Category: Uncategorized

Sample: Speech, Livestreamed to 4000 Parents in China

I decided to just go with our final version here, the one with the Chinese translation underneath every slide paragraph. For Shiliu Education.

Creative Writing: The Key to Unlocking Innovative Thinking.

创意写作：开启创新思维之门

          

                         

Jason Edward Harrington

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Opening: Ni hao! Wo jiao Jason! That’s the only thing I can say in Chinese, although I want to learn more. Hopefully, one day some of your children will be my Chinese speaking teachers, in return for me being their English writing teacher! Welcome to my lecture! Let’s begin.

你好，我叫Jason。虽然我想学习更多的中文，但这是我目前唯一会说的。希望有一天，你们的孩子可以成为我的中文口语老师，而我能成为他们的英语写作老师。欢迎大家来到我的讲座，让我们开始吧！

Slide 1: Question: What are Americans good at? Besides being a little too fat and eating far too much fast food?

首先我想问大家一个问题：美国人在哪些方面是佼佼者？除了他们的体型有点过于庞大以及平时吃太多的快餐？

Answer: Innovation— Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook,the Internet itself. Steve Jobs studied calligraphy in college for months. Learning obscure, beautiful handwriting doesn’t sound like an ingredient for a multi-billion-dollar company, does it? However, this creative, unusual decision by Jobs ended up being a huge part of Apple’s success in product design. Learning to think creatively is a key part in learning to thrive in, and compete with, the Western world, as well as with the world in general.

答案是：创新——苹果、谷歌、微软、脸书、以及互联网本身。史蒂夫·乔布斯曾在大学里学习了几个月的书法。学习晦涩难懂的、漂亮的字体听起来和一家市值几十亿美元的公司，是吗？然而，乔布斯的这一非同寻常的决定为日后苹果在产品设计上的成功埋下了伏笔。掌握创新思维是掌握了在西方世界乃至整个世界中脱颖而出的核心竞争力。

Can you think of another thing thatAmericans are generally the best at?

你能想到美国人在有什么其他领域是特别擅长的吗？

Slide 2: Making movies! Without doubt, American films are the most popular and influential in the world. And actually, it was movies that started my writing journey. At age 12, I bought a book on “How to Write Screenplays.” I finished my first full screenplay at age 15. It was a comedy. Nobody read it except my mother. She thought it was great, but then again, mothers think everything their children create is beautiful, even if it’s ugly as a deformed pig.

拍电影！毫无疑问，美国电影是世界上最受欢迎和最具影响力的电影。实际上，正是电影让我走上了写作之旅。12岁时，我买了一本关于”如何写剧本”的书。我在15岁时完成了我的第一部剧本，那是一部喜剧，而我的妈妈是我唯一的读者。妈妈给了我的处女作非常高的评价，但话又说回来，全世界的妈妈们都会认为自己孩子所有作品都是最棒的，哪怕它再烂再糟糕。

I then began writing screenplays for short movies, and filming them on a cheap video recorder my parents bought for me. After I finished making the movies, which starred such famous actors as my sister, my cousin, and my best friend, I showed them to small groups of schoolmates. I’ll never forget the moment one of my school friends said, “Oh my god, I’m actually scared right now!” when watching a short horror movie I had filmed. My creative work was actually having an effect on people, small as it was.

此后，我开始写一些短片的剧本，然后用我父母给我买的廉价录像机拍摄。在我拍完短片后，我会和我的同学们分享。这些短片由我妹妹、我的表妹和我最好的朋友等著名演员主演。我永远不会忘记我的一个同学在看我拍摄的一部短片时说：“哦天呐，我现在真的很害怕！”我的创意作品正在发挥它的价值和影响力， 虽然有时候微不足道。

Slide 3: In high school, we began having creative writing months, where we would spend 2 weeks writing a story, and then, after finishing, go to the front of the class one by one to read our short fiction aloud. My story was sci-fi, influenced by Michael Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park.” In undergrad, I double majored in creative writing and screenwriting. Both of these subjects were in the creative writing department, because creative writing can be a lot of things.

上高中的时候，我们学校曾举办过创意写作月。那时候我们会花2周时间写一篇小说。在故事完成后，我们会去教室的前面一个一个大声朗读我们的短篇小说。 受《侏罗纪公园》的作者迈克尔·克里希顿的影响，我当时写的是一个科幻小说。在本科阶段，我攻读了创意写作和编剧这两个双学位。这两个学位都属于创意写作系，因为创意写作的涵盖面很广。

At its core, creative writing is original writing that expresses thoughts in an imaginative way. It’s the art of making things up—some authors have joked that they lie for a living!— or putting a creative twist on history (as in creative historical nonfiction). Creative writing goes outside of professional, academic, or technical forms of writing. Magazine stories can be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism. So both fictional and nonfictional works are considered creative writing, including novels, biographies, short stories, and poems.

创作的核心是以富有想象力的方式表达思想的原创性写作。这是编造东西的艺术——一些创意写作作家会开玩笑说，他们是靠骗人谋生的，有时他们也会对历史进行创意改编。创意写作不属于任何一种专业型、学术型或技术型的写作形式。杂志故事可以被认为是创意写作，即使他们属于新闻的体系。因此，虚构和非虚构作品都被认为是创意写作，包括小说、传记、短篇小说和诗歌。

Creative writing is marked by the use of entertaining literary techniques and style. I first learned about lovely literary style in university, from an old, bald, brilliant Russian man. He was a poet and a mathematician, who was prone to passionate outbursts in which he’d slam thick Russian novels on his desk to get us to pay attention.

创意写作的特点是使用娱乐性的文学技巧和风格。我第一次从大学时学到的这种文学风格，是来自一个苍老的，秃顶的，才华横溢的俄罗斯男老师。他是一位诗人和数学家，他在上课时每到激动之处就会把厚厚的俄罗斯小说在桌上猛摔，以吸引我们的注意。

Through him I gained a love for the great Russian writers, especially Vladimir Nabokov. And by reading Nabokov I learned that the language and scenes in creative writing can be just as captivating as those in movies, with imagery as rich, flavorful, and spicy as the hotpot in Chengdu. The old Russian also taught me the relationship between reading and writing. Being a mathematician as well as a poet, he taught me the structured and disciplined side of creative writing. “To succeed as a writer, you must have ‘stick-to-it-veness’, he would say. Stick-to-it-veness was a word he had cleverly invented: a combination of words, meaning “the quality of sticking to it.”

通过这位老师，我爱上了伟大的俄罗斯作家，尤其是弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫。通过阅读纳博科夫的作品，我体会到创意写作的语言和场景可以像电影中的语言和场景一样迷人，带给人一种丰富、美妙、酣畅的滋味，就像成都老火锅一样。这位俄罗斯老师也教会了我读书和写作的关系。作为一名数学家和诗人，他告诉我创意写作也讲究结构性和逻辑性。他曾说过，”作为一个作家，你必须要有一种stick-to-it-veness。”这个词是老师的独家发明，它是一个合成词，意思是”坚持不懈的品质”。

In other words, you must persevere, work very hard and never give up to succeed in creative writing. The old Russian taught me that creative writing is not just about running wild with imagination, or splashing emotional opinions on the page. It is also about perseverance, clever thinking, hard work, and a lot of practice.

And in creative writing, a lot of practice comes through reading— a key part of learning how to write well is by absorbing how other accomplished and skillful authors write.

