The Call of the Dead and the Living

     Have you ever received messages from The Dead and the Living?

     I notice patterns, particularly those that parallel the very words spoken by people from my past.

     The late Loften Mitchell was a Professor of Theatre at Binghamton University and was head of the Playwrights Program.  Best known for writing the book to the musical BUBBLIN BROWN SUGAR, his writing covers original play scripts, librettos, short fiction and history.  As a Harlem native, he knew writers such as John Oliver Killens and Langston Hughes.  In fact, his oft repeated observation about the latter was that Mr. Hughes always seemed to be writing something, even as he sat in restaurants and bars.

     A student (not me) once asked "How do you deal with writer's block?"

     Mr.  Mitchell plainly answered "There's no such thing as Writer's Block.  There's only Time Block."  From there, he explained that there will be things that pull one away from writing.  He was emphatic about staying away from people who waste time.  "All that matters is you and your typewriter" he said.

    A few years later I was studying under yet another mentor, the late Stuart M. Kaminsky.  In a brief exchange, I apologized for also working on a play script (I had barely made his deadline for a screenplay).  He merely shrugged and said "Writing is Writing."

    Last week during Morning Edition on NPR, I heard an interview with an award winning Florida State University professor.  The author attributed his success to the "B.I.C. Method", which stands for "Butt In Chair."

     More recently, I attended a workshop with the Tallahassee Author's Guild.  A local author, Marilyn Griffith, conducted a 15 minute writing exercise which proved the very same thesis.

     My challenges usually involve words on a page.  Yours may involve other endeavors.  I contend that we all receive messages from the past and messages from the present.  Messages from both the dead and the living.   They are nothing more than simple reminders of what we need to do.

      The question is:  Are we listening?

     Always B Positive

From Royals to Apples

     Tack!  Tack!  Tackity Tack Tack!

     Tack!  Tack!  Tackity Tack Tack!

     Tack!  Tack!  Tackity Tack Tack!

     "Why don't you go to sleep?  All that typing is keeping me up!"

     "Aw, go back to your own room!  Leave me alone!"

     My sister did, and I continued to work on what was to be my masterpiece:  A four hundred page manuscript that combined the technological and storytelling prowess of Larry Niven with the lyrical, analytical introspection of Samuel R. Delany, two science fiction writers whose books I devoured during my high school.  What I ended up with was a sprawling mess, a Space Opera that could be best described as Star Wars meets Shaft.  To this day it sits - mercifully unpublished - in the bottom of a file cabinet.  Still, I finished it, with the help of a large, black metal Royal typewriter.

      Fast forward to college.  I made extra money typing other students' term papers.  My typewriter then was a white plastic Brother.  Occasionally I would get other machines, usually from the piles of discarded stuff that magically appeared at the end of the Spring semester.  People laughed at me when I went "shopping"; however, nobody laughed when their papers were due at eight A.M., and my battered keyboards and other junk were the only lifeboats on campus (Note to Fiskites:  Remember my shopping cart?)

     Graduate school.  I only went because I wanted to study under a playwright, the late Loften Mitchell.  I built scenery and took six and a half years to complete a two year program.  During that time my machine of choice evolved from non-electric tappers to IBM Selectrics.  I wrote my thesis on a large, green screened IBM PC, using Multimate.   Somewhere along the way I acquired a wife and child, and wrote a stack of very bad scripts.

     As a young father, I bought a Brother Word Processor, a laughable thirty pound beast that featured a monochrome screen and limited editing capabilities.  After this were several of those horrendous electric typewriters that featured the flip-up grey LCD screens.   Creatively, I hated everything I produced.

      Post grad.  I studied under yet another writer, the late Stuart M. Kaminsky.  Yet this time I had the advantage of working with the (then) newest boon to the struggling writer, the fully realized PC.  The school had a Macintosh computer lab, featuring a bank of Apple Mac Pluses and SEs.  During my second year I managed to crank out two plays, one published (now out of print) and one that was produced at the 1993 Zora Neale Hurston Festival.

    I finished yet another novel a year ago and my wife has been telling me to do something with it; my publisher-editor friends have been cattle-prodding me as well.  I actually like this book because I concentrated on the creative process, instead of getting bogged down in "the technicals."

     Over the years, I have owned over five hundred Macintosh computers, acquired mostly from surplus auctions.  Most of them I gave away, but I sold a few to finance new machines and software.  Even now I am writing this on a Mac. I know that simple word processing can be done on any computer; however, for ease of use, my allegiance is with Cupertino.

     Likewise, I tip my hat to all innovators who create tools for the common man.

     Thanks Steve.  R.I.P.