Virtual Thinking

What is creativity?

2008-12-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

You will find creativity in the unlikely places, and that in fact tells you how to look for it. I found this one when I wasn't looking specifically for creativity, only risk-taking.

Mark Gorkin writes in ‘Creative Risk-Taking’ (stressdoc.com):

No two variables are more influential to the climate and flow of new ideas than creativity and risk-taking. What are these two concepts and how can we harness their vital energy? Keep in mind, while they may be interactive, the two are not necessarily reciprocal. By definition, being creative involves taking chances and risks; being risk-taking may or may not be creative.

Let’s start with risk-taking. Taking risks means daring to try new approaches or ideas with no predictable control over results or consequences, ie, taking action when the outcome is unknown.

I myself will equate creativity with risk-taking, and risk-taking with creativity. I say they come from the same source, and they are both productive. Do we always like their products? No, but that does not negate the fact that they are creative. Do we always use their product? No, but that does not negate the fact they are productive.

Creativity should never be measured by either utility or likeability or both. Otherwise, we will run out of ideas. Let creativity run its course first, and then and only then can we dare hope to be enriched by it.

As for creativity, according to Donald MacKinnon, long-time researcher in the field, it is ‘a process that is extended in time and characterized by originality, adaptiveness and realization.’ For me, the essence of creativity is ‘connection,’ the ability to relate or combine, through flexible persistence and insight, seemingly remote, contradictory or irrational ideas and elements with an elegant, unified and complex simplicity. ‘The creative concept, product or outcome is not only novel but has value and use’ (Gorkin).

Characterizing as MacKinnon does is not helpful at all in trying to understand what creativity is. Besides, ‘originality, adaptiveness and realization’ are descriptions of the outputs of creativity, not of creativity itself.

Gorkin almost hits the nail right on the head when he says the essence of creativity is ‘connection’ – see ‘Nyet Thinking, My Way of Creative Thinking,’ this same blog. No, connection is not the essence of creativity; it is simply the result. You are creative if you can connect, relate or combine remote, contradictory or irrational ideas and elements and come up with something new or improved. It’s the connecting that matters, not the connection. There are many connections, but only one works out best.

When Gorkin says that the connection must be characterized ‘with an elegant, unified and complex simplicity,’ he is still describing the results of creativity, not creativity itself. I also cannot agree that to be called creative, the concept, product or outcome must be novel and has value and use – that is saying that if some people (critics) judge it to be not novel or has no value or has no use, therefore it is not creative. That is the tyranny of the critics who are notorious for not being creative. Criticism is anathema to creativity that mentoring is not. Creativity is too important to be left to the critics alone!

Nyet Thinking, My Way of Creative Thinking

2008-11-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

2 days ago, 27 November, Friend NC sent me a YM (Yahoo Messenger message) asking me about the kind of logical framework, if I remember right, that I use when I write. She was going to explain what she had written to her class (or classmates, I forget which), and would I help her? I would if I could, but I said, ‘Sorry, I don’t think logically!’ (I was thinking ‘logframe,’ and I don’t like it at all. Logframe, the scientists who have a sequential frame of mind are very fond of it, while I’m very wary of it – it helps you think critically; it will never help you think creatively.) And she said, come on, how come you can write so well (she meant logically). I didn’t explain how I do it; I just told NC to use Tony Buzan’s mind mapping approach to thinking; he now has ‘software that helps you think’ (Tony Buzan, imindmap.com). Buzan invented mind mapping.

As for me, today, I just invented a name for the creative thinking approach I didn’t realize I had invented for myself more than 30 years ago. (See my earlier post, ‘Nyet thinking. Not yet, thinking’ in this same blog.)

My way of creative thinking is very different from Tony Buzan’s mind mapping, different from Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking, different from Ray Bradbury’s word association, and different from Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way (see also my ‘Virtual Thinking,’ May 2008, frankensteinmindster.blogspot.com). My own ‘virtual thinking’ has now been overtaken by my own new idea of ‘nyet thinking.’ The name has it all.

Since 1955, when I was 15, in effect I have been thinking nyet after I read my first copy of the Reader’s Digest in my 2nd year of high school, even as I just thought of the words ‘nyet thinking’ today, 29 November 2008. If you are an aspiring writer and you can afford to buy and read only one book, make it a copy of the Reader’s Digest. Not only 1 or 2 articles but the whole little book is excellent and inspires creative writing in the sensitive soul.

10 years later, 1965, I read Rudolf Flesch’s book, How To Write, Speak And Think More Effectively (1963, Penguin Books). He may indeed have taught me to write better as if I were actually talking to the reader and not writing, which I have mastered, but I could have learned that earlier from the Reader’s Digest. What I remember profiting most was one of the techniques of creative thinking Flesch wrote about, which was how to generate new, interesting ideas by adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, splitting, removing, amending the materials you have, and what else that I don’t remember. While the title says ‘think more effectively,’ what Flesch taught me with that book is how to ‘think more creatively,’ and I thank him. It was my good friend and dorm mate Manny Alkuino who introduced me to Flesch and in fact gave me his copy of the book when he saw I was excited about it, for which I also thank him.

10 years later, 1975, I am working as a copywriter for Pacifica Publicity Bureau in Makati City, and my good friend, Orli Ochosa, gifts me with a copy of Edward de Bono’s The Mechanism of Mind (I remember the date of publication, 1968), which teaches me lateral thinking, and for which I also thank him. Lateral thinking is De Bono’s approach to creative thinking, where the main technique is to say ‘Po’ and not ‘No’ to any idea that comes to mind, whether preposterous or not. In fact, the more preposterous, the better for Po thinking, which is brainstorming with no holds barred, with all logic suspended in mid-air. In the same year, I begin work as Information Editor for FORI (Forest Research Institute) based at Los Baños, Laguna. I proceeded to found all the publications of FORI: Canopy, the monthly newsletter; Sylvatrop, the quarterly technical journal in forestry; Habitat, the quarterly color magazine of the institute which I patterned after the National Geographic.

10 years later, 1985, I am learning to use the desktop personal computer. The PC does not teach me anything about creative writing, but I didn’t need any more lessons – what I needed to learn was how to write fast, very fast, and the PC was going to provide me that system.

10 years later, 1995, I am Editor of a monthly newsletter of BLD (Bukas Loob sa Diyos) and displaying the rare ability to think and write creatively even in the religious sense. However, my editorship didn’t prosper, as some non-writing people thought they could do better at it and took over. They did not understand the power of words; they understood only their power.

10 years later, 2005, I am writing in my first earnest blog, ‘The Ten Commandments of Blogging’ patterned after the Roman Catholic list of course (01 August 2005, braggingrights.blogspot.com):

1. I am the load, your blog; you shall not have strange blogs before me.
2. You shall not take the name of the load your blog in vain.
3. Remember to keep holy the sabbatical.
4. Honor your fodder and your madder.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adulteration.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wile.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s gods.

You will see there punning, one of the early gifts I received as a would-be writer from the Reader’s Digest.

Also in 2005, in December, I come out with my first book, indios bravos! Jose Rizal as Messiah of the Redemption (187 pages, 8-1/2x11, self-published, Los Baños, Laguna).

Early in 2006, I begin writing for the American Chronicle (online). The first one published, 11 February, is ‘’Fuzzy logic & the avian flu. Or, Murder most fowl! A study in the language of science’ (americanchronicle.com). Now I don’t get rejection slips anymore.

In early 2007, I began writing about ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in the manner of what I called the Franciscan essay, and they liked it very much. In late 2007, November, ICRISAT published my book of essays on that non-profit organization in science, Team ICRISAT Champions the Poor (129 pages, 8-1/2x11, Patancheru, India).

Mid-2008, I contracted the writing of a book to celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the UP Los Baños Vanguard Class 58, who were the Publisher; the book has grown bigger and bigger so that now it has almost 40 people featured and the subject has expanded into the heroism of ROTC boys: CONVERSATiONS WiTH ROTC HEROES, iMPERFECT (I just finished my 4th revision of it, all of 182 pages, 8-1/2x11). We are now looking for a new publisher for the expanded volume.

Looking back at all that, I must say it was in 1975 when my nyet thinking began to take shape and the talent began to be recognized outside of my circle of friends. Those 2 popular publications of FORI, both of which I was the Editor, for which I wrote more than 50% of the stories, brought local and international attention and respect to FORI. This was the power of the nyet as seen the reading public it captivated.

So, you ask, how does nyet thinking work? It works like this (see illustration):

Stage A: First, you have random thoughts. You gather your random thoughts but you don’t attempt to put order to them, you don’t apply the rules of logic to them.

Stage F: Then you begin to connect the dots. In this illustration, you have 3 connections made: A, B and C. Note that the connection C is off-tangent at one end. (Between Stages A and F, anything could have happened. Stage F is just an example; it could be Stage B when you begin to connect the dots, meaning you were really inspired. As for me, it's usually about Stage F.)

Stage H: Finally, you have made the last connections. Networking ends. (Stage G for me could be a short time before Stage H; it usually is a long time, with so many revisions.)

And that’s just for starters!

PS:

0800 hours 30 November

I have just uploaded my essay 'Reproductive Health 101. Let's make love as if it's just the animal in us?' (frankahilario.blogspot.com). Since you cannot see it, I will have to tell you that it was the 1-page ad of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in the 27 November issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer that started my random thinking leading to the essay. But as you will see, I don't even mention the ad in the essay that I have published. That would be link A that you see is not connected to the network. That's how nyet thinking / nyet writing happens - no guarantee that everything will be connected, but you will be surprised at some of the connections found. Read my essay 'Reproductive Health 101' to find out!

Nyet thinking. Not yet, thinking

2008-11-28T14:43:00.000-08:00

What do I mean nyet thinking?

It feels great! I invented the name nyetworking – for the way I write – just this morning, Saturday, 29 November 2008, about 0400 hours Manila time. (Click the following links if you please to check it all out at frankahilario.com and frankahilario.blogspot.com.) I was out walking the dog as such an early hour because she has been howling, 'Oooooooout!' While I waited for her to download what she had in her system, my system uploaded the thought of nyetworking. Not yet a network, not yet working. My essays always begin like that; and they always end each composed of several ideas networked - sometimes an unbelievable number, like this one, ‘The Fall Of Santa Catalina’ ('The Franciscan Journeys,' frankahilario.blogspot.com), which mixes up
Obama
tennis
meteorology
ecosystem
economics
calamities
viewpoints
contradictions
logic
history
IRRI &
multifarious institutions.

That’s the list of my good friend Namor Alapgan, who is in that story.

Yes, I was thinking of Tony Buzan's mind mapping. But I wasn't using it. I never used it. Too logical for me – to begin with.

And at about 0600 hours, as I wrote this, my mind invented yet another name – nyet thinking, as contrasted to Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking. That’s how my creative mind works. Nyet thinking is the paradigm; nyetworking is the process. Random. Unbidden. Rich.

Nyet thinking is how I come up writing my essays, each with a unique blend of this and that and those, here and there and where? My own list for ‘The Fall Of Santa Catalina’ includes these:

autumn (the fall) – triple entendre, if you read
landslide
flashflood
superstorm Xangsane (Milenyo)
rainfall
deluge
cultivating farm crops
economic recession
economic slowdown
surrealism
soil erosion
erosion of knowledge
ground cover
soil cover
soil exposure
plush subdivision
disaster management
disaster prevention
intoxication
reducing impact of landslides
reducing occurrence of landslides
watersheds
land degradation
distinguishing the trigger from the cause.

I’m writing a separate and longer essay after this. How nyet thinking works. This is just an announcement.

It takes a genius.

2008-09-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

I write to inspire, not conspire

How many life-size defeats can 1 man handle in 4 weeks? You count.