换句话说，你必须坚持不懈，努力工作，永不放弃才能在创意写作中取得成功。俄罗斯老师告诉我，创意写作不仅仅是用想象力狂野地奔跑，或在纸端倾泻自己的情感观点。创意写作需要我们具有坚毅的品格，精巧的构思，努力的耕耘，和大量的实践。在创意写作中，大量的练习都是通过阅读完成的——想要学好创意写作，一个关键步骤就是大量吸收和借鉴其他成功作家的优秀作品。

The Russian taught us a good exercise for bringing reading and writing together:  mimicking the writing of great authors, also called “parodying” a writer.  With the help of the Russian’s parody assignments, I ended up publishing several parodies of classic authors. It’s great for students to mimic the style and voice of great authors. Then, they can develop their own style and voice, after having mastered the style of classic writers.  

俄罗斯老师教我们一个很好的结合阅读和写作的练习：模仿伟大作家作品。 在俄罗斯老师的模仿训练的帮助下， 我最终出版了几部经典作品的仿作。对于学生来说，模仿伟大作家的风格和观点是很好的写作训练。在掌握了经典作家的风格后，他们就可以发展自己的风格和观点。

Slide 4: My first publication! You can see my name underlined on this slide. Hair Trigger was Columbia University’s yearly anthology of the best student writing. It meant I was among the best of the best out of thousands of writers at my college.

我的第一本出版物！您可以在这张幻灯片上看到我的名字被下划线标出。Hair Trigger是哥伦比亚大学每年最佳学生作品的精选集。能够入选意味着我属于学校成千上万的写手中最厉害的一批。

I continued to get published in the annual collection of the best writing, because I was one of the students who understood the difference between academic and creative writing. With academic writing, the purpose is purely to inform, it is very structured and strict, and is targeted for a very specific audience: for example, teachers, specific professors around the world, or the people in an industry. It is giving “the facts only,” with minimal, if any, use of imaginative language, and little use of narrative.

我继续发表在年度精选集中发表作品，因为我是理解学术写作和创意写作区别的学生之一。学术写作的目的是传达讯息，它是非常结构化和严谨的。它的目标读者也是特定的，例如老师，世界各地的教授，或者行业工作者。它只赋予”事实”，很少使用富有想象力的语言，也很少使用叙述手法。

The purpose of creative writing, on the other hand, is more to entertain, and sometimes inform. For example, historical novels and movies entertain, but also inform us about history. It is also structured, but to a lesser degree. You are free to use your imagination and be creative!  And it is generally much more fun!

另一方面，创意写作的目的更多的是给人美好的阅读体验，有时也起传递讯息的作用。例如，历史小说和电影都是娱乐性的，但它们也告诉我们历史的讯息。它也是结构化的，但不那么受限制。你可以自由发挥你的想象力和创造力！ 它可以很有趣！

And wow! I had fun writing in college! I thought I was an amazing writer, because year after year, I made it into Hair Trigger. Looking back, I realize I was overconfident about my abilities. I was a big fish in a small pond, as the saying goes. But I was about to learn how hard it is to be published in the professional industry, competing against the entire world.

孩子， 我在大学里写作玩得开心吗？我以为我是一个了不起的作家， 因为一年一年， 我进入头发触发器。回首往事，我意识到我对自己的能力过于自信。我是小池塘里的一条大鱼，正如谚语说的。但我正要了解在专业行业出版，与整个世界竞争是多么困难。

Slide 5: After graduating college, I got a job with the U.S. government, in the federal security department. It was a job that did not allow for innovative thinking and so, being a creative person, I had to continue to express this part of me, somehow. So I began trying to succeed in the world of professional, paid writing. I started submitting articles to Cracked.com, a popular, fact-based humor site with an audience of millions. It took me over 25 attempts to get my first article accepted, but that first acceptance was one of the happiest days of my young life.

大学毕业后，我在美国政府联邦安全部门找到了一份工作。这是一份不允许任何创新思维的工作。但是，作为一个有创造力的人，我不得不继续表现我自己这方面的能力。所以我开始尝试进行专业写作并赚取报酬。我开始向一个Cracked.com这样一个拥有数百万访客量的流行幽默网站投稿。经过超过25次的投稿，我的第一篇文章才最终被发表，那一次是我年轻时最幸福的时刻之一。

My favorite and most viewed article, “The 7 Most Impressively Lazy Employees of All Time,” was exactly what the title advertises: a funny article showing 7 of the laziest employees to ever make the national news in America. I noticed that most of them were U.S. government employees. Because I was working for the U.S. government, and saw how incredibly lazy many of my colleagues were, I was not at all surprised.

我最喜欢的和浏览量最多的文章是”史上7种最令人印象深刻的懒惰员工”。正是标题所揭示的：这是一篇调侃上得了全美新闻7种最懒惰的员工的轻松小品文。我发现他们中的大多数是美国政府雇员。因为我曾为美国政府工作，看到身边很多同事是多么的懒惰，所以我一点也不惊讶。

Another of the proudest moments of my life, up until then, was when one of my co-workers, with whom I had never talked, walked up to me and told me that he had happened to see my article on Cracked.com, as he was a big fan of Cracked. My writing was reaching enough people that strangers were now approaching me to tell me they had read and enjoyed my writing—as you can see, creative writing is also targeted for a MUCH bigger audience than academic writing. That day, I felt just a little famous for the first time in my life.

在此之前，我一生最引以为豪的另一个时刻是，一个我之前从未交谈过的同事走过来告诉我说，他碰巧看到我在Cracked.com上的文章，因为他是该网站的忠实粉丝。 我的写作可以触及更大的读者群体，以至于陌生人会过来告诉我他们读过和喜欢我的文章。正如你所见，创意写作比学术写作面向更多的受众。那天，我人生中第一次觉得自己出名了。

Slide 6: After having found so much success at Cracked.com, I wanted to get a piece into a more prestigious publication. So I chose the most respected online humor publication in the world: McSweeney’s. It seemed impossible to get an article accepted with them. I submitted nearly 50 pieces to them, and suffered nearly 50 rejections, before I finally succeeded.

在Cracked.com网站上获得了巨大成功后，我想把一篇文章发表在一个更负盛名的出版物上。所以我选择了世界上最受尊敬的在线幽默出版物：麦克斯威尼。 他们似乎不可能接受我的文章。我向他们提交了近50次稿件，并遭受了近50次拒绝，直到我终于如愿以偿。

I learned that the key to getting accepted into a highly selective publication is learning their style, what they’re looking for, and then adjusting your writing to meet their preferences. Applying for publication was a lot like applying for jobs! I published nearly 20 articles with McSweeney’s. Two of them were reviewed in The New Yorker Magazine, as recommended reading.  I then moved on to my next project in life: preparing to go to grad school.

我意识到，被一家出版物接受的关键是学习他们的风格，他们正在寻找什么，然后修改你的文章以满足他们的偏好。申请出版的过程很像申请工作！

我在麦克斯威尼发表了近 20 篇文章。其中两篇在《纽约客》杂志上被评论并作为推荐阅读。 随后，我开始追求人生中的下一个目标：申请读研究生。

Slide 7:  I knew that all the publications I had achieved would look good on my grad school application. One type of publication that impresses almost any type of grad school program is a book review. It shows grad school offices that you are able to analyze texts, identify the structures used in them, and then eloquently express your opinions on them, using supporting details: the exact thing that universities want students to do in academic essays.

