[Journal] Dog Fostering

Hunter at the pound.

On Friday, my wife and I became foster parents.

For a dog.

The story’s a sad one. Hunter is a 3 year old beagle who was dropped off at a Missouri animal shelter because the family was moving and couldn’t keep him. He’s housebroken and seems to be trained to respond to some commands, and the family claimed his shots were up to date. But for whatever reason, they decided to drop him off at an animal control facility the way one would drop off a bag of old clothes at Goodwill. The poor dog, who is sweet and friendly and adorable, was slated to be put down if he couldn’t be adopted out within a few days.

I found out about the dog through St. Louis Pet Rescue and, braving snow and ice on a Friday afternoon, drove out to the shelter to pick him up myself.

I’m so aggravated that this even needed to happen, because it says something about how people in our society treat their pets. I love my pets, and I probably spoil them a little, but I try to make them happy because they make me happy. I can’t imagine life without them, and I tear up at the thought of Ramses or Oscar passing away. So, for someone to be so cold and callous about their pet is alien to me. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have at least found him a home, or contacted a rescue organization. He’s a purebred beagle, for crying out loud. People pay hundreds of dollars for them at the pet store. (The sale of dogs at the pet store is another gripe, but we’ll save that for another time.) Instead, they simply said, “we can’t handle this dog any more, so we’ll turn him over to the authorities.” That’s just loathsome. They took a creature that loved them deeply and they discarded him because it was too much trouble to make sure he was properly taken care of.

The Animal Control facility people are frank: they destroy dogs after a few days. They have to. They don’t have the space or the funding or the ability to keep these dogs, and they are reliant on rescue organizations to come in and bring the dogs off death row. It’s an ugly situation. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that every year, 6 to 8 million dogs and cats are brought to shelters, and of those, around 4 million are put down. Think about that for a moment. 4 million. Where I live, in St. Louis, there aren’t even 4 million people in the area. 4 million is a number that should boggle the mind. 4 million would be genocide if it involved people instead of pets.

People often ask me why I get so upset about animals when I should be caring about people who have problems. My answer is that the way we treat animals reveals much about who we are and what we stand for. If we are kind to animals and have compassion for them, we are typically kind to people as well. If we are cruel to animals or callous to their needs, we are typically selfish when it comes to assisting others. I think this proverb sums it up best:

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal,
but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10, NIV Bible)

Proverbs are meant to be chewed on and digested. What this one says is that when a person is good, he or she cares for the needs of an animal because that is what good people do. But when a person is wicked (or, by extension, selfish), no matter how much he or she tries to be kind, the action is cruel because the person is acting out of ill-intent and self-preservation. A good person bears good fruit; a bad person is poisonous.

Hunter is so much happier now that he's in foster care!

I don’t know if the people who abandoned Hunter are bad people. But I will say that they are ignorant and short-sighted at best and very likely callous and selfish. They don’t deserve a dog like him. All he tried to do was love them. But they couldn’t plan their future with him in mind.

Fortunately, he is fine now, and sleeping behind me in his crate. He’s a little upset that he can’t be around me all the time, or that he has to compete with my dogs for dominance. But he’s alive, he’s enjoying life, and he’s going to find his way to a family that will love him. I think it’s a big deal, because all of the humans involved in this story are going to learn so much more about compassion than they would have otherwise. And so many more will hear Hunter’s story (or the story of other foster dogs after him) and perhaps consider fostering some pups of their own.

As a final note, I was searching for Hunter’s new profile on Petfinder and came across another beagle named Hunter who was adopted out of the Madison County Humane Society only to be brought back a few months later because he kept getting out of his new owner’s fence. This Hunter was an 8-month-0ld puppy when he was adopted out, and full of energy. Perhaps the owner should have tried walking him more often instead of relying on a fence, or putting in one of the many fencing options that are designed with dogs in mind. Instead, the owner dumped him off at the Humane Society like a piece of returned merchandise. What a tragic world we live in, when the life of a loving canine companion can be tossed aside so callously for want of a better fence.

[Journal] The Sort of Story I Want To Tell

I’ve been reflecting, following the Lost premiere last night, about why some stories are so captivating while others are so forgettable. Lost is just one of a series of stories that have managed to build up an impressive following despite being complex and different. In the 1990s, The X-Files experienced a similar phenomenon. I’ve also realized that the Harry Potter books, the first Matrix film, the first season of Twin Peaks and even the original Star Wars trilogy have managed to achieve similar success.