August 15, I was fired as Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS), based at UP Los Baños in Laguna. Take that!

September 12, I learned I lost the Most Creative Writer Award for an alumnus of the UP College of Agriculture. And that!

A double whammy – that must be a Guinness Book of World record, and I’m the one who set it. It takes a genius.

This, as it turns out, is a study of genius; no, it’s not a sob story.

Technically, I resigned from the PJCS. I had been Editor for the last 8 volumes (8 years) and in the process set 2 records. One, I made that journal up-to-date where it was late 2 years when I came in January 2003. It was the genius of desktop publishing (DTP) – I used neither PageMaker nor Publisher but Word 2003, which is software not classified as DTP. That’s the genius of Microsoft, and I’m the one who discovered it. Two, I made that journal world-class – it became an ISI journal, where ISI is the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for technical journals anywhere in the world (click here for more details: ‘PJCS: A management issue,’ my other blog). It was also the genius of hard work – I put my body, mind and spirit into it. It was also the genius of being almost word-perfect – reading 5 times each manuscript word for word over the course of 5 weeks for every issue. Genius is in the details.

Acknowledging my displays of genius, they fired me. Ouch! The reason? I did not have the credentials, meaning I couldn’t put a ‘PhD’ after my name to save my life. I couldn’t even put an ‘MS’ if it comes to that. Degrees do not a person make, nor iron bars a cage – except if we don’t think like geniuses, meaning, if we don’t think out of the cage.

After writing 2 original books – one an intellectual biography of the national hero of the Philippines, Jose Rizal (indios bravos!), the other an intellectual (and amusing) book of essays on the great institution of ‘science with a human face’ with the name International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) captained by genius Director General William Dar, another Ilocano – and after publishing a hundred and one long essays in the American Chronicle (click here to view the list and read if you please), not to mention many others in my many other blogs – that particular UP Los Baños award committee tells me I am not creative enough. You can’t please them all.

That creative writing award is part of the celebration of the UP Centennial, to be received during Loyalty Day (October 10). I was told of my loss by Pids Rosario, and that happened despite his superb recommendation as President of the UP Los Baños Alumni Association (UPLBAA). (I thought I may have ghost-written that recommendation myself – what’s the matter, not smart enough?) I smiled. I did. I told Pids my wife and I expected it. Well, this was the time it would have been wonderful to be wrong.

My life as the editor of a technical journal has just been abbreviated; my life as a writer of creative pieces has just been stymied. What a way to celebrate a birthday!

Can you disappoint a genius? Only if he isn’t.

Caryl Churchill is a genius playwright, Mark Ravenhill says (‘She made us raise our game,’ guardian.co.uk):

It’s her ability to continually reinvent the form that most writers would identify as her genius. In Churchill’s plays, there is a constant search for new kinds of language and theatrical structures: devices that can reveal the essence of a moment.

Touches of genius. Sounds familiar.

You don’t recognize the genius in me? It’s okay. I forgive you. If I have it, you can’t take it away from me by denying me a UP Centennial award. If I don’t have it, a hundred and one friends swearing of my genius won’t make any difference.

I’m not surprised. Genius or not, I know I’ve changed – now I know for sure my alma mater UP hasn’t. Now I can see the goodness beyond the badness you see in people like Ferdinand E Marcos (click here: ‘Marcos in Hall of Fame,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com) and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (try this: ‘GMA’s Indian Summer,’ same blog). My cup overflows. To see a cup overflow with possibilities where others see a cup overflow with perils takes more than Barack Obama’s audacity of hope to be able to do that. It takes a great leap of faith.

You don’t believe me? As I was born on September 17, 1940, I’m 68; if you knew Frank A Hilario, that double loss completes 68 years of his disappointments, right?

Wrong. The disappointing years entirely stopped in 1998 or earlier when I learned to smile at the moment, the occasion, the event, the happening, any which way it goes. It’s attitude. No, there is no frustration if you don't allow a setback to disappoint you. There is no disappointment if you don’t allow a failure to discourage you. There is no discouragement if you don’t allow a lost dream to dismay you. There is no dismay if you don’t allow a lost cause to unsettle you.

Just because you’re brilliant doesn’t mean people will understand, or accept, or reward you. So, how can I not allow some little sadness to enter my life? By allowing gladness instead. It’s brains. By accepting my humanity. It’s instinct. By learning to trust in God. It’s a gift. Almost completely. And of course, that’s the hardest thing to do. It’s very easy to say, ‘I love you, Lord,’ and then you go ahead and get frustrated. Or dismayed. Or disappointed. Or insanely mad. Or depressed.

You get riled at the slightest provocation. You get incensed at a perceived insult. If it’s a provocation, why yield? So what if things don’t turn out the way you want them, if you don’t get the pearl of great prize? You thank people they even considered you. That was enough compliment. Thank you Pids, and thank you UPLBAA.

When I was told to my face, right after I was congratulated for a job well done in front of those ladies and gentlemen members of the board of the publisher of the journal, that I no longer deserved to be Editor of PJCS for lack of a PhD, I thought of the University of the Philippines Los Baños proud of being the most densely PhD-populated campus in Asia if not the world; I smiled and said, ‘I have only one thing to say – your timing is bad.’ They didn’t understand.

Some people can’t recognize genius when they see it. If you have the genius, forgive them, for they know not what they do. You will have reaped coals of fire from your own head. And blessed your own heart.

Do I deserve that award? I know I don’t have to win any award to be the most creative writer in the country, bar none. In the first place, I don’t write for critics or award committees inside or outside the university.

Two geniuses are candidates for the highest offices in the United States; one is a rhetoric genius, male; the other is a small-town genius, female – having watched the video of the acceptance speech 5 times (click here to read the whole text), I can assure you the female is deadlier than the male. Of the Washington elite and their media friends, Republican candidate for Vice President Sarah Palin says, ‘I’m going to Washington not to get their good opinion but to fight for the people of this great country!’ Doing a Sarah Palin, I say, ‘I’m going to go on writing not to win awards but to serve the people of this great country.’ About people in small towns, Sarah says, ‘They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America!’ I love my small-town country, in good times and bad, and I’m always proud of the Philippines, if not the Tagalogs, Pangasinenses, Pampangos, Ilonggos, Cebuanos, Warays, Bicolanos, Gaddangs, Ifugaos, Kankanna-eys, Chavacanos, Maranaos, name them all.

I am an Ilocano. I am a BSA graduate major in Ag Ed, UP College of Agriculture ’65. I passed the very first Teacher’s Exam in the country, 80.6%, no review, no leakage. Some people have talent. I taught high school (UP Rural High and Asingan High) and college (UP Los Baños and Xavier U), many a diverse subject; I taught myself only one: Creative Writing. Creative writing is genius bordering on insanity. Is it hereditary? No, it’s acquired.

On my birthday, I know I am the greatest! I am the only one in the world who can claim that when my birthday comes around, September 17, without fail, a whole town celebrates – all of Los Baños, Laguna, the Philippines. They call the celebration Bañamos, let’s go get wet or something. That’s physical delight. On the other side of the world, the whole United States celebrates September 17 as the day they signed the US Constitution, the model of the whole democratic world. That’s intellectual pleasure. And on still another side of the world, in La Verna, Italy, September 17 was the day of the Stigmata of St Francis, when marks on his body appeared resembling those of the crucified Christ. I’m Catholic; my parents were Catholic, that’s why they baptized me Francisco; that’s why I call my essays Franciscan. That’s spiritual happiness. What more can I ask?

When I was in high school, 50 years ago, I discovered my talent for creative writing, and I vowed to become the best, and I succeeded, with a little help from my genius friends: Rudolf Flesch (Readability Formula) in the early 1960s, Edward de Bono (lateral thinking) in the mid-1970s, Peter Drucker (thinking information & management at the same time) in the early 1990s, Howard Gardner (multiple intelligences) in the late 1990s, Barney Glaser & Anselm Strauss (grounded theory, in science) in the early 2000s. Success is being the best you can be, over the years, in or out of science. That’s being a genius.

Aware that we are in difficult times, to help the geniuses out there, here’s my contribution to the world of thinking genius:

It takes a genius

To inspire where others conspire.
To console where others censure.
To encourage where others rage.

To preach peace where others preach war.
To preach understanding where others preach confusion.
To preach potentials where others preach population.
To preach evolution where others preach revolution.
To preach growth where others preach stagnation.
To preach victories where others preach defeats.
To preach gains where others preach losses.
To preach hope where others preach despair.
To preach faith where others preach fear.
To preach love where others preach hate.
To do genius where others merely preach.

The Perfect Commandment

2008-08-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

Let’s look into my favorite Romans 12

Today I'm going to show you how when I ranked some Bible translations yesterday, August 24 Manila time, I came up with what I think is The Perfect Commandment. Serendipity at work.

How many versions & translations are there of the Bible? I don’t know. I’ve seen quite a few different adaptations or presentations of the New International Version alone, unbelievable! NIV Study Bible, Ryrie Study Bible, Open Bible Study Bible, Scofield’s Study Bible, Life Application Study Bible, NIV Living Insights Study Bible, NIV Student Bible, Quest Study Bible (amazon.ca). That's called marketing the Bible.

The other month, I discovered a website that has 2 names: ‘Biblos.com’ and ‘Parallel Bible’ – and the URL is something else: http://bible.cc/. It lists these translations: International Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, God’s Word Translation, King James Version, American King James Version, American Standard Version, Basic English Bible, Douay-Rheims Version, Darby Bible, English Revised Version, Webster’s Bible Version, World English Bible, and Young’s Literal Translation. That’s the complete list, 13.

At home we have the New International Version, New American Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Jerusalem Bible, Christian Community Bible – all 5 of which Biblos doesn’t have. Last year, I discovered BibleGateway.com, which has many more translations, but it too doesn’t have the last 4 versions (all Roman Catholic). Unlike Biblos, BibleGateway does not present the verses in parallel view. To each his own. I am Roman Catholic.

I’m writing this to compare the Bible versions very simply, using only one verse. So we go to my favorite book, chapter and verses; that would be Romans 12, all 21 verses of it. I believe it was the source of the very popular ‘Desiderata’ and I have written about this and published it in the American Chronicle (‘The Bible Is Dead!’ November 2006, americanchronicle.com). Since it’s my favorite verse, let’s now take up Romans 12: 2 in parallel, limiting to 10 the versions to compare. I believe Romans 12: 2 expresses the whole of Romans 12 if not the whole of St Paul’s letter to the Romans. In any case, Romans 12: 2 is good enough for me, as you will see.

ASV. ‘And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, and ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.’ American Standard Version

CCB. ‘Don’t let yourselves be shaped by the world where you live, but rather by the will of God: what is good, what pleases, what is perfect.’ Christian Community Bible

ISV. ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but continually be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may be able to determine what God’s will is – what is proper, pleasing, and perfect.’ International Standard Version

JB. ‘Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modeled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do.’ Jerusalem Bible

KJV. ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.’ King James Version

NAB. ‘Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.’ New American Bible

NASB. ‘And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.’ New American Standard Bible

NIV. ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ New International Version

NKJV. ‘And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ New King James Version

NRSV. ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ New Revised Standard Version

As a writer and believer, and after having had my share of off-and-on Bible studies in both the Protestant and Roman Catholic molds, the versions of the CCB, ISV, NAB, NASB, and NRSV are much more clear to me. They do not merely describe what is God’s will; they tell me plainly: It is God’s will for me that I will do what is good, what is pleasing, what is perfect.

