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I was, like, only 100 feet away from Obama and Merkel last night, and I’m now enlightened

President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sit on a stage at the Anthem in Washington, D.C., discussing Merkel's new book, German and American history, and current events.

I got to see President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in conversation last night in DC, and I want to share some thoughts I took away.

Be generous with your curiosity.

Obama and Merkel discussed at length the parallels between Germany’s divisions (literally, in the case of the Berlin Wall, which Merkel grew up on the eastern side of) and America’s. We’re in a time of great division across many lines, but in Merkel’s experience where her country was cleaved in two and then put back together, she found earnest curiosity for the experiences of people who have lived very different lives is the key to understanding and unity. Obama iterated on that idea with regard to the United States where we’re divided across race, class, religion, region, urban vs. rural, and so much more. They both agreed curiosity is the first ingredient in unity, and while it’s very difficult in the face of indifference and hostility, and especially so when it isn’t reciprocated, it’s necessary for good faith public discourse.

Freedom is a responsibility.

This one was more Merkel, but while the sentiment might feel familiar to us, I think it’s somewhat more complex. Merkel said people in democracies tend to interpret their freedom as the ability to do whatever they want, but she said, having lived in a dictatorship and then having effectively led the free world (my words, not hers, but she did), her perspective of freedom is a bit different than ours. She actually said living in a dictatorship wasn’t all that bad. She had a happy childhood, and she and her family had a decent life. However, with the state providing so much to and demanding so much from her, she noticed a void when that authority was gone. Freedom, to her, is the responsibility to build a decent society in the absence of an authoritarian state doing it for you. Freedom, she said, is a responsibility because, if you don’t tend to and nurture it, if you don’t help keep your society thriving, people will lose faith in it, and when people lose faith in their society, that’s when they invite dictators and authoritarians to come and relieve them of the responsibility of fixing their own problems using the systems and resources they have available to them.

The antidote for despair is action.

This one is classic Obama, but Merkel was on board in her own way. Obama said, when he was in office, he would tell his staff, “better is good.” He hinted at the nirvana fallacy in which people tend to despair and reject a solution if it isn’t perfect. Merkel added that, sometimes, when you want to solve a problem, it can be discouraging to find the answer is more difficult and less effective than you expected. They both suggested that, even if we can push toward an ideal solution slightly, improvements are good work. Sometimes, they said, a massive challenge with dire implications, such as climate change—which is stressing global economies and pushing migrants and asylum seekers away from the equator around the world, making it more difficult for people to enjoy the freedoms they may take for granted, and is only getting worse and tempting an invitation for an authoritarian or dictator to solve those problems—can all seem desperate but, with action, maybe we can make something better, and better is good.

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Why This Election Hurts

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about presidents in the stories we tell. I love what I do because I get to create pieces of art that, with any luck, could become a reference point for someone to make sense of our world. Cultural touchstones in art are important because they reinforce or illuminate our cultural and social values, and we can use them for growth, to chart a path forward, or to find it again when we’ve lost our way.

One of the things I love about stories is we can look at a protagonist, acknowledge their flaws, and root for them to use their strengths to defeat the antagonist. More than that, the heroes we cast in our stories reveal the ideals we hold for our own values. We recognize them as the good guys not because we’re told they’re the good guys but because we see the good in them. We can examine the aspects that make them protagonists or heroes, and we can see in them a kind of reflection of that which we hold to be good. 

We can look to President Whitmore played by Bill Pullman in Independence Day to give us hope in the darkest of times when all seems hopeless and lost. We can look to President Beck played by Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact to help us face the worst fate imaginable and to do it all with that voice that makes us feel wise and like everything is going to be okay. We can look to Dave Kovic played by Kevin Kline in Dave to cut through the bullshit, make us laugh, and remind us what’s most important: love. We can look to President Bartlett played by Martin Sheen in West Wing to demonstrate that prime patriotic quality of putting duty and country above all else, even politics. (I’m aware there aren’t really any great woman presidents in popular American culture to cite here, and I think that’s kind of a point worth making, so I’m leaving this list as is.)

In reality, our presidents aren’t like our idealized heroes. I know that. As many idealized presidents as we have in our storytelling, we seem to have more examples of presidents who represent our resentment of politics, and that points to a reality, too. Regardless, I think we should hold our real presidents to those ideals and values, because those ideals and values? They’re real. They’re the truth in the fiction.

