Timothy Johnson

Blog

  • Survival Tips for the Nightmare Age of Disinformation

    Image by Pachon in Motion from Pexels

    Hello! Welcome to my digital void. It’s usually just me and a handful of bots wasting their (our) energy here, but today, we’re so glad you’ve joined us. Have a seat. Kick your shoes off. Water, tea, coffee?

    I’m a human, just like you (right?), and I struggle every day to navigate this digital nightmare landscape where there is too much disinformation and manipulation. I bet you feel similarly because you’re a human (right?).

    Where we’re likely different is seeing that stuff pervade causes me to think about undergraduate first-year composition (FYC).

    NEEEEEERRRRRRD!

    No, wait. Come back. This will be interesting and useful. I promise. Cool? Cool.

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  • Responding to Brandon Sanderson’s Speech on AI

    Dig this image? It’s by Phineas X. Jones. Click or tap it to get it on a shirt at Threadless.

    Several days ago, Brandon Sanderson posted a video and a companion blog in which he explored his thoughts on art and tried to get at the root of why he doesn’t like generative AI in art spaces. I found myself nodding along as he worked his way to the idea that generative AI removes an essential component to art creation (us) and that, in so doing, denies artists the necessary experience to grow in their discipline.

    I cocked my head and raised a brow. That’s it? That’s not far enough, Brandon.

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  • The ‘Holy Crap, It’s 2026!’ Update

    Well hello there. It’s been a while. I hope you’ve been well. 

    This is just a quick note to let you know I still exist and am trying to do this fiction writing thing but that it’s been very difficult recently.

    I’ve thought for a long time about writing and posting something like this, but I haven’t quite been able to find a comfortable place to be in with regard to how forward and open I would be, partially because I don’t know how forward and open anyone really wants me to be.

    I’m a sensitive and emotional guy who loves to give hugs and wants everyone (including you) to know that he loves them, but I usually let others dictate how intimate we get because I understand boundaries and social norms. That troubles me, though, when my nature is to just open my veins and gush all over the place but I know that’s weird. I’m very likely neurodivergent and undiagnosed, but alas, I’m doing it again right now, aren’t I?

    The bottom line is 2025 was really difficult for me, personally and professionally. Professional woes became personal ones. Personal difficulties affected professional performance. And down the spiral we go. I imagine you understand, and if you don’t, take the win. Depression sucks.

    “I still exist” is about the best I’ve got for you today. No publications are forthcoming. It’s been a long road of rejections. I have a bunch of works in progress, but my writing has been seized up for an embarrassingly long time. I know I can’t create when my head isn’t screwed on properly and my heart isn’t full, and not creating feeds my depression. Spirals. 

    I remain exceedingly passionate about what I do, and when I revisit my wins, I am proud. I still think I have something valuable to offer the world, even if the world continues to insist I do not. I know. Woe is me. 

    Given the turn of the calendar year, I am making a more concerted effort to get more stuff out there, but the indifference of the world weighs heavily. I’m going to post something soon about generative AI, and because I endeavor to post useful stuff, I am working on what will probably be a series of blogs to help you cope with this nightmare age of disinformation. It feels like that will just get ignored because it won’t be a 30-second video on TikTok or whatever, but that just ain’t me. I’m a writer, and I look like one. Nobody wants me on camera.

    Anyway, Churchill urged the Greatest Generation to keep going through hell* so they could defeat fascism incarnate as well as the very idea of it, even if it would ironically resurface less than a century later across an ocean in the “land of the free,” so I’ll keep going, too, because stories do that, don’t they? Inspire and illuminate us when we need it? That is my deepest hope and greatest ambition.

    Much love. More soon.

    *Yes, I know Churchill didn’t actually say that, but I still like the sentiment, and this is my place, so I do what I want.

  • Why Storytelling Works

    A book lies open on a wooden table, and black and white images of a pirate with treasure and a pirate ship pop up off the pages along with floating letters.
    Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

    Most craft essays focus on how storytelling works, but we don’t talk enough about why it works. I think the question is relevant whether you want to write stories or you just like to experience them, and it gets at the heart of not only the deeply moving effect storytelling can have but also its utility—why it’s so profoundly important storytellers keep doing what we do.

