Tag: brilliance

Dumb Guy’s Disease

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“Taken care of me? Mike, you’re my kid brother, and you take care of me? Did you ever think of that. Ever once? Send Fredo off to do this, send Fredo to take care of that… take care of some little unimportant night club here, and there; pick somebody up at the airport. I’m your older brother Mike and I was stepped over! … It ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things. I’m smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!” –Fredo from The Godfather II

“What happened?” we ask ourselves. “I thought I was going to be one of the smart ones. I know, I was a disinterested student in school, and I probably cared too much about partying for far too long in the afterlife (the life after high school), but I thought I would’ve gathered enough wisdom by now that someone, somewhere would consider me wise, but I have to face it. I have a mean case of dumb guy’s disease.”

Dumb guy’s disease doesn’t necessarily mean that the carrier is dumb, but that they are not as smart as they thought they would be at this point. We all know dumb guys, those men and women who by social calculations don’t know enough to enter into the league of intelligence. We never considered ourselves one of them, until someone far more intelligent than us gave us a condescending “you don’t know do you?” smile. We would love to dismiss that look with the notion that they had an agenda, but we know we choked in crunch time, because we didn’t know. When enough of these moments happen, we conclude that we’re not half as bright as we thought we would be at this point in our lives.

To prove ourselves to us, we sought less structured forms of education. We thought this might result in us becoming what smart people call autodidact, or a self-taught person. (Yes, I had to look that up.). We might begin reading better websites and better books, we might watch more documentaries, and listen to a wide array of podcasts. No matter what venue we choose, we will focus our renewed thirst for knowledge on defeating the structured concepts we failed to learn in school. This is our way of putting all those poor grades behind us by rejecting traditional, accepted knowledge as a form of intellectual rebellion.

“Everything they taught you in school is wrong,” is click bait for dumb guys who hope to succeed beyond the fools in school who regurgitated accepted facts back to the teacher. We dumb guys learn the truth, but this version of the truth should not be confused with the truth, in most cases, but rather a subjective truth that various authors spend decades writing in various forms and incarnations. This is one of the many attempts dumb guys make to rectify the past.

***

“Too many lyricists attempt to write a song, as if it’s a college thesis,” a musician replied. “I just write lyrics that fit the music.”

That’s pretty much it, right there, I thought. We dumb guys spend the rest of our afterlives (those years after high school) focused on informing the world that we’re not as dumb as everybody thought we were in school or in the immediate aftermath where the focus of their life was partying. The musician’s quote informed me that when I injected politics and music appreciation into my fiction, I was writing my college thesis to impress upon my peers in high school the idea that I was not as dumb as they thought I was. Some big name fiction authors make political overtures to enlighten their readers, and they attempt to woo us into listening to their favorite groups with forays into music appreciation. I used to write about my main character’s appreciation for my favorite group of the moment, in the manner the big name authors do. My modus operandi was if they can do it, why can’t I? My second thought was they could get away with it, because they were big names in the fiction world, and I wasn’t. I knew their music, everyone did, it was ZZ Top, AC/DC, The Ramones, and just about every tired, formulaic classic rock group we hear every day on classic rock radio. The author’s point was to instill in our minds the idea that his character was risqué, because he enjoyed listening to rock and roll. I enjoyed the author’s brand of rock and roll back when I was trying to define myself by listening habits, but I grew tired of the classic rock monochromatic formulas. This author obviously didn’t, and it defined his work for me. In his attempts to appear hip, naughty, and rebellious through his rock choices, I also saw his attempts to appear meaningful, thoughtful, and intelligent for what they were, and I realized that he was writing his college thesis for ushis big name author didn’t introduce his political, or music, preferences as well as I thought he had when I was blinded by his big name.