The neat thing about storytelling in any culture is the audience has to mostly agree for the magic to work. The audience has to feel the hero is the hero, so we can look to stories to understand what a culture values.

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I’m Reprioritizing My Social Media (and You Should, Too)

I was there at the beginning of social media. I started my Facebook account almost 20 years ago, and I had a MySpace account before that. (I didn’t do Friendster, though, so maybe I’m not *that* legit.)

Social media was quite stupid at the start as everyone was trying to figure out what we were going to use it for. The inherent misogyny of Facebook’s foundation aside, it also was mostly harmless. When Zuckerberg let go and just let us decide what Facebook was going to be, we started to figure it out for ourselves.

The problem is a common denominator in all of this is, while people want control (and, I still believe, deserve it), they kind of suck when you give it to them, and they invariably ruin good things. It takes one bad collective decision to flush something good down the drain.

A decade or so after social media took off, things got real. Suddenly, we were all having important conversations about the world. Social media, we started to realize, was harmful because so many of us just still didn’t know how to use it, how to discern bull shit (because they never really learned those media literacy skills), or perhaps more crucially how to be a decent human being to another human being when we couldn’t look that person in the face.

Empathy was a key evolutionary trait we’d evolved to use as a vital interpersonal tool. Empathy keeps tribes together when they ought to split. Empathy makes people instinctually help others even when there is no immediate benefit to the individual, and in so doing, everyone benefits in the long run.

Empathy helps us overcome our worst impulses. And empathy, it turns out, isn’t something we’re very good at exercising in the abstract.

Back when social media became the place where we were having much of our public debate, I resolved to keep the lines of communication open because I thought, to some extent, having these important conversations with people could do some good. After all, it was something I was good at, and it was using a means of communications I was good with. Maybe people would listen to me, a reasonable, understanding, and respectful person who was both skeptical and diligent with his research and fact-finding. Maybe I could help cut through some of the bull shit. Maybe I could make a difference.

The thing I failed to understand now seems obvious: even though I have these skills because I’ve devoted my life to them, most other people don’t, and the trouble was it became incredibly draining to carry that burden of feeling like any time I opened a social media app I would find another record to correct, another bad take to address, another piece of misinformation to right, or more awful behavior from someone who had no capacity to responsibly communicate via text and didn’t really have an interest in personal growth.

All of this was constantly waiting for me on a device I carried in my pocket.

I’ve been battling some deep depression this year, and I may go into that another time. I realized months ago, this burden I was carrying had been hurting me for a very long time, so I removed myself from all social media. As a writer in these times, social media is a necessity, and that’s unfortunate since it’s so incredibly toxic (because the people who use it are so incredibly toxic).

Since this presidential election, I’ve been dealing with a lot, but some of what I’ve been dealing with is that none of it meant anything. I carried that burden for years, and none of it mattered. I changed nothing.

All these years on, I think social media is still quite stupid, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is supposed to be used for. I’ve been thinking about why I came to Facebook in the first place. I felt a need for community and support. I needed social media as a person who takes nourishment from relationships, but I also needed it as a writer whose very existence happens only with the support of others.

After a big change, I have to take a lot of time to adjust and figure out a path forward, so after this election, I committed to not making any decisions for a while; however, one decision I will allow myself to make is to reprioritize my social media experience so that it provides me with the community and support I need. What this means is I’m going to remove from my networks the people (regardless of who they are) that I allowed to collectively drain me for years. To be frank, if what I need is community, those people apparently don’t care to be in my community, and if what I need is support, those people were never going to share in that support anyway.

I’m not one for fanfare. Typically, I would just do this instead of making a big stink about it. However, I think it’s important at this point to say something to those of you who are in my community and have supported me. If you’re like me and you kept people who hurt or drained you in your social networks because of some misplaced hope that, by maintaining those connections, you could help them grow as people and ultimately benefit us all in the end, I think you can let that go now. Make your social networks places of community and support (or whatever you need) because, I think, that’s one thing that will not only help us survive in the short term, but also I now believe focusing on fortifying those in our communities and supporting the vulnerable among us who need that support is the way to collectively grow our strength so that, in the venues where we might actually be able to make a difference, we will be more prepared to do so instead of disheartened and drained by a constant weight of ignorance, disregard, and malfeasance, a fight that never changed anything and never was going to, at least not in places like this.

All this time, I think some of us have been fighting the tribalism that social media (and those who manipulate it) want to create, and I think that fight is over.