But what is it about these stories that has made them so popular? It boils down to the following common elements:

1) The presence of an overpowering element. In Lost, it’s the frustration of trying to get off an island populated by seemingly evil forces. In Star Wars, it’s the evil galactic empire and the dark side of the Force. In The Matrix, it’s the presence of the enslaving machines. In The X-Files, it’s the government. In Harry Potter, it’s Voldemort. All of these stories have not just a great villain, but a real sense that this villain (or evil power) cannot be defeated without great perseverance.

2) Everyman heroes. In each of these stories, the heroes are just normal people who are trying to stand up against a great force. By persevering, these heroes can achieve some sort of power (or knowledge), but they are never strong enough, on their own, to defeat the evil power entirely. These heroes also tend to be morally good, though that is not necessarily a requirement.

3) A secret world. Even in a fantasy world (such as the fantasy galaxy of Star Wars), some secret sub-world must exist. In Lost, the secret world revolves around the cult of the Island. In Star Wars, it revolves around the Jedi and Sith. In The X-Files, it revolves around those who have some knowledge of “truth”. In The Matrix, it revolves around hackers who are jacked out of the central network. The sub-world is what the story is able to use to not only reveal key elements of the story, but also what the story uses to elevate the heroes above their everyman status.

4) Unknown story elements that result in mystery. These might be secrets that are being intentionally kept from the characters, or they might be knowledge of the villain’s motivation, the nature of the evil force, or the true power of the secret world. Revealing these secrets must be done in a careful, metered way, though the longer the mystery exists, the more effective it will be at keeping the reader hooked.

5) Plot twists that change the audience’s perception of the story. Plot twists, when employed correctly, can give a story new life. Lost has been notable in that it has introduced plot twists in every season that have changed the very nature of the show. The original Star Wars trilogy offered one major plot twist per episode that changed the face of how the characters would react: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, the revelation that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker, and the revelation that Luke was fighting not just for his noble cause, but also to protect his secret sister. The X-Files had plot twists that would confirm Mulder and Scully’s quest, only to frustrate them even more when the evidence vanished. The audience was left with a deeper understanding of the story while the characters were bolstered in their attempts to uncover the truth.

6) A very deliberate structure that never allows the heroes to triumph until the very end. This is, perhaps, the most important aspect of telling this sort of story, and it’s actually the reason why the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the two Matrix sequels and the second season of Twin Peaks and the resulting movie weren’t able to achieve the same sort of success as their predecessors.

The structure is very similar to what you see in the original Star Wars trilogy, and it can be remembered by considering the titles of the film. The first film, Star Wars: A New Hope introduces the element of conflict with some glimmer of optimism. The second film, The Empire Strikes Back, results in the overpowering force defeating the heroes and preventing them from prevailing. The final film, The Return of the Jedi, puts the heroes in a last-ditch effort to overcome incredible odds so that they can finally defeat the villain and the evil power behind him.

Now, look at the prequel trilogy and you can see how this structure was employed incorrectly. The first film was titled The Phantom Menace, indicating that the evil power had yet to become overpowering or dangerous. The second film was titled Attack of the Clones, but the third was titled Revenge of the Sith. The conflict of these two films should have been reversed. George Lucas would have been much better off to ditch the first film, begin the new series in the midst of the Clone Wars, have the Sith return and overpower the Republic in the second episode, and then be defeated by the tragic figure of the ends-justify-the-means Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader in the process of putting the evil Palpatine (himself a Sith) in greater power.

The Matrix told its story incorrectly as well. The correct structure would have been to kill Neo at the end of the second film and then have him return in the third with a greater knowledge of who he was, allowing the humans and machines to fight the greater menace of Agent Smith. Instead, the second Matrix film decided to info-dump the audience and remove the magic of the story with a bewildering scene that gave answers no one was ready to hear.

Even Lost, which has managed to string its story along so well, has struggled with story arcs that waste characters and provide unneeded information. Charlie, a fan favorite, is probably one of the most wasted characters in the series. He was made into a pseudo-villain during the second season, and then killed off in a meaningless sacrifice in the third. Other characters, such as Sayid, were changed later in the series in the name of plot twists, but these twists were neither necessary nor appealing to most viewers.

