Becoming a Healthier Writer

Willing is not enough; we must do. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. - Bruce Lee

One of the 'problems' of being a writer is that your reality can be mostly what goes on inside your head, and as you sit at the keyboard, year after year, your butt and gut slowly swell before you realize it.

After recently discovering that my butt was reaching felonious proportions, I decided to take action, using a vehicle that I hope will keep me motivated over the long term.

I've started a separate blog which will track my progress to achieve physical fitness this year: Martial Arts Fitness.

Let's see how I go!

Comedy Structure

Larry David

Early this year, I came across this article in the New Yorker about one of my comedy inspirations - Larry David. See Angry Middle-Aged Man.

A part of the article that grabbed my attention is how he weaves his plots together for his great show, Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Referring to his tattered notebook:

He leafed through the notebook. “Most of the ideas stink,” he said. “But you’d be surprised. See, a lot of these I’ll use, not as a big story but like a little piece of filler. And then all of a sudden it somehow leads into something.”

When the time comes to begin writing the new season, David scans his notebook for possibilities. “He’ll go through the notebook and find three or four stories and extrapolate them to worst-case,” ... “He starts to weave them together. Sometimes you can brainstorm ideas with him—you can even pitch B stories to him. He’s used stories from Larry Charles and me. Cheryl got a story in there. And then he just sits down and sweats it out.”

Larry David is the master of the setup. He places his characters in innocent situations that usually escalate to an unexpected catastrophe. The humor just pours out of those situations because of what the characters have to suffer.

It's the comedic structure that keeps his stories fresh and interesting.

Most stories have an 'inciting incident' that sets the protaganist (main character) on their journey, however Larry David gives his characters multiple inciting incidents so that they get boxed in and can't get out.

The hero in Curb Your Enthusiasm usually doesn't win the prize at the end (but he does in that great restaurant ending episode to season 4), but instead of the hero's loss being upsetting or depressing, it's usually hilarious.

I know his humor doesn't appeal to everyone, but I enjoy how he tackles human suffering seriously, which is fairly typical of American Jewish humor. Larry David clearly stands in that tradition.

He reminds me of that old joke attributed to the ancient Israelites, God's chosen people, "Next time Dear God, please choose someone else."

Semicolon Abuse

Dr. Who spots a misused semicolon

In a lot of technical material, it's very common for items to be introduced and listed in point form, for example:

• Point 1
• Point 2

Did you notice I introduced those two points with a colon?

I've lost count the number of times I've seen this instead;

• How can I hear you
• When you offended me with that semicolon?

There. I feel better now.

So please remember, hold down that shift key when pressing the button that has the colon/semicolon.

I found this site of a lovely man who is doing a good thing for the apostrophe, The Apostrophe Preservation Society.

Hot Writing

Someone hand this man a razor!

I came across this quote today:

"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience."

~ Henry David Thoreau

It's true - writing is fast and easy when the thoughts are hot.

Too often for me I get ideas in the most inopportune moments.

The trick is setting aside the time for the ideas to heat-up while I'm AT THE KEYBOARD.

Capturing Streaming Video

Not Internet Explorer

If you use the Firefox Web browser, there is a useful extension called Video Downloader: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2390 which will let you download streaming video from YouTube and a select list of other sites.

The video clips will download in .flv format, but there are freeware converters out there that will change it to .avi or .mpg, such as http://www.snapfiles.com/get/internetvideoconverter.html

Splicing other clips into your own video projects could lead to some interesting results!

3 Awful Things About Germany

I took off on a trip through parts of Europe and North America, so I haven't made an entry in my blog recently, but I kept some notes which I hope to use to reminisce about my trip.

The first point I want to make about my trip was how overwhelmed I was by a few things I just couldn't comprehend about Germany:

1. Lufthansa. This is a well known airline, but you would think they designed their economy seats for Hobbits. I'm not the tallest guy in the world (six feet), but my knees were pressed for 13 hours into the seat in front of me. After 8 hours, the pain turned to numbness and the trip became bearable after that.

Here the Hobbits line up for their specially designed airplanes

2. Smoking. It seems that when a child is born in Germany, they are given a free packet of cigarettes. It appeared to me that MOST people in Germany smoke, especially if there's food and drink around. I couldn't understand how a nation known for being aware of health and environmental issues could have such an addiction to cigarettes.

My first sight of Frankfurt from Hobbit airlines. I thought they were clouds but later discovered it was passive smoke

3. Shelf-toilets. A friend warned me before using his bathroom in Munich that the German 'shelf-toilet' is one of the most disgusting things he's ever seen. I was equally appalled at the proximity it makes to one's feces and the resultant pungent odor it leaves in the bathroom. I asked an Austrian aunt about this style of toilet and she said she preferred it in case her doctor ever requests a sample of her stool. If my doctor ever wants my stool, then I'll do a poo for him at his place, thanks all the same.

Scatalogical nirvana

Bonus awful thing about Germany:

4. Autobahns. One of the words I heard the most while in Germany was their word for traffic jam: Stau. Autobahns are famous for having no speed limit, but that's of little use when there are traffic jams everywhere. What the Germans really need are AUTOBAHNS.

National past-time: Germans stop to watch Hobbit airplanes fly overhead through clouds of cigarette smoke

Apart from these awful things, I still had a great time in Europe. Some of those good things will follow.

So you wanna be in the movies? Make your own!

Don't talk about it, just shoot it

I have the good fortune of being able to make videos for the fine software company I work for, plus I've created some for myself for my own amusement.

I've discovered that "creating content" in audio and video format can be far quicker compared to the laborious task of writing and editing text.

I was going through some old e-mail and found these links that might be helpful for future reference:

• http://www.cartoonsmart.com/ – cartoons and flash
• http://keepvid.com/ - download youtube videos, only saves them as FLV’s though you can encode them into avi’s
• http://www.findsounds.com/ - SFX search engine
• http://www.therecordist.com/pages/downloads.html - free SFX

The most enjoyable part of making video clips for me is adding music and sound effects (sfx), they can add a lot of humor to dry and dusty material.