The last decade has been exhausting, and unfortunately, it’s going to continue for the foreseeable future. It probably will endure for the rest of our lives. In the story of America, this election was probably the final chapter before a time jump during which a whole lot of darkness happens.

But, I don’t think it was the final act in the story of America. There are still chapters to write. We’ll need you all for that, so take care of yourselves because it’s only after you care for yourself that you can care for others. 

If you’re reading this, much love to you.

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(Still) Seeking A Sensitivity Reader

I’m still seeking a sensitivity reader for issues of Mexican culture and heritage, Spanish–English translations, authentic representation, and experience with discrimination and U.S. immigration for a post-apocalyptic/horror road novel (103k words). I prefer readers with experience in sensitivity reading and publishing, but I am seeking anyone who is willing to share their lived experience with me and help me get this aspect of the novel right. The novel features one primary character of Mexican descent (specifically Jalisco), but he’s not the perspective character (so that might be a bit lighter of a lift). Trigger warnings include racism, religion (Christianity), politics, assault, physical violence, trauma, and profanity. I’m negotiable on rates. Please contact me if interested or with referrals. Thank you for your help in getting this right!

If it pleases you, here is the novel’s pitch:

It has been almost two years since mysterious giants emerged from the earth and took down an America withered by climate change and civil war. Now, this land belongs to them. 

Former academic Wade Wallace should never have made it this long, but when he found the resilient former cop Cynth Porter, they agreed staying hidden and killing when necessary was the only way to survive in this new world. However, with the monolithic creatures and larger groups on the prowl and their water and food sources drying up, they’re one bad day away from losing everything.

When a lone traveler, Hector Morales, pleads for their help, Wade and Cynth take him in. A mechanic by trade, Hector seeks to repay their kindness by fixing an old Ford Mustang that belonged to Cynth’s grandfather.

When he gets it running, however, the engine’s roar draws one of the behemoths, and forced to flee their destroyed sanctuary, Wade, Cynth, and Hector must trust the limping muscle car can carry them across 1,500 miles of unknown, post-American wilderness to the southern border where they hope to find asylum in a country they’ve heard still stands. 

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My Big Think on Generative AI and Human Artistry’s Death

In a parody of Michelangelo’s "Creation of Adam," a human hand reaches out to touch fingertips with a robotic hand.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

For maybe as long as I’ve been published (a decade this fall!), I’ve used the line, “Timothy Johnson fears nothing more than the future, so he writes about it and hopes he’s wrong.”

I think that’s important contextualization for who I am as a futurist and precog (admittedly, I don’t think I’m a very good one), but I think it’s good to frame all of this with the sentiment that I hope I’m wrong about generative AI, or large-language models (LLMs), which is a less-sexy name but probably a more accurate and responsible one we should be using (and I will use for the rest of this post).

I struggled with this post because not only is it a very complex issue (one I’m betting the non-artist techbros will challenge), but I think I had illusions it would be my definitive take on LLMs and its position in art. I’d write about it once, and that would be that. But, I know these can’t be my last words on the subject because, well doggonit, I’m a human being, but more to the point, LLMs are still so new and changing so rapidly that my takes on it are evolving, too.

Suffice to say this post may exhaust you (it exhausted me to write it), but it won’t be exhaustive.

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How to Develop Your Characters on the Page

A doctor shows a patient a chest x-ray and points approximately to where the heart is located.
“You see, your character’s heart should be right about here.” (Photo by Skintone Studio from Freerange Stock)

My last craft post covered how to develop characters for your understanding as the writer. I’ve split this crash course in character development into two parts because characters develop in two main spaces. Well, three, actually: the writer’s head, the page, and the reader’s head. Your perception of your character is inevitably different than the one that exists on the page and is further invariably different from the one that the reader comes to know. I won’t be going into readers’ heads because that would be presumptive and rude.

In my previous post, I made another critical separation. I split you planners and pantsers into your respective groups, and I gave the former a whole heap of questions to consider in your logic-centric minds. For the latter, I gave you some tips that almost resemble exercises, and they are focused on helping you get the feel of your characters. For both groups, it all was work for you to do for yourself, work intended to pour the foundations for your characters so you could write from a place of intentionality instead of wandering and wondering what the heck you’re writing about (an affliction that plagues us all, I promise).

Now, let’s look at developing your characters on the page for the reader’s understanding. How does character development actually work on the page anyway?

