I just felt that this was important enough to share.

Some of the commenters are taking the opportunity to share their experiences growing up, and the ways porn affected their lives (good and bad alike). I’d like to share my take on it, and I’d like to hear yours as well.

I discovered hormones in the age of really easy digital pornography. I downloaded my first JPGs in early 1998 (guesstimating) and had a few hundred megabytes worth by 2000. Both of my parents worked and didn’t get back until 6 PM, so I had plenty of time to get all the afterschool porn I wanted.

For a hormonal teenage boy, this is a lot of porn. I didn’t go looking every day, but Passerby‘s “same sex couple naked, one or both penetrated, displayed on black latex covered in oil” was small fries.[1] I remember reading a few bestiality stories, trying to figure out the attraction, and I accidentally wandered into a Dolcett archive once. I didn’t like those, but I certainly looked. I got Goatse’d and didn’t like that either. People are weird. Fantasy and reality are very different things. Kids can be much better about understanding that than adults would like to give them credit for.

Like any other activity, I think porn is what you make of it. It has precious little inherent morality. Tulsa mixed fantasy and reality together, and it started affecting her sense of self-worth. I liked Anthony Brown’s posts on Alt.Sex.Stories and started writing my own, hoping that maybe one day someone would enjoy something I wrote as much as I enjoyed Wulf. Tulsa let cybersex become part of her reality. I just took it as writing practice. By the time she was seventeen, she’d lied her way into a tremendously bad situation. By the time I was seventeen, I was… well, surprisingly good at writing. Some people see those seductive black-and-white dungeon photos and get into BDSM; I got into photography. Popups took control of Cand86‘s computer and scared her away; I learned how to lock the computer down and take it back (it helps that I was and remain a technical kind of dork).

In my case, at least, I think porn was a lot better for me than soccer or basketball might have been.

Porn is like alcohol, guns, or credit cards. Their value is in what you make of them. And, like alcohol, guns, and credit, I think that it’s far better to teach people how to deal with them responsibly than simply to hide them away behind some forbidden mystique and expect that maturity later, without benefit of experience.

[1] Incidentally, even at 14, I knew that “latex covered in oil” was bad juju. Give the kids some credit. You’ll ruin your latex. Use something water- or silicone- based.

I think she deserves the same chance. Really, I think that everyone deserves the same chance (that teaching urge is hard to forget), but my friend seems particularly important right now. She’s endearingly quirky and I believe she doesn’t give herself enough credit for how bright she is. Sometimes I wonder how she might change in the experience; I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t make the most of it, but how is anyone’s guess.

I’d like to meet that hypothetical future-self, whoever she might be. I bet she’d have a lot of interesting, compelling things to say.

It’s time for me to put some money where my mouth is.

This is my open gift to her, my promise before all of you. I hope you get to hold me to it.

Hi DeeDee,

Happy graduation, and happy upcoming birthday. Welcome to the start of your adult life.

I think you should go and try college for a semester. Try it on; see if it suits you; see if you can handle it. I think you’ll be surprised. It doesn’t really matter which; even community college is better than none, and you can always transfer up if you find it too easy. Just go full-time and give it your best shot. Keep in touch; let me know how you’re doing and ask if you need help.

If you can pull off that one semester, I’ll help you pay for it. After your finals are done, I’ll drive down to meet you, take you out to lunch, and write you out a check for three hundred and fifty dollars. Call it a delayed scholarship. If you go to a CSU it’s a good start; if you go to a community college, it pays for your tuition, fees, and bus pass, then gets you started on your books. You can use it to keep going, or pay off what you’ve done and stop. I believe in you that much, and that’s my gift to you.

You have one year.

Please don’t waste it.
-Adrian

So, please excuse the lack of posting lately, and maybe for another few days.

Thank you,
~Catboy! =^.^=

While I think that Teach For America’s mission is tremendously important, parts of the program do concern me. As one friend put it, a lot of the program’s teachers just want their requisite nonprofit time before moving on to Senate appointments, and it really does show. I’ve always been a bit more of a craftsman than a politician, personally, and I worry sometimes about whether students suffer as people for the sake of good-looking news stories. They talk about “dynamic teachers who had not only a command of the curriculum but also the ability to connect with children,” but one US News story they shared described an academy founded by former TFA teachers:

Running or yelling is forbidden; students walk in straight, quiet lines. Though classes average more than 30 students, they are so silent you could hear an eraser drop. If a child speaks without being called on, the teacher stops in midsentence. If a child’s attention strays, the teacher warns: “I’m missing one person’s eyes.”

This doesn’t feel like “connecting with children” to me; it feels like a show of force rather than compassion or outreach. The teacher isn’t saying Look at me, because this is important; he says Look at me, because I can humiliate you. The academy even spends the first week “KIPPnotizing” new students to behave that way. I almost expected the example student to snap to his feet, ramrod-straight, and shout “I am sorry, Mein Herr! It shall not happen again!” Discipline and academic rigor have their places, of course, and I’m an advocate of both, but too much of either can be a socially crippling thing.

