Hi Ryan. Okay, well, two things. There’s only one exercise I like, and that’s describing people and places and recounting bits of interesting conversation that float past, because so much of writing is about noticing things. One way to do this is when the places/people are in front of you; another is to do it a little later. You may think this is pointless and boring. The trick is to make it not boring by injecting your own view of the world into what you see, so that someone is not 5 foot 8 inches tall with brown eyes and a side part, but rather looks like your Uncle Henry, with the same self-preening air and overpuffed physique of a middle-aged gym rat. It doesn’t have to be quite that complicated, the aim is to get it to feel natural and therefore enjoyable. This exercise can help your writing in two ways. First, it helps you create characters, or pieces of characters, and it sounds like you need some characters. Second, it helps get you out of your head and into the world, since so many people who like to write are in fact very observant, but with the introvert’s knack of observing their internal states at the expense of everything else. Sometimes these people end up writing stories where solitary characters wander around ruminating to themselves, and while maybe this isn’t the worst thing in the world, it’s nice to have a few more choices.

This brings me to the other thing that will help you write a structured narrative: before you even sit down at your keyboard, see if you can think of two characters (or more) who will interact with each other, but who don’t want the same thing. That’s really it. I always find it more productive to start with characters who are in some sort of a situation with each other than to start with themes and issues. Themes and issues might be too abstract to get you going! And anyway, they have a way of soaking into a narrative on their own, without much effort, once you start. I’m not sure how this happens. It has something to do with the subconscious.

Thanks! Happy Thanksgiving? to you too.

Yes.

To compensate for the miseries of being an adult, and to encourage us to procreate, even though procreation tends to lead to less sex in the long term, and more responsibilities, and hence more of the miseries of adulthood.

It depends on what we mean by cavemen. I'm not sure if you mean the cavemen in my story or the actual, prehistoric cavemen of yore. I'm going to go with the latter and say yes, they were smart, at least compared to all other animals (except maybe whales). The people who made the cave paintings of 20,000 years ago were intellectually identical to us, or at least biologically identical. Their culture was different though, and most artifacts haven't survived the 20,000 years of intervening time. Therefore, what they knew and made and how they did these things is information that is not really available to us. But they did make remarkable cave paintings that are unmatched in presence and power, in my opinion, by most art of our historical epoch, maybe with the exception of medieval cathedrals. So they knew something.

Is this a traditional dress-up day? I did not know that! I guess I'll be a giant carrot.

In the early nineties, I made a movie with a friend and a 16mm camera. It was sort of long. It played in a lot of film festivals, which was nice, I guess. It's sort of long and stupid and cute. It has a lot of great shots of Tucson in it, including some now-lost Tucson locations, and I think it's mainly notable for that. If I showed it to you, you would think it was kind of cute but mostly boring.

Because we suck.

Not most people, but they are capable of forgetting, which is sometimes just as good, if not better.

A lot of things, Wag, a lot of freaky things. Mostly we think about the past and the future while inhabiting the present, where we walk around and do things, or else sit and interact with electronics. Other things that happen are eating and pooping and secreting. When sleeping, an unusual thing that often occurs is dreaming. Another really weird thing that happens to girls is that they occasionally have babies, which come out of their vaginas, which had previously been used for other purposes. Some of us live in small rooms with animals such as cats or dogs or parrots. Others drive cars. It's all really very strange.