我知道我所发表的所有作品会给我的研究生申请加分。一种可以几乎给所有研究生院留下深刻印象的作品就是书评。 它可以展示给研究生院你具备分析文本，识别其中使用的结构，运用证据来支持你对它们的看法，这些都是大学希望学生在学术论文中所能运用的技能。

One of the book reviews I successfully had published was about Vladimir Nabokok. I knew that this, along with all my other publications, would give me an advantage over all the other applicants. And it did: I applied to 8 graduate school programs, and I got accepted into all 8 of them.

我成功出版的一本书评论是关于弗拉基米尔·纳博科克的。我知道，连同我所有其他出版物，将给我一个优势，比所有其他申请人。它做到了： 我申请了 8 个研究生院课程， 我被其中所有 8 个课程录取了

This is why creative writing is helpful for students applying to colleges or jobs, and why they should learn creative writing. College entrance exams, especially in the West, always demand that students show an ability to identify structures in pieces of academic writing samples, as well as creative writing samples, and analyze them creatively.

这就是为什么创造性写作对申请大学或工作的学生有帮助，以及为什么他们应该学习创造性写作。大学入学考试，尤其是西方的高考，总是要求学生表现出在学术写作样本和创造性写作样本中识别结构的能力，并创造性地分析它们。

And both college and job application departments look for applications that really stand out. The absolute best way to make one’s application stand out from all the others is by using creative elements in the application.

大学和求职部门都在寻找真正脱颖而出的申请。使一个人的应用程序从所有其他应用程序脱颖而出的绝对最佳方式是使用应用程序中的创意元素。

Creative thinking is not valued as highly in the East as it is in the West. Helping children learn to think creatively—as I did when I begged my mother to buy that screenwriting book so many years ago— will create a new generation of citizens who are able to think more innovatively, on the same level as the Western world. This will make them much more competitive. 

创造性思维在东方不像西方那样受到重视。帮助孩子们学会创造性思维——正如我多年前恳求母亲买那本写剧本时那样——将创造出新一代的公民，他们能够像西方世界一样，以创新的方式思考。这将使他们更具竞争力。

Slide 8: Now that I was able to quit my government job in order to pursue my grad school studies, and ultimately, my writing dream, I was free to begin expressing my opinions about my former government security job. There was one important thing that the American public needed to know.

现在，我能够辞去政府工作，以追求我的研究生院学习，并最终，我的写作梦想，我可以自由地开始表达我的意见，我的前政府保障工作。有一件重要的事情，美国公众需要知道。

The nude x-ray scanners at the airport were ineffective, and many government employees were secretly laughing at the naked images of airline passengers. The men were also being naughty with some of the nude images of female passengers, even taking photos of them with their phones. I decided to start a blog, which I titled “Taking Sense Away,” telling the world about all the details of day-to-day life as a government employee at the airport. Eventually I wrote about the abuse of the x-ray scanners, and overnight, hundreds of thousands of people visited my personal website.

机场的裸体X光扫描仪无效，许多政府雇员暗中嘲笑航空公司乘客的裸照。这些男人还顽皮地看到一些女性乘客的裸照，甚至用手机给他们拍照。我决定开一个博客，标题是”带走感官”，告诉世界作为政府雇员在机场日常生活的所有细节。最后，我写了关于X光扫描仪的滥用，一夜之间，成千上万的人访问我的个人网站。

As you can see on this slide, next to the celebration balloons, nearly 1.4 million people have visited my personal website, as of today. My true story of how the American government was misusing the x-ray technology was important enough to appear in several American newspapers. When the public found out that the creator of the website was also a published writer in many other outlets, interest in me grew greatly. An editor from Politico Magazine, one of the most popular political publications in America, contacted me. She wanted to bring my story to the entire world.

正如你在这张幻灯片上看到的，在庆祝气球旁边，截至今天，已有近140万人访问过我的个人网站。我关于美国政府滥用X光技术的真实故事很重要，足以出现在几家美国报纸上。当公众发现该网站的创建者也是许多其他渠道的出版作家时，人们对我的兴趣大增。美国最受欢迎的政治出版物之一《政治杂志》的一位编辑与我联系。她想把我的故事带到全世界。

Slide 9: I was sitting in a grad school Shakespeare class, when the Politico article went live on their website, as well as in print. The POLITICO Magazine editor kept texting me updates every 20 minutes, telling me how many people had viewed the article: “1 million  people. 2 million people. 3 million people!”

 我坐在研究生院的莎士比亚课上， 当政治文章在他们的网站上和印刷品上直播。《政治》杂志的编辑每20分钟给我一次短信更新，告诉我有多少人看过这篇文章：”100万人。200万人300万人！

Within an hour, 5 million people had seen my article. I was shaking in my seat, trembling with excitement and fear. That evening’s lesson on Romeo and Juliet was going in one ear and out the other. All I could think about was my super-popular article, which was rampaging across the world faster and faster with every tick of the clock on the classroom’s wall.  

在一个小时内，有500万人看了我的文章。我在座位上颤抖着， 兴奋和恐惧地颤抖着。那天晚上关于罗密欧和朱丽叶的课是一只耳朵进，另一只耳朵出。我所想到的只是我那篇超级受欢迎的文章，随着教室墙上时钟的每一滴滴答声，文章越来越快地席卷全球。 

I had to excuse myself from the class. At that moment, my viral report against the corrupt government agency I had worked for just a few months prior was a little more important than Shakespeare. I was ecstatic, and terrified. This fear was irrational, because in the U.S., the Freedom of Speech laws apply strongly to former government employees.  

我不得不原谅自己上课。那一刻，我对几个月前我工作过的腐败的政府机构的病毒性报道比莎士比亚更重要一点。我欣喜若狂，吓坏了。这种担心是不合理的，因为在美国，言论自由法强烈地适用于前政府雇员。 

It took a lot of courage to stand up to the entire U.S. government as I had done. By the time I got home, every single major news TV station from America to Europe was calling my cell phone and emailing me, asking for TV, radio and newspaper interviews. Although intimidated by the worldwide attention, I relaxed when I realized I was being treated like a hero for telling the world the truth, not like a villain. By the end of that night, I felt as though my act of writing had been one of courage— as though I’d acted as brave as a lion, or as fearlessly as the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Jurassic Park movie I had loved so much growing up.

我像我那样，要与整个美国政府站在一起，需要很大的勇气。当我到家时，从美国到欧洲的每家主要新闻电视台都给我打电话和发电子邮件，要求电视、广播和报纸采访。 虽然被全世界的关注吓倒了，但当我意识到自己被当作英雄对待，告诉世界真相，而不是像恶棍一样时，我放松了。到了那晚，我觉得我的写作行为好像是勇气的——好像我像狮子一样勇敢，或者像《侏罗纪公园》电影中的暴龙雷克斯一样无所畏惧。

Slide 10: The Politico piece ended up getting almost 100 million views, forcing the American government to respond to my article, twice. Within 2 months, the government changed the intrusive and low-quality x-ray machines they were using for better ones. They also made new rules for employees that prevented the bad behavior so common amongst my former co-workers. My article had made a real change in the world—forcing the government to improve its policies and upgrade its technology in just a couple of months.

