The Joy of Giving

So, I've taken a class this semester to help myself get published, and so far, so good. I have yet to get published through this class, but we're still at the beginning of the road.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I keep helping my classmates by giving them tips and website links, and other resources to help them with their writing and publication.

In class I offer nuggets of information I originally thought were known to anyone who writes, but found useful to a few of my classmates who did not know. Everybody does this in class, and I've learned a lot from their nuggets of information myself. We all also love to give each other personal tips.

Dave, an old man who reminds me of Peter Boyle with more hair atop his head, introduced himself to the class like we all did, and talked about what kind of writing he's interested in.

It turns out he's into questioning Christian Doctrine. Well, it hit me as I was sitting there listening to him that I had read an article in an issue of Writer's Digest a while back about a hot and growing market along the same lines. I made a mental note to bring the article in for Dave to look at if I could manage to remember. I did remember, and boy was Dave thrilled. He expressed total thanks when I first gave the magazine to him last Thursday, and then over the weekend emailed me to thank me again. It didn't stop there. Yesterday in class, he came to me and thanked me by saying, "Boy, that magazine you gave me was great."

Yesterday, I got to class, only to find the class before ours still in there. I said hello to Jon, a guy in my class, who has a fantasy book ready to be published. Instead of standing there in silence, I searched in my brain for a topic of conversation. We exhausted one topic, and then it hit me that Jon is a fantasy writer, and had expressed interest in finding out how graphic novels are made. Excellent! Just the day before I had been reading one author's newsletter, in which she had discussed how graphic novels are made, since she is in the process of making one herself. I found the bit to be so interesting and intriguing, that I was wowed by something I never gave much thought to. I told Jon about this, and he was thrilled at my offer to show him said page. Later, I emailed him the link, and got an email back today thanking me.

I'm embarassed by the shower of appreciation for simply transporting a magazine from my bookshelf into someone's hands, and emailing a link I had no hand in creating.

It feels good, though. It is the joy of giving, and the good feeling will do until I feel another form of joy-- that of being published somewhere new.

Controversies+cryptic drawings+added bonuses = 300

I blogged about the movie Iron Man a post or two ago and I talked about how I'm not into the comic book world.

Last night I finally watched the movie 300, which is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I lump graphic novels with comics. I can't say I hate these things, because I've never actually sat down and tried to read a comic book, or a graphic novel back to back, but suffice it to say that I generally like to read things in paragraphs rather than in dialogue bubbles.

I'd been wanting to see 300 for quite some time. Then a controversy or two sparked, and my interest increased. Iran actually banned it for its less than attractive portrayal of the Persian empire, and Iranians wrote up storms about how the movie was an attack on Iran and its history. 300 also sparked a controversy for its indirect commentary on the Iraq war, by portraying the Spartans in a way making their situation similar to that of the Iraqis who fought against the much bigger and powerful Americans.

I originally wanted to see it for the whole Spartan, Greek and Persian deal. I loved studying about these guys, and I love to see portrayals of them, however inaccurate they are so I can feel the umph visually, rather than just by reading about it. And I got plenty of umph with this flick.

Also, I've been seeing bumper stickers and t-shirts and other things that were cryptic to me before seeing the movie.

I finally know what this drawing is referring to:



All in all, I liked 300. Pieces of actual history were cut up and rearranged to make quite a tour de force of historically recorded (but reworked in setting) one-liners, and an interesting vision of what an ancient world filled with struggle and war might have been like. The 300+ incredibly chiseled, half-naked men also sweetened the pot for me, and that was a definite bonus. It made me actually want it to be Sparta around here.