The most popular Bible version of all, the NIV, doesn’t quite make it to my standard, as it says, ‘Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ I have had high regards for the NIV after all the good words written and spoken about it. Now I’m quite disappointed; NIV is an uneven, inelegant translation; it doesn’t have to repeat the word ‘will’ at all. It seems they did not try hard enough for a more powerful translation.

As translated in those various ways above, the way I see it, Romans 12: 2 is a play of words, a double entendre. This I think is what many of the versions miss. Thus, as do the ASV and KJV, the NIV version merely describes God’s will, and excludes what God wills us to do to follow God’s will.

Note also the repeated conjunction and in several versions; that is to say, the Will of God = A + B + C, where A is something desirable and B is something satisfactory and C is something ideal or pure. The Will of God is a trinity in itself; it is not either/or but all of the above. (In this sense, the angels in my photograph may as well represent the Will of God.)

So:

My #1 translation is that of the NRSV –‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ All the translations have the word ‘perfect,’ so that takes care of the C word. In the NRSV, I think the words ‘discern’ and ‘good’ and ‘acceptable’ reflect most the spirit of the original.

My #2 translation is that the NAB – ‘Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.’ They both use the word ‘discern.’ The only difference between #1 and #2 is the choice of the B word: ‘acceptable’ or ‘pleasing’ – and I think ‘acceptable’ is more down-to-earth.

My #3 translation is that of the ISV – ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but continually be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may be able to determine what God’s will is – what is proper, pleasing, and perfect.’ I like the alliteration: proper, pleasing, perfect. However, I think to ‘discern’ is the better choice of word than to ‘determine’ what God’s will is.

My #4 translation is that of the NASB – ‘And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.’ This is almost exactly like the NRSV, except I do not approve the word ‘prove’ – I do not think that God is telling us to prove God’s will.

And:

My #10 translation is that of the NIV – ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ This is a poor translation, and I’m referring to the style as well as the substance. And: What, a mere mortal like me to ‘test and approve’ God’s will? I wouldn’t dare! ‘Let this cup pass, if you please. But your will, not mine.’

Now then, I think I have found The Perfect Commandment for me, and it is this:

Do what is proper and pleasing and perfect.

Stage flight.

2008-07-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

Lea Salonga from front and back

She’s a national treasure. Lea Salonga was the Filipina who made the musical Miss Saigon a household name all over the literate world and raised the Filipino flag on top of Mt Everest many years before Dale Abenojar, Leo Oracion, Pastor Emata, or Romeo Garduce ever did. She’s no joke.

She’s a Journalist now, so I know she can fly. I’m referring to the girl who has began real life as a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (July 2, inquirer.net). Now I know the Inquirer is that smart when it wants to be.

Been there, done that! After an amazing run receiving the Oliver, Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics and Theatre World awards for the same role, today she has stage fright – I’m referring to the girl who as Kim in 1989 made London’s West End bow at her feet and who reprised that role in 1991 and swept New York’s Broadway off his feet. Lea Salonga, Columnist. She may not realize it, but she’s in a different stage now. She is still dealing with the script, but now, instead of acting it out, she’s making it all up. Don’t we all? But she can fly anytime she wants to.

'Lea Salonga, the writer, debuts in PDI' writes Bayani San Diego Jr. I expect her to be writing each of her columns as in a chat, with class. A Chat Act, if it comes to that. Writing at her best:
Acting will be in Lea’s head, not her body;
Characterization will be implicit, not explicit;
Gestures will be virtual, not visual;
Dialogues will happen sight unseen, unmarked;
Changes of Scenes will happen in the blink of an eye.
Everything will be all Asides.

And nothing has to be sequential, only consequential. Or simply a quest. The beauty of creative writing is that you can start anywhere and end nowhere.

Backstory is what she calls her weekly column, and her first story she has titled ‘From my weird, wonderful world’ – and, as it happens, it appears at the back of the Entertainment Section of the Inquirer, Thursdays. Half the time being fearsome views, the Inquirer can be funny when it wants to.

Yesterday, Lea Salonga was the front story; now she’s the back story. For years, she was a choice subject for Entertainment; now, the subject is subject to her choice. Even if you don’t change, the world will.

I have read her first column and now the writer in me would like to relate to the writer in her, textually and contextually.

Please bombard this corner with suggestions. I would really appreciate that. She’s a writer now, and she says she needs help. Don’t we all?

Now that my schedule has become more regular, it’ll be easier for me to sit at the keyboard and type away. If you are very creative, yes. But first, you have to get rid of the jitters of a writer. Lea, did you know that even the old-time, Nobel Prize writers have the jitters? Only they call it by another name – the famous ‘Writer’s Block.’ Like you, they have so many things to write about and find it difficult to decide to begin with what, or how, or where. Welcome to the Club!

Just remember: You are not writing a weekly column – you are communicating to your readers. Now, who are your readers? Your friends. Talk to your friends and you will be talking to a great many reader.

Now you’re writing with deadlines, someone texted you. No, Lea, you’re not writing with a deadline. You’re writing with a message in your head. Let the deadline worry about itself.

How do I find inspiration every week? You don’t look for inspiration – let inspiration find you. Right now, you may want to google for Serendipity.

Where shall I find things worthy enough to be written about? What’s worthy enough to you is worthy enough to your readers, including this one.

Should I just pray and hope for the best? Sometimes.

This is going to be a challenge, definitely. Girl, take it not as a challenge – take it as an adventure. You are your own Alice in Wonderland and, you know, the marvels of your imagination will come visit you when you least expect them. Of course, sometimes, like the Red Queen tells Alice, you may have to run twice as fast to get to someplace else.

It makes my current occupation seem like a walk in the park. That’s an idea: Go take a walk in the park!

For my blog, I find inspiration in many places. That shouldn’t change at all. Blogging is publishing yourself but, first of all, blogging is yourself writing. You should find inspiration in even the unlikely places. Just open your mind. For a good help, if you can, get yourself a new copy of an old book, Rudolf Flesch’s How To Write, Speak And Think More Effectively. That book is at least 40 years old – you can learn from the old as from the new. I know this old writer did when he was young, 25 years old, 43 years ago.

Be sure your Apple is always around, fruit and notebook. The notebook is good for jotting down thoughts, among other things. Let Lea Salonga, 37 years old (born February 22, 1971) be inspired by Apple’s Steve Jobs, 53 years old (February 24, 1955), who keeps coming up with new ideas, inventing, improving. A writer is an inventor. And the fruit is good for you. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Jeanelle Boyer & Rui Hai Liu of Cornell University in New York tell us apples are high in phytochemicals and, eating them, you are a low risk in cancer, heart-related diseases, asthma and diabetes (nutritionj.com). You can learn from other people, sometimes even from doctors.

In the blogosphere, finding something to write about is never difficult for me. Nothing’s changed. You can still write about your nervousness, unfamiliar vocal territory, a belly laugh, driving from New York to Washington DC alone, waiting hours for your flight, listening to music with which you can fly to the moon ... You will find other universes as you surf more often, if more leisurely. Don’t try too hard.

Giggle and Google, girl!

Every week? Yes, every week. I’m 68 and I have as many blogs as my age and I write almost every day.

Will I find suitable subjects … every week? When your eyes widen, when your heart skips a beat, when someone sees your eyebrows raised, when you’re absorbed in your reading, when you’re lost in your listening, when you look at your baby and smile, when someone like Dolphy walks into the room – you have found a suitable subject. I open the windows of my mind and so I never run out of ideas. If you don’t like Windows, open Doors.

Backstory. I did my own Google search on ‘backstory’ (also ‘back story’ and ‘back-story’ as you very well note), and so I find that to be true to the label of your column, you can write about the background information, history, story behind the story, a character’s back story, your own back story. There’s nothing mysterious about the back story; in Tagalog, it’s nakaraan, in Ilocano, napalabas. You can always invent one. Or reinvent.

With your column, the back story becomes the front story. Just like Batman Begins – I just love that back story of a movie; I can watch it over and over again. Just like the Star Wars prequels, each one a back story that becomes a front story: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), Revenge of the Sith (2005). George Lucas is a genius. If not a genius, the writer can write about genius.

In googling, after reading the current page, even in email, you either click ‘Previous’ or ‘Next.’ Back story is like your ‘Previous’ – in writing a back story, therefore, you can write about the Previous and the Current and even the Next.

You can even pretend you’re Kim when you write. That should be interesting. That will take your mind off Lea Salonga as writer – and you would write like no one could, I know it. You have 3 names; explore yourself sometimes: write as Maria once, Lea twice, Carmen thrice. Other times, look at you as in Viva Pinoy’s Leas Salonga – write about the many you, the many characters you have played, texturize each one like no one else can do. Sometimes it’s all texture.

Milk it to the core. Like I’m milking ‘back story’ right now. Try and gain a different or new perspective wherever you go. Like: ‘A photo in order to be art,’ says Marios Lefteriotis, ‘must have a back story, or must give a message to the spectator, or must give an answer to a problem of life’ (photon.net). You get ideas even from photographers who open their mouths and smile even as they press their shutters.

Change perspective. Like: Instead of looking at back story as defining, look at it as enriching. One is pushing away, the other is embracing. I’d rather be embracing!

Stephen King says, ‘The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.’ Ah, but the adventure is to make it interesting. The adventure is the reward. There are no boring back stories, only boring writers!

Yes, write about your feet’ feeling, microphones, nipples, backstage games, pants, kissing, homesickness – write about more.

Your life has been Entertainment, the ups and downs and in-betweens. Write about your life. Write about your ‘rock stars’ and other stars.

But above all, don’t do what you do in introducing your website ‘Lea Salonga’ (leasalonga.com) – you speak a few words and look at the prompter many times. If you must, speak from memory. Sometimes you can ramble on. But always, if you want to enjoy your writing, you must write from the heart. You must, because that’s the only way your reader will enjoy their reading. If you the writer like the reflection you see in the mirror, we your readers will like the reflection we see front and back.

Science Q&A: To blog or not to blog?

2008-06-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

To blog or not to blog,’ that is the question, paraphrasing Shakespeare. If you are in science, if you are a technical person, you might ask: ‘Should I blog or should I not?’

My answer is: That’s the wrong question to ask. A flower does not really ask itself, ‘To bloom or not to bloom?’ As a researcher or extension person, you owe it to your employer (your company or your country) to disseminate your research results, data or information, to the target clients of your science – after all, they are the ones paying you. It is not enough that you publish technical papers (if you do) so that other experts may know what you know – you have to communicate what you have learned and what you know in terms of what may be useful to the people, and I think the best way to do that is by blogging.

I am an incurable blogger (since 2005), now with many a blog, and an inimitable editor of many a technical journal (and currently Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science) who has been using since 2003 not a desktop publishing software (like PageMaker) but a word processor (specifically Word 2003) for desktop publishing, and who has been using Microsoft Word for writing since 1987. Since I have been working as a writer and editor for science since 1975 (starting with the Forest Research Institute), I have reached the point where I can offer a workshop on blogging (which is writing and publishing at the same time).

But why blog at all? Why should a man of science blog? I can give you several reasons:

(1) No reviewer. You are free. No critic needs review your work, unless you ask someone’s opinion – and then again you can accept or reject it.

(2) You want to improve your writing skills. Blogging is the perfect way to get that kind of exercise, since there are virtually no restrictions to your writing. To improve your writing, you have to write and write again, and when you blog, nobody is stopping you.

(3) Your style is yours. Nobody dictates on how you write. Except to follow certain grammatical rules (not to mention correct spelling of words and terms), you’re on your own creative self.

(4) Your time is yours. You do it when you feel like doing it. Your only compulsion is either to write to communicate something to someone, or simply to express yourself, which is communicating anyway, since other people can identify with it.