We are more than our grades and test scores.

Saying this out loud was probably not the smartest thing I have ever done.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Teach For America decided that I was best not left alone around developing young minds. If they hadn’t done that, my assignment would be winding down now, nearing completion, and I think it’s interesting to look back and think about that alternate self, the one who does get paid to help the underachievers.

He doesn’t get to pick his students. I would hate to find myself forced to deal with a year of this. On the other hand, he gets to devote more time to a noble cause, and he gets to give the Opening Talk.

The Opening Talk was supposed to be my first-day speech, a highlight of my general expectations and the material I planned to cover in the class. It was supposed to run bell-to-bell, or very close to it, an indulgence to my sense of the cinematic. I never finished it, but I do have the ending, and I’m still very proud of it.

I can hear you asking, “Why do I need to learn this? What does it matter? They’re only words.”

I will tell you.

Words have power. People will fight and die for words, in ways they wouldn’t dream for any lesser thing. How much money does it take to pay a man to jump on a grenade? There isn’t enough the world, but he’ll do it for his country, because words will stir him, to believe in Mom and apple pie, to remember Pearl Harbor or the Alamo. The greatest battles that the world has ever seen have been fought over the supremacy of words, when the immortal poetry of We the People of the United States of America and the stoic grandeur of God, Queen, and Country were set against the grim and unyeilding fury of Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer.

Words will set the world on fire. Words will shape the minds of men.

Words are the most important tools that you will ever have.

Think about that.

Dismissed.

Sometimes I wonder if it would work the way I planned. Maybe I could have made a difference; maybe I’m better off out here.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
- Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University

Over a lifetime, the average college graduate makes a million dollars more than someone with only a high-school diploma. Many careers remain forever closed to people without degrees. I’ve heard it said that the first four years of college are worth ten in the field.

A university education is about more than job training, though: a good one forces you to digest so many different viewpoints, so many disciplines and ideas, that it’s almost about transformation. For me it was a chance to grow into myself, for me to find new directions and the things I really care about. It did wonders for my social consciousness. None of this would have ever happened if I hadn’t gone to Cal, and I doubt that 1000Gears would exist at all. I wouldn’t be half of the person I am now if I’d gone to an industry training program and called it done.

I think that’s what disappoints me most about my friend’s situation. I think she would grow from it, and her transformation would be a staggering thing to watch. First she has to go, though, and put herself through the mill.

I’m not about to lie. It’s hard and it’s not for everyone. More than once I pushed myself too hard and broke against my limits. Every year I could count on staying awake, grinding away at a project, until the sun rose over my shoulder. I learned a lot of things the hard way, by failing over and over again until I got them right.

That’s part of the process, though, part of life, part of becoming the people we would like to be. It takes a forge to make good steel.

im willing to lern im only thirteen but i want to be a great author more than anything

I spent a lot of time wondering if I should write back. My day job cuts into my writing time enough as is, and I’m not really sure I believe that she wants to improve. Particularly in fan communities, many writers will praise each other and enjoy being praised, even if their work simply doesn’t measure up. Writing is less an end and more a means for growing closer. They write for community, because humans are storytellers by nature, because they enjoy sitting around the virtual campfire.

Basically it’s a circle-jerk of the ego.

It’s too bad that I’ve never really been friendly enough for that sort of thing.

I thought about it until she wrote to me again.

i went to ur website cuz i was interested in more of ur stuff cuz that first link you gave me was pretty cool im wondering if u care if i use ur stuff in some of my storys not published or anything like that im not that stupid ive seen ur copyright but as inspiration do you mind?

My answer that time was reflexive: I do care, and it bothers me quite a bit. While I admit to reading the Wulf Archives in my early teens, I can’t really endorse handing out shameless pornography to a thirteen-year-old, particularly one who can’t even write a coherent sentence. More than that, though, is the idea that someone could just “use ur stuff”; writing simply doesn’t work that way. It’s not like drawing, where you can develop muscle-memory in the process. Inspiration is one thing, but copying is quite another. Published or not, it doesn’t teach anything; it has no instructional value.

I closed out my reply with this thought: If you really want to improve, you could look at what you enjoy about my writing, and practice to achieve the same effect. It’s much more effort, but the work and the credit be yours, not mine, if you make something really worthwhile.

For a while that was enough, but later that night I sat down and wrote her a more complete explanation. She deserved that much, I thought, and ultimately it cost me nothing to sit down for an hour of downtime and try, one more time, to reach her. I’m actually rather proud of it.

> i want to be a great author more than anything

I’ve been trying to decide how to respond to this for a while now.

I can’t teach you to be a great author.

I can’t even teach you to be a great writer.