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We Are All Thieves of Somebody’s Future Available

Hey there. Just swinging by to let you know We Are All Thieves of Somebody’s Future—the anthology that has a neat little sci-fi story by me in it—is now available. Remember, this is a limited print run, so if you want one of these beauties gracing your eyeballs and then your bookshelf, order one before they’re sold out. Future you will be delighted.

My story is called “Starlight Vigil,” and it’s a funky one in which time moves both ways as we follow the story of an engineer on a generation ship bound for the stars in search of a new home for humanity. I hope you check it out and it doesn’t completely baffle you like most of the people who read the first draft.

http://aanpress.com/aanorder.html#thieves

The cover of this anthology depicts a young person in the foreground gazing in wonder at a large deer with antlers before a foreground of mountains.
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How to Develop Your Characters off the Page

A black cat reaches out to touch a human finger in a reference to the Creation of Adam painting
Photo by Humberto Arellano on Unsplash

Last time I wrote about craft, I directed you to the starting line. In that post, I wrote superficially about getting to know your characters, kicking off the plot, building your world, and the search for information. Someone asked me about developing that stuff, and I realized I’d glossed over it. I’d told you it was important work but took for granted you’d already done it.

Oops!

So let’s talk about character development. When we talk about character development in a story, we typically refer to the ways in which that story develops its characters on the page. How do the characters develop for the reader? What does the reader come to learn and understand about the characters, and how do the characters change through their arc? What story does that arc tell, and what significance can the reader derive from it? Those are questions I won’t be addressing in this post but will in a later one. This time, I focus on developing your characters off the page for your understanding. How do you create a character so that you understand and know them well enough to then insert them into a story for the reader to meet and follow?

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Everything Ends: The State of Apocalyptic Fiction

In his 2016 book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh lays out the case for climate change and charges contemporary fiction writers with the responsibility of writing about it. But why, Ghosh wonders, aren’t our fiction writers writing about it? Ghosh condemns contemporary fiction writers for a failure to address climate change. 

I found it an interesting accusation because, in my experience, fiction writers were, in fact, writing about climate change and had been for years. Ghosh proposed the idea that writers in the literary mainstream would tend to be relegated to science fiction when writing about climate change, and considering the realities of western literary culture—where we tend to draw lines of artistic merit between literary traditions—I think he had a point. To me, though, a good story is a good story.

Regardless, in the eight years since Ghosh’s book hit shelves, I think we’ve seen a more widespread willingness of writers to go there.

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Review of Between Days by Nick DeWolf

The cover image of Between Days by Nick DeWolf depicts a disembodied eye at the center with the onlooker's face disintegrating into pieces. The title has a distressed and fading-away treatment.
Cover design by J Caleb Designs

When I picked up Between Days by Nick DeWolf, I had no idea what to expect. I’d read his novels but only one of his short stories, and I certainly didn’t know what a collection of dreams was. What I found was a cool collection of tales full of wonder, horror, imagination, and heart.

Between Days is a collection of short stories based on dreams, and it’s notably filled with variety and diversity of thought. Each story has its own identity and an apparent reason for being, but more than that, the sheer breadth of aesthetic is impressive. Many writers have trouble writing anything that isn’t literally inspired by their daily lives or lack the ability to imagine themselves as anyone but themselves, but this book demonstrates Nick DeWolf’s imagination knows no boundaries. I didn’t realize until this collection that what I’ve always wanted from him is a book full of his stories. This book shows what his beautifully unique brain can produce when it is unrestrained and empowered to follow its muse. It’s a wonderful thing to behold, and while his novels are magnificent descents into living, breathing worlds full of intriguing characters and compelling plots, this collection allows him to play with his extraordinary imagination in many different ways.

Between Days is kind of like going to Nick DeWolf’s fro-yo shop where the fro-yo is his imagination and you can stick your head under the spouts at will. Toppings are free. Go ahead and heap them on. Nobody’s going to weigh your bowl at the end.

I think most readers look to stories primarily to take them somewhere alluring and to be with people who are interesting. Nick DeWolf has a creative mind that is uniquely suited to satisfy these desires. As a means of escape, Between Days grants readers worlds and realities to wander and wonder about. Moreover, I think most readers are looking for experience, vicarious living through empathy, when they pick up a book. I think most readers are looking to feel something, and in that regard, I think this collection is full of successes. 

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