Blógünder Schlock

A couple of months ago I lectured at Utah Valley University on the relationship between talent, hard work, practice, and artistic success. They recorded the presentation, and posted it on YouTube. Because, you know… ANYTHING that gets recorded eventually gets posted on YouTube.

It’s in four parts, but before you watch this thing I need to warn you — the guys in the audio booth made a horrible mistake, and during some parts of the lecture they accidentally dropped in bits of a UVU commercial’s audio track. It’s really awful, and they assure me that the problem exists on every copy of my lecture that they have.

I didn’t hire the recording crew, so I can’t fire them. Also, they’re probably students. Also, their failure in this particular case is sure to be a stinging one, a resounding blow against whatever illusions of competence they may have crafted for themselves. PERFECT. If they decide to learn from it, this gaffe will make them better audio engineers someday. It’s an object lesson that fits right in with my subject matter.

So:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

One of the journalism students at UVU put together an excellent little news-piece after the fact. It’s also on YouTube, and I can recommend it with no reservations whatsoever.

If you’re interested in knowing who I was citing, here’s the bibliography:

Flower and fountain photos ©2009, Janci Patterson Olds, used with permission.

“Victor Pendrake” model from Privateer Press. Photo by Janci Patterson Olds, painted by Drew Olds, Garden Ninja Studios, used with permission

“Schlock” pictures from Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness, ©2007 The Tayler Corporation

“How Not To Talk To Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise,” Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, New York, Feb 12, 2007

“Subtle Linguistic Cues Impact Children’s Motivation,” Cimpian, A., Arce, H., Markman, E.M., & Dweck, C.S., Psychological Science, April 2007: (subscription required)

“Family planning: Football style, the relative age effect in football.” Barnsley RH, Thompson AH, Legault P (1992).  International Review for the Sociology of Sport 27(1), 77-88

“The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, Psychological Review, 1993 Vol 100 #3:

As a follow-on to my last post, I’d like to add that Life is a Point-Buy system.
It’s kind of a complicated one, though. You start with a random set of genetic predispositions, along with some environmental modifiers so that by the time you actually get around to character generation it looks a little bit like your character was randomly rolled.

With most point-buy systems you have to short one stat (let’s say “Constitution”) in order to buff another (let’s say “Intelligence.”) In Life, however, there is a stat that can be dumped almost completely to zero in order to buff the others far above average.

That stat is “TIME.” Spend it wisely. It is never too late to buff your Intelligence, your Charisma, or even your Wisdom, but some folks insist on simply using it as target practice…

The gamers among you will get this immediately. Some of the rest of you may also get it immediately, though I won’t be surprised if a few of you need a nudge.

Here’s the full statement, which I found occasion to use during three different panels at Life, the Universe, and Everything XXVII: “If you want to work in this business, charisma is not a dump stat.”

My meaning should be obvious. If you want to be a professional writer, illustrator, or other creator, you may be enticed into believing that your dress, demeanor, and interpersonal skills are less important than they are in other fields. This is patently false. The only situation in which people will overlook what a jerk you are, or how smelly you are, or how shabbily dressed you are is when you are so incredibly impressive in other ways that they figure your eccentricities don’t matter, or may even be part of the mystique.

This is not a message that I send to my fellow creators who are successful in this business. Why not? Because whatever their current charisma score, they’re successful in this business and it probably doesn’t matter much. Whatever they’re doing is working.

But if you’re trying to break in, if you’re hoping to get hired by a comic book company, a video game company, or get an editor to read that 200,000 word manuscript, you cannot afford to be anything other than easy to get along with and inoffensive to the other senses. Write nice emails. Say kind things. I’m not suggesting that you become a simpering, obsequious, shallowly-flattering aspirant. Just be nice. Look nice, smell nice, act nice.

Why? Because you’re going to have to work with others, and they have to want to work with you.

And now, an observation…

Every full-time, creative professional at this most recent event looked really good. The authors, illustrators, game designers, animators, and editors all dressed sharply, carried themselves uprightly, spoke clearly, and if I stood close enough to them to smell them the only smells were clean clothing, and perhaps a hint of appropriate fragrance.

They did not all look sharp in the same way. Tracy and Laura Hickman wore muted colors, while Lee Modessit wore black and white. David Farland and Brandon Sanderson looked like college professors, casually yet very sharply academic.

There were a few fans, on the other hand, who looked, acted, and even smelled pretty bad. Yes, the smelly fan is kind of a cliché, and we laugh at it. But in some cases it’s sad because there are fans who desperately want to be professionals, and whether or not their work is up to that level they won’t be recognized as such… not unless their work is so incredible, so outstanding, so ground-breakingly, astoundingly awe-inspiring that those reviewing it are suddenly forced to pay attention to nothing but that work. And that’s a hard thing to pull off if you look like you haven’t showered in two days, and then, upon closer examination, it turns out that you smell that way too.

