Literary hypocrites and the plagiarism business

I enrolled to an advanced essay writing course. About 30 percent of it dealt with plagiarism. So I read articles after articles on it, and I got the impression of watching a debate in a kindergarten. "He pulled my hair." "No, she started it, she called me a sissy." Finally I turned in my essay with (hopefully) proper citations.

J. D. Salinger used to be my hero, although my favorite was his less popular Franny and Zooey. When a Swedish writer wanted to publish a post-modern paraphrase, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, Salinger sued him (Sulzberger). A similar narrow-minded attitude prevails in academy where the greedy business exploits the good intention of honest academics. Fighting literary plagiarism in the US now is mostly about money.

Don't trust me, I am a manager

Management is part science, part art. The remaining eight parts is deception. It is similar to astrology in this regard. Oh no, I can hear you gasp, astrologists are different. They suck poor people’s blood, not poor in a literal sense, but people who believe in medieval superstitions refuted by science decades ago. I wonder if there is any serious research on the effectiveness of management in general. There are researches that compare management styles and approaches, a number of business magazines (the shiny version of tabloids printed on more expensive paper) publish articles on the most successful managers of the year, of the century, of human race. But the higher price of a business magazine doesn't make it different from astrology.

The diamond cutters' rules of editing

All I have is a question I want to walk around: how to edit what I have written. I do not know the answer, I do not know the way, so I will digress for sure. I will digress, because it is worth stopping sometimes on the road and look under a bush, it may hide an unexpected treasure.

The write side of the brain

Since I quit eating sweets, my brain needs another source of joy. So I learn. I enrolled to online courses, now I do two in parallel. I eat sweets occasionally, to be fair, but at most a few times a day. But it is learning that gives me the kick, I practice a small language every day, I finish my assignments for the essay writing course on time, I practice and practice. “No pain, no gain” says the workout mantra which emphasizes the less important part of the experience. Learning and practicing can be sheer joy, let me share my examples.

Public speaking. I have been a member of Toastmasters for two years. It is a international organization that has as many members worldwide as half of Amsterdam. Its goal is to help its members become confident speaking in the public; the fear of public speaking is presumed to be worse than the fear of death. I didn’t find it dreadful when I joined the club, I was comfortable to speak my mind in front of people, but they had difficulty to follow my thoughts that jumped from topic to topic. It was a gradual progress, I hardly noticed it, but I am more confident now. The club has a strict schedule, every evening is structured the same way, we clap a lot. First it felt as alien as stumbling upon a gathering of the Alcoholics Anonymous. Then I got used to it, even realized how much this warm atmosphere helped me: I could experiment with seemingly stupid ideas, I could make mistakes, and all I got was a round of applause and a nice piece of feedback what I could do differently next time.

Drawing. I am not a Pablo Picasso (in his early years), but I am above the stickman-only level. It is not my hobby, but I had periods in my life when I carried sketchbook with me and my then favorite pen; I sat on a bench and made a quick sketch of a fallen oakleaf or an old lady in a purple coat feeding her snowwhite poodle. Well, showing these drawings to my friends would have been embarrassing. Then I heard of an application, Paper by 53. I thought drawing applications are for illustrators, for those who can draw, like a racket is for those who can play tennis or at least intend to learn it and take it seriously. After ten minutes spent with Paper, I had to admit this was something different. I don’t know if you ever had this feeling of immersing in drawing for an hour, then you come back to this sobering world, look at what you have done, and say, meh. It is not fair that so much effort adds up to so little. When I looked at my sketches with Paper, I felt the opposite, they looked better than what I had been prepared to see.

Drawing again. When I first encountered the book Drawing on the right side of the brain, I was skeptical. I didn’t expect more than what similar books on the same shelf had to offer: deep knowledge on how to make my aura colorful or how to have a happy life in 3-4-5 easy steps with just five minutes every morning before my breakfast cereal. I tried the first exercise in the book. Then I looked at my drawing and it made my jaw drop. Impossible, I couldn’t draw this well. And this jaw-dropping moment repeated more times while doing the exercises. I haven’t become a Pablo Picasso (in any of his years), but I enjoy drawing now and I am usually satisfied with the result.

Where is a toastmasters club for writing? What is the “write side of the brain” method? I have been looking for it, and I still don’t know. I know there are tons of books on how to write (I have a shelf full of them). There are courses on all sorts of writing from academic to creative to script writing. Writers’ groups, National Novel Writing Month, and tons of tons of advice, “Just keep writing” being the number one of them. Oh boy. I want to have that jaw-dropping experience when I jump and yell, Impossible, I can’t write this well. I want others to have this experience too. Are you in? If so, let me know.