(5) You teach yourself. When you try to express yourself even as you try to understand your materials, you learn. You cannot communicate well if you haven’t learned your materials. Just remember that your target reader doesn’t know much about your subject matter.

(6) You feel great! Blogging is a great feeling, the process as well as the results. It’s a wow! the first time you do it, and the next, and the next. When you receive a comment or an email, you feel good.

(7) It’s a great writing system. I think it’s the best way to learn to write, whether it’s technical writing or popular writing, critical or creative writing, religious or political writing, economic or social writing. Of course, when you’re a beginner, it doesn’t hurt to look at other people’s blogs and emulate someone or something.

Blogging is an aphrodisiac.

2008-06-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

Grapes are an aphrodisiac, according to Matt Szura, a food columnist of State Hornet of California State University (statehornet.com). There’s more in Matt’s list: oyster, asparagus, celery, banana, chili pepper, tomato, strawberry, and Green M&M (because it’s full of chocolate). It’s the chocolate, folks. If I have to choose, I'll take the grapes. This is a shot I took of the grapes of Freda, a friend of Dr O, during her birthday party - if they are from California, they must be 'the plumpest, juiciest and tastiest grapes in the world' (freshcaliforniagrapes.com.)

LiveScience has other ideas; here it considers what it calls the Top 10 Aphrodisiacs that people refer to:
(10) rhino horn – it’s not an aphrodisiac by any means.
(9) Spanish fly – it’s not a beetle, not a fly. Not an aphrodisiac either.
(8) Alcohol – a false aphrodisiac. In fact, it contributes to erectile dysfunction.
(7) Chocolate – not an aphrodisiac. Chocolate makes you feel good, that’s all.
(6) Oysters – aphrodisiac no, appetizer yes.
(5) Herbs yoshimbe, tribulus, maca: sold as natural ‘Viagra’ – they are under study.
(4) Viagra – not an aphrodisiac; it works only with sexual stimulation first.
(3) Psychoanalysis – it may be the psychoanalyst who becomes the aphrodisiac.
(2) Getting in shape – maybe. Erectile dysfunction is correlated with inactivity.
(1) Respect – ‘The most meaningful sexual relationships begin with respect.’

I’m interested in #2 and #1.

#2: If you want to learn to write, or be a better writer, you have to ‘get in shape’ – you have to exercise your talent. The only way to exercise your muscles is to exercise – the only way to exercise your writing muscles is to write. The more you exercise, the more you’ll like it. That’s when you’ll get your aphrodisiac.

#1: As a blogger learning to write better, remember that you have to show respect to your subject matter, as well as to your target reader. In fact, all writers should behave that way. Respect means you have to understand your subject matter better so that you can write about it well. Respect means you have to understand your target reader so that you can write for them something that not only you but also they can understand. The more you understand, the more you’ll write better, and the more thrilling it becomes – and that’s when you get your aphrodisiac.

That’s why I say blogging is an aphrodisiac. From Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love. Aphrodisiac, according to my favorite American Heritage Dictionary, means arousing or intensifying sexual desire; something, such as a drug or food, having such an effect. Believe me, that’s almost the effect of blogging for me, and I’ve been blogging for years, in 2005 sporadically, from 2006 intently, intensely. If blogging doesn’t arouse in me something akin to sexual desire, or if blogging doesn’t have an effect on me like food that stimulates the whole body, I would have stopped blogging long ago.

Collins Essential Thesaurus gives these as related words to aphrodisiac: exciting, stimulating, arousing. If already you’re a blogger, you would know what I mean. If not, you are missing more than half of your life in this modern world of the Internet.

You’ll probably react and say, ‘I’d like to, but I don’t have the time.’ Of course, you don’t have the time. But that’s exactly why you should find the time – it will take your mind off your work and refresh you. Like I always tell people, ‘The time to find the time is when you don’t have the time.’ When you’re too busy, that’s the time to find the time to relax. If you take the time to blog, it may tire you a bit but you’ll in fact recharge yourself. The secret of relaxing is not to relax but to find something else to do that you like.

Can you blog? I tell you if you can write an English sentence, you can blog. And in any case, blogging would be a good exercise in learning good English – if you don’t know how that would happen, I can teach you. In any case, you have an excellent first aider in English: Word 2003’s grammar & spelling checker.

I tell you that while you’re learning to blog, you’re at the same time learning to write. Is it technical, popular, or both? That depends on your interest. The only way to learn to write is to write, not simply read a book on how to write written by a genius of a writer. The author can give you advice, but he cannot give you experience. Blogging will give you that experience. But first of all, blogging will give you the confidence. The more you blog, the more you are stimulated. So now you know: Blogging is a continuing aphrodisiac.

The Frankenstein essay

2008-05-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

In yesterday’s post in my other blog, The Virtual Thinker, I said I wanted to call my kind of writing (blogging) Jollop, an acronym for jolly journalism laced with literature in the language of a philosophy of productivity. In two words, if I may invent another term, what I do at its best is creative satire, if gentle and unobtrusive. And yes, I am able to do that with such a dull, dreary subject as science.

If not jollop, if not creative satire, I’d like to call each of my long posts as a Frankenstein essay. That’s because I have begun to assume the identity of Frankenstein as the author of my articles in Blogger. You know of course Frankenstein, the scholarly mind in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus (Cynthia Hamberg, home-1.worldonline.nl) and, according to Cynthia, Frankenstein is a genius in ‘animating lifeless matter’ and ‘assembling body parts’ – which is exactly what a creative writer does with uninspiring, unexciting materials. Since I am the discoverer of the art of virtual thinking (see my ‘The Frankenstein Mindster’), I am a discover of a secret of animating lifeless matter as well as assembling body parts to create a life called a Frankenstein essay. I think, therefore it is.

Jollop is Frankenstein

2008-05-29T06:17:00.000-07:00

If you look at the posts in my main blog, Journeys from Grief to Grace (frankahilario.blogspot.com), now comprising more than 200 long essays, you will notice that my articles are a unique blend of something or other. In October 2007, I tried to describe it by coining the term Franciscan essay (‘The Franciscan Essay,’ ‘Francisco’ being my full name and ‘Franciscan’ in reference to my perspective as a Roman Catholic.

Tonight, at about 1930 hours Thursday May 29 Manila time, I was out riding my bike coming from the public market after buying some apples and oranges, when a thought occurred to me that I could describe my writings in one new word, and in fact that one word came out: Jollop.

It’s an invented word, of course, as is my wont. Jollop is an acronym: jolly journalism laced with literature in the language of a philosophy of productivity. Complicated? My thoughts exactly! You have to read it to appreciate it. Actually, it's complicated if you are trying to explain it; it's something else when you're trying to understand it.

And yes, of late Frank A Hilario has assumed the identity of Frankenstein, in reference to the genius of a scholarly mind in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus (Cynthia Hamberg, home-1.worldonline.nl). Here is Cynthia’s one-sentence summary of the novel:

A young Swiss student discovers the secret of animating lifeless matter and, by assembling body parts, creates a monster who vows revenge on his creator after being rejected from society.

I can empathize with what Frankenstein the scholar did in creating that monster, that is, ‘animating lifeless matter’ and ‘assembling body parts’ – that is what I do as a writer, don’t I? Having discovered the secret of creative thinking (see ‘The Frankenstein Mindster’ (frankensteinmindster.blogspot.com), I have discovered the secret of animating lifeless matter as well as assembling body parts to make a living entity that now I am happy to call a jollop essay.

A guide to grace from grief

2008-05-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Commiserating with the family of Steven Curtis Chapman in their tragedy compounded, how did I come up with a guide for grieving gracefully where there was none? (See my earlier ‘Good Grief!’ and the sequel ‘From Grief to Grace,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com.)

'5 Stages of Good Grief!' I called it. Truth to tell, I wasn’t planning to come up with a guide like that, and then Ms Serendipity came into the picture. Looking at the 5 Stages of Grief that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had come up with, I had the insight of reversing the process, that is, for every stage, I would come up with a step that is the opposite of grief:

Denial becomes what?
Receiving. You receive the good news, you receive the bad news.

Anger becomes what?
Absorbing. In anger, you reject; in coming to terms with your grief, you absorb it.

Bargaining becomes what?
Giving in. Instead of begging for less or for reprieve, you surrender everything.

Depression becomes what?
Rejoicing. You’re done with grieving. It’s time to shout with joy!

Acceptance becomes what?
Growing with it. Having successfully confronted your grief, you are ready to become a new person.

What happened after that is that I got carried away myself and changed my blog title from ‘Excellence, Manila!’ to ‘From Grief to Grace’ – because I believe that that is the journey that my country, the Philippines, must take. I write not really for myself but for my country. That is my legacy. After all, I’m 68. If not now, when? If not me, who?

Rx for critical thinking

2008-05-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

Creativity workshops in all fields

I’m thinking right now of going all over my country, the

Philippines

, like Jun Lozada has been doing propagating critical thinking – but instead, I shall be propagating creative thinking. I rather think I can do much better than Jun Lozada when it comes to teaching. I'm a certified Teacher (Civil Service Professional Level, as I passed the Teacher's Exam in 1965 with a grade of 80.6%); Jun Lozada is a certified preacher. To preach like Jun Lozada is easy - all you have to do is open your Bible and open your mouth. There are no Civil Service exams to pass before you become a preacher. But they allow you to visit schools and preach to the students.

I will be using Microsoft Word as software, especially Word 2003. (Why not the latest, Word 2007? I can buy Word 2007 if I like and she’s beautiful but, you know, I also know that it’s the beautiful who is difficult, very difficult.) And I will be conducting free lectures, demos. And I will be enticing the secretaries, authors, editors, reviewers, critics, students, advisers, writers, biographers, autobiographers, bloggers to attend these. Maybe I’ll even arrange for video recording so that anyone can view the whole lecture or demo over and over again.

I’m thinking of conducting ‘Beauty & Brains Microsoft Word’ workshops for hands-on creative thinking leading to creative writing.

Did I say ‘Free?’ The lectures and demos, yes. I want the Movement for the Creative Filipino (M4) to propagate itself all over the country and around the world where there are Filipinos. Creativity is not the sole privilege of the literate, or even the genius – creativity is for all. I believe that all of us have genius inside us, except that half of us aren’t using our head.

Why Microsoft Word for creative thinking? Ah, my friend, to see is to believe! Come attend my lecture-demo anytime – it’s free!

M4.

2008-05-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

Aiming for The Creative Filipino

For the past several years, the air of negativism has been so thick in Philippine society you could almost choke on it. I say: Enough!

The great American President Abraham Lincoln said, ‘He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help,’ It’s easy to criticize; you don’t need practice – just open your big mouth. Or say there is only thing to do, and you know exactly what. To be creative needs a little more imagination, not to mention a lot more courage. The negatives are at heart all cowards, afraid of a better idea that is not theirs.

Truth to tell, I learned my creativity from books:
from the Reader's Digest since high school, circa 1956;
from Rudolf Flesch's How To Write, Think And Speak More Effectively circa 1965;
from Edward De Bono's The Mechanism Of Mind circa 1975.
I also learned from Ray Bradbury's word association in the 1990s.

This year, I invented Serendipity X, a method of brainstorming or creative thinking unlike any other - that's Chapter 03 of my book, and if you click the link you can find it in this blog you're reading.

In fact, I have actually began to refer to it as the art & act of virtual thinking, a new paradigm of creative thinking. This is different from :
Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which calls for journaling in a special hour of your own;
Tony Buzan's Mind-Mapping, which calls for linear relationships, not unlike logical or critical thinking.

