The Magical Power of Perspective

Have you found the magic? The good news is that you don't have to look for it. It will find the real you. Now, that's the trick. The operative phrase being: the real you. Someone once said that if you don't know where you're going any road will get you there. Hackneyed? Yes, but it's equally profound.

If we are spiritually connected, our true destiny will find us. If we can overcome the gravity of materialism and people worship, we will find diamonds in the rough by way of the people we meet, the ideas and values we embrace and sometimes, even in our dreams.


The Buddhist believe strongly in the power of what is called Nyo Ze Factors. Here they are: nyo ze so, nyo ze ze , nyo ze sho, nyo ze sa, nyo ze in, nyo ze en, nyo ze riki, nyo ze ka, nyo ho and nyo-ze-hon-mak- -kyuoto. These are ten factors of nature, designed to expiate one's bad karma caused by one's negative thoughts and behavior. Interpreted, they represent: Appearance, Nature, Power, Influence, Internal cause, Relation, Latent effect, Energy and drive, Manifest effect and Consistency from beginning to end.

When I lived in Los Angeles (where I grew up) many of my friends were involved in Hollywood, one way or another. I loved them, but I never had an interest in Hollywood. That factor probably helped to produce our friendship in an abstract way. For example, when out in public with them, I observed first hand, the pathetic nature of star gazers and paparazzi. While I don't feel sorry for my most fortunate friends, I understand the madness. They could not sit down to a decent meal at a restaurant without the gazes and inteterruptions. Because I am not famous, I saw upfront what we regulars must look like when mesmerized by famous personalities. What does that have to do with writing? Everything. Read on.


During my visit to the far east, Seoul Korea in particular, I attempted to soak up some Eastern culture. Oh, how we are so different in the west. It is relatively enlightening to ensue the other side, to peruse a different perspective on life, a perspective diametrically opposed to our own. It's okay, don't defend yourself, just travel with me, vicariously, for a moment and bring your main characters along with you.

Before leaving for Korea, I spent time with a good friend of mine who happens to be a world re known businessman. As we spoke in a hotel lobby, a few people gathered around. Simultaneously, there were two businesspeople next to us who drew a large crowd of Americans. They were attracted to these gentleman because the men were famous. They listened to my friend for a moment, then returned their attention to the famous personality believing they would learn more from him. Little did they know, my friend, Nolan, was far more famous, more successful, more generous and knowledgeable in business than all of us combined.

Later, I asked Nolan why he had not mentioned his background (or his last name) when I introduced him. He responded, "...because I already know who I am."

The point of the story is that we in the west perceive value based on notoriety, material and commercial success. Although, individuals who rightfully exemplify those values are worthy of honor for their accomplishments, and although they have much to offer, it does not mean they are spiritually appointed to encourage each admirer toward his or her destination.

The nyo ze factors mentioned above are designed to put us in the company of the right people at the right time.

"They are looking to be sold," Nolan said. I did not understand his conveyance at the time, but I do today.

After visiting the far east, substantially, I began to grasp a part of universal wisdom which we rarely confront in the west. It is not about commerce. Our calling in life is not written on a brochure. Enlightment is not sold. Great fictional characters and great books emanate from the hearts and minds of passionate people, long before they become famous. The greatest works of the masters are often unseen, unread, unspoken. Some of John Lenon's greatest music was revealed after his death. The same will be manifested in Michael Jackson's music. The same is true among painters such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Their best work was done long before fame was realized. Tiger Woods best golf game took place during a causal match with friends, not at The Masters. As readers and writers, part of our call to destiny is to enjoy those diamonds in the rough, before the necessity of commerce destroys genius given to increased public appetite calling for prolific production, rather than quality art created in solitude free of commercial coercion.

So, consider the characters in your story. Are they more prone to follow the crowd, or, are they spiritually inclined to find themselves? That's a question we might put to our characters, and more importantly, to ourselves. At this point, our characters begin to grow and so does the writer.

One should be oneself, because others are already taken.

Buddhist believe in what is called "yo ze factors." Those are fundamentally, spiritual elements in the universe that affect karma. Among those factors are: influence, manifested reality, latent reality,

Creative Writing Success

I absolutely guarantee you will become a better writer, immediately after executing this half hour exercise.

Write a 5 to ten page dialog involving only two characters. Do not use dialogue tags (he said, she said, he replied, etc.)

Try to evoke character and conflict and plot using dialog only.
Avoid long analog expositions
Use context, not explanations.

Here is an example of an exercise I created. I will use it in an upcoming short story.


