Yes, that picture’s of the Green River. Yes, it’s that beautiful and that clear in the calmer parts, of which there are many.

We just ran the seven mile stretch that starts just below the dam and goes down to the Little Hole campground with our four girls (ages 6 - 15) and had a ball. During our trip we saw otters swimming  up the river not more than six feet from our raft, a herd of mountain sheep off the side of the road, fish and more fish, a snake a long as a man with a light silvery skin mottled with black rectangles, and two osprey (one that dove under the water to get a fish and a second flying about twelve feet over our raft with a fish in its clutches). We ran some class II rapids. This time of year they weren’t scary to me, but provided plenty of thrills and stress for the kids. The water was warm enough to swim in, but cold enough to give you a shock. And it was so CLEAR.  Of course, there were spots too deep to see the bottom. But there were plenty where you could see the river plants, rocks, and aquatic life. And all of it in that emerald hue.

The girls were in the water inbetween every set of rapids. We packed a cooler and so stopped a number of times. Once to check out a waterfall, another time to snack, another to play on a sandbar, yet another to chase those otters, a bathroom break (outhouses provided by the park service), another time to swim.  

The Flaming Gorge area features the beautiful landscape seen in Southern Utah–red rock, pines, junipers. People come from all over to run the river and fish. We didn’t fish this time, but there were plenty of anglers who had rented boats. Still, it didn’t feel crowded at all. There were long stretches where we had the gorge to ourselves. Next time I think I’m going to bring a book (in a waterproof ziplocok) and we’ll spend a little more time on one of our stops to sit and relax.

Some tips:

• Bring a cooler. You’ll want to put in along the river and enjoy the gorge. There’s no hurry to finish.
• Bring good water shoes that have a sole with traction and netting to keep gravel out. (I got a pair at Wal-Mart that made the whole ride wonderful.) Also bring a hat and sunscreen. If you wear a cotten tee-shirt and quick drying shorts you’ll enjoy the ride even more.
• We stayed at the Flaming Gorge Resort the night before our run. It’s been around a while and the condos showed it, but it wasn’t bad. The condos had a kitchen. And the restaurant had large servings of good food.
• You might also want to bring a way to transport the raft inflated. We put ours on top of the minivan and had no problem taking it to and from the rental shop. However, I wished I had learned the trucker’s knot. The knots I tied cinched up into nasty snags that proved very difficult to untie.
• Bring two vehicles or a bicycle. The businesses there charge close to $50 to shuttle your car the 9+ miles between the launch below the dam and Little Hole. That was outrageous to me. Next time we’ll bring a bike, lock it up by Little Hole, and have one of us bike back for the car. Or you can park half way inbetween at Dutch John after you’ve launched your raft and make the hour walk down. Of course, if you’re an early riser, the rental shop in Dutch John offers a $20 shuttle from Little Hole to the Dam, but only at 8:30 AM and 9:30 AM.

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While in Provo this year for the Freedom Festival I purchased Ticket to Ride (European version). I wanted to do more than walk around or swim at the pool with the family. It was an excellent purchase and recommendation from the folks at Games People Play in the Orem mall. Of course, the kid at the store had played everything in the store and knew just where to steer us. It only took a few minutes to figure out how to play and everyone from the 6 year old to both Nellie and I had fun. It’s so fun we’ve played it a number of times since we got back.

*

Both Nellie and I learned to love Indonesian food during the years we spent in the Netherlands. Alas, not many Indonesian restaurants around. In search of something similar while living the in the San Francisco area, we found Thai food.

Ah, that dream within a dream.

And now we found yet another Thai restaurant in Utah with excellent food. So good my two oldest daughters get cravings to go back. The first is Thai Evergreen in Orem, Utah. It looks like a family owned operation and is. And their food is delicious. Four family’s went while at this year’s Freedom Festival, which meant we ordered quite a variety of food. Everything I tasted was delicious.