So today, to encourage you, I’m launching in the infinite universe of the Internet the Movement for the Creative Filipino. Movement, but there are no fees, no organization to speak of, no Constitution and By-Laws to quarrel about, no officers to quarrel among themselves. I'm inviting the bloggers to join, first. You don't have to be a genius like Albert Einstein to be creative, but it helps. All you have to do is cultivate the habit of looking for, looking at the positive side of things - it's good for your health too.

'The Movement for the Creative Filipino.' I was thinking the name of the movement is too long to say in full all the time, so I thought of a shorter name, and I came up with ‘M4.’ Now, the name M4 as an unintended acronym begs for another meaning, that is, what are the 4 Ms, so I have come up with an original list of those also, and these are:

Mental first, not manual – think innovatively, inventively, ingeniously, imaginatively, intuitively first before you do something.

Mission first, not method – be sure the mission or overall goal is clear, measurable, time-bound, achievable first before you think of any method.

Macro first, not micro – think of the Big Picture first and foremost; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Message first, not mass media – you come up with a campaign first before you think of any combination of mass media.

Let me make a special note that in this same blog you are reading this, you can find the 13 chapters of my new book on creative thinking for writers, The Frankenstein Mindster, free for the browsing. No, I’ll never take any part of it offline. Each chapter is an implementation of the lesson itself; the book itself illustrates the lessons I want you to learn in creative thinking.

I’m especially encouraging the young ones to become creative.

How about the young once? I don’t know. But they’re not hopeless. I was already 46 when I began teaching myself how to use the PC. That was in 1986, so the year of People Power was my year of Personal People Power. That was when the PC was yet relatively unknown in the Philippines. I have been learning ever since. The problem with People Power is that we stopped learning right after February 25, 2006, when the dictator had flown the coop.

I'm referring to creativity in all fields, from A to Z, from Art to Zoology. And how can you be creative in Zoology? Like so:

(1) Don't give imported feeds to your animals. The problem with our animal scientists is that they have Pavloved into the lives of poultry and livestock raisers the habit of mind of buying ingredients for feeds from the US of A. Why because they have the habit of mind of importing poultry and livestock breeds from the land of green bucks. Not creative.

(2) Come up with Filipinized animal artworks. Like you can make the rice terraces the motif of the artwork for each animal from A to Z. I like American technology; for instance, I love my HP Compaq Presario C700 Notebook PC not made in the Philippines - but I don't have to import the food for my poultry or pet.

What am I trying to say with the image I have shown here? It’s a Photoshop effect, called glowing edges, of an original photograph I took of a burning rubber tire somewhere in Quezon City last year, February 11. I want to light the creative fire inside each one of you. In fact, I want to turn on a million points of light inside a million you. An impossible dream! Of course. That’s why it’s called a dream, and I’m dreaming it.

The Frankenstein 5 Stages of Good Grief!

2008-05-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after reading about the accidental demise of Maria Sue Chapman, 5 years old, beloved daughter of Gospel music superstar Steven Curtis Chapman and Mary Beth, I was moved to write an essay and, among other things I had in mind, to remind them of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ 5 stages of grief and, subsequently, was inspired to come up with an entirely new set of those, which I called The Frankenstein 5 Stages of Good Grief! (frankahilario.blogspot.com).

Good Grief! Isn’t my Frankenstein 5 simply tongue-in-cheek advice, worth a smile and nothing else? No, of course not – I’m serious even when I’m joking. Especially in the midst of gloom. Especially in the midst of tragedy.

And especially in the midst of double tragedy, nay triple tragedy. Consider these:

(1) Your youngest son killed someone, and it wasn’t self-defense. Killing is terrible.

(2) Your youngest daughter was killed, and it was without rhyme or reason. Being killed is horrible.

(3) It was your youngest son, Will Franklin, who killed your youngest daughter, Maria Sue, by accident – he had backed up your Toyota Land Cruiser on your driveway and not seen his little sister. Killing and being killed within your own family is horrifying, if unintentional.

That’s why the 4th stage of Good Grief! of the Frankenstein 5 is Rejoicing, and the 5th stage is Growing with it. And that’s why the title of my essay in my main blog is ‘Good Grief!’ with the subtitle ‘Steven Curtis Chapman, please don’t be Sue-sad.’

And now I want to recite here the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi that I believe is apt, even if I know the Chapmans are not Roman Catholics like me (I had this in another essay, 'Primate Change? Or Climate Change?' frankahilario.blogspot.com):

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Texas is talking sweet sorghum

2008-05-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

Betsy Blaney (May 14, AP, foxnews.com) writes that the conversation in Texas, not to mention Florida, has turned to sweet sorghum and its potential for ethanol production. At least they’re talking.

Betsy reports that Global Renewable Energy LLC has planted about 10 hectares (40 acres) for tests in converting sweet sorghum sugar into ethanol. I can report that in India, a collaborative enterprise between Rusni Distilleries and ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) has been producing ethanol from sweet sorghum since June 2007, or almost a year now. This is the world’s first successful commercial sweet sorghum ethanol distillery. (I have been writing about this since February last year; see my ‘The Yankee Dawdle,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com).

‘The real issue is it’s just not a well-known crop,’ says Danielle Bellmer, Executive Secretary of the Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Association and a scientist at the Oklahoma State University studying ways to improve ethanol production from sweet sorghum. That’s how the best of science starts, doesn’t it? With the unknown. That’s called creativity. Or serendipity.

The planting of those 10 hectares split in 2 locations (the news didn’t say where) has a hidden agenda. ‘The purpose of those (is) obviously the testing,’ says Ray Coniglio, spokesman for Global, ‘but we want to bring farmers and investors out.’

That’s the distillery model. So who’s thinking for the village model?

Serendipity X. Saying goodbye to a blog

2008-05-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

On the 7th of January this year, I created the blog Serendipity X, theserendipityman.blogspot.com (THE CREATIVE WRITER’S GUIDE FOR NON-DUMMIES. Because_if_you’re_a_dummy,_you_can’t_learn), and was very happy about it. It was meant to collect all the chapters of the book as I finished writing them, the book I was calling at that time The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies.

I am going to delete Serendipity X, the blog, today, May 22, 2008, after I finish this essay, because it has served its purpose – I had written the last chapter of the book, (13) The Frankenstein Mindster. Or, The Revolt Of The Unpublished Writers; the book I am now calling The Frankenstein Mindster. Or The Revolt Of The Unpublished Writers, and for which purpose I had created the blog The Frankenstein Mindster, frankensteinmindster.blogspot.com. In this blog, the book is complete in 13 chapters and is free for the browsing and copying, meant to inspire creative writing in science, which is my forte.

While I’m deleting Serendipity X, the blog, I’m not doing away with my idea of Serendipity X, the creative thinking process that I have invented.

At the time I created Serendipity X, the blog, I was thinking of

David & Goliath & NeoWorx

2008-05-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

I was googling for David & Goliath and came upon Oswald Sobrino’s Catholic Analysis (catholicanalysis.blogspot.com). Oswald points out that David decided against using Saul’s sword and armor and instead used his sling and 5 smooth stones and went on and downed the giant.

So Oswald points to the power of Davidian bloggers to down Goliath media. He tells the story of how 5 bloggers, equivalent to David’s 5 smooth stones, downed the media giant Dan Rather, along with it of course his mother station CBS News: Powerline, INDC Journal, Little Green Footballs, HughHewitt.com, Instapundit.

Oswald says:

Why is this story so important? It is a story that is simultaneously political, cultural, and technological. The technology of blogging has made it possible for anyone to post their analysis of the news in an inexpensive way available to millions in an inexpensive way.

The barriers to entry to political and social commentary have come down. If you are curious, perceptive, and intelligent, you can now put your hat in the ring. No Ivy League degree needed, no syndicated newspaper column needed. It is obvious that journalism school credentials have become much like education credentials: they are required for professional employment in those fields but by themselves indicate very little about the holder's competence.

The visual image of the blogger revolution was captured when Brit Hume at Fox News interviewed a bespectacled, mild-mannered lawyer by the name of Scott Johnson. Johnson is one of the bloggers at the Powerline blog (see transcript of Sept. 14th Fox interview at the Double Toothpicks blog).

Johnson looked more believable than many a blow-dried reporter for the major networks. His appearance on Fox looked like a fulfillment of the promise that the meek shall inherit the earth. All of this while Dan Rather, the old giant of old media, stumbled in stunned confusion.

Johnson explained that he and his colleagues at Powerline had in past years written and published articles for various conventional print publications but had tired of waiting months to see if some print editor would run their next submission. The internet allowed them to bypass editorial delay and reach their audience directly in real time. That is the revolutionary aspect of blogging: no unnecessary bureaucratic delay, no editorial gatekeeping or censorship. Blogging is information democracy.

Oswald’s story is dated September 15, 2004. On my part, almost 1 year later I said something that could summarize this story even if I didn’t know it before: ‘Blogging is the revenge of the unpublished writer’ (creativeleaps.blogspot.com).

Oswald’s blog is also where I discovered NeoCounter by NeoWorx. Now I have one for Total Visitors from Countries in Excellence, Manila! (frankahilario.blogspot.com). Thanks, Oswald; and thanks, NeoWorx!

Subjective thinking.

2008-05-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

The next step in sequential thinking?

I can’t find the author’s name, so I’ll just call him Erasmatazz from his website, erasmatazz.com. I quote from what he says about virtual thinking.

There's one other form of thinking out there that represents the next step in sequential thinking: subjunctive thinking. This might be called ‘virtual thinking’; where sequential thinking imagines a line of nodes, subjunctive thinking sees each node as a branchpoint from which a thousand possibilities emerge. The workload of keeping track of all those possibilities is too much for the human brain to handle, but now we have a medium that is ideally suited for subjunctive thinking: the computer. Thus, the computer will permit the full exploitation of subjunctive thinking in the same way that writing permitted the full exploitation of sequential thinking. We are about to enter a new period in the human story every bit as brilliant as that of classical Greece.

A new period in human history as brilliant as that of classical Greece? I doubt it. It will be more brilliant. But not because of what you refer to as virtual thinking, not what you describe as subjective thinking – that is all critical thinking, logical thinking, just another form of sequential thinking, hierarchical thinking, vertical thinking – not creative thinking. Only creative thinking, like God creating the world out of chaos, can be brilliant. Subjective thinking is creative thinking, not linear, which the computer does at fantastic speed and at different levels. The creative ancient Greeks were not critical thinkers, I’m sure – else, my statement is illogical. You can’t create democracy out of logic; you cannot invent anything out of logic, only out of insight, which is not obtained by logic.

A book review to rewrite

2008-05-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

A book review to review

I’m looking at the webpage for the book review of Rolf Smith’s (Virtual Thinking Expedition Company) book 7 Levels Of Change. While the review is good, I do have reservations on the language of the webpage itself. It’s like this:

The title of the book review is ‘Different Thinking for Different Results, 3rd Edition’ while the book review refers to ‘his seven levels for creating radical, results-driven meanings in the second edition of his book’ and the image shown on the same page is that of the 3rd Edition, available at amazon.com. Even the link says ‘new 2nd edition’ as you can see below:

Aurthor's observations on the new 2nd Edition

Also, unfortunately, I see that the webmakers of vTx can’t seem to see their mistakes; there's another one in that link above. And when I clicked that link, I see the author says 'So what's different about the 2nd edition?' What it tells me is that even the author himself is up-to-date in his thinking but is not up-to-date in his writing.

What’s the matter, vTx, too busy thinking virtual to mind your grammar & spelling?

7 levels of thinking?