“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“You know more than you’re telling us, don’t you?”
“Like what for example?”
“You know who did it.”
“I don’t know anything. “
“Then tell us, why did you run?”
“You came down the alley driving like crazy. You didn’t have any sirens on. How was I supposed to know you were cops?”
“You could have jumped out of the way if you thought you were in danger, but you didn’t. We chased you damn near two miles on feet, all the while screaming, police stop. But you didn’t stop did you?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Names. Addresses.”
“Like I said, two guys were running from the building when I got there. I didn’t see their faces.”

“And you didn’t have a conversation with them?”
“No. I don’t usually stop armed men and make friends with them.”
“Then why would someone testify that you did?”
“Who said that?”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you talk to the killers?”
“No.”
“Someone saw you talking to those men in front of the library, yesterday.”
“Yesterday? Yes, I …I talked with two strangers ….at the….library, yesterday.”
“Why did you deny it?”
“I didn’t deny anything. Are you trying to tell me those strangers are the same men who killed those people tonight?”
“Who said someone was killed?”
“I heard gunshots. People often die from that you know?”
“How many shots did you hear?”
“Five. Six or more. No more than ten.”
“But probably more than five?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said the men were fleeing the building when you arrived.”
“They were.”
“But you heard shots. How much time exhausted between the time you heard the shots and the time you saw the fleeing men?”
“Seconds.”
“Where were you when you heard the shots?”
“Just around the corner. About ten feet away.”
“And then you approached the building?”
“Yes.”
“You put yourself in harms way after you heard the gunshots?”
“I work there.”
“So, because you work there you decided to walk in the directions where you heard the shots.”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t afraid.”
“I guess not.”
“You weren’t afraid of the bad guys, but you ran from us…the cops? Do you own a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Let me guess. A nine millimeter. Silverplated?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“It was stolen.”
“Did you file a police report?”
“No.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m getting at two men. Men you know and met with yesterday. Men who killed tonight.”
“You’re not gonna plant this one me. I don’t know anything about it. I was simply going to work when the killing started.”
“What time do you normally report to work?”
“Seven forty five.”
“Seven forty five sharp over the past three years isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“But you were late today. Why?”
“I stopped for donuts.”
“Any reason why we would find a nine millimeter silver-plated pistol ten feet from where we stopped you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Any reason why your fingerprints should be on it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Donuts. Where?”
“Where What?”
“Where’d you stop for donuts?”
“Krispy Crème.”
“Which one?”
“The one on Peachtree and tenth.”
“Will anyone remember you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you often stop there?”
“No.”
“Why stop by this morning?”
“I was hungry.”
“Those men, the suspects stopped by Krispy Crème this morning, also. The clerk said there was a third man. Know who that might be?”
“I wanna see my lawyer.”
“You’ll need one

. Stand up and turn around. Put your hands behind your back.”

Creative Writing Critique for Thrillers/Suspense/Mystery

Perfect your writing skills by joining a crit group. I write thrillers/suspense and some mystery. I will crit the work of experienced thriller writers. I also recommend you do the same. This is an effective means of refining your writing skills. Acquire sound feedback and develop greater insight into your strengths and weaknesses by getting involved in a good writers crit group.

Although, my interest is in thriller/suspense, as you know, we can learn much from writers of any genre, romance, horror, YA, etc. I am personally concentrating on thriller/suspense because I have a novel written and nearly ready to publish.

Should you find an interesting group along those lines, please notify me at barrywrites@gmail.com

The Top 20 MFA Programs in Creative Writing

There is not a federally sanctioned accredited body to actually rank creative writing programs in terms of an MFA program, especially in creative writing.

This ranking is based, in part, upon the reviews of published authors who have read books by authors from these universities coupled with the results of avid readers of fiction who were impressed to the extent that they surrendered rankings based on their readings. We then followed up by contacting those authors to arrive at the schools to which they attended and/or earned an MFA in creative writing.

We took into account that many world renown authors do not have an MFA, therefore, we asked them "Which school would you attend toward earning an MFA if you were just starting out?"
Rankings are strongly dependent on the success of the MFA students toward publishing and gaining national recognition for their novels. Again, many famous authors do not hold a degree in the arts. That's one reason their evaluations of schools is necessary.

We credit the following resources for their contributions: Poets & Writers Magazine, gradschools.com, acclaimed novelist and The Atlantic Magazine.

We dissected a preponderance of information to arrive at this list. Here they are in the order of their rankings.