The next is Kamin in Logan, UT. Again, wonderful. Nellie and I have eaten there a number of times and never leave unsatisfied.

The first part scared the crap out of me. More here on their cool website: http://www.cyberstein.co.uk/

Oh, and remember the last monster created with a named that ended in stein? Not an auspicious beginning…

You know I’ve been trying to attract some crows and ravens. No luck yet. I’ve gone to plan Q which is probably what most people would do for plan A–just put up a bird feeder with cat food in it. Except I haven’t gotten around to erecting the whole apparatus. So no crows or ravens yet. But I have been able to attract the attention of a pair of hawks.

At first I thought they were protecting their nest. A pair of doughty parents. But I’ve looked about and can’t find any nest. Furthermore, they don’t always pull their stunt in the same area. And so I’m beginning to suspect they’re toying with me.

Here’s what happens. I go on my hike and while I’m walking in place at the beginning of a new interval, looking out over the magnificent mountain vistas and contemplating important things like cheese, one of these hooligans will sneak dive bomb me from behind. At the last moment the bird will pull up making a huge WAAAHOOOF sound with its wings that sends my heart racing even faster than it already is. It’s like someone taking a huge broom and swinging it at speed three inches from the back of your head.

Yesterday, I saw them off to the right at about 100 yards, calling out, making that piercing cry. I thought—ha! they’re over there. But THEY weren’t. It was only one of them. The other guy was between me and the sun. And so I’m hiking along minding my own business and WHAAAHOOOF!  I just about had a heart attack.

I’ve caught one diving at me once. It’s an amazing thing to see a bird of that size hurtling from the sky straight at your head. And I would welcome such an experience again. But they just won’t perform. No, they’ve got to blindside me. 

This week I’m going to get a picture of the low-budget criminals and post it here.

The have two podcasts on magic:

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/12/writing-excuses-episode-14-magic-systems-and-their-rules/

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/18/writing-excuses-episode-15-costs-and-ramifications-of-magic/

I found these two interesting, and, as always, entertaining to listen to. However, while their focus on limitations and ramifications is excellent, I’ve found asking “what does the magic cost” to be counterproductive. Here’s why: “cost” leads people to think ONLY of magics where you trade x thing for y power. Blood, memories, vitality, years of life, your children, etc. The problem with this is that while magics that use fuel (cost something) can be great, it isn’t necessary to do it that way. There are many stories with wondrous magics that don’t cost a thing.

For example, Heroes shows a lot of magic without cost. What does it cost Hiro to time travel? Nothing. It’s free. What about the painter? He can do it at will. Same with the guy who goes invisible, the cheerleader who regenerates–all the other characters there. What about the magic in Elantris? It costs nothing to draw the runes. What was consumed? Nothing. What about Orson Card’s Hatrack world? Alvin can doodlebug until doomsday. There’s no fuel required.

Some may say it’s semantics, but it’s not. It affects the paths taken in the invention of the magic. I’ve seen it in my invention sessions and those of groups I’ve been in. Don’t trust me, do a group magic brainstorm session where you ask the cost of magic question and then another where you ask about limitations instead.

I’ve found that it’s MUCH more helpful to ask these questions but NOT necessarily in the order below.

• What is a cool power?
• What are the limitations to it?
• What are the ramifications and conflicts of using it?

Costs are simply ONE type of limitation. In magic, limitation and ramification are the key things. By opening up the question, we can use costs or MANY other types of limitations like genetics/bloodlines, intelligence, scope of power, duration of effect, sources, scarcity of ability, morals, geography, times when it’s effective, mysteries, etc.

Listen to the wonderful podcasts and then focus on powers, limitations, and ramifications, and use costs only if they are limitations that jazz you. 

I don’t like deodorants because they wimp out on me. I’ll put on my bracing Speedstick in the morning and be sniffing myself by lunch. And if I put some industrial perfume on it only leads to rashes.

