Rats. I just hit chapter 46 of The Da Vinci Code – a surefire way to tell when a novel is beach material: the chapter numbers run to 40, 50, 60, 120 – and one of my main plot devices just surfaced. Darn. Further, the author handled it fairly well, but he still made me wince with some shaky suspension-of-disbelief stuff. Which, of course, made me realize how ludicrous it would probably sound in my book. Back to the drawing board.
Maybe it’s time to write my Twentysomething novel instead. I’ve been considering doing a small genre hop, to write a Nick Hornby-esque book for twentysomething guys, but I’m not 100% convinced that I could do it justice yet. Somebody once told me that a surefire sign that things are awry in one’s life is the inclination to start doing stupid things just to have something to say at The Fray. The same can be said about living to have something to write about… But yet, isn’t that what writers have always done? Gone to sea, trekked into the Yukon, gone off in search of adventures, so that they can not only live better lives but collect better source material?
As always, I have more reading to do, more living to do, and a whole lot more writing to do.
(A brief aside: are any of you familiar with Aimee Bender? She popped up on my radar today as someone whose work I should read, but I have so many books on my list already… Is her stuff worth extending the list?)
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
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