《政治》一文最终获得近一亿次的 浏览量，迫使美国政府两次回应我的文章。 在两个月内，政府改变了侵入性和低质量的X光机，他们用于更好的。

他们还为员工制定新规则，防止不良行为在以前的同事中如此常见。 我的文章使世界真正改变了——迫使政府仅仅在几个月内就改进了政策并升级了技术。

Having a piece of writing become this popular, this fast, quickly creates a lot of opportunities. For one, Hollywood came calling. Every major studio wanted to buy the rights to my story. In the end, I sold the rights to Paramount Pictures, after writing a 100-page screenplay of my full story. Finally, I was talking to and dealing with the world of Hollywood, as had been my boyhood dream!

有一篇文章成为如此流行，这种快速，迅速创造了很多的机会。其一，好莱坞来电话。每个主要的工作室都想购买我故事的权。 最后，我卖掉了派拉蒙电影公司的权利，在写了一个100页的剧本后，我的故事。最后，我和好莱坞的世界交谈和打交道，正如我童年的梦想一样！

Slide 11: This is why students should learn creative writing: it enables people to express themselves eloquently and persuasively, allowing them to make changes for the better in the world, like when I forced the American government to change the old x-ray scanners.

这就是为什么学生应该学习创造性写作： 它使人们能够而有说服力地表达自己，使他们能够改变世界，就像我迫使美国政府改变旧的X光扫描仪。

Also, it is fun, and, at times, can make people’s dreams come true. Even for those who don’t want to specialize in a creative writing-related field, it is therapeutic, by allowing people to release the ideas and thoughts trapped inside of them. Personally, it has given me the edge, many times, in job applications, college application essays, as well on the job, where at times I have been able to present very creative solutions to bosses that other colleagues could not think of.

而且，它很有趣，有时，可以使人们的梦想成真。即使对于那些不想专门从事创意写作相关领域工作的人，它可以帮助人们释放深埋内心的想法。就我个人而言，它给了我很多次在求职申请、大学申请论文以及工作方面的优势，有时我能够向老板们提出其他同事都想不出的非常有创意的解决方案。

Slide 12: After the enormous success of the Politico piece, I felt happier than a man on an all-paid, two-week vacation to Hainan Island.One of the other opportunities that came after the POLITICO piece was Time Magazine. They wanted me to tell them more about my experience working for American government security.

在《政治》作品取得巨大成功之后，我感到比一个人在海南岛享受为期两周的带薪假期更快乐。《时代》杂志是《政治》杂志之后的另一个机会。他们想让我告诉他们更多关于我为美国政府安全工作的经验。

My mother and father used to have a yearly subscription to TIME magazine, and I grew up with those magazines spread all over the tables like giant playing cards. I immediately jumped at the chance. I was ecstatic to be able to tell my parents “I have an article in TIME Magazine today.” Their faces lit up with pride, brighter than a pair of Christmas trees.

我父母曾经每年订阅《时代》杂志，我从小就喜欢像玩巨型卡片一样把杂志摆满餐桌桌面。我立刻抓住机会，欣喜若狂地告诉我的父母 “《时代》杂志上有一篇我的文章。他们的脸挂满了骄傲，好像两棵圣诞树一样闪亮动人。

Slide 13: Although the world wanted me to write about my experience with the government, I was determined to prove I could write about much more. I decided to give the New York Times a try.

虽然全世界都希望我写一些我与政府的经历，但我决心证明我能写更多。我决定试一试《纽约时报》。

I was living in Chicago, the most violent city in America, when the famous filmmaker, Spike Lee, decided to make a film about the gang violence there. I took the opportunity to visit the film set, spend time in the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, and interview the residents of the city about the violence. I submitted a proposal to the Times, for a creative nonfiction piece about the upcoming movie, and the epidemic of violence in the city.

我住在芝加哥，美国最暴力的城市，当时著名的电影制片人斯派克·李决定拍一部关于那里帮派暴力的电影。我借此机会参观了电影集，花时间在芝加哥最危险的街区，并采访城市居民关于暴力。我向《泰晤士报》提交了一份提案，为一部关于即将上映的电影和该市暴力流行的非小说性作品提交了一篇创意性文章。

Writing for the New York Times was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I had a 7-day deadline to complete the piece. After writing one draft of the piece, the New York Times editor told me it wasn’t good enough; I had to start over again.

为《纽约时报》写作是我做过的最艰难的事之一。我有一个7天的最后期限来完成这件作品。在写了一篇草稿之后，《纽约时报》的编辑告诉我，这还不够好。我不得不重新开始。

I wrote a second draft. Again, the Times editor told me it wasn’t good enough. I had to delete half of it and rewrite the other half. It kept going on like this, until finally, my draft was accepted. Then it was run through the rigorous New York Times fact-checking department. They verified and checked up on almost everything in the article.

我写了第二稿。《泰晤士报》的编辑再次告诉我这还不够好。我不得不删除一半， 重写另一半。在反复多次之后我的稿件终于通过了，但它还要再经过严格的纽约时报编辑部的文章真实性审核，他们审查了我文章中的几乎所有内容。

I thought I would fail, with the clock ticking, and with the various editors and researchers at the Times being so hard on me. But finally, my piece was cleared for publication. I had done it. Writing for the Times made me realize just how hard creative writing can be, and how much research, hard work, and analytical thinking you have to exert in order to get into the most respected publication in the world. As my Russian teacher had said so many years ago, it required all the “stick-to-it-veness” in the world.

随着时间的点滴流逝，我以为我会失败，《泰晤士报》的各编辑和研究人员对我如此努力。但最后，我的作品被批准出版。我已经做到了。为《泰晤士报》写作让我意识到创造性写作是多么艰难，为了进入世界上最受尊敬的出版物，你必须进行多少研究、辛勤工作和分析思维。正如我的俄语老师多年前说过的，它要求世界上所有的”坚持到底”。

Slide 14:  Here are three book recommendations I can provide, for three different learner levels. First, for beginners, “A Sound of Thunder.” A quick read by the great science fiction author Ray Bradbury—it always stimulates imagination in youths, whilst introducing a simple, yet thought-provoking philosophical concept that will stay with readers for the rest of their lives. And it includes a giant, terrifying dinosaur!

这里有三本书的建议，我可以提供，为三个不同的学习者水平。首先，对于初学者，”雷声”。伟大的科幻小说作家雷·布拉德伯里（Ray Bradbury）的快速阅读——它总是激发年轻人的想象力，同时引入一种简单而发人深省的哲学概念，让读者一起度过余生。它包括一个巨大的，可怕的恐龙！

Second, for intermediate learners, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Harper’s Lee’s classic drama, told through the eyes of a 6-year-old girl, has been a part of middle school children’s lives for over 50 years. Its amazing insights and powerful messages are inspiring and timeless.

第二，对于中级学习者，”杀死一只知更鸟”。哈珀的经典戏剧，通过一个6岁女孩的眼睛告诉，已经成为中学生生活的一部分超过50年。 其惊人的见解和强大的信息是鼓舞人心和永恒的。

And finally, for advanced learners, “Black Boy”: the harrowing and, at times, heart-breaking autobiographical tale of Richard Wright’s escape from the oppressive South in the 1920s, to make his way to the safer, “promised land” of Chicago.