2008-05-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

Different Results For Different Thinking

I’m intrigued by the Texas corporation that calls itself The Virtual Thinking Expedition Company (vTx) of the Office of Strategic Innovation Inc (OSI). I’m reading now their own book review of a new edition of their book, 7 Levels Of Change written by the founder of the vTx himself, Rolf Smith. According to the website:

Smith packs the book with case studies and real-life examples to demonstrate how creativity, thinking different, and boldness can yield results and solutions far beyond an organization's expectations - and even produce results previously believed impossible. He has empirically derived seven distinct, increasingly challenging and significantly different Levels of Change and seven corresponding mindshifts in thinking.

And the 7 Levels Of Change, according to Smith, are the following:

Level 1: Effectiveness – Doing the right things.
Level 2: Efficiency – Doing things right.
Level 3: Improving – Doing things better.
Level 4: Cutting – Stopping doing things.
Level 5: Copying – Doing things other people are doing.
Level 6: Different – Doing things no one else is doing.
Level 7: Impossible – Doing things that can’t be done.

Reading that list, I can almost tell you how the vTx people go about doing their creative thinking.

According to the website,

Einstein pointed out that ‘The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level we were at when we created them.’

That is the reason Smith came up with those 7 levels of change:

To get different results – change – we must do things differently. The framework of this model is divided into seven distinct levels – from easy to impossible - across a spectrum of continual change (continuous innovation) over increasing levels of difficulty.

Just looking at the list, I can tell that vTx has identified the entry points for thinking, not simply the levels of thinking. What I can see, from where I sit, is that the first 5 levels are critical thinking sites and the last 2 levels are creative thinking sites. What’s interesting to me is how they can get people to think differently and to think impossible. That’s creative!

UST Writers’ Workshop & Me

2008-05-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am reading the article ‘Prose and the UST Writers Workshop’ written by poet Cirilo F Bautista (see pages 25-26 of the Philippine Panorama, the Sunday Magazine of the Manila Bulletin, issue of May 11). Bautista writes of the national writers workshop - I prefer an apostrophe after the word writers, and he doesn't - conducted for the 9th year by the University of Santo Tomas, this time on April 21-26 in Manila and Laguna. From Bautista’s list, I count 15 participants:

Abuan, Mariane Amor Romina T (UST)
Alvarez, Jack A (Mindanao Polytechnic College)
Kimpo Jr, Philip (UP Diliman)
Larin Jr, Edilberto D (Baliuag University)
Lima, Micah Angeline (Ateneo De Manila University)
Magpile, Christine Marie L (De La Salle University)
Marcelang, Gresela A (UST)
Medes, Melvin (Far Eastern University)
Nadora, Anna Christina G (UST)
Navarrete, Joderic C (Leyte Normal University)
Nieto, Deborah Rosalinda D (UST)
Paguibitan, Geraldine Victoria (UST)
Palatino, Chinee S (UP Diliman)
Peña, Romeo P (UP Diliman)
Santillan, Renato S (University of Pangasinan)

The regular panelists were Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, Cirilo F Bautista, Eros Atalia, Manolito Sulit and Carlomar Daoana; the guest panelists were Jerry Gracio, John Jason Chancoco, Santiago Villafania and Ramil Gulle.

Why did I go to great lengths typing out all those names? Because I’m interested in writers’ workshops. I’m a frustrated writers’ workshopper: I haven’t attended any. I’m not planning to, but I think I can learn from those workshops, since I’m thinking of conducting creative writing workshops myself.

That workshop is managed by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies. According to Bautista:

(The Center) believes that early intervention in prospective writers’ career will give them the proper foundation and vision for fruitful production. Stylistic, philosophical, and social concepts can be taught to them without previous prejudices cluttering their understanding. They will acquire the necessary tools for imagining and writing on the authentic and clever level of creativity.

Bautista quotes Dimalanta as saying, ‘We teach them how to think well and to write well, how to bring out their potentials for creating excellent poems or stories.’

Bautista emphasizes that the participants were young but they, ‘surprisingly, showed sufficient knowledge of the basic elements of textual criticism.’ He enumerated these:

mixed metaphors
inappropriate imagery
grammatical errors
weak phraseology
inappropriate terms
disorganized plot
absence or conflict of crisis
ineffective closure.

While I’m not interested in writing short stories or poems, I can use all that in my own workshops for creative writing in science, right? I can always use good and bad examples myself.

Pray tell, how did I get to read about the UST Writers’ Workshop?

This morning, May 13, 2008, I woke up at about 0400 hours Manila with my HP Compaq Presario C700 notebook PC closed and that copy of Panorama on top of it and opened to page 20; it’s good old Zac B Sarian’s ‘The Potentials Of Dryland Agriculture’ (pages 20-21). Half of the page is a photograph of Director General William Dar (with straw hat) and someone else both walking along sweet sorghum plants standing tall, in fact taller than either of them (and Dar is tall). Since I’m a wide reader, naturally, I check out the other pages, and that’s how I found Bautista’s piece on the UST writers’ workshop.

On his part, Sarian writes of the work of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). ‘The main focus of ICRISAT is to help farmers make the vast dryland areas in the tropics, particularly in Asia and Africa, productive in a sustainable manner.’ Of Dar’s enthusiasm, he writes: ‘For the Philippines, he is very excited about sweet sorghum which is for biofuel production as well as for food.’ ICRISAT’s sweet sorghum varieties are now being tested by farmers in the Ilocos and Bicol Regions, the Visayas and Mindanao.

Sarian mentions the wish of some agricultural experts for the Philippine government to create a dryland institute and explore, for instance, the planting of crops for export, such as chick pea for India.

For all that, Cirilo F Bautista and Zac Sarian have inspired me to think more of creative writing in science as I haven’t heard or read of any in this country. So now I’m thinking of really going out there and conducting science writers’ workshops. And since I’m a practical man, and I learned my own science writing in the School of Hard Knots, I think I shall avoid using in my workshops such language as ‘stylistic, philosophical and social concepts’ and ‘prejudices cluttering their understanding.’ I doubt also that I will be giving anyone any of ‘the necessary tools for imagining and writing’ and that I will be discussing anywhere near an ‘authentic and clever level of creativity.’ The Red Queen and Rudolf Flesch told me long ago to run twice as fast as I can away from big and long words such as those.

But I certainly shall be thinking about teaching my writers' workshop fellows how to think well and to write well and how to bring out their potentials for creating excellent journalistic works in science.

Anyway, reacting to Bautista’s article, I have gone back to my new book, The Frankenstein Mindster - you can read the whole book online free of charge at my blog frankensteinmindster.blogspot.com - which I am preparing to go to press any day now; it is for science writing, I know; science is all over the pages of that book, but now I want to make sure that the emphasis is clearly seen as writing for science, and have revised the subtitle from ‘A Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies’ to ‘Writing For Science, Writing For People.’ Nobody is minding science, and I mind that.

Are you typing, or are you playing?

2008-05-12T00:30:00.000-07:00

Do you know how fast I can type with the computer keyboard? I will tell you by way of this story:

I learned to type thanks to the typewriter of my brother-in-law Romulo Llamas and the tutoring of his wife Luciana Gaño, my first-degree cousin, a teacher. That was when I was in high school yet, more than 50 years ago, in Asingan, Pangasinan. What I did that first day was when I went home, I was walking and typing in the air with both hands, ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ With a boy’s determination to learn, I learned those home keys and so on and became good at typing. For speed, I tried the practice typing lessons of old but I couldn’t stand the typing of meaningless non-words.

When I went to college 300 km away from home, at UP Los Baños when it was yet a Cow College, I stopped typing because I couldn’t afford a typewriter and there were no typewriters for hire. But once in a while, working for the school organ, Aggie Green & Gold, I could use the typewriter. I was typing fast, but only faster than most of the students who didn’t know any better.

When I finished college and first taught, at the Asingan High School, with my first salary, I ordered a brand new typewriter (ABC was the name of the brand, I think) from one of the shops in Baguio City. They delivered it to me in school; I was a very proud owner of that portable typewriter. I must have read their ad in the Bannawag, but I’m not sure. So, I was typing my own lesson plans – no, you cannot teach Elementary or High School without a lesson plan. So I had good typing practice.

When I was employed (eventually) as Chief Information Officer of the Forest Research Institute (FORI) in Los Baños in the mid-1970s, I preferred to type my own stories. I founded-edited 3 FORI publications: Habitat, a quarterly color magazine I patterned after the US National Geographic. Sylvatrop, a quarterly technical journal in tropical forestry. Canopy, the monthly newsletter of FORI. Since these were the days when the personal computer (PC) had yet to be invented, you can imagine the amount of typing that had to be done, and that we had to rely on typewriters for the manuscripts. Since I was my own typist, I became so expert in typing that I thought I could beat my wife Amparo, a Secretary who had been typing since high school herself and whose job required typing day in and day out.

About 12 years later, after working as Training Coordinator or something for the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI), I had already my own PC, and of course, I had not graduated from being my own typist. So, for the last 20 years, I had been typing using the PC keyboard. My fingers have memorized the placement of all the letters and they remember 95% of the time where the number keys are.

So, if you ask me how fast I can type, I will tell you that a few years ago, I was typing at home as usual with nonchalance, and a visitor noticed and asked, ‘Are you typing or are you playing?’ Without pausing on a key I said, ‘Both!’ In other words, the asker couldn’t believe his eyes that I was typing fast, too fast. You see, I have long learned to love what I’m doing, writing, and that goes with the typing. I pity the writer who can’t type; I pity the writer who can type but can’t or don’t want to use the PC. There are many shortcuts to typing with the PC keyboard and software that when I’m typing with it, it seems to me I’m in a place of Heaven on Earth.

How I Wrote The Frankenstein Mindster 03

2008-05-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

As of February 24, 2008, I had already written, aside from the Introduction, 3 chapters of the book:

(1) My Law Of Graffiti. Graffiti as a metaphor for brainstorming.
(2) PC Fools. The PC as a tool for creativity.
(3) Serendipity X. The Muse is on-call.

By April 22, I had written 2 more chapters:

(4) A Thinker’s Faith. How to start writing anytime.
(5) Lesson Of The Water Cycle. Looking at the Big Picture.
(6) The Neutral Visits. Taking sides actually.

And the number of chapters had increased to 13.

By April 27, Chapter 13 had been written. Not only was it easier to write because I didn’t have to do research except write on what I know, I thought that it would be a good idea to break my own monotony of writing the book chapters in sequence. After all, as I said in an earlier chapter, Chapter 03, this is where you should begin, not Chapter 01.
(13) My Digital World.

By April 30, I had written chapter 10:
(10) Language Of Change. ‘If you don’t want to revise, you don’t want to be good’ said my note.

On May 01, I decided to make the book part of a series under the main title of Serendipity X, so that I could have
Serendipity X: A Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies
Serendipity X: A Creative Editor’s Guide For Non-Dummies
Serendipity X: A Creative Publisher’s Guide for Non-Dummies

Also on May 01, I had written Chapter 08:
(08) Readability Check. How to acquire vocabulary easily.

On May 04, I had written Chapter 07:
(07) Wars Of The World. Packaging your story.

On May 08, I had written Chapter 11:
(11) The Osims Years. Looking at the village.

Also on May 08 later in the day, I decided to have only 12 chapters and wrote Chapter 09 to finish the book:
(09) Virtual Thinking. Blogging for creative thinking.

So I had to renumber Chapter 13 to become Chapter 12.

How I Wrote The Frankenstein Mindster 02

2008-05-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

On February 15, I had written ‘My Crazy Dozen. The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies’ – The number had changed to 12 chapters. This was intended as the Introduction to the book.