(1)The University of Iowa - Iowa City
(2)The University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
(3)The University of Virginia - Charlottesville
(4)The University of Houston - Houston
(5)Boston University - Boston
(6)The University of Massachusetts - Amherst
(7)John Hopkins University - Baltimore, MD
(8)New York University - New York City
(9)The University of Texas - Austin
(10)The University of Wisconsin - Madison
(11)Cornell University - Ithaca, New York
(12)Brown University - Providence, RI
(13)Columbia University - New York, NY



(14)Indiana University - Bloomington
(15)Syracuse University - Syracuse, NY
(16)The University of Georgia - Athens
(17)The University of California - Irvine
(18)The University of Oregon - Eugene
(19)The University of North Carolina - Greensboro
(20)The University of Utah - Salt Lake City, Utah

Most Memorable Single Line in Opening Chapters

There are many strong lines in opening chapters. The thriller and horror genre, by nature requires shocking openings, however, there are some writers who simply have the knack for grasping the readers attention right away, without compromising style or flow of the story. The writers listed below are among them.

I dare say this is an exclusive list, but it is the best based on the books I've read to date. There is much yet to read. I will update this list to the best of my ability and rank in order as I discover more. If I have missed your book, forgive me, and please make suggestions as I will read it.

These rankings are obviously based upon my judgment, however, for whatever it is worth. I write and read thrillers, religiously.

Here's a line within the opening chapter of The Listener by Shira Nayman. It moves me for reasons I will not explain because I want you to discover it for yourself, otherwise, it's like attempting to explain the meaning of a particular painting, subject to interpretation.

The doctor is visiting an asylum where she treats patients. Patients are on the grounds working with hoes and rakes. I think it's clever that the author, Mrs. Nayman did not mention the doctor's name, but kept us in the story. Here it is:

...perhaps the smell of fresh dirt really is a primal palliative that makes a mockery of our talking cure.

The author followed up with tremendously suspenseful dialog. Check it out at amazon.com

Creative Writing: How to unlock your imagination, develop your writing skills - and get published

Shira Nayman Speaks

Welcome Shira Nayman, Author of The Listener and Awake in the Dark. The Listener is a great read. Many of us have read it. To those who have not, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy. The Listener is in my personal library along with books by James Patterson, Stuart Woods, John Cannally, Lee Child, Sarah Paretsky, Karim Fossum and more. As you know, I absolutely love The Listener.

Here is a copy of the missive Shira sent me in response to our blog post entitled, Words Matter.


Writing Matters
Reading your latest blog posts….
What amazes me about Sarah Palin’s response to the shootings in Tucson, is her self-absorption, defensiveness, and utter lack of proportion. When six innocent people have lost their lives, and other lives hang in the balance, as a result of the shootings, to focus on her own grievances about the press, and to make reference to an accusation—“blood libel,” that invokes the deepest, most destructive kind of religious prejudice and persecution, and resulted for generations in countless murders and untold suffering—reveals a tremendous amount about the person doing the speaking: about her ignorance, selfishness and compromised character. You are very right that writing—words—matter; and as a sage philosopher of the twentieth century remarked, when listening to someone, one must always remember who it is who is doing the speaking. I suppose the point here is that we assess people who are in the public eye based on what they say and what they do. We know Sarah Palin through her actions and through her words—both of which reveal a comprehensive portrait of a person whose astonishing egotism is only overshadowed by a truly impressive ignorance.

When we fall in love with a speaker—or writer—we fall in love with a way of seeing, a point of view. I have often thought that being a writer is not so much an occupation (though it is also that) as a mode of being, a way of experiencing the world: not so much a skill set (though it of course involves skills) as a spiritual condition. The writers I admire and connect with appear, from early in life, to have an intuitive understanding that words matter; that what we say and how we say it has an impact on who we are, and on the world. Jean Paul Sartre cogently talked about how when we take on and espouse a belief, we are, in a sense, defining how we believe the world should be: we are declaring this is the idea or belief we would have all of mankind think or believe.