A taste of majority

The master does not hit his slave anymore, the manager lives in harmony with his people. Our modern age reinvented the pyramid, organizational consultants never stop preaching the difference between management and leadership. The chain of command belongs to the past, like the steam locomotive and printed books.

The dirty secret of being funny

We sit on the cozy couch, watch soccer players or politicians, and we nudge our partner, “hey, I could do this too”. There are some professions though that we are less confident about, we probably would not climb the stage, make fun of ourselves, and enjoy being laughed at. Being a comedian seems to be more challenging than being a soccer player or a politician.

The tiger and the manager

A few companies ago I had a wise old manager, the big belly of Buddha, the white beard of Obi van Kenobi, and the management skills of Steve Jobs... no, Jeff Bezos, no, he was an experienced guy anyway. He invited me for a beer one afternoon (I'm not sure if Kenobi would do that). I asked him what his top priority was (this is a question managers eat and drink). "I have a bunch of great people," he answered, "I'm working on how to set them up for success." What a noble soul, I thought, he's obsessed by how to make others successful. We tasted our craft beer, it was bitter, so it must've been excellent; I shivered. He continued, "People are like tigers, they have a lot of power without direction. How can you use that power?"

Across the Authentic Ocean -- why you don't want to be true to yourself

I wish I lived in a softer world where I could jump around without bumping into the sharp edges of the cupboard or the windowsill. A world where I can be myself, express myself freely without a fear of harsh consequences, without people punishing me solely for being who I am. The world as we see it is far from this ideal. No coincidence we fall so easily for promises of such a wonderland. The hardest lesson we learned as children was the difference between the land of fairy tales and the land of the angry neighbor. It's not much easier as adults either, we're just more used to it, but we are willing to pay a fortune to get a taste of that other world. This is the business model of movies, drugs, and religions: they take us to Utopia.

Digging deeper in garbage

Burger is not the first on the menu, because it starts with a B. Crafting a menu has its science based on what thousands of customers selected previously. Wherever you see items on a shelf, tooth paste and pop music magazines, you can be sure a team has already analyzed what people had selected. Then you bite into that burger and find the onion spongy, you leave it on the plate. You try a new brand of tooth paste, but its too strong, so you end up not using, off to the garbage bin it goes after a month of hesitation. Is there a big team analyzing what's left on the plate and what half-full packages land in the garbage? Yuck.

Things have a lifecycle just like a relationship. They arrive on the shelf fresh and new and sexy, they feel at least a bit different than anything you ever touched and tasted. You look at it from the corner of your eye, it's a teasing glimpse, you are not committed yet. You take it from the shelf, ready to put it back in case it's too pricey, not organic enough, too this or not enough that. Hm, shall we try it? Maybe. It finds a cozy place on top of your cart between a sliced bread and a pair of good old grey socks. You drag your prey home, take a first bite. It tastes a bit different than back then in the shop, it's slightly salty, not suave enough. Maybe try again later. You get used to after a while, it becomes a part of your life, like sliced bread or the annoying bark of the dog in the neighborhood. Time passes and on a sad Saturday afternoon you realize the story is over. If you had more sensitive ears, you could hear the thing squeak as your hand moves it to the garbage bin. Plupf. It finds a pathetic spot between a rotten slice of bread and a sock with a hole.

Some relationships last decades until death do the parties part. Other relationships finish as a one night stand or just a wistful glimpse on the bus. It's the same with things. We watch movies about how a boy and a girl meet each other, fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after. These stories energize us, we hold our partners hand stronger on the street, we quickly send a text message "I love you". Movies about divorce, death, and loss are far less popular. They are about a period after the peak in the lifecycle of a relationship. Again, it's the same with things. Shopping stats, software applications that deal with recommendation are sexy. Researching what people left on their plates or threw out of their lives? "I'm an expert on decay" -- not the perfect pick-up line.

Your first conscious thought after your gut reaction is you can't learn anything new from old stuff. It doesn't matter how we learn what items most customers prefer, whether we learn it by what they select or by what they get rid of. If people prefer Dent-o-dream to Mouth Magic, it doesn't matter if we learn it by seeing in the stats more purchases of Dent-o-dream, or we find more half-full tubes of Mouth Magic in household garbage. But this thinking is wrong. Purchasing more Dent-o-dream means it looks more appealing, it has an elegant thin tube and a playful picture of a unicorn on it, it has better placed ads, it's advertised with an actress who has bigger tits than the competitor. Purchasing more Dent-o-dream does not necessarily mean people actually like it more. An expedition to the garbage can show us what people actually think after the honey-moon period is over. If Mouth Magic had the best ads ever with the biggest tits ever, but it tastes horseradish mixed with horse dung, annoyed housewives and bachelors and students would toss it to the trash can without hesitation. Garbage tells us the real story.

