Doing It Right

John Noble and Jasika Nicole's
Fringe panel at Dallas Comic-con

This past weekend I attended the Dallas Comic-con. It was a blast and I thoroughly recommend it. It's crowded and it's just short of chaos, but its also a great deal of fun. Really, when you get down to it, most people are nerds about something. I've got quite a few somethings, but we don't need to detail all of that out here.

One that I will mention, only because it's relative, is the Star Trek Next Generation Panel that I listened in on. There was a little girl in the audience that had come the previous day in full costume as the Borg Queen. Very creative, very cool. She asked her question to the panel and when she had finished the actors were talking with her parents about the creativity that went into the costume and cultivating creativity in children. They  said that the parents were "doing it right."

That seems to be a common phrase lately. Doing it right, but what does it mean?

 I know that I've mentioned, as a writer, that I tend to dwell on words, their meanings, and how their used. Sometimes almost to a paralytic state. I have the personality that when I set out on route to a goal, I want to make sure that I'm doing it right and sometimes that means that I get so bogged down in the idea that I don't move in any direction. 

It seems like our world is increasingly full of pitfalls and snares that are ready to grab us around the ankles and drag us down. Do my words hold any weight? Have I validated my argument in every way possible? What if I've missed something detrimental because I simply didn't know where to look? How can I do this right?

I'm not sure there's a definite answer for this. (Scary, right?). I may simply be speaking for myself, but I'm not clairvoyant. No matter how many pieces of information I try to gather to make the best decision, there is always the possibility - the probability - that I've missed something. Whether it's research I'm doing for a book, reading up on historical and current news for this blog, trying to figure out the best route for publication, or just conversing with another person: I cannot 100% predict the outcome of an event that has not happened yet. 

So what is doing it right? If we can't pull back the vale of time and peer off into the future for our answers, how do we know? We don't. Sometimes we just have to take a breath, say a little prayer, and not let our fears tie us down. Kristen Lamb says every hard knock is a learning experience. 

Think about our foundings (you knew it was coming around to this eventually) as Americans. What if Dr Joseph Warren had been unwilling to stand strong while his political mentor Sam Adams was in Philadelphia? What if John Hancock, as a merchant, hadn't been willing to dump the tea? Or if Nathan Hale (and so many others) hadn't been willing to give his life? And what if George Washington had demanded a sure victory in order for him to take command? None of those men knew how it would end. Some didn't even live to see what their sacrifices bought. They had no idea that Americans nearly 240 years later would think they were doing it right. 

So we stand as each generation stands: with fewer answers than we have questions. Those knocks we take, both as individuals and as a nation, make us who we are. Own up to the mistakes and use them to make better choices in the future. Perhaps, God willing, they will look back on us someday and say that we were doing it right.

Commitment

Image via IMDB.com

I have a confession to make that is likely to either make my history-minded friends cringe or laugh. I feel I should make this confession in order to begin this post and to explain where I am coming from on this.

I adore the 1776 musical.

There. I said it. I know it's campy. I know it is, in many ways, historically inaccurate, and it often shows only charactertures of the Founders. There are many flaws to it, I know, but there is something to it that pulls at me and I will always love it.

The latter part of my time in undergrad I was very active in local grassroots movements in politics. I gave everything I had to it, fought the fight (as it were), and struggled to do what I could to make a difference. Here's the second confession of the blogpost: In all of that, there are many times when I feel like, no matter what I gave, it did little good in the grand scheme of things. This is not to say we did not make some changes, but they were local and, in the end, I felt very discouraged when I looked at the big picture.


(This does tie together with the 1776 musical, I promise. )

When you give your all into something, whether it's a political movement, a creative venture such as writing or art, or your career and you feel as if you are either at a standstill or losing ground, no matter the effort you put into it, it can be discouraging. If you lean more to the idealistic side as I do, it can be jarring. You feel as if all that time and effort is wasted and you might as well have simply kept your mouth shut and sat on your hands for all the good it's done you.

I've been there, and it's a struggle not to go back to that place. I think it is because of that I am so encouraged by this campy musical. Oh, it's good enough fun for a few laughs to see John Adams bicker with... well, everyone, and to watch the rest of the founders dance and sing about the heat and the flies, but I've always found something much deeper to it.