These were the suggestive ideas for the new 12 chapters of the book:

(1) If you want to begin right, don’t begin right.
(2) If you want to create order, don’t create order.
(3) If you want to write well, don’t write.
(4) If you want to be read, don’t read yourself.
(5) If you want to listen to advice, don’t give the advice.
(6) If you want to attract readers, don’t give your vocabulary.
(7) If you want to improve, don’t just improve.
(8) If you want to get more ideas, look where there are none!
(9) If you want to have a good sequence, make a bad one.
(10) If you want to write objectively, you’re a journalist.
(11) If you want to know everything, you’re an encyclopedia.
(12) If you want to give up, you’re a mad genius!

How I Wrote The Frankenstein Mindster 01

2008-05-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

On January 10, 2008, I created the Word 2003 file ‘The Rebel Writer’s Club.’ Inside, the file was titled: ‘The Rebel Writer’s Club. Proclaiming The 13 Commandments Of Writing For Non-Dummies.’ Here in simulated Word 2003 collapsed outline form, the original file containing text beneath the level 2 heads, the content was this:

The Rebel Writer says,

(1) Law Of Graffiti. The Rebel Writer Writes, And Having Writ, Moves On
(2) The Rebel Writer says, ‘The computer is right minus wrong.’
(3) Frank’s Chaos Theory of Writing. The Rebel Writer says, ‘Create disorder after disorder.’
(4) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Talk to me.’
(5) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Throw your vocabulary out your windows.’
(6) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Listen To Music, Listen To Others.’
(7) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Do tomorrow what you can do today.’
(8) The Rebel Writer says, ‘If you don’t want to revise, you don’t want to be good.’
(9) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Negatives attract positives.’
(10) The Rebel Writer says, ‘To get the sequence right, make it wrong.’
(11) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Your Objective Is To Be Subjective.’
(12) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Know more, not no more.’
(13) The Rebel Writer says, ‘About Being Better Before Being Good ...’

Note the number of chapters: 13. This will change over the months.

Is there intelligent life among robots?

2008-05-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

thevirtualthinker.blogspot.com - This blog of mine has a story to tell. But I'm not telling it there. It's the robots, stupid!

Yesterday, May 09, 2008 Manila time, at about 0500 hours, I created a new blog I called ‘The Virtual Thinker.’ Highly original, I thought. I wanted ‘virtualthinking’ as my domain name but someone had beaten me to it. At 0523 hours, I uploaded ‘Frank’s Rules of Virtual Writing’ in that blog. Highly original, I knew.

Today, May 10, 2008 Manila time, I got the jolt of my life, I mean, the jolt of my morning, when I tried to open ‘The Virtual Thinker’ I got instead an error message that read in part, ‘Your blog is locked. Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?)’

The hell with those robots! So I immediately thought that 'blogging is the revenge of the unpublished writer' as I wrote in August 2005; so I created another blog, which is this one. In any case, 'blogal journalism' is an original concept by me, and so is the name. In March 2007, I first described it in my 'Primate Change? Or Climate Change?' and then in September 2007 I came up with the precise term 'blogal journalism' in my 'Do you know where democracy is?' because I was encouraging it (both at frankahilario.blogspot.com).

And then I requested that my blog be unlocked. This is the message I got: ‘We received your unlock request on May 9, 2008.’ (I’m in Manila, so that explains the date difference.) ‘On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam. Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.’

I laughed when I read ‘On behalf of the robots …’ I can’t help it, I’m still laughing. I can’t accept an apology from robots because they cannot think for themselves! (And was another robot telling me this?)

Ye robots!

Is there intelligent life among robots? Did those Blogger robots know The Three Laws of Robotics as enunciated by Susan Calvin (Isaac Asimov)? Here they are (ANN, author not named, iit.edu):

Rule #1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
Rule #2. A robot must obey orders given to him by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Rule #3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

First Law: The Blogger robots have injured me by locking me out of my own blog and, by their inaction – I was told it would take 4 days to rectify the error – they have twice violated this law.

Second Law: The Blogger robots should not obey orders given to them because they conflict with the First Law in this case.

Third Law: If only I could get my hands on those Blogger robots ..!

I never did believe in artificial intelligence (AI). Too regimented for me. I don't want my routine life to be ruled by those who follow only rules.

When those robots interrupted this morning’s idyll, immediately I thought that I had better check on ‘virtual thinking,’ something I should have done before I thought of that blog of mine.

‘Virtual thinking’ is not an original phrase from me. The earliest information I could find was that Rudolf Arnheim wrote about Virtual Thinking in his book published in 1969 (University of California Press). I couldn’t find a description of the book, but I found a reference to the author, and it may be that Arnheim was referring to ‘visual thinking’ (Miguel-Angel Materazzi & Ines Josefina Puig, wpanet.org).

There is a VirtualThinking! Website, virtualthinking.com, which is for business consulting via software.

Geert Mak calls ‘virtual thinking’ a ‘dream world’ (stadt-leipzig.de). Mak has just published a book, In Europe: Travels through the Twentieth Century (August 2007, Pantheon Books, 876 pages). He is a journalist and a historian.

By ‘virtual thinking’ I mean ‘blogal thinking’ or ‘blogal journalism,’ which is creatively thinking of, for, by your blog. The blog in this case is not used for ‘augmenting thinking’ as Andrius Kulikauskas puts it (ms.It)

Virtual Thinking Expedition Company (vTx) – Office of Strategic Innovation – The company employs ‘a mindshifting process that leads groups to very different perspectives in immediate applications of innovation and unusual problems connected with cost-cutting, reengineering and new product development’ (mindtools.com). That kind of virtual thinking is too formal, too rigid for my kind of virtual thinking.

Dominick Bellizi, James Byers & Adam Frey are collectively Tanqient, and they have built and now run Wikispaces. I found their ‘Virtual Thinking Skip’ (wikispaces.com/Thinking) and its description intrigues me:

This area is a thinking dumping ground, for the information floating around my head. It is somewhere I can offload the clutter that builds up and organize my thoughts as I gather new information and construct new strategies.

Close to my way of virtual thinking but not quite, and it’s too crowded around here I need to get out for fresh air.

While I’m in the mood for virtual thinking, I expect the air to be fresh, the ideas to be coming from everywhere, wafts of faint little breezes to caress the mind …

I have just finished surfing the internet for “virtual thinking” (including the double quotes) and Google Web gave me 1,150 English pages (Strict Search). I looked at them all; the most number of pages showing are those of the Virtual Thinking Expedition Company – and they all refer to either ‘abstract thinking,’ or ‘mindshifting’ for ‘strategic innovation’ and some other purposes.

Yahoo Search gives me 1,610 English pages. And yes, Yahoo! did find something different for me that Google didn’t. Like Mike DeSchryver’s essay on ‘Virtual Thinking’ (May 02, 2007, deschry2.fts.educ.msu.edu), in which he narrates his use of Google, Clipmarks (to clip sections of web pages – apparently, Mike doesn’t know about Google’s Notebooks), and mindmapping (Freemind). And after 14 hours of activity, he doesn’t report what he learned or what he came to think! How disappointing.

Still from Yahoo! I thank Jay David Bolter for writing ‘Degrees of Freedom’ (bsu.edu); finally, I found someone who tries to define the term. Virtual thinking, Jay says, is ‘the desire to transform the highly sophisticated artifice of electronic representation into a seamless perceptual experience.’ Jay, this is very technical but it’s quite close to what I’m thinking of as the act and the process of ‘virtual thinking’ – so, if I may interpret what I have just quoted:

Virtual thinking is this: What you see is what you get – and what you hear, what you (can almost) touch, what you feel, what you imagine.

And I will add this: what insight(s) you may gain from such a process. It is not the virtual reality that is important to me in virtual thinking; it is, simply, the thinking.

To put Descarte’s cogito ergo sum, ‘I think, therefore I am’ differently, I say virtual thinking is like this: ‘I blog, therefore I think.’ Virtual thinking becomes an imperative, if a joy.

Thinking Virtual? Shoot first, ask questions later!

2008-05-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a new, improved lesson in thinking out of the box - you don't see the box.

After I had created in my mind a new paradigm of creative thinking that I call 'Virtual Thinking' (see 'Virtual Thinking,' this same blog) on 09 May 2008, I found my metaphor of it in the New Testament, the one that says, ‘Now we see through a glass, darkly, and then we shall see face to face.’ Those are the words I memorized. From the King James, if I remember right; I can't find our copy right now. 1 Corinthians 13: 12. I love the language of the KJV; I was still in high school some 50 years ago and I was already memorizing biblical verses, even if I didn't know they came from the KJV. I just loved memorizing beautiful thoughts - I happened to agree with what they were saying, of course.

My new favorite Bible, the NRSV, New Revised Standard Version, puts it a little differently: ‘For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.’

Darkly, or dimly, you get the point, I hope. My original photograph doesn’t look like that of course; this one, as most of the many others that illustrate my essays in my many blogs, is a Photoshop effect; this one is of a Divisoria scene in a town mall (Manila) that I wasn’t supposed to be taking photographs in. The security guard warned me taking pictures was not allowed, but did not insist on deleting my shots, bless his soul. Must have something to do with my slim digital camera, a Canon PowerShot A540, not to mention my white hair; I was 67 after all (that was 2007); I couldn't do any harm, could I?

When I was shooting those few pictures I did that day, I wasn’t thinking that photographing the inside of that mall was against the law. That would have been thinking logically. I wasn’t thinking logically. And I'm glad I didn't. I shot first; the guard asked questions later.

Which just happens to be the whole point of this message: Virtual thinking is not thinking logically. It is vaguely thinking, that’s all. You are darkly, or dimly, or hardly thinking at all. 'Thinking out of the box' is still logical thinking: you are still thinking in reference to the box. In virtual thinking, you are not only thinking out of the box - you don't see the box at all!

You think first, then ask questions later. Creatively first, critically later. Of course, it takes some practice. If you want a device for virtual thinking, visit one of my other blogs: Creative iQ Consulting. Try my Creative Red Circles. Of course, it's all creative thinking; virtual thinking is my paradigm for creative thinking. If you are successful, the vague images become faces. 'Then I will know fully.' See!?

Frankenstein's Rules of Virtual Writing

2008-05-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

1. Welcome Yourself. Learn to live with yourself. Learn to accept your inadequacies, to admit your failings. Then you can be a better absorber of ideas, information, insights; then you can be a better, more creative writer.

2. Write On! The only way to learn to write is to write – and again and again. It has always been true since the first time it was said, even if it wasn’t said of writing: ‘Practice makes perfect.’

3. Begin Anywhere. You have to tolerate sloppy writing. Begin anywhere but begin. Begin with the title, begin with the beginning, begin with the middle, or begin with the end. Then you will release more of your creative juice. Then you will never have Writer’s Block.

4. Know More. The only way to say more is to learn more. Read on the subject; ask questions; listen, watch. Then you’ll become more interested to read on the subject; then you’ll become more interesting to read.

5. Write Less. Write more about less. Limit your subject matter to something you can handle at one time. For instance, don’t write about ‘His good work habits made him prolific as a writer’; instead, write about ‘His forcing himself to write a quota of words everyday helped him to become prolific.’

6. Relax. Learn to stop, look & listen – to something else. Don’t force yourself to finish. Doing something else unrelated to the article will – surprise – refresh your mind.

7. Rewrite. There’s always room for improvement. The best way to write is to rewrite. Win some, lose some – that too is the essence of rewriting.

8. Connect. See the Big Picture. You must look hard and long at your topic or subject matter, and try to arrive at a perspective of how it fits into the overall scheme of something bigger than it is. Nothing is unconnected; you must see the connection – that is your privilege as a creative writer.

9. Write Onscreen. The computer is a capitalist tool, so capitalize on it. You hesitate. If you are young, do you think the best (PC) is yet to come? If you’re no longer young, do you think you’re too old to learn? I was 45 when I started teaching myself. Now I can teach you Windows and Word with my eyes closed. Including Word 2003.