I’m not pointing fingers.  If you were there, please don’t go thinking I was looking at you and saying to myself “what a slob.” I wasn’t. But if you think that maybe you did look that way, congratulations. You probably know enough to solve the problem.

Many of the panels and lectures at this event focused on developing the skills necessary to be a creative professional. We covered putting good science in your science fiction, writing believable romance, maintaining suspense, rewriting for clarity and concision, and a host of other things — and that’s just on the writing side. To my knowledge, however, there wasn’t a panel centered around crafting personal appearance in order to increase the chances of getting published.

Maybe there should have been. And maybe the title of that presentation should be “Charisma Is Not A Dump Stat.”

The single most imporant part of my lecture is the source material I used. Research on this subject is both ongoing and controversial. I hand-picked sources that supported my own opinions on the matter (so much for objectivity!) but those sources then presented information that changed my mind on more than a few things (see? He CAN be taught!)

So here’s the infodump. (more…)

As I mentioned in my last post, my UVU lecture on talent will be streamed live today at noon Mountain time at http://uvu.edu/broadcast. I’m not sure whether that system will have any facility for posting questions, but I am quite sure that more than a few of you would like to take a shot at asking one.

If there is a way to ask questions via the stream I will announce it during the lecture. You know, over the stream. If not, it’s still possible I’ll be able to have someone monitor this very Blógünder Schlock page for questions.

So… if you’ve got questions, ask ‘em below. Yes, you’ll need to register. Yes, it’s possible your comment will get trapped in the moderation queue (though if you’ve posted comments before that shouldn’t be a problem.) I’m afraid this is the best I can do on short notice. Note also that I’ll cherry-pick the questions I like, so if there’s an aspiring Larry King out there wanting to ask that hard-hitting question in front of a big audience, your fifteen minutes of fame as a pit-bull journalist are probably not anywhere on today’s schedule. Sorry.

My noon lecture at Utah Valley University will be streamed, or so I am told.

My topic, which I’ve carefully researched, is “Talent? Who Needs Talent?” I have even gone so far as to create a slide deck. Because you know it’s not a proper 21st-century lecture without slides.

Again with the details: it’s this Friday, January 30th at noon Mountain time. There is a Howard Tayler Lecture Event Page over on Facebook, and if you’re looking for the stream I’m told it will be available at http://uvu.edu/broadcast. I’m also told they will archive it for later viewing. If you’re planning on attending in person, you may need this map to get you to The University Library (#29 on the map.) I’m not sure where you should park.

Will my dynamic, interactive style of presenting come across in the video? I have no idea. I’d love it if there were reaction shots of the audience thrown in there, but only if they’re shots that show the people who are reacting, rather than that loner in the back of the room snoozing in front of his laptop.

It’s a college crowd, and it’s my first time speaking there. We’ll see what happens. This will be the first time I’ve taken this particular show on the road, so to speak, so I’m actually a little nervous. Which anecdotes do I share? Which questions do I ask the audience? Which questions will they ask me?

There’s no way of knowing. I’ll just have to make sure I arrive well-armed… figuratively speaking of course.

I’ll be lecturing at Utah Valley University this Friday, January 30th, at 12:00 noon in the University Library Lecture Hall. My topic: “Talent? Who Needs Talent?”

I’ll be addressing the relationship between raw ability, skill development, and artistic accomplishment, and thanks to the research of others I will not be talking out of my… umm… thin air.

If you’re a Facebook member I’ve created an Event page for my UVU lecture. If you’re not on Facebook (and believe me, I understand if you’re not keen on plugging into that kind of thing) then the best I can do is this page at UVU. If you need directions, you can find UVU with Google Maps, but then you’ll need to use this parking map and this map of campus and get yourself to the building with the big 29 on it. It will not actually HAVE that number on it, though… just on the map. I know, I know… what were they thinking?

Apparently they have flyers with my face on them up all over campus, and decided that’s a better way to reach their student-body than a dedicated URL would be. I’m okay with that.

I’ll be lecturing for about 45 minutes, and then taking questions for the last part of the hour. If you can show up, by all means ask whatever you want. I’m game to answer anything.

Following the lecture and Q&A I think they have me doing a signing. I’ll bring books, and maybe some other stuff.

Now… I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you remember me saying that I was on “convention sabbatical” for 2009, and wouldn’t be doing appearances. Well… that’s half-true. I’m doing a few local events like this one, and I’ll be attending the World Science Fiction Convention in August, but that’s about it. I have too much book-work to do, and this is the year for it. These local things don’t cramp my work schedule the way a big convention does, but they do get me out of the house.

My long-time friend David Brady likes bugs. He also has a camera that will let him take really, really cool pictures of bugs. Like this one:

I swear, she looks like a battle-weathered mecha.

Anyway, Dave has been putting up bug pictures every day for the last two months at www.insectpod.com. If you like learning about bugs and creepy-crawlies, you could do worse. If you’re an expert, you will probably enjoy correcting him from time to time.

Do be careful, though. Dave has been known to gloss over some ugly truths here and there.