In the years I spent trying to prove I was not a dumb guy, I never heard the notion that intelligence and brilliance should be considered different strains of intellect. (I realize that in the strictest sense of the terms, some might consider another so intelligent, in a structured manner, that they consider them brilliant, but for the sake of argument let’s say that brilliance and intelligence are parallel roads.) The two strains of intellect could be broken down to left-brain versus right brain, as in one type of brain has a natural aptitude for math and science, while the other is more of a creative type. One could also say that an intelligent person knows the machinations of a saxophone so well that they can fix it and tune it while the other knows how to play it brilliantly, and while both can learn how to accomplish the other’s feat, neither will ever do it as well as the other, for their brains work in decidedly different ways.

This idea applies to dumb guy’s disease, because some creative types do not discover their aptitude for creativity, until the afterlife, the life after school. We recognize some forms of artistic expression, such as an ability to draw or play an instrument, early on, while an aptitude for creative writing often occurs later in life. The math and science types discover an aptitude for the structured learning, memorization, and problem solving in school, and it puts them in the upper echelon of learners, whereas the young, creative types live outside the bubble, looking in with jealousy. Screaming, as Fredo did in The Godfather II, “I’m smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!”

***

“You’re not already there,” would be the first piece of advice I would give a younger me if I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice. “You’re not special,” I would add, “and you don’t know how to play basketball already.” These are the pathogens of dumb guy’s disease, and the bacteria reproduces and multiplies rapidly infecting every matter it comes across.

I would also advise myself to find a way to learn the structure of the system and succeed within it, but I was never adept at structured learning–I’m still not–so, that would be pointless. What I would say instead is learn more about yourself, who you are and how you can succeed with your gifts and talents while keeping an eye on your limitations. 

I would also ask myself to work harder to acknowledge that there’s nothing special about me. I wouldn’t tell myself to stop watching Tom Cruise movies, but I would suggest that I stop watching them, thinking that the theme of those movies applies to me. “You’re not the chosen one, or the one that shouldn’t have to accept mediocrity. Accept mediocrity. Learn it, love it, and live it, until you can surpass it.”

I wasn’t a better athlete, student or employees because I thought I already was, and the frustration I felt when faced with the fact that I wasn’t, was tied to that idea that I thought I was already there, or should’ve been. When I failed in athletics, it was such a mystery to me that I threw temper tantrums, because I was frustrated that I wasn’t as great as I thought I was. It was also a message I sent to my teammates that that wasn’t me. That was but a snapshot of my abilities, and I was so much better than that. The problem for dumb guys is that oftentimes the message is enough. We don’t feel the need to get better, because “We already know how to play basketball.”

We get in front of ourselves at times. We never learn how to slow our roll long enough to work within the confines of who we were to succeed within the constraints of who we are. 

If I could advise myself thirty years prior, I would say slow down, realize who you are when you’re doing it. Analyze your shot in basketball and try to figure out how to make the shot more often, and when some tries to give you some advice, don’t shoot them down by saying, “I already know how to play basketball.” 

“You’re not the all star athlete you think you are,” I would add. “You’re not a great employee, and you’re not near as smart as you think you are. You’re actually pretty dumb, because you refuse to listen to people, like that obnoxious 50-year-old waiter who nodded at everything you said, because he said he used to say those same things.”

“He was a waiter, a 50-year-old waiter, so what the hell does he know about life?” my younger self would argue. “He was an oafish, avuncular type, who was always kind of a fool.”

“Until he got you alone, away from all your friends, and he turned all serious on us, saying, “You’re doing it wrong, and the only reason I know is because I was doing it wrong at your age, the same way as you. I was a dumb kid, just like you, but I knew better. I knew how to play football already, and I was good enough at Math to pass the stupid class that I probably would never use anyway. I didn’t get good grades, and I thought it was kind of funny, and I fell asleep in study hall too. I did just good enough in school to keep everyone off my back, so I could go out, enjoy my youth and have some fun in life, and here I am a 50-year-old waiter. If I could somehow switch places with you, right here, right now, I’d do my life differently.”