    Once again, I’m inspired by my teaching experience. I previously wrote about how I see stories as arguments, and while I think it can be helpful to think of stories rhetorically, teaching or educating is another part of argumentation; if you want someone to agree with you, you have to ensure they understand and know what you do. There are many ways to do that, of course, but let’s talk about two categories of learning. 

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  • Storytelling Elements Are Connected (in Triangles)

    Yellow, glowing triangles in the dark
    Photo by Jumping Jax on Unsplash

    Last time, I wrote about Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals and how they can play a role in storytelling, and it got me thinking about triangles. We often express Aristotle’s appeals in triangular shape to demonstrate effective rhetoric can’t exist without all three and to express the idea that they’re connected. Triads appear in all kinds of artistic theory, from the color wheel to the building blocks of musical chords. So what about literature? I’ve been wondering about other storytelling elements that we can visualize as triangles and how this frame of thought can help us better understand the stories we’re experiencing or telling.

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  • Four (Argumentative) Questions to Ask for Better Storytelling

    A statue of Aristotle holding scrolls

    All stories are arguments.

    I know what you’re thinking. That’s a bold claim, and what’s a fiction writer doing talking about argumentation anyway? Well, I’ll have you know I taught it at the university level, thank you very much, but that’s beside the point (actually, no, it isn’t; it speaks to ethos, which is a fancy word I’ll get to momentarily). If you disagree stories are arguments, that’s okay. How about we let that particular statement stand for the time being? If nothing else, we can use argumentation as a framework to look at storytelling through a new lens.

    Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher (maybe you’ve heard of him), conceived of the rhetorical appeals (ugh, I know, booooooooring, but stick with me as I crash you through a rhetoric lesson). Those appeals are logos, ethos, and pathos. Aristotle envisioned three different modes any speaker or writer uses to appeal to an audience. He also conceived of a fourth, kairos, or the moment in which the speech or writing takes place, which can affect the speaker or writer as well as the audience. We also often refer to this concept as context, and especially in writing, we consider the context in which the writer is or was writing as well as the context in which the audience receives that writing, which can sometimes be extremely different. Aristotle also considered logos, ethos, and pathos as wisdom, virtue, and goodwill, respectively.

    Got all that? Good. Now how does it apply to storytelling?

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  • Everything Is Terrible, so Here’s A Nice Poem I Wrote

    A dog lays in the grass with a backdrop of foliage on a sunny day.
    Photo by johnerfurt on Unsplash

    In times such as these, it’s easy to forget you need to take care of yourself, so here is a poem I wrote that I think is kind of nice. It’s about being stuck between a storm and sunshine with a dog. I hope it brings you a few moments of joy and perhaps something to think about today.

    The Whole Damn World

    Each moment we’re out here, 
    sheltered in the shade of tree canopies,
    insistent sun baking pavement rainfall,
    life’s ambient anthem playing in audible particle collisions 
    to make wing flaps, insect swells, breath drawn into arterial corridors,
    exhaled in pulses,
    stolen in atmospheric currents,
    gripped by leaves, 
    channeled by branch, 
    and sucked by root,
    I wish he would just pee already
    so we can go back inside
    where it’s cool 
    and quiet,
    and the air is filtered,
    and the sounds of neighborly chats 
    and combustion engines
    and lovers loving
    and playful children’s thunderous footsteps
    are muted
    and heavy curtains made from synthetic materials
    and dusted with shed skin cells
    reject the sun because we like to sleep through mornings and
    extract some peace
    when we think there is none to be had.

    Maybe all he wants in the whole damn world
    is to stand beneath this oak tree
    paws planted in musty mulch
    sniffing the honeysuckle wind
    hearing each raindrop as it tremendously pats one of a million leaves
    breathing the steam and mist of a daylight storm
    watching cars that don’t belong pass by
    ensuring they pass by
    because, he thinks,
    if not for this leash, 
    he would chase them off,
    and wouldn’t that be a glorious morning for everyone involved,
    if not for the leash?

    And maybe he’s not as greedy as I am 
    to want the whole damn world 
    but just a piece of it,
    and maybe it’s the greatest gift 
    I can give him
    to let him have it.

    And me too.

  • How I Have Benefited From Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (And How You Can Too!)