Anyhow, the story with the elements above — that is the sort of story I want to write. Three times, to be precise — on three different projects I’ve been working on. Now that I’ve been able to identify these elements, I think I’m in much better shape to incorporate them. The next step is to work on my revisions.

[Journal] Why It’s Hard For People To Change

I’ve spent the better part of the last year talking about all the ways I want to change. I want to exercise more, to eat better, to accomplish the things I do want to do and to stop wasting so much time with filler activities like messing around online or playing video games.

Unfortunately, I’ve gotten so used to TELLING myself what I want to do that I’m having a hard time getting started now that I’ve run out of excuses.

I think a big part of the problem is momentum — as Newton told us, and I’m paraphrasing, objects in motion tend to stay in motion, while objects at rest tend to sit around and feel their butts grow bigger. It’s really easy to make changes if you get some momentum behind changing your life. But it’s really hard to do it when you’re starting from nothing. Getting that first shove so you’re in motion is difficult, and it requires a major force (either through your own willpower or some life event) to make the change start to occur.

Another problem comes in the form of habits. We develop habits because they help us to sort of hardwire our behavior into our brains — to allow us to think less and go on autopilot more. Unfortunately, some habits aren’t very good for us, and some activities we get involved in are actually bad habits. But it’s hard to change a habit. I’ve been trying to ditch the fingernail biting for years with no luck. I don’t like chewing on my fingernails, but I think, deep down, that I’m comfortable with it. It’s hard for me to change because I find some comfort in knowing that it’s my way, even if it’s not a particularly GOOD way.

So, what I need to do are the following things:
1) Get some momentum going behind the areas where I do want to change.
2) Understand that if I want to change habits in my life, I have to do so by rejecting the hardwired response and building new pathways instead.
3) Stop being complacent about being comfortable with “my ways”.

-SJJ

[Journal] My 5-Car Pileup

Photo Credit: Markybon (Flickr.com)

Note: This is a non-fiction entry in my personal journal.

It was after an exceedingly stressful day that I was in a 5-car pileup on the Interstate. A pickup truck in front of me hit the brakes suddenly, and then I hit mine. And then, the lady behind me hit me, and the two cars behind her hit each other and then her, pushing me into the truck in front of me. 5 cars, stuck in a domino effect. Every one of us unable to prevent the accident from occurring.

My description makes it sound a lot worse than it really was, of course — no one was hurt, do real damage was done, and the whole thing wound up being a big inconvenience to everyone involved. One of the guys was even annoyed that I called the cops since it was going to take a chunk out of his evening. But isn’t it wonderful that we could all be in a 5-car pileup and be annoyed that the paperwork was taking too long?

Here are some of the many things that could have made the accident much more serious, and potentially fatal to some of us.
1) A semi could have been involved.
2) Someone could have hit their accelerator instead of their brakes out of panic.
3) The roads could have been icy or wet, resulting in less traction.
4) The accident could have spilled over into another lane.
5) It could have happened at a much greater speed.
6) It could have happened a quarter mile earlier while we were still on the curve of a bridge.
7) Someone could have not been wearing a seatbelt and been more seriously injured.

And so on, and so on.

But nope. Hardly any damage, either to ourselves or collaterally. We all lived to be annoyed. I’d call that the best car accident I could ever hope to be in.

Let’s hope the next one is just as easy.

-SJJ

Change is Coming…

Once again, I find myself looking at my Web site and asking myself, “Why do I have this again?” My dream of keeping daily articles on this site continues to fall through the moment I lose interest in whatever new scheme I’ve set up for updating, and I honestly am too busy with my upcoming marketing blog (for my new job) to keep this updated with fresh content that interests me.

I have, however, decided that I need to start “scrap writing” every day as an exercise. Scrap writing is a lot like flash fiction — you just sit down for a few minutes, write a story of less than 1,000 words, and go with it. You don’t spend a lot of time editing or developing it – you just write what you are feeling at the moment. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but it doesn’t really bug me if they don’t; I came up with this idea, as I come up with so many other good ideas, when I was taking a shower.

So, starting January 1st, I’m going to alter the design of this site a bit, take down most of the links to old articles, and begin posting writing scraps every day. I will occasionally intersperse these with journal articles or items of interest, but fiction (or occasionally, non-fiction!)  is going to be what I put up from here on out.