There is a subtle and important difference, and I hope you understand it. The way I’m going to use it here, an author, I think, is as much a matter of community as it is a matter of craft. An author is recognized by what he has accomplished; he has an audience and performs upon the stage of their expectations, both on and off the page. An author has a presence. By that measure, I am barely an author at all, let alone a great one.

So what am I, if I am not an author? I am a writer. I write. That is all. I claim no allegiance to any community, no responsibility to any fans. My loyalty is to the craft, to the endless pursuit of an aesthetic. To this end I am only an egg, unhatched. For the most part I have learned by doing, fumbling in the dark, and there is very little I know that isn’t taught in school.

Even if I were a great writer, I’m not sure that I could teach you, or that such a thing can even be taught. Almost by definition great writing transcends teaching. There are no magic pills, or even magic lessons; there is no list of things to learn that add up to greatness, at least not in any meaningful sense. “Bring your images to life.” “Omit needless words.” What do these things mean, really? What makes an image live? Which words are needless? I barely even know, and only then by the faint and painful whispers in the shadows of my dreams. Great writing has a certain sublime quality, a certain alchemical purity that I find hard to even quantify, let alone bottle up and teach.

I don’t think I can even teach you to write in my own style. It would be an empty lesson, a farce if not an insult. A style is so… so personal. I can step into Hemmingway’s style, for a few sentences, and it’s like stepping into his head, like seeing the stark cold lines of reality drawn and highlighted by his eyes, like feeling the hard, proud machismo pounding in his chest, and the weight of his existence upon his shoulders. It’s a profound experience, but it is also a profound wrongness; a style is like a man’s skin, like a suit cut for him and him alone. Wearing someone else’s bends you in places where you have no joints, or you wear out the fabric where a seam should have buttressed it. A style is like armor; if it is not yours, you will break it – and it will break you.

So what do I have to teach? I could, I think, teach you to write the same way I do, with the same process, but I ask you… is this really what you want? I don’t think you understand what that means. It is very simple. There are only two lessons:

1 – You must have the courage to see your mistakes, and the determination to find them all. What is a mistake? Everything that is not perfect is a mistake.

2 – You may never forgive yourself for any of them, ever again.

It’s that simple.

Writing is a slavery. I am a servant of my craft, an empty vessel for the words to fill. I suppose I am a good servant, or at least a competent one, but it is hard to tell; three or four years ago I would have been thrilled with what I’m writing today, but as you grow, so too does your understanding of perfection. You chase something that can never be caught, not in a thousand lifetimes of geniuses a thousand times better than you will ever be, but still you serve, because anything else would be unthinkable; you serve because anything else would tear away the piece of yourself that you’ve already poured into the craft. To write the way that I do is to sit trembling in the corner for hours, sifting your mind for the right word; to wake up gasping and desperate in the middle of the night, hunting for paper to catch the phrases before they fade; to beat your head on the shower wall, trying to make the words come; and to wish, at the same time, that you could stop, and that it would never end.

More than that, though, writing this way means that you will never again be happy with anything you ever make.

Is that what you really want?

Think about it.
-Adrian

I suspected that it would go over her head (to be perfectly truthful, I think basic sentence structure goes over her head), but maybe in five years she’ll open it again and understand what I’m trying to tell her. That’ll be worth it.

Realistically in five years I’ll be ‘that 1 meen guy who was 2 stuk up to help me’.

That’s a cross I’m willing to bear.

Forward to the Aftermath

do u think u can help me with my writing?

She made it sound so easy. I don’t think she understood what she asked.

I remember a story about a pianist, supposedly Vladimir Horowitz but probably apocryphal. After a concert, it’s said that a woman came up to speak with him, amazed by how well he played. “I’d give twenty years of my life to play like that!” she gushed.

Horowitz looked pleased. “Ma’am, that’s exactly what it takes!”

I wanted to tell her this story, because I think that was my biggest reservation. I don’t believe in “writing talent”. Writing is a matter of discipline and precious little else; writers who “naturally” do good work have internalized it, turned craft into instinct. It takes years – decades in most cases – to make a compelling writer from scratch. She told me later that she was thirteen. That puts her in eighth grade, maybe even high school, and still unable (or unwilling, perhaps) to spell out “you” or use any capital letters.

I’m not a miracle worker. I’m not extraordinary. I’m just a public-school brat with a good work ethic and a few good teachers; I started public school in kindergarten and stayed in public schools (minus a summer) until the day I walked off the stage with my bachelor’s degree. Teach For America turned down my application. In eight years or more, she couldn’t find the motivation to learn basic sentence structure; what made her think I could give it to her in my spare time?

Still, I wrote back, trying to nudge her in the right direction.

Do you really want the help I have to offer? I’m an infamously unforgiving tutor, as I believe that writing is an even more unforgiving master.
There are probably better ways to ask that question, if you really mean it.

-Adrian

A few hours later, my email alarm went off again.

my question is do u think in the futur u could help me with my own writing?

*headdesk*

Forward to part 3