Someone might be saying that I should just be a real man and smell like a real man smells. But how about I be a real, smart man. See, if you’ve got dog poo in your carpet, you wouldn’t spray it with cologne, hoping to deal with the smell. No, you go to the source. Clean up the stuff and forego all the scents. In fact, if you keep the dog from pooping in the first place, you’re ahead of the game. So why not do the same with underarm odors? Just get rid of the stinkers.

Well, that’s what I did. Many years ago I found out that natural mineral salts kill underarm bacteria. If the underarm bacteria can’t exist, let alone breed and excrete, then you don’t get underarm odor. What’s more, you can get those mineral salts in “rock” form. Just wet and wipe under your arms and you’re done. It works just like regular anti-perspirant and deodorant, it’s just that you’re delivery bacteria killers instead of perfumes.

Another good thing about mineral salt deodrant rocks is that they last a LONG time. And I mean looooong. My last rock took about 4 years to use up (heads up all you one-year’s supply people). The problem with them is that you can’t find the rocks in the grocery store next to the big brands. But you CAN find them in health stories. I got my latest from Shangri-lah in Logan. The brand is Thai Crystal (named after the location where the US companies discovered this method of deodorizing).

Folks, it’s 3:09 PM. I just did the sniff test–aah, the sweet smell of nothing!

*

I heard all the hype about Rothfuss and picked up his The Name of the Wind  in a Hastings book shop. The first few pages didn’t grab me and so I put it back. But then I kept hearing the hype. I finally decided, okay, okay, I’ll give it a go.

By “go” I mean something like five pages. See, I’m impatient with books. If you can’t grab me by the bottom of page one, I’m outta there. I read too many stories in my undergrad program that bored me to the very last page. Sometime after I graduated (why did I wait so long?) I realized that I could increase the odds of reading something interesting me if I only read things that interested me. (You only arrive at this level of brilliance after many years in college.)

I’m not going to overview the plot here. Just know it’s a fabulous read. For you writers, note that what drives the reader’s suspense is not an overarching plot, but his situation of being alone and destitute. So while there are villains, that really isn’t what keeps the reader going. It’s the wonder of a new place and our hope for this kid.

*

I read more non-fiction than I do fiction each year. I need to so that I have something to say in my writing. And I will tell you that I haven’t found a finer source of cool ideas to huck into stories than Paul Newman’s (no, not the actor cum cookie man) Daily Life in the Middle Ages.

He breaks up medieval life into topics like Eating and Cooking, Building and Housing, Clothing and Dressing, etc. It’s full of wonderful stuff.

Did you know that they played football back in old England? Not sissy European style, but hog style, like rugby or American football. Except it was often between two towns and the playing field was miles long.

Did you know that respectable women wore hats? Those who let their hair go free were young girls and prostitutes. And that if a man knocked a woman’s headdress off it was tantamount to accusing her of prostitution and might result in the woman’s husband or family taking the man to court to exhonorate her. 

Did you know that the word “curfew” came from the old French “covre feu,” meaning “cover the fire.” Since open flames were such a fire hazard in the old cities, many towns had regulations that required people to douse their lights and carefully bank their fires at a certain time in the evening which was often marked by the tolling of bells.

I pulled these beauties out just randomly flipping through the pages. The book is full of such delights and you can be sure many of these will be finding their way into my stories.

*

I didn’t vote for Ross Perot the first time. I certainly wouldn’t vote for him now. But James Maxey just pointed me to an excellent on-line explanation of the current government budget. It’s worth your time to check this out to be able to understand what folks are talking about when it comes to our money and how Congress spends it. The charts are narrated, compelling, non-partisan, and incredibly easy to follow. Here are more Perot Chart presentations.  

Here’s my response.

—-

I don’t know any of these successful authors who don’t have self-respect because I don’t know any of them who try to write based on what they think will sell. Everyone of them that I know writes from passion. And I know some NY Times Bestsellers. They might look at 10 projects they have passion for and choose one that might be more marketable. But the passion comes first.

