Finding The Hidden Authors In High-Schools

So on a scale from salt to good old fashion black coffee, I'm just a little bitter about my memories of high-school. Not the fun I had or the girls I dated or the injuries I sustained or the fights I got in.

But on the fact that my joy of reading and imagination for stories was never picked up on, by the school system and the great teachers I had a chance to learn from.

They had no time!

We spent so much time teaching the basics and the mandatory and cheaply acquired essentials that we never got to the best part of English class, Writing!

I can remember covering creative writing as a two-week module in any high school English class I ever took. One where we learned for the fourth time in a row by grade twelve how to write a haiku and the elements of a 3 act play. Only as a set up our Shakespear unit the next month.

But I can't remember for the life of me ever being told that Author, was a job you could be out of high-school. That Writer was even a profession. These two titles were nowhere during the career fairs. On the long list things, you learn in school but never use, was the type of writing we learned in high-school that for the most part left us unprepared for the real writing, we were expected to complete in college let alone in life.

No one explained the difference between the novel and the novella or what a sourcebook was and why they are essential to writing non-fiction as research sources. How to write a proper essay, what a footnote was and how to format an essay.

No one dared give the idea of pouring your imagination and heart into a story with the intent of publishing it, in grade ten, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why.

It's because the gatekeepers of literature were big, strong, and picky back then. and now they are not.

The desire and nostalgic envy I have for my former self sits squarely in the shed light of this new era of self-publishing. One where Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and a host of others allow anyone to publish their work with no gate and no keepers other than your self and your ability. That light didn't exist for us millennial parents back then like it does for our kids now. So the approach we took to literature and making it need to change.

Is your kid a book worm devouring novels of any genre and length by the 9th grade?

Get them a copy of "The Elements of Style" and turn them on to the idea that they could write the next Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or Katniss Everdeen, into existence

Get them a copy of Stephen King's "On Writing" to give Pennywise a run for his terrifying sewer clown money.

Pressfield's War of Art,

Lamott's Bird by bird.

Any number of toe-dipping dives into the world of being a writer because unless the government who runs our schools have suddenly become fantastically good at preparing youth for the world they will enter post-secondarily, they will never hear the call of their own pen's and keyboards until they are 26 and working a dead-end job with more commitments than motivation.

So this year, for Christmas. if you know someone who fits that bill. don't let them go another day without knowing it's at least possible now to Write. and give them the gift of dream chasing.

On College Degrees And Libraries

There is a good chance you have heard the sentiment shared, from the red-clad stage of a TED talk or from a YouTube video staring a now millionaire that left theirs all behind them.
I'm talking about college degrees. Your BA. MA. And any other string of letters you care to put behind you the last name on a business card
But before you assume too much I'm not here to tear down the institution or convince your teenager to take a gap year that turns into a passion for making minimum wage. I think higher education has a place but it has lost its meaning. I wouldn't want a doctor or a nurse who did not graduate with sufficient grades to become one anywhere near me with a scalpel and a needle, but there is something magical about someone who left college to become a massive success by mastering their life and circumstance.
From the ever polite and pleasant Bill Gates to the inspiring Ryan Holiday. There are dozens of examples now of people who are experts and stars in their field that never walked across a stage to receive a piece of paper saying they knew what they know. In this new age of internet and information, the value of a college degree is becoming a thing of the past.

But then there are guys like me. People who spent 6 years and a lot of my parent's money striving for a degree I finished 95% of just to land a job and later career that was unrelated aside from proximity to the degree and then found my life's purpose in writing which is a third type of different from those first two directions.

It seems like a big waste and for writers at least, where I find my deepest passion, the money I spent on a degree is something I can't help but wish I spent it elsewhere.

The 40,000 to 80,000 a BA in arts cost these days at your average college can pay for so much more valuable things than a piece of paper that says your a writer. Every book and article and poem already does that. The degree just says an institution, instead of a fan, agrees with you. And last time I checked my College never purchased one of my books but I've sold all of them so far to fans. The thousands of dollars spent on a degree could be spent on book covers and editors and of all things a writer truly needs these days, a library of books.

John Green said it best that " Book are the only apprenticeship most writers have."

I would trade my degree in a heartbeat for the shelves and books that would fill them if I could have spent even half of what I spent on college. But alas I did not and can not but hopefully, you reader of this tragic blog post, a hopeful writer in your own rights still might be able to.