So, to those who have enjoyed my articles, thanks, and to those who are simply friends with me and who wonder what I’m up to, send me an e-mail or find me on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: Marketers Re: Twitter

To: Marketers
Re: Twitter

Here's a simple analogy. Say you want to study the ocean. Do you go to a popular beach and draw all your conclusions from the scene there, or do you take the time to get a boat and some SCUBA gear and go searching for the big fish?

Look, I know you’re excited. Really, truly, I do.

But for the love of God, please stop trying to convince me that Twitter is the be-all, end-all of marketing.

I’ve been watching Twitter for awhile, and honestly, I think it’s pretty limited in what it can do. You marketers keep telling me it’s great because you can study trends on it. You love that you can see real-time reactions to entertainment media or to big news. You love how easy it is to click on the “trending” tools and see what the biggest topics of the day are.

But what you don’t seem to understand is that Twitter is a social network largely used by vapid, know-nothing attention whores who want to make every aspect of their lives known. Think about this for a moment. If you use Twitter, everything you post is available to anyone who wants to see it. Since you’re restricted to 140 characters, you can only really give the cursory details of your life. Twitter encourages stalking people by “following” them, and it discourages real communication by making it difficult to offer more than a surface reaction to the topic of the day.

I understand that many of you in the marketing world fall into this mold, so you don’t see anything wrong with it. But trust me. Twitter is the most superficial social network there is. It has its uses, but trying to draw any meaningful conclusions from it is ridiculous. It’s like going into a crowded room and trying to overhear how a bunch of people respond to the events of the hour. Sure, there are going to be common threads, but it’s all just a lot of noise.

Do you want to know how Twitter should be used for marketing? 21st century marketing is about having a relationship with your customers. If you want to use Twitter for your ad campaign or your customer retention strategy, you need to use it to encourage a dialogue. Twitter can be very useful as a portal to much deeper, more meaningful content and interactions. You can use it as a means to begin a conversation with people who just want a quick response to whatever their question or issue is.

But all this nonsense about building ad campaigns based on the views of the Twitterati, or testing product designs on Twitter, or any of the other nonsense I hear about every month in the various marketing publications I read? You guys are setting yourselves up for failure, and while you might seem trendy and cutting-edge now, you’re going to look like idiots when this whole Twitter thing gives way to some other trend.

I understand that you’re young and you’re bored and you want to do something exciting, but focus that energy on building a better marketing strategy that’s based on solid marketing research. It might not be glamorous, but it’s going to benefit you down the road when you want to manage a division instead of a bunch of mindless morons twittering banalities at you.

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: That Guy Who Cut Me Off To Get One Car Ahead Today

To: That Guy Who Cut Me Off To Get One Car Ahead Today
Re: Musings

There we were, driving down a single lane road on the way to the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. I was keeping up with traffic, and there was barely a car’s worth of space between me and the car ahead. We were just an intersection away from a 2-lane road. There were no traffic jams or problems to contend with.

And yet for some reason, you decided to gun around me and move up a single spot.

I realize you’re probably in a hurry. It was the noon hour, and maybe you were running late getting back from your break. That’s fine. But did you have to be so ridiculously inconsiderate? Did you have to nearly cause an accident? Had you known that I was running a fever today, and doped up on cold and sinus medicine, would you have taken such a stupid risk?

Let me tell you something about cutting people off — don’t do it to people who are driving crummy cars. My car is a compact. It has rust spots around the back wheel-wells. It’s dirty. You were driving a nice, new-looking SUV. If I hit it, I wouldn’t do much damage. But the accident would total my car, because it’s built to crunch. Yes, I’m insured, but not for very much. I don’t have a lot to lose here. You, on the other hand, could find yourself with a messed-up bumper that might take you months to get fixed while you wait on your claim to get paid out. Guys in crummy cars don’t typically have very prompt insurance.

It must have escaped you that this took place in East St. Louis, where people are even less likely to have insurance than usual. You could take them to court, but they don’t have any assets to seize. It’s not smart to have a close call in East St. Louis. You’ll almost always walk away a loser.

It must have also escaped you that we were right next to the police station. Any accident we had would have generated immediate response. I assume from your driving that you’re hotheaded and stupid. Do you think the police would find me at fault for being unable to stop when you gunned around me like an idiot? They deal with enough idiots down there. They wouldn’t suffer your bad attitude for too long before writing you a ticket.