Now that the roles are flipped, what would we do differently? I’d drop the whole Tom Cruise “I could be the chosen one” mindset, because Michael Jordan wasn’t the chosen one, until he sculpted himself into it. I’d drop the whole “I already know how to play basketball” mindset and listen to those teaching me the “finger tips, rotation, follow through” tedious mechanics of the game. I know those mechanics now, now that it’s too late. I was never an adept student with all that structured learning, and I’m still not, but if I would’ve had more patience with myself and learned more about myself earlier, I might’ve been able to chip away at the granite stones I placed in my path to create something, as opposed to inviting that ‘I’m already there’ pathogen that caused my dumb guy’s disease. 

How to Succeed in Writing III: Are you Intelligent Enough to Write a Novel?

Rilaly3 Comments

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of (poor fiction),” –Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the (poor fiction) in the wastebasket.”

The key to writing great fiction is streamlining your story. Cut the fat! Some of the greatest authors of all time have admitted that the best additions they made to their novel were the parts they deleted. Somewhere along the line, in their writing career, they achieved objectivity. Somewhere along the line, they arrived at the idea that not all of their words were golden. Somewhere along the line, they realized that some of their words, sentences, paragraphs, and even some of their chapters were quite simply self-indulgent, wastebasket material. These self-indulgent portions, or the “ninety-one pages of (poor fiction),” of any novel are usually found in the asides.

There are asides, and then there are asides. Some asides are what we enjoy in a novel. Some provide setting, pace, and drama. Some also build suspense by taking us away from the train barreling down on the main character to form a cliff hanger. Some fortify the characteristics of a character, and kill a novel. Most asides are unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. As anyone who has read a novel can attest, most novels could be written in forty pages, but that’s a short story, and short stories don’t sell as well as novels. They don’t sell as well, because readers want involvement. Readers don’t fall in love with snapshot stories. They want a world. They not only want to know the humans that they are reading about, they want to be involved with them. They want to see them breathe, they want to hear them talk to an employee at a Kwik Shop, and they want to feel the steps these characters take from place to place. They want to know these people, so when something happens to them, they can care about them. They want to know the minutiae of the human they’re reading about, but they don’t want to get so caught up in the minutiae that they’re taken off pace, and they don’t want to read a self-absorbed writer who thinks it’s all about them. Cut the fat! Get to the point already!

“I’ve met a number of intelligent people throughout my life, and I’ve met a number of people I consider brilliant. I’ve met very few that were able to combine the two.” –Unknown.

One such aside involved the author trying to prove how intelligent they are. The desire to be perceived as intelligent is a strong, driving force in all of us. How many stupid and overly analytical things do we say in one day to try to get one person to think that we’re not a total idiot? This desire to prove intelligence is right up there with the drive to be perceived as beautiful and likeable. It’s right up there with the desire to be seen as strong, athletic, independent, and mechanically inclined. We spend our whole lives trying to impress people. Even those who say that they don’t care what others think are trying to impress us with the fact that they don’t care.

In my first era of writing, I wrote a lot of these self-indulgent asides that contributed little to the story. I was a new student to the world of politics, and I was anxious to prove to the world that I was one smart cookie. I also wanted to show that half of the world that disagreed with my politics how wrong they were. So, I put my main character through an incident, and he came out of it enlightened by a political philosophy that agreed with mine. In various other pieces, I wanted to inform the world of all of this great underground music I was experiencing. My thought process at the time was: “Hey, if Stephen King can get away with telling us about tired rockers that we’ve all heard a thousand times. Why can’t I tell a few readers about a group they’ve never heard before?” Copy the masters right? I wanted the world to know both sides of my brain in the same artistic piece. After taking a step back, I reread the novel, and I achieved enough objectivity to realize that it was all a big ball of mess.