Exploring garbage is interesting not only for market researchers. It has a symbolic meaning too. The Western way of thinking tends to understand the world in big terms. What is your biggest achievement? What is your wildest dream? What was your most epic failure? These are the questions asked at a job interview, these are the questions you ask when you at a party when introduced to your partner's colleague, these are the questions you ask yourself. This is Dent-o-dream thinking, it considers what looks sexy. Even the biggest failure is related to something big you wanted to accomplish and failed. For a change, you could have a look at the other end of the lifecycle of things that's closer to decay. You could approach the garbage in your life with curiosity. Explore what you do when you're too tired to be a top performer. Explore how you waste your time. Explore what you've left on your plate. The bigger part of life is not golden nuggets in the sunshine, the bigger part is leftover. It's time to make friends with it.

The slow success of Holacracy

I'm so excited about this new idea, I can't wait to give it a try -- after a few friends have tried it and found it okay. This is the usual way of thinking in business. Managers are eager to find solutions to their problems, they'd call a tarot consultant to help in a difficult decision if they are desperate enough,

Storytelling Inc.

When I read Ed’s story, I felt inspired – then envious. My mother had many friends, she was the head of an internationally acknowledged institute, and she didn’t consider herself successful. I’m not even the head of anything big and important. I wish I had more talent or persistence, I wish I had been dealt better cards by fate. How is Ed different from the rest of us?

The rich men on the other side of the fence

We are a few hundred meters from the Palais des Festival in Cannes. This part of the beach is now closed to the public, big fat guards stand at the entrance and check if your name is on the list of the invitees. Your name is probably not on that list.

The mother tongue of The Little Prince: Toki Pona

The turmoil at Babel resulted in hundreds of languages. Some speak English, some speak Gaelic (they don't have their own country); there are people who speak German with their partner and Dutch at work. The landscape of languages is complicated. To complicate matters more, people invented artificial languages from Esperanto to Klingon. You may think it's a pastime of the modern ages, but you'd be wrong. The first attempt at creating a better language dates back a few centuries. Why would people do that? Why don't they just have a beer instead of putting in tiresome hours of tweaking with irregularities of grammar?

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

I love this quote. I don't exactly know what it means, it actually means more things at the same time and this is the reason I love it. It has a meaning related to nurturing your inner child. It doesn't matter how old you are, you can be a child at eighty. You can stop in a park at lunch time and gaze at the doves fighting for popcorn or at a nondescript bush covered by dirt. You can listen to the music of car brakes and horns in a traffic jam.

Be your own headhunter or how talent is found

When I finished high school, I had no idea what the next step would be. Shall I study math? It was an obvious choice, I had won some competitions. Or shall I become a rabbi?

What's the problem you are trying to solve?

The meeting room is dead silent, people are standing in a shock unable to grok what just happened. A few minutes ago I shared my idea with them. Mark glimpsed at me and asked a short question. “So what’s the problem you are trying to solve?” The next moment I jumped over the empty chair between us, grabbed his head, and bumped it to the desk. Two times, to be precise. There was an awful thump sound. Now we are waiting for something to happen. Mark looks up, blood smeared all over his face, his nose stands in an acute angle that doesn’t suit the original plan of the human face. He’s trying to say something, but he has difficulty breathing. He finally collects himself to utter a sentence, “I’m sorry I asked that question”. I smile and pat his shoulder, “it’s OK, dude, we are over it”.

The long story before "the end": How to finish a narrative essay

In the beginning there was nothing, no internet, no iPhone, no pizza, and no microwave oven. In the beginning it was easy for God to create something. He could create anything and fail, no big deal. Let there be dinosaurs, for example, if they prove to be too big and slow, we can get rid of them later. The whole creation was a six day long, non-stop party, nothing prevented God from letting his imagination loose.

The weekly post challenge

We entertained the idea for weeks. No, months now. Then it happened, my friend challenged me. This is what he wrote me.

I hereby challenge you to blog once a week, on the same day of each week, between midnight at the beginning of that day until midnight of the following day. We must announce on our blogs that this is our plan; that we will publish weekly on the same day.

It does not matter how long the posting is. Even a few sentences making up a short paragraph.

We will refer to one another's blogs in the first posting announcing weekly publishing. I choose Wednesday. It would be good if you would publish on Wednesdays too, but you can choose another day.

Challenge taken. I hereby announce I'll publish a post every Wednesday... until September. Then I'll re-examine how much I like the idea. Follow me. And follow my friend at The Dream Warrior.