(Back to Palin—in this sense, when she put cross-hairs over those congressional districts, the implicit intention is that this is a vision she would have all people share; in declaring this image as representative of her and her views, she is propagating a vision of political discourse and response, she is setting forth her prescription for political rhetoric, which includes a call to citizen involvement—a declaration to supporters that this, too, is how you should think, this, too, is how you should act in relation to your fellow citizens. Of course, she could not “know” that a mentally unstable person might literalize her call; however, any savvy politician—and surely, she would consider herself savvy—knows that there are wayward elements in the population, extremists and the easily-influenced-unstable, which is why responsible politicians steer away from the potentially incendiary. In this sense, figures in power do indeed have a responsibility to speak and act with forethought, with knowledge, with awareness that their words and actions can have wide impact. An important aside here, is that as a doctor would be irresponsible, indeed, culpable, if she remained ignorant on matters that affect her patients—a heart surgeon, for example, not staying current with new developments in her field—so a politician who is ignorant regarding matters that deeply impact her job (such as having an awareness of basic geography, or of the meaning and deep resonances of hot-button historical flags such as “blood libel”) is not only irresponsible, but also to some extent culpable, given that this ignorance has consequences. The words and actions of any prominent political figure obviously have very-real potential impact on the public’s views and actions.)

When reading a novel, my internal sensors hone in immediately on what feels like the pulse-point of the writer’s soul; I sense, pretty quickly, if this author is on a hunt for some kind of truth—or more concerned with fancy-footwork and impressing. I suppose it’s not unlike when one meets someone new and immediately finds one’s intuitive faculties sniffing things out. Who is this person? What kind of a journey is he embarked upon? What kinds of moral stances does she take in life? How does she treat people? How does he understand the world and his place in it? We may not go too far down that road in every chance encounter, but for me, those kinds of questions always hover beneath the surface, certainly an any encounter that is prolonged; it is based on such delicate judgments that we decide if we are going to take this person into our lives.

When I pick up a novel, I find those same kinds of fibrillating assessments coming into play; and when I fall for a writer, I fall hook, line and sinker. When I tell my husband that I’m taking a new, already beloved book to bed, I mean this in the deepest sense; I am in some way making this author my lover, if to be one’s lover means to commune in the most profound way, spirit touching spirit, all the way.

After finishing Joseph Roth’s two masterpieces—The Radetzky March and Job—I came across another of his books in which there was a photograph of the author, circa late 1930’s, sitting on a suitcase at a train station in Germany, a notebook in his hands. Staring into the grainy, black and white snapshot, I found the tears welling—and cried for an hour or more, I couldn’t stop. Here was this man, with whom I had just had a passionate affair of the spirit; here was his gentle, troubled, fiercely intelligent face, the light of a pure and troubled soul pouring across the decades right into my own, the force of his honor and courage in what was a pained, lifetime search for truth so powerful it knocked the breath from me. My husband came into the bedroom to find me sobbing; years ago, he might have found cause for concern. This time, he only shook his head kindly and patted my hand. “Joseph Roth,” is all he said. I nodded, miserable and inspired, shattered with the pain and joy and troubled, ecstatic journeying which is the work—the life, the soul—of Joseph Roth, comforted to be joined in this strange, enlivening, darkened cave and to have my husband beside me, looking at the flickering, shadowy images being projected onto the wall.

Look forward to further writing insights from this wonderful author.


-

Writing, A Most Honorable Art

Here is a poem I wrote sunday morning. It is a poem about us....about all writers gifted with an insatiable need to write, a master class if you will. Because we are so spiritually masohistic, I believe we deserve an occassional inspiration that reflects upon the nobility of our profession.

(c)copyright 2011 Hamdani

Wisdom of the Pen

We are quiet blessed you know,
an enigma manifested by the words we throw,
an intangible skill, clothed by precepts of magic.
By stroke of pen worlds are changed,
thoughts transformed and convictions,
thwarted and so compelled to travel vicariously
to places unknown...to a land of open minds.

Oh, how we discover the province of freedom!
Roads yet unmapped. Once closed minds
now filled with doors without knobs,
windows without locks, illustrated by faces without color
...a cleansed soul that knows not hate.

In the beginning, God created us in his likeness and in his kind,
Aha! By stroke of meaning undefined...we create worlds without war,
giving birth to disincentives to conflict by reflection
and we find that all is settled in time.

Oh, Mighty pen, most distinguished warrior!
How wise you are to enter stubborn hearts and minds,
a valiant sword transforming beastly ideas
from muddy waters to wine.

Sanity and peace emerge from your tracks-
footprints that should have been conveyed by soldiers;
victories acknowledged by ink...a spiritual technology
thus soldiers blood made obsolete
and individuals, families, cities and nations made free,
one-by-one by stroke of your intangible genius.

Oh, fellow writers, how we meditate gracefully
in supplication to the voice of reason
as the breath of God most high forms the next season
with the clay of words otherwise forgotten,
made immortal by a message betrothed to history.