So, in closing, you’re an idiot, karma’s eventually going to pay you back for being a jerk, and next time, please be a little more careful to actually hit my car. I wouldn’t mind totaling it out and getting something nicer. You’d be doing me a favor.

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: Sony Re: PSP Go

To: Sony

Not as cool as a newer, better PSP would be...

Re: PSPGo

Ah, Sony.

When the PSP came out in 2005, I was one of the people who jumped right on it. I couldn’t help myself. The system was beautiful, and it had some really cool games that made my GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS games look like toys. To this day, I’ve been a PSP booster.

But the PSP Go baffles me. It’s a little smaller than the PSP-3000, and it looks kind of cool. But why would I ever need this device if I’ve already got a perfectly good PSP? It doesn’t do anything different. It has fewer features than the PSP I’ve already got, and it can’t play any of the games I already own. Its control scheme looks like it would cause my hands to cramp up. And, most important of all, it’s about $80 more than I’d spend if I replaced my original PSP-1000 system with one of those shiny new PSP-3000 models. $250, for a system with fewer features than the one I’ve already got? You have got to be kidding me, Sony.

Clearly, your marketing team was asleep during their marketing strategy classes, because the whole concept of the PSP Go is flawed. You want to repackage a 4-year-old handheld and sell it as geek chic. But in doing so, you’ve made it incredibly impractical to own. It’s a device that relies on digital downloads to play games… and yet it can only download on the wifi 802.11b standard, which ensures slow download speeds. Hrm. You’ve only made about 100 games available for download, and yet you’ve missed many obvious titles, such as Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Lumines and Metal Gear: Portable Ops. Hrm again. The games are being sold at full retail with no associated bonuses, which means that they’re going to be more expensive than their used counterparts. Hrm once more. Did you marketing team sleep their way through economics as well, somehow concluding that during a recession, people spend more money on items than they might otherwise?

What really galls me is that you put out a press release this week announcing that hardware sales for the PSP are up 300%. What that really means is that you’ve shipped out new hardware to retailers for the Christmas rush. It has nothing to do with what consumers are buying. You want people to think that the PSP Go is the must-have item right now. Maybe a few will fall for it. But I have yet to see a line for PSP Go hardware forming at any stores I’ve been in. The guys and girls at my local store are telling me that no one’s very interested. Why should they be? It’s like taking a McDonalds happy meal, putting it on a fancy plate, charging a dollar extra for the presentation and then slapping on an extra fee for the toy, soda and fries. The happy meal was fine the way it was. There’s no reason to try to make it into something better.

Speaking of which, where’s the PSP upgrade that consumers really want — the one with two analog sticks, four shoulder buttons, and switchable faceplates? The one that can use 802.11g and that has a kicking web browser. The one that has a battery that lasts more than a few hours, and that can play downloadable PS2 games? I’d pay $250 for that system, even if you stripped out the UMD drive and vulnerabilities to homebrew. And if I could use it to access PSN Home and to stream the videos on my PS3 over the Internet and I could hook it into my TV like I can with the PSP-3000, then yeah, I might even pay more.

All I can conclude is that you aren’t listening and don’t care what I have to say. That’s fine, Sony — you’ve always been too cool to let your customers push you around. But you’re going to pay the price for that as the years go by. In the 21st century, the most dangerous move you can make as a company is to treat your customers like they’re not important.

You’re lucky I love my PS3 so much. At least you’ve finally got yourselves straight where that console is concerned. Too bad you had to lose so much ground to Microsoft while you skimmed the market with a ridiculous price point and lackluster software. You might recover during this generation, but you’ve made yourself vulnerable, Sony… and it’s going to be hard for you to keep things up when the next generation of consoles is due and you’re still trying to pay off all the money you sunk into blowing the PS3 launch.

Good luck. You’re going to need it.

-Sean J. Jordan

[Open Letters] To: Aspiring Novelists

Note: I have placed an updated version of this letter here: http://www.seanjjordan.com/to-aspiring-writers/

To: Aspiring Novelists
Re: Getting Published

So you want to get a novel published. And you’ve decided it’s time to start shopping your pitch around.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t. Because chances are good you’re wasting your time. Which means, by extension, you’re going to waste a lot of peoples’ time in the process.

