TED Talk to Be. Some Day.

All righty. BANG. Some far reaching miracle has occurred and there I am. Staring at an invitation to give  TED talk somewhere. Here's what that would look like. Not that, you know, I've planned it out or anything.

TITLE: The World Inside Us

High Concept: George Lucas had it wrong. The Force isn't what permeates us and binds the galaxy together. It's story. Story is the unifying force, across culture, time, and all possibility.

*Insert cheesy story here about how here I am, an author. Four published novels, short stories, a novella, a couple of awards to put on my shelf. But I was a lonely little kid who didn't really fit in anywhere. I didn't fit this world. It didn't fit me. And I didn't seem to be growing in the right directions to have any hope that the fit would improve. Then a relative handed me a box of worn paperback books, all by the same author, Andre Norton. I was maybe 10. "Read these," my aunt said. Those stories saved me. I learned that not fitting the world made me something specific and peculiar. It made me a story-teller. End slightly humorous, cheesy story.*

Talk Brief (this is the condensed idea set - yet to be fleshed out because - you know - no invite as yet...)

What unites all of human-kind? Stories. What defines our psychology? Stories. What connects us to our ancestors - the ones reaching up to etch something into the rock wall of a cave? Stories. What, if you believe in this sort of thing, connects you to the past lives you lived across history? Yep. And what is it that links you to the vast stretch of future - the past your mortal existence? Right again.

Brief history of the origin of language - really brief. Segway to lying as predating actual proto-language (behavioral experiments done with chimps who learn muffle food calls - essentially lying to their troops). What is story - combination of pretending and communication - so by this definition, cave paintings are stories. Oral tales, ballads, a shaman's vision quest or journey into the underworld. All story. In as much as dreams are stories, we can claim to be connected by story to every living thing that dreams. (more brief data here)

Universality of emotion as connector and story as a means of evoking emotion

Pretending. Imagination. That's the important part. That's the part that connects us across all time, space and dimension. That lonely little kid who didn't quite fit the world? She never really did settle in. She still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. EVERYTHING. Astronaut. Veterinarian. Rock star. Movie star. Lawyer. Doctor. All of it. So her job is clear. BE all of it. In story. Try on all the hats. Step into the clothes for the space of 90k words. Be someone else in story. This is a sacred tradition of stepping out of your life and your world (shamanic traditions) in search of lessons among worlds not your own.

How does it connect you to past and future? You're imagining. Your ancestors imagined, your past life selves imagined, future generations will imagine. And it's likely that you're all imagining one another - what was life like/what will it be like ? How did/will it feel? For the brief moments your imaginations align, you make contact. What if there are infinite universes? Infinite copies of you? Right now, in some other universe, you are a doctor. An astronaut. A great artist of some kind. Every time you tell a story and try on one of those personalities or vocations, you connect.

Close: *Insert brief story about belonging as a demonstration of what the lonely kid learned by embracing story.* 

Story becomes art when it resonates with an audience as true. When your stories ring true, they reach across the world, across cultures and maybe even across time and space.

There it is. A rough draft from a disorganized brain.

My Two Paragraph TED Talk

My Two Paragraph TED Talk

or 

Keep Reading, 

The Good Stuff is at the Bottom

by Linda Robertson

A few weeks ago, seeing this blog topic coming, I grew excited. I'd seen a few TED speeches and found then very uplifting and encouraging. My topic options rolled around inside my head. (I think it might have gotten stuck in my allergy-polluted sinuses. Truth, sorry.)

Then life happened. Major Important Stuff At Work (the kind that leaves you grateful to just shut

your mind off when you get home). My mom was, and is, sick. There have been extra errands to do. I'm going to ConCarolina's Thursday (SQUEE and, seriously, you know prepping for a con takes a bit of time and mental real estate). A holiday weekend happened. Yardwork happened.

Excuses all. Valid, but excuses. I wanted to write for this topic. IMHO, I think I can be positive and encouraging. But I prioritized other things and suddenly, here it is. TED day.

Damn it. That's the lesson.

Priorities.

As a mom, as a writer, homeowner, employee, and all those other titles that I juggle, it all functions because of priorities. And gravity and momentum yes, yes, all my titles are fluctuating between me having a firm grasp on them and letting them go hoping they will fly all the while knowing they are just 'falling with style' as Buzz would say.

I sit here at the last minute with a couple of S'mores Oreos (s'moreos??) and a glass of milk, giving you this impromptu and rambling speech because I also have a sense of responsibility.

So here is my TED talk:

Priorities, my dear friends, always seek to pull you from that coveted and comfy seat where your mind has made you the god of a world that exists only on your page, where releasing the words is every bit as necessary as releasing your breath so that you may have another.

Responsibility, to the populace on your page, and to yourself, will always bring you back.

NOW GO WRITE!!!

I'm sorry, I keep thinking of the movie TED.

