What Travyon Martin and the Hunger Games have in common

In today's blog, I use my communication professor voice rather than my fiction writer voice. I started a different The Hunger Games inspired blog yesterday, and I'll get back to that later.  Today, a friend tweeted this link, and I needed to talk a little about it. Please take a moment to read the link.

Racist Hunger Games Fans are Very Disappointed


The article showcases several tweets which reveal the way some fans reacted to the casting of Rue, Thresh, and Cinna, in particular. A few examples are beyond vile, but they can be summed up with this one,

"I was pumped about the Hunger Games. Until I learned that a black girl was playing Rue."

Patience

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. 

~Harriet Tubman

Yes, I am a dreamer, and I can totally see myself in Tubman's quotation.  Strength and passion might as well be my hyphenated middle name. Here I go off to change the world. Wait. There was something else?  Patience.  Oh crud. Me and patience?  No so much.

I'm sure there are dreamers who are good at that waiting thing, but I'm not one of them.  I'm more likely to attack the situation.  I also tend to want pretty fast results, and if they don't come, I may get bored and move on.  I realize it's a fundamental flaw.

This morning Elana Johnson's blog that talked about failure, and one of the things she said in failure we learn our weaknesses.  I loved that sentiment.  I tend to think I'm pretty good about figuring out my weaknesses but my lack of patience means I usually either barrel through them or find ways around them rather than taking the time to fix them. (No, I'm not just talking about writing.)A friend of mine began to query her novel.  The requests poured in.  I believe she ended up with a forty percent rate of request for her manuscript.  The agents commented on the strength of her writing.  I might have taken that as a sign to mass mail my query to every agent in the querytracker database, but she did not.  In fact, she stopped querying altogether so she could embark on a substantial revision she believes will make the book better.  Yes, she wants to publish, but she has the patience to wait until her novel is exactly where it needs to be.

Insecure Writer's Post: Is it done yet?

Once in a while, I have to run out while something is cooking or baking.  I will ask my husband to take it out when it's done.  "How will I know?" He'll ask. Then, I have to figure out how to describe something that is often subjective.

• It's exactly golden brown. 
• It springs back to the touch.

• It's crispy just around the edges.

There's a lot of pressure in knowing when something is ready. You can hover around the stove, opening the door every few seconds, maybe even pulling the meal out when it's just a little underdone.  Or maybe you take a laissez faire approach and until someone asks, "What's that smell?"  

Too many voices

It’s a busy world. It’s a loud world.  Everyone is talking.  Is anyone listening?  I'm part of the problem. The very notion of a blog epitomizes the issue.  We all want to put our two cents in.  We’ve all got something to say.  

With so many voices trying to be heard, it’s hard to filter all of the information coming out way. Focusing on anything is a challenge so we end up focusing on nothing at all. Information overload causes us to shut down.

Storytime!

I don’t remember how this started in my house but it’s been happening for a few months.  It goes something like this:

We’re all eating dinner, and someone will say, “I remember that time we had Chinese in Hawaii.”  Then someone will add to it.  Suddenly, the kids start bouncing up and down, yelling, "Story time! Story time!"

So, we keep going.  One story leads to another.  Maybe about Hawaii.  Maybe about another trip we took or our favorite local Chinese restaurant.  It doesn’t matter.  We don’t stop until the kids have either lost interest or we’ve run out of ideas for the moment.

Beginnings

Whew, by the skin of my teeth, it's January which means I can still get away with a beginning of the year post.  I love beginnings.  One of the best parts of my job is that I get at least two new "starts" a year.  Every semester, I get the thrill of new students, a fresh chance to get everything right.

Inevitably, after a month, things stagnate, and most professors begin the semi-annual "Is it the end of the semester yet?" lament. Just hurry up and get here already so we can move on. 

I suppose my love of beginnings is why I have the starts of four novels but have only completed two.  It's fun to develop new characters and plots.  It's less fun in the middle—where everything is more complicated and murky.  I get bored.  Then, I want to rush to get to the end, but I tend to be disappointed when it's over. I've been thinking what a common phenomenon this is.  Think about how often we end up finding the end of the series to be the most disappointing—Star Wars, Godfather, Harry Potter, Hunger Games …

Noticing the Universe

I am a bit obsessed with death. There I said it.  I often struggle to fall asleep because I can't quite get my mind off of it—when, how, and then what? Obviously, it doesn't stop me from actually living, but I just have so much to do, so many things to see, you know?  I think you do. I continue to blame it on my mid-life crisis, and I hope it'll fade soon. In the meantime, I blog about the purpose of my life and share all my struggles with you. Enjoy! 

A few months ago, a friend posted this blog link on Facebook, and I believe she linked it in the comments of my blog at some point, too.  I found the message that the universe doesn't care about about me and that I should do epic shit as a result to be equal parts depressing and inspiring.  Perhaps, that's why I've been so focused on lists and what I have yet to do.  It's certainly one of the reasons I hope to publish my fiction.

Then comes John Green.  He makes me think maybe how I'm defining epic shit is limited. I've enjoyed his work for a while, but his widely popular The Fault in Our Stars was released this month. Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief which I contend is one of the best books of all time, said on the back flap, "A novel of life and death and the people caught in between . . .  You laugh, you cry, and then you come back for more."  Yup, sounds about right to me.

It once again raises the question of the relationship between humans and the universe, something not taken lightly when the main characters are terminally ill.  Near the end, Augustus sums up the most valuable messages I took away from the novel.  He said, "I want to leave a mark." Sigh. I identify with that sentiment. That little piece of immortality despite the inevitability of our mortality. But then he argues that leaving a mark does as much to scar the universe. He says of Hazel:

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But … Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything.  He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox (p. 312).

What I love is the idea that to do anything worthwhile in this life, you have to pay attention first.  You must listen more and see more and feel more.

I don't think it means you stop doing, but it changes why. Doing something because you noticed it needed doing usually turns out better than doing something because you wanted to be noticed for doing it.

Then again, in today's world, paying attention may well be epic in and of itself.  I invite you to put yourself on notice with me.