You might think that you’re a great writer. There’s a possibility that you are even a great novelist, but it’s remote. I can say that safely because I know that you don’t have any experience writing actual novels. If you did, you wouldn’t be looking for a publisher. You’re a wannabe, and while you might believe that you’re sitting on something incredible, I’d be willing to bet that the book you think you’ve written and the book you’ve actually written are vastly different in quality.

Go to a bookstore and check out the fic/lit section. Notice how many books are on the shelves. Notice how many you’ve never even heard of. Now, understand that this section represents just a tiny fraction of all the fictional books that have been published over the last 10 years. Most of the books that have been published in fiction genres are long-forgotten. Only a handful are held over for multiple printings.

I’ll bet you believe you are different. You think that you have something the tens of thousands of writers who have come before you don’t have. You think that you see the world differently from everyone else, that you’re more skilled at telling stories, and that you have something special to offer. That’s fine. You’re entitled to think whatever you want.

But when you start shoving your manuscript in the faces of editors and literary agents and professional writers demanding that your work be considered for publication because you believe that you’re somehow entitled to do so… well, you’re nuts.

You may have written a novel, but it doesn’t make you special. Every year, thousands of people write novels 50,000 words long during the month of November for National Novel Writing Month. Most of them don’t feel entitled to be published. A lot of them know they’ve written complete garbage. The accomplishment is in crossing the finish line. Many shelve their drafts and move on to something else. They have no illusions of grandeur.

But you, oh aspiring writer, who may not have even finished one entire novel. You love to go on the Internet and into writer’s groups to talk about how wonderful your work is. You love to have long, late-night conversations about the craft of writing. You love to critique other published writers and explain why you are better. You read Writer’s Digest and attend writer’s workshops and keep an earmarked copy of Writer’s Market close at hand.

Here’s my advice to you: sit down, shut up, and just write. Not about writing, or about how wonderful you are, or what you intend to do with all the money you ‘ll make when someone finally realizes your genius. No. Write a novel. Then another. And another. And keep on doing that until you write something that is actually good; something that someone might actually want to read. Something an editor might actually want to publish.

And then, before you waste anyone’s time with it, spend ten times the amount of time that you spent writing the book actually revising it. If it took you one month to write the novel, you need to spend 10 months revising it. If it took you six months to write the novel, you need to spend five years revising it. I’m not talking about the calendar days it took you, of course, but the actual number of hours you spent writing. My rationale here is simple: you’re going to have to put some distance between yourself and your work. You’re going to need to snap out of the mindset of “I just wrote this” and into the mindset of “I need to fix this.” And you’re going to have to do that over and over and over until you have refined your piece of writing to be something that’s actually good. If you force yourself to repeat that process ten times, you’re going to quit if you create something that’s garbage… and you’re going to shape your ungainly rough draft into something a little more refined.

You can solicit the opinions of others, but don’t waste your time soliciting the opinions of other writers, particularly other amateurs. You’re just giving them an excuse not to be writing. Instead, solicit the opinions of readers – the more jaded they are, the better. Ask them where they got bored, or where they found their minds wandering. Ask them where they thought the novel could have been better. Don’t let them get off with saying, “it was good.” Tell them not to spare your feelings. Tell them to pretend they’ve just spent $10 on your book and you want to know if it was worth what they spent. Ask them how much they really thought it was worth. Ask multiple readers who read multiple genres. Don’t let one person’s assessment of your work be the be-all and end-all of your beliefs about its quality. Evaluate every critique you receive, and separate legitimate concerns from the personal tastes of individuals.

Stay away from writing about writing or reading about writing. Many writers make a successful occupation out of selling this stuff to others. Don’t fall prey to them. If you want to be a better writer, write. Vary your work, and write about anything that interests you. Stay away from being locked into a genre or a topic. Don’t worry about your pen name or what the cover of your book should look like. That’s something for professionals to worry about. You just keep your head down and get back to work.

If you have written a manuscript, and you think it’s ready for publication, you should not need to make any more revisions to it. If it comes back with requests for revisions, either it is not ready to be published, or the publishing world is not ready for it. At this point, you must decide — is it even worth revising? If the revisions involve changing the very nature of what you have written to suit another market, you should shelve that story and work on something else. Sell it later when you have found an audience.

If you ignore all of my advice here and insist on pushing on in your stubborn, obstinate way, then let me give you one final piece of advice: don’t send your work to me, because I don’t want to read it, even if you manage to get some other publisher to pick it up. I’ve got plenty of time-tested titles to read. And I’ve got plenty of my own projects to finish.