I don’t know how anyone could spend the amazing number of hours it takes to finish a novel unless they have passion for the project. In fact, I wonder if it’s possible to create something that’s actually sellable without it. Everyone’s always talking about these hacks out there with metal brains writing for money. But after all the writers I’ve met, I’ve yet to find one. In my experience they’re as scarce as the yeti.

So my intent wasn’t to say you can write for love or money, but not both. My intent was to say that I believe most MFA programs have made themselves irrelevant to the greater stream of literacy in the country. The teachers have passion for fringe genre and teach their students how to entertain that fringe reader. And if they DO have passion for the types of fiction most readers want, such enjoyment is always talked about as some form of slumming. There’s an apology or at least a statement making it clear they know such fiction is not something you bring to the table where serious writers work.

But this isn’t true. Serious writers, passionate writers work in those genres. And they deliver excellent work. By that I do NOT mean they deliver the tropes of literary fiction in drag. What they deliver doesn’t appeal to the fringe markets. But it’s excellent, nevertheless, because it delivers exactly what the people go to those stories for.

I immediately bought his anthologies–Greasy Lake, If The River Was Whiskey, Descent of Man. I was in heaven. Now, not all of his stories worked magic on me. But when I was having a hard time finding one story in a whole anthology, his books seemed like a treasure trove.

He didn’t do as well in his novels. Oh, the writing was just as good. The characters and descriptions just as odd and stunning. But he didn’t keep my interest. The problems never built into anything. Nevertheless, I loved him.

I’ve been having a brief conversation with him and the fan boy in me is delighted to finally talk to this guy. And after reading an interview with him, I realize why he probably spoke to me. While the other literary fiction authors were following the tastes of the fringe group, Boyle at least wanted to entertain.

In his interview he says.

 Everybody has forgotten that literature, like all art, is, at root, entertainment. It is supposed to entertain you. It’s not supposed to be some conundrum to be resolved by some professors in the university. It’s not a game. It’s not masturbation. It’s art. And I think great art is great on all levels. But the first level on which it must be great is that it must be entertaining.

Amen, brother Boyle. Amen!

Here the full Boyle AWP interview.

However, I still think he misses the mark. In it he says about bestsellers:

But it’s mainly vampire books and Tom Clancy and all the rest of it. I don’t understand why we can’t make our books more available to everybody-not by compromising what we do, but by popularizing them, getting them out to the public.

I think that now we don’t have great editors. We have editors who are basically trying to hold on to their jobs and who publish good books once in a while. They’re basically cheerleaders for the books. They’re not editors, really. They’re incapable of being editors; they don’t need to be. Because editing is done-self-editing is done-through the apprenticeship in the writing programs. Nearly everyone from my generation on to your generation and beyond will have been through an MFA program. It’s just the way it is now. It’s a different world. It’s essential.

I’d like to suggest that Boyle, despite his love of entertainment, still misses the mark in his interview because you cannot popularize something that only appeals to a small market. The reason why Stephenie Meyer, Patterson, et al sell exponential circles around folks like Don DeLillo or Louise Erdrich is because Meyer and gang are very good at delivering what the largest portions of the reading public want. They deliver types of entertainment that DeLillo and Erdrich do not. (And I mean “entertainment” in a very broad sense.)

We could point at the Oprah effect (whether you like it or not, Mr. Cold Mountain) and say that’s not true. It’s all PR and marketing. But that assumes publisers are idiots. And while some of them may be, I think it’s an extreme assumption. Publishers are in it for the love AND money. And you can be sure that the board of directors is looking for smart, money people to lead the companies. You don’t make money, you’re fired.

Which means that IF the publishers found literary fiction sold like hotcakes they’d promote it like hotcakes. But literary fiction too often fails to entertain anybody but a handful of fringe readers. And so trying to popularize it can only have a limited effect. When people are thirsty, not many are going to pass up tall glasses of ice water for the pickled jalapenos at the end of the line.