最后，对于高级学习者来说，”黑人男孩”：理查德·赖特在20世纪20年代逃离压迫性的南方的令人痛心的、有时令人心碎的自传故事，他到芝加哥更安全、更”应许之地”。

Slide 15: I will wrap up today by telling you why I’m suited to teach your kids creative writing. First, I have a lot of experience in the professional publishing world, as you can see. I have also been taught by some of the greatest living authors today.

 今天，我将告诉你为什么我适合教你的孩子创造性写作。首先，我有很多经验，在专业出版领域，你可以看到。今天，一些最伟大的活着的作家也教过我。

Also, I have a lifelong passion for this. It is fun for me. So I am always happy to spend extra tine with students to help them with their writing pieces. I get true joy out of it!

此外，我毕生对此充满热情。对我来说很有趣。所以我总是很乐意花额外的时间与学生，以帮助他们与他们的写作。我从中得到真正的快乐！

Additionally, I understand the difficulties of speaking and writing in another language. I taught myself Spanish, so I can sympathize with the challenges they face. I have also been teaching online ESL and writing to Asian youths and adults for 5 years.

此外，我理解用另一种语言说话和写作的困难。我自学了西班牙语，这样我才能同情他们面临的挑战。我也一直在教在线ESL和写作给亚洲青年和成年人5年。

These experiences have given me a deep understanding of what it is like for your children, as they try to express themselves in another language. And finally, one of my greatest strengths is building genuine relationships with students from other cultures, which promotes enthusiasm in the classroom. I love to make learning fun!

这些经历让我对你的孩子的时，有了深刻的理解，因为他们试图用另一种语言表达自己。最后，我最大的优势之一是与其他文化的学生建立真正的关系，这提高了课堂上的热情。我喜欢让学习变得有趣！

Slide 16: Thank you everybody! Any questions?

谢谢大家！有问题吗

1. Some students write very boring essays which read like a routine list of his or her life. How can they write interestingly?

有些学生写的文章读起来像是写流水账。他们怎么能把文章写得生动有趣呢?

Perhaps the biggest problem for beginning creative writers is that they are so used to writing academic essays that they attempt to use the same formulaic template so common in academic writing (opening paragraph with thesis, three supporting paragraphs, concluding paragraph). One of the first things I teach creative writing students is the creative writing version of the 5-paragraph academic essay structure: the three-act dramatic structure. This has been used in the vast majority of all creative writing since the time of the Ancient Greek drama writers, and for a very good reason: keeping this basic dramatic structure in mind while writing will tend to make for exciting pieces, in which the reader will constantly be asking him or herself, “Oh my god, this is so interesting! I want to know what will happen next!”

也许对于刚开始写作的创意作家来说，最大的问题是他们太习惯于写学术论文了，所以他们会尝试使用学术论文中常见的写作模板 (首段提出论点、三个支撑段落、以及最后的总结段落)。我教创意写作学生的第一件事就是五段式学术论文结构的创意写作版本:三幕式戏剧结构。从古希腊戏剧开始，这种结构就被广泛运用于所有的叙事类写作。记住这基本的戏剧性结构来创作激动人心的作品, 当读者读到时，他们便会不断地告诉自己说,“天呐，这真是太有意思了，我想知道接下来会发生什么!”

In essence, students then begin thinking about how to create and maximize dramatic tension in their stories—constructing compelling plots– instead of thinking about how to deliver boring, “facts only” information in a 5-paragraph format. The three-act structure is very informal, and can be interpreted in many different ways, making it a very flexible “structure” that allows for a LOT of creativity.

从本质上讲，学生们开始思考如何在他们的故事中创造和最大化戏剧性的张力——构建引人注目的情节——而不是思考如何用5段的格式来传达枯燥的、“只讲事实”的信息。三幕结构是非正式的，它可以有许多不同的解释，使它成为一个非常灵活的“结构”并有很大的创造空间。

Also, most beginners are unfamiliar with the concepts of character and setting development, and with how to use poetic descriptions to bring characters and settings to life on the page. I help students with this by assessing their creative assignments, finding places where there is a lack, or a complete absence, of setting or character description, and then get them thinking of ways to add intriguing and unique descriptions. All of these things quickly make students’ pieces much more interesting.

而且，大多数初学者都不熟悉角色和设定发展的概念，也不知道如何使用诗意的描述来把角色和设定带到生活的页面上。我通过评估学生的作业来帮助他们找出缺乏背景或人物描述的地方，然后让他们思考如何添加有趣和独特的描述。所有这些都会让学生的作品变得更有趣。

2. What common problems did you find students have with writing in your teaching? How did you help students overcome them?

在您的教学中，您发现学生在写作方面有哪些共同的问题?你是如何帮助学生克服的?

In creative writing, we have a very important principle called “The Passover Question.” This means that before you choose to write about any given time in your, or a character’s life, the very first question you should ask yourself is, “How was this day different from all the others in this character’s life?” Many students all over the world fail to ask themselves this question before beginning to write a piece of creative writing. Once students get into the habit of asking themselves this question, they realize they have been choosing boring chunks of time from their (or their characters’) lives— time periods which really weren’t all that different from average days.

在创意写作中，我们有一个非常重要的原则，叫做“Passover Question”。这意味着，在你选择写你自己或你塑造的人物的某个生活片段之前，你应该问自己的第一个问题是，“对于这个人物来说这一天和其他日子有什么不同?” 世界各地的许多学生在开始写文章之前都没有问自己这个问题。一旦学生们养成了问自己这个问题的习惯，他们就会意识到，他们从自己塑造的人物的生活中选择了一段乏味的片段——这些时间和平常的日子并没有什么不同。

Asking themselves the Passover Question before even beginning a piece will help them choose days from their or their characters’ lives in which the most unusual and interesting events occurred. Usually, the pieces will then be centered around the unusual event that happened that day, week, or year, allowing the young writer to begin using techniques of dramatic tension in order to make it even more interesting. For the most part, people want to read about the MOST amazing and unusual thing that has ever happened to a person, not about an uneventful day!

在开始一篇文章之前，先问自己Passover Question，这将帮助他们从自己或角色的生活中选择最不寻常和最有趣的事件。通常来说，接下来作品会围绕发生在那一天、那一周或那一年的不寻常事件展开，这样年轻的作者就可以开始运用戏剧张力的技巧，使故事变得更加有趣。大多数情况下，人们想读到发生在一个人身上的最令人惊奇和不寻常的事情，而不是平淡的一天!

Also, beginning writers tend to be unaccustomed to using metaphors in their writing.

What I do to help students add this crucial tool to their creative writing arsenal is give them metaphor and simile exercises, in which the students will be given homework asking them to think of and list as many metaphors and similes that they can think of for actions or emotions that they have recently experienced. I then assess their responses, choose the best metaphors and similes that they have thought of, and share the best examples from each student with the rest of the class, and explain to everyone why the student’s example was a good one.

此外，很多新手在写文章时往往不习惯使用隐喻。

我来帮助学生掌握这个至关重要的写作技巧的方式就是布置给学生隐喻和明喻练习,让他们去构想和列出生活中最近经历的事情和感受，然后用隐喻和明喻来表达出来。然后我会评估他们的反应，选择他们想到的最好的比喻和明喻，把每个学生举出的最好的例子分享给全班同学，并向大家解释为什么这个学生的例子是好的。

Then, in private, I explain to the students why some of the metaphors and similes they thought of were not of good quality, and why. In this way, they get stronger and more accustomed to spicing up their writing with poetic language.