Ted, the movie, is about a talking child's teddy bear that comes to life and grows with his owner. And their many, often perverse misadventures. It's written for anyone whose mind refuses to leave the gutter. I watched it with two of my siblings. My brother and I enjoyed it, but we equally enjoyed my sister's outraged squawks of indignation.

I laughed myself silly.

But apparently TED talks, this week's subject, is about Technology, Entertainment and Designed, converged. 

I have never even considered giving a TED talk. I did;t know what one was.

What would I talk about?

Not giving up. Not looking to others for your success. Not looking AT others as the guidepost for you success.

I would talk about "I wish I had to the time to write a novel."

I would talk about "I've got a great idea for a story. You could write it and we could share the profits." and why, exactly, that is a gigantic, heaping pile of horse dung.

I would talk about the differences between professionalism and stalking. They are many, they are varied, and they look nothing alike, and yet, there are buffoons out there who confuse them all the time.

I would talk about deadlines and how to keep them (and what to do when you fail to do so).

I would talk about the difference between real professional rates and "for the love" rates.

I would talk about whether or not going to college to learn how to write is a good idea.

I would talk about the business of writing versus the actual act of writing.

I would talk about the uses of conventions.

I would talk about form rejections and how to handle them like an adult.

In short, I would talk about being a writer.

And maybe I'd throw in something about forthcoming projects, like the now recurring episodes of my podcast talkshow with Christopher Golden and Jonathan Maberry, THREE GUYS WITH BEARDS or about my latest short story coming out in Innsmouth Nightmares, edited by Lois Gresh and coming out from PS Publications. Just because I love pretty artwork, I'll show you some of that to go with the anthology.

And I'd probably close by asking you to remember those who served this country so very well and often with their lives this Memorial Day. Because, really, we should remember our heroes, not just the occasional athlete. 

James A. Moore

Working Up My TED Talk

I always say that one of the best perks of being an author is befriending other authors I love to read. Here's me and the amazing Jennifer Estep at the RT Convention. I have mad love for her assassin heroine Gin and her Elemental Assassin series. And not only because she's up to 14 books in that series. The woman is a powerhouse. Dayum. We got to sit and have a long conversation, which is just my favorite things about conventions - picking each others' brains, hearing other perspectives on both our art and the business.

It's like having a week's worth of intimate TED talks.

I'm fascinated by TED talks and listen to/watch them over the internet from time to time. Which is saying a lot because I really don't like to spend the chunks of time that can require. My days are pretty packed and stuff like that feels like a diversion from the work I need to accomplish. But I also love the concept - "Ideas Worth Spreading" - and some of the talks have really opened my mind. Some favorites are Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking, Stella Young's incisive breakdown of "Inspiration Porn," Eli Pariser's eye-opening discussion of online "filter bubbles," and Elizabeth Gilbert's wonderful discussion of creative genius.

(Apologies if I just sent you down a rabbit hole of TED talk watching...)

At any rate, I contemplate sometimes what I would say, given the opportunity to give my own TED talk, which is why I suggested this topic for the Bordello. I figured it would make me think about it in a more focused way and I want to hear what the other Word Whores would say.

But when I sat down to write this post, I still didn't have a clear idea. I have about ten-thousand pieces, but not a single, concise thought. Which left me feeling daunted until I realized that's partly what the TED process is about. A colleague of mine - from the day job - did a local one on drinking water. She told me that she worked and reworked her talk with extensive coaching from the TED people. They kept telling her that they didn't really feel her passion for clean drinking water and that it was a revelatory process for her to dig into what that really meant to her.

The point then, I suppose, is that I wouldn't need a perfectly clear concept to begin with. That's how essay-writing always worked for me. I started with a nugget of an idea, a pivotal moment, and explored it. That's how I cemented my process of writing for discovery, no doubt.

I think I'd want to talk about balance, the concept of the middle path. In my bio, I used to say that I'm a fence-sitter - something I later took out because people interpreted that as me being indecisive, neither here nor there, which isn't very accurate. No, by that I mean that I'm a right-down-the-middle person. On most tests, I come out balanced. I'm equally right- and left-brained. My writing voice is equally male and female. I'm neither Type A nor Type B, but an equal measure of both. Though I come out as an INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs test, I'm mildly so on all four parts and could easily tip into the opposite designation.

Which is why it should be no surprise that I'm both a scientist and a writer of romance and fantasy. Once I told my agent a true story that involved me using a pendulum to dowse and how I inadvertently caught the attention of something vengeful and not-quite human. He exclaimed, "My God, Jeffe - you're a scientist!"

Yes, I am.

And as such, I'm a believer in empirical evidence. This is why I double-majored in college, in biology and comparative religious studies (another two-sided aspect) - because I see both sides of the world. That which is material and that which is immaterial.

That is what I'd talk about.

Wouldn't it be fun if I got to, someday?