10. Write Big. If you want to be a great writer, believe in something bigger than yourself. Believe in and write for the individual, family, village, town, country – always in the context of the world. Whether your religion is Reason, Mysticism, Science, Islam or Christianity. To write, as well as to believe, is to relate. It’s a great feeling!

Virtual thinking.

2008-05-09T02:08:00.000-07:00

The day I reinvented the blog

To which half do you belong? Seeing my photograph, half of the lookers will notice the closed gate of iron bars, and half of the lookers will notice what lies beyond the closed gate of iron bars. The first lookers sense what cannot be and the second lookers sense what can be. The iron bars are my metaphor for critical thinking; what lies beyond the iron bars is my metaphor for creative thinking. Why do you mind the closed gate of reason when you can always open the windows of your free mind?

I suppose half of the bloggers in the world do it while looking at the imperial gate of reason. They don’t want to be unreasonable. They’d rather be logical – and boring. You see, being unreasonable is the only way to travel the road of creative thinking. I’d rather be stimulating!

With this essay, I introduce virtual thinking as a new form of creative thinking that is distinct from the popular form of thinking, which is vertical thinking (also known as logical thinking, critical thinking, that is, sequential, hierarchical, linear, mathematical), distinct from Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking (horizontal thinking, as opposed to vertical thinking), from Ray Bradbury’s word association (every which way), and from Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way (journaling regularly at an easy, personal time) (artistswayatwork.com).

(I hasten to add, though, that creative thinking neither negates nor opposes critical thinking. Rather, these two types of thinking complement each other. It’s just that if you want to engage in creative thinking, first you suspend critical thinking so that you can go to ridiculous places and come back with wonderful ideas. In the end of course, the creativity you reach must somehow be reasonable or acceptable. It's just that creative thinking is more equal than critical thinking. If you believe Jun Lozada, then it's the other way around.)

I just thought of the term virtual thinking today, May 8, 2008 Manila time, at about 1800 hours, excitedly upon which I created immediately the blog ‘The Virtual Thinker’ without a single post to upload, as I wanted to register the date and time in virtual history (thevirtualthinker.blogspot.com).

It is only once in a million blue moons that an idea like this comes to mind. In fact, I have been searching for such a name actively since 2005. I said ‘name’ and not ‘concept’ because I have had this concept since I first read about Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking in his book Mechanism of Mine in 1975 when my good friend Orli Ochosa gifted me a copy, and I juxtaposed lateral thinking with my earlier experience with Rudolf Flesch’s Readability Formula (in his book How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively), that which if you applied puts you right in the universe of creative thinking leading to creative writing. You don't have to call it creative thinking to be creative thinking.

How did the idea of virtual thinking come to me? It happened this way:

We go back to 40 years ago when I realized that it was almost impossible to get published by the local papers. However can you become a good writer if you are never published? You are never published because nobody wants to publish you, that’s all, no explanations given, no explanations necessary. Even today, the papers don’t even acknowledge email submissions. Writers are at the mercy of publishers (and editors) of newspapers and magazines and publishing houses. But not quite as doleful as before with the invention of the blog.

Now, a week ago, May 01, 2008, it suddenly occurred to me that a beginning or not-yet-mature writer can have lots of practice at his own pace and still be assured that each piece he writes is published, I guarantee it! It’s all very simple, now that I have been inspired to look at something I have been doing in a different light:

To practice writing everyday, blog everyday. You’re practicing and at the same time you’re publishing yourself. The power to publish is in your hands.

But that’s not enough. So, I had this idea of mind-blogging; I was happy with that, as you can see if you note that I have written many posts after the first one on May 6 as you can see if you visit ‘Mind-boggling or mind-blogging?’ (themindbloggers.blogspot.com).

I was thinking: Mind-blogging is creative blogging, creative writing using the blog as medium. It gives me almost complete control, assures me that what I’m going to write, whatever it is, will be published – I am the publisher of my blog. A blog is wholly, totally personal. Just like an insult.

Then today, May 08, I came to comparing vertical thinking and lateral thinking with mind-blogging. Thinking of vertical lines, I thought mind-blogging is more than vertical thinking; thinking of horizontal lines, I thought mind-blogging is more than lateral thinking. And it is more than just a combination of the two, a burst of arrows of energy from one source into all directions in the universe of thought. I needed a new term.

Mind-blogging did suggest thinking (mind) and virtual (blogging, as you cannot blog except in the virtual world). But that’s not how today the term virtual thinking came to me – it just popped out of the blue, not as a pun but as an insight that which appeared out of nowhere, of course, otherwise it was not insight.

Test your insight: Look at my photograph again, and tell me what you see that I haven’t told you. Email me at frankahilario@gmail.com and I will write an essay about the first 10 of you who submit an insight or two.

Now then, how do you do virtual thinking so that it really is creative thinking?

For the virtual part, you need to start with a blog. Always with a blog, otherwise it’s not virtual. For the thinking part, you need to accept any & all thoughts that intrude into your mind, to allow them to process themselves in and out and not to interfere, to be only a virtual receiver and not a reviewer, to concede and not to contend. Let the Muse of Serendipity tempt you with her wiles. That is to say, be inspired!

Half of the time you don’t blog like that; well, it’s time you do it all the time if you want to learn creative thinking in the most pleasant way.

While I have just invented the term today, I in fact have been virtual-thinking officially, you might say, since February 11, 2006, when I submitted my very first essay to American Chronicle (‘Fuzzy logic and the avian flu’) and, inspired by the immediate and warm acceptance of the article, I at once wrote another and submitted it and it was published in the same day (‘Google is Genius’). My logic was clear, my genius showed up.

Blogging has become second-nature to me, like typing has become play, as you see that I can’t seem to be able to write short pieces. After some 124 weeks, I have written as many long essays, that is to say, I have authored an average of 1 essay a week for the last 28 months. I have always been prolific, even in the number of children from 1 mother: Would you believe 12?

Can you use a mantra for virtual thinking? Try mine, that which I call ‘PS,’ (without the quotes) (click here for details on PS, as mantra).

Open your own blog today, a different or a new one, for learning virtual thinking as a new skill. A blog a day keeps the blues away. If you’re not so sure of your own writing yet, treat your blog as a daily journal for the reading pleasure of your friends and no more. You will gain confidence as you write-publish, write-publish, write-publish from day to day, week to week. This is freedom of the press and you're wielding it.

The beauty of a blog as a plan for practice in creative writing is that:

(1) It’s free.
(2) It’s relaxing.
(3) It’s exhilarating.
(4) There is no killjoy Editor or Publisher – you are on your own. (You can have one KJ later if you like.)

In the meantime, enjoy blogging for your friends. Like I said in December of 2005, blogging is the revenge of the unpublished writer’ (‘The 5th: Freedom of blog,’ creativeleaps.blogspot.com).

If you are religious in your creative blogging, it’s for your own good – you learn to write creatively better, faster. The only way to learn to write is not to write – it’s to write seven times seven times. If you don't have passion, you'll pass out.

While doing your virtual thinking, learn at least one little lesson in creativity everyday. And where do you get those lessons? Read (or reread) any of my essays and I’m sure you’ll learn something, or be inspired by something, and then go ahead and write what you have in mind. (Visit my blogs: ‘The Virtual Thinker’ and ‘Excellence, Manila!’ and revisit this one, ‘Serendipity X.’)

In the world outside the Internet, editors and publishers are the lords and masters, not necessarily respectively. Either or both dictate whom to publish, no matter what quality of writing or thinking has gone into a manuscript. I should know. I have been sending articles to the Manila Chronicle, Daily Express, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Manila Bulletin.

Not only that. If you are persistent, you will earn for all your blogging from Google AdSense. How’s that for incentive? From those newspapers, you don’t even get an A for Attempt.

To help you in your virtual thinking, you can always refer to the online copy of my book (you’re on the right site right now), or you can order the print from me later (I’m going to press within the month). At any rate, possessing the book is not important or necessary; processing the thoughts in the book is.

In fact, I meant that book to be my sourcebook when I conduct creative writing workshops. I’m finishing it with this chapter you are reading now.

Flashback: On May 03, 2008 Manila time, I was still 4 chapters short of the 12 I had planned for that book, but at the rate I was writing, I was going to finish before the month ended. So I was already thinking of how to conduct my creative writing workshop using the book. I didn’t write the book for me; I wrote the book for you. (If you’re reading this elsewhere, you may use my book free as far as that goes; visit ‘Serendipity X,’ theserendipityman.blogspot.com).

So, how was I going to transform non-writers into writers, or poor writers into better writers in, say, 7 days? Creative writing is not simply writing; you don’t pluck creativity from a tree – you pluck it from the air, and that needs technique, even a mantra (see my ‘PS,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com). PS, is a mantra, for creative thinking, yes, but you still need to write creatively. The two don’t necessarily go together.

Then I looked at the act and the fact of blogging. What has blogging done to me, the art and the science of it? That’s when I had the insight: Blogging is not an act; it’s a process. In other words, the process is more important than the act. That’s when I connected blogging with creative thinking. So I had invented creative blogging.

Of course, you probably have connected blogging with creative thinking. Let’s examine that assumption. How do you make sure that when you’re blogging, you’re thinking creatively? (Never mind the grammar and the typos.) And how do you think much, much more? That’s the 64-M dollar question. Half the billion blogs in the world are only half-critically thinking, not to mention half-creatively.

I have been blogging since 2005. On the American Chronicle alone, I have published more than a hundred long essays. As of today, I probably have 70 blogs comprising hundreds of essays, and not the little, disorganized ones you see half of the time, and none of them a rehash of another – so I speak from deep experience. If you want half of the world to respect you as a Blogger, blog well. (The other half of the world isn’t paying attention.)

To write well, what you need is good practice. So, practice well. The only way to learn to write is to write. No, let me reinvent that too. The best way to learn to write is to blog. Blog. And the only way to learn to blog is to blog. The only way to learn to blog well is, well, to learn from the master.

Now then, to learn creative writing, you must learn creative blogging. Virtual thinking. You say: But I don’t feel creative half the time when I’m blogging. Ah, that’s where the guru comes in. For your virtual thinking sessions, apply Frank’s Rules of Virtual Writing – it’s free, on me. Print it out and follow each one of them as much as you can. I guarantee you pleasant results.

And yes, in your blogletting, remember these:

Blog with all your heart & soul.
As you practice blogging, practice your humanity,
Writing is personal.
Make love, not war.
Say thank you.
Have fun!
Do theater when you can.
The Reader is more important than the Blogger.
Tell stories.
Show.
Excellence is in the details.
Open your eyes, not the gate.
You don’t have to be right all the time.
Enjoy the journey - the journey is the reward.
Separate the biodegradable from the non-biodegradable.

As of course I have been following Frank’s Rules for decades, I have found my rhythm. I now have ease of thought flow: 90% inspiration, 10% perspiration. That’s my genius. I have it all the time, on call. What about you who are yet struggling to write or struggling to be a better writer? With virtual thinking, your genius awaits you.

When Ray Bradbury was that high, he met Mr Electrico and, in a magical hour, the magician enchanted the boy, wish-shouting at the believer, ‘Live forever!’ (raybradbury.com). If you write well, you will live forever.

I have proven to myself in the last 33 years that Frank’s Rules work like magic – you just have to believe. Believe forever!

Endnote: This is Chapter 9th of my book, Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. Virtual thinking is a practical way of flogging the mind so that it doesn’t flag down when you’re trying to think creatively. Since it’s a new invention of mine, I’m still in the process of fine-tuning it. Theory must transform itself into practice; practice will confirm or confront theory. Also, if I tried to explain it fully here, where would the fun be if you attended my creative writing workshop?