Thanks,

-Sean J. Jordan

[Open Letters] To: The Writers of NBC’s ‘The Office’

An unbelievable wedding... and I mean that in the negative, I assure you.

To: The Writers of NBC’s The Office
Re: Congratulations are in order!

Wow. I’m simply stunned. It’s a rare opportunity to see what you managed to achieve on television last night, and you managed to not only pull it off, but to do so with gusto. There I sat, watching in slack-jawed amazement, as the wedding episode of The Office danced across my television. And I mean that literally, by the way, because a good chunk of the show was devoted to the cast flailing around in a sad imitation of the Hollywood club scene. And yet even that was not the most excessive thing that happened in last night’s acme of awful episodes.

Did you mean to write a swansong for your series? That’s exactly what you accomplished. All of the excess, all of the indulgence, and all of the smarminess might have been acceptable for a final episode, where sentiments are meant to run high and comedy takes a back seat to tying up the plot. But no. This is only the fourth episode of the sixth season, and we’ll be back in The Office next week asking, “where do we go from here?” Chances are good that the answer is going to be awfully disappointing.

The episode began in the office, with a throwaway gag about Pam using her pregnancy to try to influence the behavior of others. The punchline was a chain-vomiting scene. I should have known then that this was not going to be one of the smart, edgy and human episodes I saw in the first and second seasons of your show, or even occasionally during the third. No. When you rely on bodily humor to get a cheap laugh, my own humors are aroused. Specifically, the bile in the back of my throat.

The episode then moved to the wedding, taking place for no particularly good reason in Niagra Falls. Yes, it’s been explained that the wedding was meant to be held there to prevent people in the office from coming. But you decided to write down a way for them all to be there anyway. Why go to all the trouble?  Were the cast and crew begging for a vacation to one of the tackiest tourist traps on Earth? That can’t be the case, because the only scenes involving the setting whatsoever involved Jim and Pam. The entire setting was wasted except for one painfully smarmy moment aboard a tour boat.

Do you understand what drama is? Do you understand that a few shaky camera shots of two characters getting secretly married on a boat just moments before their actual wedding is ridiculous? If you had spent episodes preparing us for a nightmare wedding where Pam had no control, and everyone else had edged her out to make it about them, then perhaps, just maybe, the scene would have made sense. But what sort of bride wants to spoil her wedding day by going under Niagra Falls, getting her dress and hair completely messed up, and then repeating a sham ceremony in a church? (Of course, Pam didn’t appear to have a wet dress or messed-up hair when she returned; it’s one of those details that showed this whole sequence hadn’t been thought out very well.)

And then Jim’s brothers and Pam’s bridesmaids decided to act out a Youtube video by having the entire cast dance down the aisle. The video is referenced several times, but never actually shown onscreen. There has never been a reference to it in the show before this, and the entire joke hinges on the audience being familiar with the reference. I have not seen the video for myself, and as far as I could tell, this entire scene was meant to replicate it, not parody it. That is not comedy. It’s not even entertainment. You’re getting paid to write a show that many people believe to be fresh and original. You’re very bold to steal someone else’s idea just because you think it’s funny for the cast to be awkwardly dancing onscreen. To do this without developing or serving the plot in any meaningful way is an even greater travesty.

You’ve also managed to work in a pregnancy arc this season, which is even more baffling. Countless comedies have been ruined by pregnancy arcs. The only comedy I can ever think of that successfully survived one was Malcolm In the Middle, and that was because that show did not view having children as a blessing, but as a trial to endure. It made sense for a baby to bring yet another layer of hardship into the lives of Hal and Lois.

What does Pam being pregnant have to do with anything? What is your end-game scenario here? Are you going to get all gooey and sentimental on us, as you did with the wedding episode? Are we going to have to put up with Pam being whiny and obnoxious and Jim having to balance work life and family life while Michael tries to insert himself into their relationship? The entire idea is just played out. I’m weary even writing it.

I don’t think you writers understand why people started watching this show in the first place. Back in the first and second seasons, when the show was good, The Office was about the mundane, day-to-day life of a meaningless job. The show was very much in the pattern of the British original, and it managed to walk the fine line between making the characters funny and making them tragic. I would argue that one of the finest episodes was the Halloween episode, where Michael struggled with firing an employee because he really, truly did not want to be the bad guy. There was a humanity about him, then; a Peter Principle victim who just wanted to be one of the sales people, and who enjoyed the title, but not the responsibility, of his position. You could actually relate to him, then.