Fear And Banning On The Internet As A Christian Writer

I have been a writer on the internet since early 2008. And as such, have seen plenty of change in the landscape of what can and can't be authored online.
I surfed a web before trigger warnings and declarations and tragically before the NSFW label on posts. Way before blue checkmarks and the ever-mysterious shadow banning wielded by their outrage.
But as of late the ideologies that pilot the social networks the web became, have been active. Deplatforming people because of what they believe the same way I would boot a porn channel if I ran the world.
These sites are only doing what they feel is right to things they objectively own. The problem is that sites like youtube don't make the content they promote and host the content. Google doesn't blog on blogger, bloggers do.
And as the death grip of a left staggering thought pattern chokes the social out of these media companies, I feel like any step in defiance will have me blocked, banned or worse de-platformed.
The freedom of the internet is now tangled with a snake of compromise. We can post and write whatever we want so long as we do it to fit inside the community guidelines and political affiliations of who builds the servers and keeps the lights on in silicon valley.
To boldly host my own site on my own server so these measures can't be used means more hardware than most writers can afford. To rank on Google on an opposing platform of my own would mean means to an unreachable end.
But maybe that's the point.
Persecution never works. It only breeds martyrs and sympathy. And right now alongside orthodox believers are orthodox biologists, lawyers, politicians and teachers. People willing to stand and be shot or at the very least blocked and banned.
Ages before these internet debacles a man took sights on an opposing empire that was ideologically driven as well. One that viewed sex drugs and communications standards drastically different than that missionary. But Paul staked a claim on Rome that brought Christianity to the world. Maybe not at first but by his courage and conviction, evidently at last.
I don't want to be afraid to post an article about binary gender or theology all the same. But to have convictions alongside your websites ideologies means at least entertaining those jitters before the plunge.

Still.

I think of a lot of articles and book ideas that I know will get banned and removed from the sites I use to spread my attempts at spreading the gospel.

To let that fear decide when my pen writes and when my keyboard types is cowardice. And the scriptures have little to say pleasantly of cowards.

So here goes.
To Rome or bust.

The False Freedom And Nature Of Online Censorship

The internet itself is the true social egalitarian aspect we look for, based on the freedom that we seek as posters and searchers on the web.

The problem with that is that each website and app on our phones belong to private people as intellectual property on physical servers.

There is no free place on the web like the freedom we have in our lives like there is public land or public property. The right to speak in these places concurrently must be fitted to a website owner's preferences in their own speech. In the same way, they can not tell you what to type on your keyboard, you can not tell them what the terms and conditions of their website's use are.

Unless the internet becomes an unowned place or an all owned place. One that can be contributed to like society but not possessed like private property. The internet will always be a false freedom.

That is the nature of the internet as it now hints at this possibility of freedom while being nested in the possession of billion-dollar companies.

Each one wanting the allure of freedom of use to attract users. Each one needing the benefits of private ownership when their personal or corporate preferences are challenged or opposed.

This is why and how anything is censored on the internet. Not because its a violation of free speech or expression. But because a website hosted by an individual crashes when it becomes too popular so the websites with more resources to host more visitors foster the communities we want to join and be with. These large infrastructures of storage and servers come with a price tag, that price tag gets paid by people with ideologies. These ideologies need to be placated to or the money disappears and with it so does the ability to have a popular site. The reality of the internet is that while connection is available through your personal phone. It's all stored and server via massive infrastructure in Silicon Valley and other info centers around the world.

These are not as free as the sign up's you fill out to tweet and snap.

This is power plain and simple. Power over another smaller service, your own computer hosting your own website to be exact. It is not evil in itself but it's present nonetheless.

If power corrupts at all. Then the size of your websites hosting ability is proportionate to your potential of tyranny in tandem. If you own a web domain or app or social media platform, it is only a matter of time before your freedoms are challenged or opposed by the users, or you oppose the user's freedoms

The tech that the internet is made of. The servers and data centers and electronic storage that hold every tweet, Instagram story, blog post, and video is fundamentally opposed to freedoms, as owned things cannot be free.

No matter how they are marketed as such.

On Masculine Writing And Soup

While the research and political discourse might be conflicted and ostensibly up in the air, men and women write differently. I will never have the descriptive grace that Anne Frank or J.K. Rolling had. Conversely, these excellent and passionate writers in completely different fields of fiction and journaling, will likely never have the hold on terror the way Stephen King does.

There are aspects of the written word that are tied to our minds and mental tendencies that are not as transferable as the ink to the page. Aspects of what it means to be distinctly male and female, I dare say how God intended.

These aspects are like the aroma of a good soup, simmering on the stove of creative's muse's kitchen. Noticeable from the mere entrance of the audience to the work but not identifiable without a taste of the subject matter.

A mother can not write of the violence of war the way a soldier does, from the perspective of a soldier. She may empathize and sympathize but the soldier will know what it feels like for a man to kill a man.

The soldier, conversely, can never, no matter how versed and researched, speak with any of the authority of the mother in childbirth on childbirth.

These perspectives are not lines to be drawn in distinction but rather lenses and filters to observe the world better in. For there is a desperate need in this world for soldiers to be willing to understand the birth of children and mothers to be willing to understand the horrors of war.

If nothing else the written word gives us this unassuming table where both sexes can sit and lends itself more to understanding than spoken words tend to.

As Anne Frank said, "Paper is more patient than people." And our written words can be sipped and spooned through like the noodles of a soup. rich in its composition and varied in its ingredients.

As for the men who write. Your masculinity is part of the body whose hand holds that pen and hovers over that keyboard. Your aggression, your stoicism, your logic, pride, and honour all blend as the muse stirs your pot. You do not write with these aspects as to overshadow or replace the aspects of feminine authors of which I am not fit to adequately describe. But instead to compliment them.

Neither is better, both are needed.

The way you need a bowl and a spoon to eat soup.