There are a couple scenes towards the end in which John is voicing his discouragement to Abigail, feeling as if everything he has fought for, everything he has ever believed in has gone to waste. She says, in so many words, not to forget that he is committed to freedom and to liberty. The scene that follows is one in which he is reading over a letter from Washington that asks "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?" In those words you can hear that low that we have all felt if we have put our all into a cause. It's a terrible feeling, but it's one that can make you stronger if you let it.

I find this scene encouraging, no matter what I feel my commitment slipping in, because even though he feels as if everyone is against him, he feels alone and unheard, there is a passion that reignites within him and he finds that commitment that he's been looking for.

I know this musical is cheesy, but I really feel like it captures, at least here, that terrible, sinking feeling that the Founders must have had at times. (Go back and read some of Washington's letters sometime... Poor man). No matter the odds, no matter the obstacles, commitment is the key. Don't give up and don't give in. We have to realize that even the greats in history were once questioning if their actions meant anything in the whole of the world. Without ideas there is no vision. Without vision there is no call to action. Without call to action, there is no change.

Finding Your Voice in the Masses

I once had a co-worker and good friend that referred to me as a walking history book. I took it as a great compliment and continue to do so even though I certainly don't feel as if I know as much as I should. The reason that she (affectionately) gave me this nickname was because I have a habit, in many conversations, of noting tidbits of history. After several months of working together, she decided that I could link most anything to history, no matter the subject matter.

I say this because I've been thinking quite a bit lately about the best way to share your voice today and, obviously, my mind went to some of my favorite historical figures and how they shared their voices during the early stages of the American Revolution. Great men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Thomas Paine have their words immortalized in grand speeches and beautifully constructed documents. Even personal notes were saved. John Adams seemed to have quite a few of his correspondences put into the public eye as there are collections made of his letters to Abigail, to Jefferson, and others. Through the times that tried men's souls founders remembered and not-so-well remembered wrote their thoughts and argued their opinions, many under pseudonyms in their local papers (my personal favorite, of course being Dr. Joseph Warren's writings).

I have always been a writer of fiction. My parents tell the story that when I was young I would dictate long stories to my grandmother and have her read them back to me for editing. University woke a brief spark in me in the earliest stages and I wrote under a pseudonym, mostly on social topics that were important to me. Looking back (and I don't dare at this point) I can only imagine them as bumblings that might have come across as rants, with little research and quite a bit of emotion (emotion, I believe, is a necessity when you believe fully in the subject, but fact is just as important). Coupled with the fact that I had no idea where to go, I did not go very far and soon gave up on the venture.

Towards the end of my university years I formed a friendship with another student who was also a writer and shared in many of my social and political views. As writers, we decided, we could use our talents to bring attention to local and national happenings that would affect our fellow students on campus. With this thought in mind we began tossing around ideas of creating a newspaper. If memory serves, we even discussed taking on names of our favorite historical heroes as pseudonyms in their honor. While the newspaper was not practical with our limited time and financial budget, we turned to the blogs. Together we created a blog called The Liberty Pole: Conservative writings from a generally liberal generation and were joined by a fellow contributor or two along the way. 

Once again, time restraints did a number on the project. I contributed a bit on a club's blog during those days, but most of my writing time (beyond the many papers required as an English Lit undergrad) was devoted to the novel I had just begun. It took on the same name as the blog and within its pages are characters that are (some more loosely than others) based on those historical heroes that we had discussed using the names of when The Liberty Pole was to be an underground school newspaper.  

Three and a half years have passed by since we started the blog called The Liberty Pole and probably about that since I first dove into the depths of writing the book. As an author of novels and short stories, I find my voice in that, but in today's publishing world they need more. I attended a writing conference last year and was told ever way that I turned that I should have a blog, a twitter account (something that I had avoided vehemently), and make sure that I was involved in the various other social media outlets. It's been a slow road, but I'm climbing it. I found my voice in my novel and this is yet another avenue to take in getting it out there. 

With all the outlets, with all the possibilities, I often think of how it might have changed things in the late 18th century if Warren and the others had had access to this. Would he have written his own blogposts? Gone viral? The whole works that every online-author hopes might happen? Then I stop and give it a good, hard look and realize: it didn't matter that he didn't have access to everything that is at our fingertips today. He spoke honestly and passionately and he didn't need all of this. His and the other founders' words live on today because they meant something. They continue to mean something. That, I think, is truly finding your voice. 

 "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

                                                                                                   Benjamin Franklin