If I was going to clean this mess up and start writing decent stories, I was going to have to divide my desires up. I was going to have to cut the fat. I was going to have to discipline myself to the creed that should be recited nightly by all aspiring storytellers: Story is sacred. I was going to have to learn to channel my desire to be perceived as smart into political and philosophical blogs. I was going to have to channel my desires to have people listen to my “discovered” music into Amazon.com reviews, and my stories, my novels, and my short stories would be left pure, untarnished stories with no agendas. By dividing these desires up, I would be able to proselytize on the role of the Puggle in our society today, and the absolute beauty of Mr. Bungle’s music, without damaging my stories or boring the readers of my stories. I learned the principle the esteemed rock band Offspring tried to teach the world when they sang: “You gotta keep ‘em separated.”

There’s one writer, he-who-must-not-be-named, who never learned this principle. This author presumably got tired of being viewed as nothing more than a storyteller. This author knew he was intelligent, and all of his friends and family knew he was intelligent, but the world didn’t know. The world only knew that he was a gifted storyteller, and they proved this by purchasing his books by the millions, but they didn’t know that he was so much more. This author achieved as much in the industry, if not more, as any other writer alive or dead (It’s Not King!), but he remained unsatisfied with that status. He needed the world to know that he wasn’t just a master of fiction. He needed the world to know he was as intelligent as he was brilliant, and he wrote the book that he hoped would prove it. It resulted in him ticking off 50% of his audience. 50% of his audience disagreed with him, and his politics, and they (we!) vowed to never read another one of his novels again. This is the risk you run when you seek to be perceived as intelligent and brilliant in the same work.

thomas-mannBut politics makes for such great filler, and to quote the great Thomas Mann: “Everything is political.” Well, there’s politics, and then there’s politics. If you’re one of those who doesn’t know the difference, and you don’t think your politics is politics, you should probably be writing something political. If you’re one of those who wants to write politics into your novel simply because it makes for such great filler, however, then you should try to avoid the self-indulgent conceit that ticks off that half of the population that disagrees with your politics. You’ll anger some with this, you’ll bore others, and the rest of us won’t care that you think it’s vital that your main character expresses something in some way that validates your way of thinking. We will just think it’s boring proselytizing from an insecure writer who needs validation from their peers. Stick to the story, we will scream, as we skip those passages or put your book down to never read anything you’ve ever written again.

You will need to be somewhat intelligent though. You’ll need enough to know your punctuation and grammar rules, you will need to know when and where to make paragraph breaks, and you will need to know how to edit your story for pace, but these aspects of storytelling can be learned.

“I am not adept at using punctuation and/or grammar in general…” A caller to a radio show once informed author Clive Barker. She said that she enjoyed writing, but it was the mechanics of writing that prevented her from delving into it whole hog. “Are you a clever story teller?” Clive asked her. “Do you enjoy telling stories, and do you entertain your friends with your tales?” The woman said yes to all of the above. “Well, you can learn the mechanics, and I strongly encourage you to do so, but you cannot learn the art of storytelling. This ability to tell a story is, largely, a gift. Either you have it or you don’t.”

Be brilliant first, in other words, and if you can achieve brilliance, you can learn the rest. You can gain the intelligence necessary to get a thumbs up from a publisher, an agent, and eventually a reader, but you cannot learn brilliance. You cannot gain artistic creativity, and it’s hard enough to prove artistic brilliance. Why would you want to further burden yourself by going overboard in trying to also prove intelligence, and thus be everything to all people?

Let the people see how brilliant you are first! Gain a following. Once you have achieved that pied piper Wildeplateau, you can then attend to the self-indulgent effort of proving your intelligence. I don’t understand why that is so important to those who achieve artistic brilliance, but if I could understand their mindset better, I would probably be one of them. The preferred method of achieving all of your goals is to ‘keep ‘em separated’, but there are always going to be some who need to prove their intelligence and brilliance in the same Great American Novel. Those people are going to say Stephen King is a much better example to follow to the best-seller list than I am, and he achieved his plateau with a little bit of this and a little bit of that sprinkled in his prose. The question you have to ask yourself is, is he the rule or the exception to the rule? If Stephen King’s model is your preferred model, and these political and music parts are so germane, so golden, and so uniquely special to your story, keep them in. As Oscar Wilde once said, “You might as well be yourself, everyone else is taken.”