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    30Nov, 2018
    Get to the Point

    Watching debates on television is often funny– largely because I spent years being a spokesperson so I know what goes on behind the scenes and what’s happening on the set. All the “crosstalk” in the world isn’t going to make a person’s point any better unless it has truth and facts behind it. (“Crosstalk” is the polite term used in the news media to describe what happens when you have guests talking over each other trying to make their point. No one can understand what they are saying but news shows love it because it “shows” conflict.)

    The art of arguing is quickly being lost in our day and age. “Arguing,” as commonly defined in everyday speech, means angrily disagreeing with or even yelling at someone. It can mean calling someone names or making extreme proclamations of dire results if things don’t go a certain way.

    But to truly argue or debate a point is quite the opposite.

    When you argue your point, you must have facts on your side and maybe an example. You must organize your argument and your facts must be support the point you are trying to make.

    You cannot call someone names and then proclaim yourself the winner of an argument because the other person won’t attack you personally. You cannot use made up stories to make your point. You cannot make sweeping generalizations to make your point.

    True argumentation is an art that has few masters and even fewer followers. Today, many will make an argument based on their feelings or they may attack someone’s character, morals or values to make their point. I’m sorry but these are not arguments. They are forms of various fallacies. The reason they can seem so powerful is because they are emotional and difficult to combat because they are not based in facts but opinion.

    Unfortunately, everyone has opinions but most do not hold educated opinions.

     

    9Nov, 2018
    Creative Writing Revisited

    I took a creative writing course as part of the master’s degree program I started a few years ago. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did not finish my master’s degree because of the expense).

    The class wasn’t a bad class. I just thought I would be doing more writing than I did. I did do a lot of writing but I also did a lot of analyses–of texts and poems. To a great degree, it felt like an undergrad class (one assignment was to find all of the literary elements in a 25-page poem).

    Recently, I signed up to audit the Creative Writing classes offered by Coursera and I think I’ve learned more in the past week than I did in my master’s class. The classes are offered by Wesleyan professors and many of them are alumni of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The information presented in the videos has been instructive and I have a greater understanding of certain elements of fiction writing. The same elements that make me nervous when I attempt fiction.

    This is not a paid advertisement for Coursera. Just my very happy and pleasantly surprised endorsement of a program that you can learn from– whether you pay for it or not.

    4Nov, 2018
    Moving Memories

    In preparation for NaNoWriMo and working on a book about my kids and dealing with autism as a parent, I’ve been reviewing my autism blog and laughing at some of the stories from when the kids were smaller. I had forgotten about some of the things they would do and it was fun to go back and read about some of their behaviors.

    I’m not sure how to structure the book yet and keep thinking that after I’ve read all of the old the blog posts and stories that I’ve written I’ll figure it out. Instead, I have found myself laughing out loud and saying thinks like, “Oh my! I forgot that they did that!”

    I still have several years worth of posts to get through but the look back has been eye-opening and encouraging. I can see how far the boys have come since they were diagnosed.