Crossroads

It's a potent word, isn't it? "Crossroads." Brings to mind an image of a lone man (or woman) paused at the intersection of Robert Frost's infamous two roads, trying to decide which one to follow. When I was nine years old, I had to make a decision whether to enroll in dance or synchronized swimming. As you've probably figured out, I went with dance. Sometimes I wonder how drastically different my life would have turned out if I made a different choice. Not that I regret my decision, but... it's interesting to wonder.

If you can believe it, I think that Choose Your Own Adventure books conditioned me early on to believe that decisions come in one particular flavor. Remember those books? You'd read one chapter, then, at the end of the chapter, you'd have to decide whether to a) explore the scary house in the woods or b) go home and read. Sometimes the choices were clear and obvious, with the wrong answer ending in a gruesome death scene. Other times it wasn't so easy and the only way to avoid getting disemboweled was to cheat.

These days I face many of my decisions with the same intensity that I used when reading those books. Clearly, there can only be one right answer and one wrong answer. I must follow the correct thread of fate, otherwise I'll find myself dangling from the neck above a curious crowd of onlookers. Sure, this intensity can be helpful when making big life decisions but, when making smaller decisions, such as where to eat lunch, it can be overkill.

See, that's the thing. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there's always a clear right choice and a clear wrong choice. If one choice is true, than the other is false. Good and bad. As if life is a mathematical equation that we're all trying to get right.

The most effective thinkers, the ones who are able to build truly exciting lives for themselves, are the ones who are able to see beyond a) and b). Because there isn't always a choice that will kill you and a choice that will let you live. Sometimes there are eight million different choices and it isn't as much a matter of choosing between them as it is of molding a new answer for yourself.

This is why arts education is so vitally important to our society. Creating art isn't about finding one correct answer, it's about learning to build new answers in order to create a completely unique conclusion. How often do kids get to do this in a traditional school setting, as opposed to searching out, identifying and remembering one answer? The arts introduce a completely different way of learning, one that is going to be much more valuable to employers in the long run. Do you want the employee who is going to memorize and quote procedures back to you? Or, do you want the one who will build new solutions to old problems? People who can think creatively, who can make eight million tiny choices at the same time, are the ones who will push the world forward.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably an artist of some sort and the creative process is familiar to you. While writing a novel, you make hundreds of tiny decisions every moment in service of originality. If you choreograph, you probably have the ability to look at a dancer and choose between the hundreds of different movements you could give them to perform at any given time. Photographers, animators, musicians, and designers practice this style of thinking on a daily basis.

But, it isn't always easy. Sometimes it can be crippling (especially if you let yourself think too hard about all the options you're continually discarding). It doesn't come without practice. And yes, sometimes it can go horribly wrong. I don't mean to say that there aren't situations where there is definitely a wrong answer. Running with scissors is a wrong answer. Killing your spouse is a wrong answer. But it's also remarkably freeing to exit the pages of those silly Choose Your Own Adventure books and enter a world of limitless possibility.

I do an exercise with my modern dance students from time to time. One at a time, they each pick a random place in the room to stand, creating a constantly evolving formation with the other dancers in the class. There's always at least one student who freaks out.

"How do I know what to do?" they ask.

"You can do whatever you like."

"But how do I know what is right?"

Today, whatever you choose is right.

How to Write a Novel

I know I've done a number of "how-to" posts over the last few years, each more helpful than the last. However, I've skirted the main issue, the question everyone wants the answer to. The hardest part.

How to Write a Novel.

Everyone has a novel hiding somewhere in their head. Maybe it's just the kernel of an idea hanging out in the thalamus. Maybe it's a bit further along, inching over toward the frontal lobe. Either way, most people will never write their novel. Why? Well, to put it bluntly, they aren't smart enough.

You have to be really, really smart to write a novel. The first thing you should do is go out and get your IQ tested. If you measure up, then there's nothing to worry about. Go forth. Write your novel. I'm sure it will be awesome. Most would say the ideal novel-writing IQ is somewhere in the 144+ range.

But, what if you aren't smart enough? What if you don't fall within the ideal novel-writing IQ range, but you've still got the itch to get that idea out?

Well, then this blog is for you.

The first thing you'll want to do is create the perception that you're a smart, writerly type. Consider bringing a pipe with you everywhere and, whenever you want to be taken seriously, pull it out of your pocket and give it a couple puffs. It's best if you keep the pipe in the inside pocket of a tweedy, ill-fitting blazer. No one ever questions the intelligence of a pipe-smoker (so long as it is the right kind of pipe). Make sure that in all your photographs you're holding the pipe up to your mouth and preferably wearing a pair of dorky glasses. If you do this, you'll find that slowly your image starts to shift from "that weirdo in the corner" to "Writer Guy (or Girl)". It worked for me.

Appropriate topics of conversation:
Agents
Procrastination
The Hobbit
Rare Coffee Blends
Blogging

Inappropriate topics of conversation:
Sports
Writers' Block
Batman
Frozen Pizzas
Tetris

Next you'll want a sweet writing machine. Portability is super important, because you want to make sure that you can take your sweet writing machine out in public where everyone can see you writing. Another benefit to this is that you can also make snide twitter updates about the strangers surrounding you, which is a very important part of the writing process. I recommend finding a writing machine in an exciting color, because it will help you seem quirky and unique. You don't want to blend in with all the peons at the coffee shop who are doing real work. Load up on fancy software. These days it seems like everyone is offering some kind of program to help you process words better. Buy them all! This is an important step in becoming a Real Writer who has actually Written Things. If you can find a few stickers with writing puns that you can stick on your sweet writing machine, that will give you additional writing cred.

Eventually, if you keep this up long enough, you'll have a novel. Or, at least you'll seem quite writerly.

*pulls pipe out of pocket*

*takes a puff*

Good luck, my friend.