Look at Michael now. He’s a child and a buffoon — a character who most people dread seeing onscreen and who always predictably acts against his own best interests. He started to get a little of his humanity back briefly in the fifth season when he went off to start his own paper company, but you writers had to get carried away with that story arc and find an implausible way to bring him back so things could be more or less the same as before. You seem to think Michael Scott is the heart and soul of the show. He’s not. He gets too much screen time and isn’t entertaining. In short bursts, yes. But as the sympathetic character? That’s supposed to be Jim.

Ah, and Jim, how far you have fallen. Jim was likable in the first couple of seasons, much like Tim in the UK original. Jim was an underachiever who was stuck on a girl he couldn’t have. We can relate to that. When Jim moved on, he was successful. When he came back, things just couldn’t be. We sensed that they might always have to settle for being friends as they made other compromises in life.

And then, you writers had to mess it up by putting Jim and Pam together. The unrequited love between them was fulfilled, and the show suddenly got a lot less interesting. You teased us with maybe pulling them apart again — and you could have! — but then Pam made the safe choice and quit school and returned to Scranton, and to Jim, pretty much ruining any chance she really had of evolving into a more interesting character. You tried to compensate by focusing on Michael’s relationships, but who really wanted to see those played out? Who really wanted to see the smart, stable, independent woman in Jan turned in to a crazy control freak who eventually vanished off the show entirely?

For a show that is supposed to be a mockumentary, you have been very bad about keeping a strong level of continuity with side plots. Last night’s episode was a great example: Pam’s mother has appeared in the show before, and she was a friendly, likable character who was Pam’s best friend. Not only did the actress change for this episode, but so did the character. Pam’s new mother seems like a repressed WASP who was dumb enough to sleep with Michael despite being likely to know all of the terrible things Pam had told her about him. Pam’s father, too, seems to be different from how he’s been described before. There was no point in including either character; both simply brought attention to the lack of attention to the established “reality” of the show.

My final complaint has to do with Andy Bernard. The Office has always had a great ensemble cast, and Ed Helms as Andy seemed like a natural fit. But wow, has he been wasted. Here is a character who came in as a scheming “yes-man,” who could serve as an interesting foil to Dwight and who could stir up dissension in the office. Instead, he’s been used for a series of gags that I think are meant to be zany, but which come across as gratuitous. Andy used to be smart and interesting in his frat boy persona. Now, he’s just a hard-luck background character who endures pain and punishment for no good reason. Last night’s ill-advised scene with him somehow hemorrhaging his scrotum by doing the splits on top of his car keys was bizarre, unrealistic, and failed to serve the plot at all. Why would Pam have to drive him to the hospital? Why wouldn’t they call an ambulance? How could Andy have possibly been able to attend a wedding the next day? Are you really that weak of writers that you can’t think through these questions before you have a gag filmed, edited and included in the final cut of the episode?

I would like to close by encouraging you all to re-watch the British original and see how far you have deviated from the proven template you started with. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and brilliant writers, and they crafted a show that refused to indulge itself. When The Office ended its second series with Tim striking out with Dawn and David Brent getting fired, Gervais and Merchant took a huge risk, and they left the audience wanting more so badly that they had to put together an encore Christmas Special to tie up all the loose ends and bring some closure to the characters. Even then, Tim had a wonderful monologue about how his life would go on, and how we were just seeing a snapshot of his life. It was a stunning conclusion; a fictional character reminding us that the story would go on even if we weren’t able to watch it for ourselves.

Where is that sort of edge in the American version? It’s long since gone dull. I suggest you sharpen the plot by retooling the characters, avoiding the easy humor, and bringing Michael back down to Earth. The show can still be saved; Scrubs managed to make itself good again in its eighth season. But you’ve got to work at it. Otherwise, I expect we’ll see The Office on the chopping block in the next year or two when the ratings start to drop as more and more viewers tune out.

Speaking of which, I’ll be watching Community, which is one of the best comedies I’ve seen in years. I’m hoping 30 Rock can keep its edge this year, too. But I think I’ll be skipping The Office from now on. Parks and Recreation is getting better, but I’ll let you know now — it’s already pretty stale. I doubt you can save it in time.

Sincerely,

Sean J. Jordan