Meyer, Clancy, Grisham, Roberts etc are masters of entertainment. And, like it or not, that’s the main reason the small portion of the public who actually read go to fiction.

I think it’s fine to cater to the fringe audience if that’s your pleasure. But I think it’s ridiculous to think such fare is better than what most people enjoy. Or that it deserves any special veneration. The MFA programs I’m familiar with seem, by and large, to miss the point. Instead of teaching the meat of fiction (entertainment) they focus on teaching students to serve up the parsley with great pomp. And when the customers go elsewhere to get the meat they crave (or the salad for you vegans), they respond by saying the customers are simply too dumb to get it or have no taste.

Now, I’m not saying the folks I work with in the MFA program are idiots. Or jerks. Almost everyone I’ve met has been extremely nice and smart. They have great insights. But there is a strong pressure in that culture, amost a moral pressure, to think about fiction this way. And it’s based on their tastes.

I think we all do this. 90% of what’s out there is crap. But it isn’t, really. The truth is that 90% of what’s out there simply doesn’t appeal to us. And so because it doesn’t deliver the goods, it’s crap to us. The problem is when we don’t realize the difference and begin to think that because we don’t have the taste for something that it’s garbage.

It’s not.

And that’s one thing the gentle and smart people in my program have shown me. I’m just as liable to make this mistake as anyone.

So what MFA programs need to do is teach fiction. The meat. As well as the parsley. They need to teach all the genres, not just one. Alas, for the meat you have to go to communications departments to even talk about it. And then hope you find someone like Dolf Zillman, Bryant Jennings, Jenefer Robinson, or Peter Vorderer.

Which leads me to the next point. Boyle is wrong about editors and writers. The majority of the authors that actually sell never set foot in an MFA program. MFA’s teach students to write for a small fringe market. And so they’ll dominate that fringe market, but not the big markets. Not what most people actually read.

Since I haven’t worked with any editors in that so-called golden age of editing, I cannot comment on the difference. But I do know that the editors I and other authors have worked with do many edits on the projects they oversee. They are thorough. They want it to be the best story it can be. It’s true they won’t take something that’s a complete mess and work on it. But why should they? There are so many better manuscripts out there it only makes sense.

Anyway, I love Boyle. Probably becasue he loves plot and story as much as language. His shorts saved me in my undergrad program. They were one of the few interesting things I read. I just am dismayed that these writing programs are so far off in the weeds.

Generation R (R Is for Reader)
The book business may be flat, but there’s at least one bright spot: the booming sales of books for teens–and no, it’s not all Harry Potter… Contrary to the depressing proclamations that American teens aren’t reading, the surprising truth is they are reading novels in unprecedented numbers. Young-adult fiction (ages 12-18) is enjoying a bona fide boom with sales up more than 25 percent in the past few years, according to a Children’s Book Council sales survey…”

If that trend holds, it means we’ll have a fine wave of readers to replace all of us who die off, and then some. Someone praise JK Rowling for Hogwarts and for awakening pleasure reading in the hearts of children (and adults).

And take it as a lesson. The future is in the next generation. Perhaps reading provides just as much entertainment as anything else. The kids just have to discover it.

Hopefully, Nellie will be doing her part to awaken that joy in the hearts of the marvelous youth of our small town. As I wrote before, she’s going to be following the steps of Nancie Atwell who has done amazing things for 20+ years up in Maine.

http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Understanding-Writing-Learning-Workshop/dp/0867093749
http://www.c-t-l.org/about.html

It’s all about reading and writing for the intrinsic joy of reading and writing. Only 15 minutes of her 65 minute class will be spent in traditional lecture. The rest is for the kids to read and write. This isn’t study hall. It’s rigorous. And again, it follows the principles I learned in my last 20 years of teaching and learning how to write.

I cannot wait to see what happens this fall!