or try to appear humble in its presence, they simply accept it. What lovely and enviable equanimity. I’ve actually tried it. (Yes, I am publically admitting that I have received praise for my work.) When I simply accept it, whether I agree with the praise or not, whether I trust the praise giver or not, it immediately calms the dissonance in my head and allows me to actually enjoy my own accomplishments.

That is only a good thing.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a25)

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On a radio show recently the question was put forth, “does art have the power to change a life?” Although I’ve always thought a life without art is a dead life and a society without art is a dead society, I’d never considered the question quite in that way. It started me thinking about my own journey.

I graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre. The plan after college was to spend a year in Northern California with my brother and his wife while getting acclimatized to life outside of school, then move to San Francisco and disappear into some rep company or other and spend my days happily ensconced in a life in theatre.

I often visited San Francisco with my brother and sister-in-law, seeing plays, visiting museums, drinking in the Bohemia of it all, preparing for my eventual move there. As Robert Burns said to the wee mouse, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley…” Okay, so my schemes weren’t all that well laid out to begin with, but they did gang a bit agley.

Soon after lighting in Northern California, I got a job at the Round Table Pizza parlor at Brunswick Plaza, half way between the small towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City. I was quickly promoted to assistant manager and moved into a tiny house in Grass Valley. I didn’t have a car, almost everything I needed I could get to by walking or riding my ten-speed bike. Everything but movies. There was one movie theatre that served both towns. It had three screens and was fairly close to me, but their usual fair tended to ooze a little too much testosterone for my taste. The nearest alternative was in Sacramento, a forty-five minute drive down the highway. If I wanted to see something that didn’t have Sylvester Stallone in it I would need to find someone else who wanted to go who also had a car.

One afternoon I decided I needed to see a movie but no one I knew wanted to go. My friend Vern, however, who lived right across the street from me, offered the use of his car. I decided on The China Syndrome, which was playing at one of the bigger complexes in the outskirts of Sacramento, gathered up the keys and journeyed hence.

The movie, staring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, Jack Lemmon and Wilford Brimley, was a political thriller very loosely based on the Three Mile Island incident. A young, naive reporter (Fonda) accidentally stumbles upon evidence that the safety inspections for the building of the local nuclear plant were fudged and those responsible ranged from the halls of corporations to the government. The script was tight, the direction flawless. The tension built slowly but steadily to a fever pitch. Jack Lemmon, an actor I always admired, was never better. I was moved. Stunned might be a better world. On the ride home in that borrowed car, I decided I wanted to be part of an industry that could produce something so powerful. The next day I put my notice in at the pizza parlor.

I saw the movie two more times that week, convincing friends they had to go. None of them seemed as moved as I was, but they humored me. It wasn’t until the third viewing that I realized that there was no background music in the film, only incidental music occasionally coming from a car radio or in a party scene. How tight must a movie be to not rely on music to manipulate your emotions? How courageous must a director be to make that choice? If I’d had any doubts about my impending relocation, they vanished.

I bought a car, a Ford Grand Torino station wagon, bright orange, loaded all my belonging in back and literally a month after that initial viewing of the movie I was on my way to Los Angeles. I lived in the car those first few days, parking on side streets in this unfamiliar town, until I tracked down some friends from college and camped out on their living room couch. I stayed with them until I found a small room in a building just north of Hollywood Boulevard, got a job at an answering service and became a Los Angelian. Before watching that movie, it was completely unpredictable that I move to this town, one I’d never even visited. I liked San Francisco. Whenever I visited there, it felt like home, yet here I am. I tell people I was headed for San Francisco but took a wrong toin at Albuquoique.

That was in 1979. My acting dreams have transformed, I am now a writer, but I still live quite happily and productively in Los Angeles after all these years, working in and around the industry that made such a powerful film. I look upon that evening in a movie house in Sacramento as a major turning point in my life.

To answer the question posed by the radio show, yes, I say. Art does have the power to change one’s life. I often wonder what that original trail would have been like, but the one I chose has thus far been wildly diverting.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a21)

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I used to be a night person. I was in the theatre, after all. (And, yes, I spell it with and “re”. I’m pretentious and gay. Go with me or move on, I say.) Even in college, when most people were getting up at dawn to get to their first class sometime in the prehistoric and mythological hours of seven or eight in the morning, the earliest class I ever had in the entire four years was at ten. But I wasn’t goldbricking, I often didn’t get home from rehearsal until after midnight, then had to do homework. I did my best writing in the afternoon, when the sun was just shining through the leaves of the trees on the commons, dappling the lawn and my thoughts.

When I first came to Los Angeles, I got a job at the switchboard of the Pacific Theatre corporation (see? I’m not the only one with the “re” thing.) I worked the evening shift. The phone pretty much stopped ringing after my first hour there, then didn’t pick up until well after midnight when all the theatres started calling in to report their box office receipts, which I would record for a report that went on all the executives’ desks first thing in the morning. From about seven until midnight there was little to do in the bleak solitude of the little office where the PBX phone was. Most on that shift watched a small black and white television that sat in the corner of the desk. Some read. I wrote a novel. Evenings, it seemed, were my most creative time.

In my thirties, I discovered Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and doing the 12 week odyssey she outlined in that wonderful book changed the way I viewed creativity. One of the first exercises she laid out was the Morning Pages; spending ten or fifteen minutes in the morning, right after you awaken (and after any necessary trip to the john) writing long-hand in a stream-of-consciousness journal. I poured my mind out every morning and discovered several short stories lurking in those pages. Mornings were definitely the best time for me.

When I first started blogging regularly I wrote a blog post every morning. Then writing started to get later and later in the day until it threatened to overtake dinnertime, so I decided to write the blogs the night before to be ready to post first thing in the morning. The pressure was gone and the quiet sounds of the cars speeding by on Washington Boulevard lulled me into a pleasant state of creative bliss. I have been amazed at some of the words that flow from my fingers onto the screen.

So. What is the best time to write? When you do. And as often as possible.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a20)

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A blank piece of paper (or a curser blinking on a blank screen) can be the most wonderful of things. It can fill you with wonder or dread. I chose wonder. The possibilities are endless. Shall I create a lush landscape and people it with gnomes? Shall it be a bleak forest full of gnarled, sickly trees covered in stringy moss or a gleaming city with tall buildings, fast automobiles and faster people hurrying toward their dreams?

I conjure, more powerfully than any wizard or mage, dark realms and bright, a farm with simple people tending strange beasts, a ramshackle hut filled with the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat, a dark spaceship hurtling toward the horizon of imagination.

I write because of the power it gives me to create whole worlds and explore others, to breath life, godlike, into new beings. I write because of the gift of being able to bring other people along on my journey.

And in creating, I am created. To paraphrase Descartes, I write, therefore I am. Writing allows me to examine my psyche, to justify my existence, to explore my doubts and triumphs.

I stare at the blank piece of paper (or the curser blinking on the blank screen) and I am spellbound with awe at the possibilities.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a16)

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