然后，在私下里，我也会向学生解释为什么他们想出来的某些隐喻和明喻不够精彩。通过这种方式，他们变得更强大，更习惯于用诗意的语言来充实自己的写作。

3. What can students get from the study of creative writing?

学生能从创造性写作的学习中得到什么?

First, creative writing is usually the student’s first experience with writing that can actually be fun. The experience of having fun while writing will get them to start to enjoy writing a little (and in some cases, get them to love writing a lot), as opposed to hating it, or thinking of it as a tedious chore. This will in turn make them feel less dread (and hopefully make them feel confident) when faced with all types of writing assignments, including academic ones.

首先，创意写作通常是学生的第一次写作经验，实际上可以很有趣。从写作中获得乐趣的经历会让他们开始一点点地享受写作(在某些情况下，会让他们爱上写作)，而不是讨厌它，或者把它当成一件乏味的琐事。这反过来会让他们在面对各种类型的写作任务(包括学术任务)时不那么害怕(希望也会让他们感到自信)。

Second, creative writing will give them the drive to write more, which means more writing practice. And as we all know, “practice makes perfect.” One thing that both creative and academic writing demand is proper use of grammar, spelling, word usage and vocabulary, so the increased practice will help them improve in all of these categories, an improvement which can be carried over to every category of English writing.

第二，创意写作会给他们提笔的动力，这意味着更多的写作练习。我们都知道，“熟能生巧”。创意写作和学术写作都需要一件事，那就是正确使用语法、拼写、单词用法和词汇，所以增加的练习将有助于他们在所有这些方面的提高，这种提高可以延续到英语写作的每一个方面。”

Finally, it will help them on their college applications, as well as in language proficiency exams. For example: I worked as an ESL test grader for years, grading the answers to academic questions on exams. One major thing we looked for was the students’ ability to use complex, beautiful sentences, and to answer questions in creative ways that were different from the other 1,000 essays we saw every day, which almost all contained similar, uncreative answers. To give students the highest grades, they needed to respond to the academic exam questions in imaginative ways— the kind of answers best learned through creative writing.

最后，它将帮助他们申请大学，以及通过官方的语言能力考试。我做了多年的ESL考试评分员，给考试中学术性问题的答案打分。我们主要关注的是学生使用复杂、优美的句子的能力，以及以创造性的方式回答问题的能力。这不同于我们每天看到的其他1000篇论文，它们几乎都包含类似的、毫无创造性的答案。为了拿高分，他们需要用富有想象力的方式来回答学术性考试的问题——这种回答最好通过创造性的写作来学习。

Sample: ESL Editing, Chinese Student

This was for a student’s high school entry essays. Permission given. As with all jobs like this, I purposely left some of the student’s errors in. I also gave her extensive notes on how to write better.

  • Imagine there is a door in front of you. Tell us where does it lead to. What will happen when you get to the other side, and what will you do?(Maximum 150 words)

I am standing by the half-open door, but I can see the scenery inside.  Inside is a brand new world on the other side of the door.  I can receive a better education, accept different things, and experience different cultures.  Challenge and accept new things.  Just like my future suddenly turns on like a light, now is not just my town, but a place where I can live in the world.  Enter the world, stand on a new stage, stand on a higher starting point.  From here I will go back to where I started.  I went out to come back and come back to make changes to help people like me go outside.  Therefore, we can live in a diversified world with our mission to achieve better change.

  • Imagine there is a door in front of you. Tell us where does it lead to. What will happen when you get to the other side, and what will you do?(Maximum 150 words)

My edit:

I am standing by a half-open door. I can peek inside. There is a brand-new world on the other side. I can receive a better education, benefit from new perspectives, and experience different cultures. As though my future has suddenly been lit by a million lamps, I can now see not just my small town, but a bigger world. One with a place to welcome me, where I canlook around with a better view.

After visiting this new place, and enjoying all its opportunities, I’ll go home. I left, and then returned to make a change. To help others like me start off on their own journeys. In this way, I can bring diversity to the world, by taking my experience back home, after giving the world a taste of the experience of my people, in order to create a better understanding for us all.

  • Tell us a personal story when you questioned or challenged a belief or an idea and how does it shape you as a person.(Maximum 150 words)

(268 words. Would be rejected by school.)

Do you want to join the basketball school team?  The coach of the basketball school team asked me，that my dream of more than three months has finally come true. I was so excited that I couldn’t speak, so I nodded.  Looking back on these three months，I watched the basketball school teammates practice enviously every day, and thought about how I could improve my skills so that the coach could recruit me into the basketball school team,  Because I am the only girl among more than 200 boys in the basketball club.  Every day, I try to imitate the basketball team’s classmates practicing. When others practice, I also practice.  When others practice fake moves, I am also imitating and I want to improve my skills.  On basketball school team，the coach is very concerned about me. Boys don’t use words to attack me, but they only call me ‘girl’.  After the epidemic ended, I wanted to stay on the basketball school team, and another girl with high skills who also wanted to join, but the coach told us clearly that because there is no junior high school girl basketball game in Liuyang, girls will not be recruited. So I started to switch careers. I was transferred to the track and field team through my first place in the 1500 meters in the school sports race. Now I am sticking to sports in a different way, but I will continue to stick to basketball and hope to change the image girls of my class cannot have the same opportunity to receive ball education as boys.

  • My edit:

(149 words, was accepted by school)                                                             

For three months，I enviously watched the basketball team’s daily practice, hoping the coach would recruit me, especially because I was the only girl among more than 200 boys in the basketball club. Every day, I imitated the basketball team’s play, mirroring their moves.  Eventually, I made the team! Coach had noticed my skill.

The boys didn’t respect me. They just called me ‘girl’. After the epidemic ended, I wanted to stay on the team, but the coach told us that because there was no junior high girl basketball in Liuyang, girls would not be recruited. So I switched paths. I transferred to Track and Field after making first place in the 1500 meters race.

But I’m continuing to pursuebasketball today, in hopes of making a change. In hopes of changing the fact that that here, girls don’t have the same basketball education opportunity as the boys.

Sample: Book Review. Vladimir Nabokov Biography

I had to submit this after reading it, as Nabokov is one of my favorite writers. Published in The Rumpus, one of the better known literary review sites.

In Vladimir Nabokov’s 1933 short story “The Leonardo”— written in Germany just as Hitler came to power— the reader is presented with a trio of main characters: two thuggish German brothers living as roommates, and a mysterious lodger who moves in as their neighbor. The lodger is a poet, we’re told, working quietly in his room each night, leading a cloistered life which stirs the brothers to suspicion. The brothers bully the poet using increasingly violent tactics, culminating in a murder plot. In a cruel twist, the narrator reveals that the poet was not who we thought he was—he was an impostor of sorts, a producer of beautiful counterfeits—and the rug is swept out from beneath the reader as the brothers are somewhat vindicated; a case of two criminals having “only” murdered another criminal.

“The Leonardo” illustrates, in miniature, what has come to be the popular characterization of Nabokov’s style: beautiful, cold, apolitical and purely aesthetic, with the ever-deceptive Nabokov displaying an unrelenting cruelty to his characters in story after story. As Andrea Pitzer notes in The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov, “Nabokov is fond of trumping what we think we know about a character with new information that rattles our expectations.”Pitzer sets out to rattle the popular conception of Nabokov by asking the question, What if Vladimir Nabokov was doing more than just making “art for art’s sake”?