    Racks of doughnuts. Chocolate and cinnamon sugar. Mmmm.
    I couldn’t find a free picture of people sitting in a circle, so enjoy these doughnuts instead. Photo by Eneida Nieves on StockSnap

    I want to tell you a story about how I’ve benefited from interacting with diverse people in equitable and inclusive spaces. I want to share this story because I know not everyone has experienced these benefits first-hand, and I firmly believe in and support such work. Certainly, I’ve benefited personally in countless ways—many that I probably don’t even realize—but one specific experience comes to mind.

    Before we get to my tale, I think it’s important you know—in case you don’t know me and have come here from another corner of the internet—this is me:

    With more hair, fewer wrinkles, and minus a beard…I need a new headshot.

    I’m a straight, white, cisgender man with no disabilities from a middle class, blue-collar family that called northern suburbs and southern rural towns home. I have a master’s degree, and I have lived most of my adult life in and around the Washington, D.C., metro area.

    Which is to say, in these matters, I’m a pretty typical dude who was relatively isolated for a portion of his life but who has gotten around and seen the world a bit (but not enough because it’s never enough).

    Now, our story begins in my first year of grad school. Ah, I remember it like yesterday (so I’m probably forgetting or misremembering things, but stick with me anyway).

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  • Why I Love Storytelling

    The cast of Shrinking are gathered around a long park bench on a beautiful day.

    Recently, my wife and I finished watching the second season of Shrinking, and while the credits rolled, I leaned in, wrapped my arms around her, and just stayed there for a while because I cherish her so damn much.

    For me, it was a moment of pure storytelling magic. While stories can have myriad effects on us, depending on the story and the audience, Shrinking is a show about cherishing loved ones and growing by facing personal challenges together. It’s therapeutic and only natural that my response to it is an outpouring of love. Other responses also are perfectly natural or reasonable, though, if it makes you feel violent, you might want to talk to someone about that. I found myself profoundly moved.

    When I taught literature to undergrads, I distinguished between fact and truth with my students. One appealing aspect of nonfiction storytelling is it’s built on facts. We tend to call them “true stories,” but I wish we’d call them “factual stories” because there’s a larger truth to factual stories that goes beyond the facts. We watch a documentary about Bernie Madoff and think, “yeah, he had a really good life for a while, but when the hammer came down, they even took his underwear. Maybe stealing from people isn’t worth it.” We read a biography about a great political figure and walk away with a perspective of hope. We watch a 30-second clip on the Internet of a guy rescuing a doe from a frozen lake, and our faith in humanity is restored. 

    Fictional stories access these same larger truths even though they may be based on fabrications and fantasy. Fiction, despite being totally made up, contains truth or truths. 

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  • Here Comes the Change-Up, or How to Keep Tabs on Me in a Time When Seemingly Every Information Source Is Bad and I’m Becoming More Reclusive

    A wilderness-isolated cabin surrounded by fir trees and likely inhabited by a reclusive writer
    Photo by Mateas Petru from Pexels

    We fiction writers are notorious for being reclusive dwellers of wilderness-isolated cabins, but these days, being a fiction writer necessitates engaging with people (ew, gross) online. Like any social setting, it takes a particular set of skills.

    (I will not be posting a Liam Neeson meme at this time.)

    The trouble for me is I don’t think I’ve ever had those skills, nor have I been able to develop them. Moreover, the state of the Internet and media these days is not just about finding ways to cut through the noise. It’s about being so noisy your noise overwhelms the other noise and, in what seems to me like a paradox, steals attention before some other noise muscles yours out or an algorithm decides you’re not worth anyone’s time because you’re not giving the tech bros enough engagement, or whatever.

    I’ve written before about how I’ve found the need for fiction writers to be terminally online has had significant impacts on my mental health. Moreover, most of the people who own the media we have to use are now in the American oligarchy, so I can’t in good conscience continue to support that. To boot, I’m a real person (apologies if this comes as a shock), and some things have changed in my real life that have necessitated I re-evaluate the energy I’m putting into these things.

    So, I’m altering how I tell the world about what I’m up to with my writing. If you want to keep following my fiction writing, keep reading. If not, you’ll probably miss out on news, blogs, reviews, bonus content, and more goodies, and I’m sure that will just cut you to the bone. (This is sarcasm because I know it won’t.)

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