Bookended by a historic near-meeting between the ostensibly apolitical Nabokov and the decidedly political Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974, Pitzer’s story follows Nabokov and family across war-torn early-20th-century Europe as they flee first from the Bolsheviks in post-Revolution Russia, and then from the Nazis in Germany and France. Pitzer emphasizes the humanistic themes in Nabokov’s work along the way, from his early short stories and plays all the way up to his final novels.

Many of the biographical points in this book were new to me, such as the fact that it was Vera Nabokov’s multilingual abilities and talents as a technical writer that supported Vladimir and their son Dmitri for many years, while Vladimir played the role of stay-at-home dad. The fact that Nabokov’s homosexual brother, Sergei, perished in a Nazi concentration camp (a point which is only granted a single sentence in Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory) also came as a surprise. In Sergei Nabokov’s story lay the heart of Pitzer’s argument: given the profound ways in which anti-Semitism and the specter of Russian and German concentration camps personally touched Vladimir Nabokov’s life, and given how fond he was of folding puzzles into his work, isn’t it likely that Nabokov’s works still contain undiscovered commentary on the brutal history of 20th-century Europe?

I must admit, I was skeptical when I first picked up this book. My first thought: If Nabokov had folded these political plums into some of his most famous works, wouldn’t he have chided the public for failing to pick up on his clues at some point, perhaps in one of the many harsh letters-to-the editor he fired off from his permanent residence in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland? After considering Pitzer’s methodically laid-out case, however, it becomes hard to argue that her reading of Nabokov’s oeuvre could be anything butspot-on. Suddenly, the idea that Nabokov may have intended Pale Fire’s delusional narrator, Charles Kinbote, to be a former prisoner of a remote Soviet concentration camp becomes obvious. The most surprising thing about this book is not the claims that Pitzer makes about Nabokov’s most famous novels, but how persuasively those claims are supported by evidence.

At times the book feels as though it strays into excessive recapitulations of World War II history. While many of the details concerning pre- and postwar Soviet concentration camps will be new to readers (as well as essential to understanding many of the references in Nabokov’s work), some of the pages that Pitzer devotes to rehashing details such as the Nazi Party’s rise to power felt unnecessary—well-worn territory that doesn’t need the space devoted to it here.

For the most part, however, the historical information is strongly relevant to Nabokov, and Pitzer’s handling of her material is so engaging that the book ends up offering something for everyone: the reader with a passing interest in Nabokov will gain a solid introduction to Nabokov’s life, as well as a refresher course in the political turmoil that surrounded it, and Nabophiles will be treated to new understanding, especially in the final 1/3 of the book, where Pitzer unveils her readings of Pale Fire and Lolita. Pitzer also gives us a wonderful, painstaking historical reconstruction of Sergei Nabokov’s final days in Nazi captivity at Neuengamme—a loving addendum of sorts to Speak, Memory.

The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov presents an engaging argument that there may be jewels hidden within the works of the greatest prose stylist of the 20th century that have, for the most part, gone shamefully unappreciated.

Jason Edward Harrington is a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and an MFA student in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He is working on his first novel. He’s on Twitter here. More from this author →

Sample: History Blended with Autobiographical Humor

Originally published on McSweeney’s, for my own personal column they ended up giving me. You’ll be seeing quite a few samples from said columnl

YOU’RE NO HUEY LEWIS, DADDY: A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLUES AS POPULAR MUSIC

by JASON EDWARD HARRINGTON

I used to think my dad would one day show up on MTV, back when MTV played all music, all the time. It seemed reasonable enough: the people on MTV played guitars and sang, and my Dad played guitar and sang. The people on MTV were cool, and everyone in Chicago seemed to think my dad was cool.

This childhood delusion of mine gained traction in the 1980s, when my dad began getting some big career breaks: requests for month-long tours in Europe, Asia and Australia. He’d finally found substantial success at the age of 50, which is pretty much the norm in the blues. It seemed to me that the sky was now the limit, and as far as I could see, the sky meant only one thing: face time on MTV. I remember I would sit at home in front of the TV watching Prince or Madonna’s latest video, Van Halen w/Roth blissfully unaware of how good they were for each other, LL Cool J breaking it down, or Aerosmith and Run D.M.C. respectively rocking and breaking it down (until that fateful day when they came together, rocked, and broke it down, as one.)“A key barometer of the literary climate.”
—The New York Times

But to me, one MTV star stood out above the rest.

Bret Eason Ellis has already done just about everything possible by way of extreme Huey Lewis worship, and so I won’t even attempt to wax nostalgic here, but suffice to say, I really loved Huey Lewis as an ‘80s kid. We’re talking near-Michael Jackson readings, here. Huey Lewis played harmonica and sometimes had a bluesy thing going on; my dad could play harmonica, and definitely had a bluesy thing going on. The comparisons went on and on as far as I was concerned, and I couldn’t understand why my dad couldn’t just get his shit together like everybody else and show up on my MTV already. I was sure that if only he would invest in some tighter, or baggier, or brighter, or more tight-and-leathery clothes, add a synthesizer to his band and get in touch with Huey’s people, then he too could frolic around on a beach with hot bodies for the MTV cameras, to the acute envy of all my friends. I remember I especially had my heart set on a reprise of “If This is It” (this one featuring Eddy Clearwater, who would be the only black person in the video).

All of this culminated in what I would come to remember as the Huey Lewis Incident—a shameful stain in the history of my relations with my father, and by extension, the entire history of the blues (at least to my mind). In order to place the Huey Lewis incident in context with the broader history of the blues, I present you with:

A VERY BRIEF SKETCH OF BLUES AS POPULAR MUSIC, EARLY 20th CENTURY—HUEY LEWIS INCIDENT AND BEYOND.

1901: Traces of the blues first begin to surface in historical documents; the most well-documented being the 1901 notes of archaeologist Charles Peabody, who, while on a dig in Mississippi on behalf of Harvard University, noticed that the black laborers were singing and playing a new form of music, which Peabody was mostly at a loss to describe.“A brilliant and entirely necessary volume, featuring our best writers and thinkers from Tommy Orange to R.O. Kwon. Every bookshelf should have a volume.”
—Gary Shteyngart

1914: The popular jazz composer W.C. Handy, after having come across a man with a guitar singing our titular lyrics of “going where the Southern cross the Dog” at the Tutwiler train station in Mississippi, 1903, composes the quasi-blues, “Saint Louis Blues,” released in 1914, which would go on to become one of the most covered songs of the 20th century. Though the song is as much ragtime and habanera rhythm as it is blues, it still provides the larger world with its first taste of the blue note.

1920: Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” becomes the first big hit blues recording performed by a black artist and marketed to a black audience, selling 75,000 78s within a month of its release. The “Classic Blues” era is ushered in, and white America begins to get acquainted with the blues in the manner in which it feels most comfortable: female singers only, performing blues/Tin Pan Alley fusions. The most popular of the vaudevillian blues singers, hands down, is Bessie Smith.

1927: Blind Lemon Jefferson becomes the first male blues singer with a big selling record, “Black Snake Moan”: a formative blues standard, double entendre and all. The record labels begin sending talent scouts out into the South, lugging old-timey recording equipment around in order to search out country blues singers. Their MO is to find a country blues singer with songs in their repertoire that had not yet been recorded, cut a record with the singer, pay the performer a hundred or so bucks, and then never contact him or her again. The records are marketed as “Race Records,” in a manner that most would find offensive today. The album covers feature images of black people on plantations happily picking cotton, thanks to the enriching music (e.g. “You know that harvest sure am GOOD when it’s Blind Lemon Jefferson singing these blues!”) The occasional female country blues singer-guitarist, most notably Memphis Minnie, finds popular success as well.

1930s: The Depression hits the recording industry hard, spelling certain doom for the glitzy Classic Blues era. Country-style race record sales continue at a trickle during this period, with the occasional record gaining modest popularity outside of the black Southern market. The most high-profile blues event of the 1930s is the sensation of Huddie William “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, the Louisiana-born prisoner who’d been convicted of murder and incarcerated in various prisons, each time having performed his way to freedom by way of flattering songs addressed to wardens and governors. After folklorist John Lomax discovers and records him in Angola Prison in 1933, the two proceed to tour the nation as a team, with Leadbelly acting as Lomax’s driver and walking black folklore exhibit. Leadbelly becomes the darling of academics everywhere, all the way to LIFE magazine (April 19, 1937, pg. 39: “Lead Belly — Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel”)“No one writes like Hopler. And no one ever will.”
—Katie Ford

1940s: The blues band begins to gain wide popularity (as opposed to the lone singer guitarist) along with the electrified blues, beginning the trend toward the rhythm and blues form which would soon evolve into rock ‘n roll. Louis Jordan moves to California and popularizes his “jump” blues style, slick and jazzy, striving toward a “clean” presentation (partially the result of blues singers looking to the phenomenal success of Nat King Cole as inspiration), while in Chicago, that city’s hard-hitting electric sound begins to make waves. T-Bone Walker’s slick blues classic, “Stormy Monday” hits in 1947, followed by Muddy Waters’ “I Can’t Be Satisfied” in 1948—an electrified return to popularity for the country blues style.

1951: Rhythm-and-blues artist Ike Turner records “Rocket 88” with a fuzzed-out guitar on the recording, making it a good contender for the title of “first rock ’n roll song.” With the rise of electric blues, followed by R&B and then rock ‘n roll, demand for the mother source, acoustic blues, begins to wane. The increasing popularity of jukeboxes serves to further reduce the demand for blues singers in juke joints and dance halls across the nation.

1954: Elvis Presley covers blues singer Arthur “Big Boy” Cruddup’s “That’s All Right”; the record burns up the Memphis airwaves, and the blues takes its permanent backseat position to rock, with a blues singer’s marketability being largely determined by his or her ability to cross over to R&B and rock ‘n roll. Those who can do so are the ones who maintain the greatest mainstream popularity (e.g. John Lee Hooker, B.B. King), which is why my father, right around this time, begins selling himself to Chicago blues club owners on the strength of his Chuck Berry covers. Popular blues is now a young person’s game, if anyone’s.

1960s: With the civil rights movement and the attendant soul-searching of liberal white America, a blues revival begins. More than ever, the blues now becomes, in one of those rare twists, an old person’s game—the older the performer, the closer to the music’s roots, the more “authentic.” The annual Norfolk Blues Festival begins in 1962. In 1964, when Paul McCartney names Muddy Waters in response to a reporter’s request to list his biggest influences, the reporter asks, “Muddy Waters? Where’s that?” provoking McCartney to admonish the reporter for not knowing his own country’s music. Mick Jagger demands Howlin’ Wolf be allowed to appear with the Stones on Shindig! in 1965. This marks the beginning of the trend that would have more white people listening to the blues than black people, as soul and gospel dominates the African American market in the 1960s.Together again! Four issues of McSweeney’s Quarterly, four issues of The Believer magazine.

1970s: Disco ruins everything.

1980s: The release of The Blues Brothers, along with the decline and fall of disco, single-handedly breathes new life into the blues. The blues begins to settle into an equilibrium with America.

1987: I tell my father that he sucks compared to Huey Lewis.

1990: Robert Johnson’s complete recordings are released, selling nearly half a million copies in its first six months, helping the blues stabilize into something like the relationship it has with the U.S. today: sort of an unofficial UNESCO musical heritage badge for the U.S., tourist money and all.

1992: The first House of Blues opens, paving the way for other similar tourist-oriented mega venues

2009: I begin to feel guilty for having told my father he sucks compared to Huey Lewis.

Just the other day: I asked my dad if he remembered The Incident. “Huey Lewis?” he said, blinking, as though I’d stirred up the sort of thing that eyelashes keep out. Then he smiled a little.

“Yeah, I remember, now. You just loved you some Huey Lewis, didn’t you?”

When he told me that there were no hard feelings concerning my musical preference for Huey Lewis over him, I realized that I’d probably been making too much out of it.

I think that the reason the Huey Lewis incident hovers over me in such a cloud of guilt is because I am retrospectively identifying with my father as an artist. At this point in my life, I am certainly familiar with rejection, as nearly all aspiring writers are, and looking back at the history of the blues and my father’s place in it, I recognize the sting of rejection in all his years in the ‘60s and ‘70s spent covering Clapton and Beatles and Stones songs, while his own original material was pushed to the sidelines night after night by venue operators. I can only imagine what it would feel like for me to suffer rejection (as we writers are always doing) and then try to unwind and forget about it with my family, only to have a blundering little knife-wielding Brutus come at me with something like, “Why can’t you write a really funny and popular play like Tyler Perry? You’re no Tyler Perry, Daddy.”

All of this represents just one reason why I really don’t see kids on the horizon for me. I consider language to be a powerful and unstable thing—to be handled with only the greatest of care—and kids tend to use language with all the precision of a sawed-off shotgun.

I guess I’m willing to concede that my dad’s just a better man than me, and that, in his handling of the Huey Lewis Incident, he gave me one lesson about parenting that I’ll take to heart, just in case I ever need it:

You have to love your kids just as they are, even when they wish you were someone else.

Sample: Tech Humor/Literary Parody

Yet another piece from McSweeney’s. Blending lit and tech.

RAYMOND CHANDLER’S
THE MAN WHO REPAIRED LAPTOPS

by JASON EDWARD HARRINGTON

When a girl like Vivian Sternwood walks into your third floor bachelor pad that doubles as your at-home laptop repair business as advertised on Craigslist, it can only mean trouble. It would be a hot one that day, a real summer scorcher—not even noon, and already I felt like a boiled New England dinner simmering in a sea of electronics.

“What can I do for you, sweetheart? Take a seat,” I sai

She was a doozy of a dame, with dangerous eyes like blue screens of death and a dark umber HP Pavilion laptop with a 640 GB hard drive she’d dropped off the day before. I’d taken her case at the recommendation of her father, the landlord, on account of my being two months behind on the rent.

“I am here to pick up my laptop that would not start up. Why else would I be here?” she said, cell phone buzzing in her purse. “And I am in a rush. Make it snappy.”

This busy bee hadn’t lost her stinger, that much was for certain. But I wasn’t about to let Vivian Sternwood ruin my picnic.

“Sure, I know the one. It was sticky, Ms. Sternwood, real sticky. Seemed someone had spilled a Frappucino on it or something at some point. Had to take a soft cloth to the motherboard. You really should be more careful. But I’ll tell you what the real problem here was: malware. Your virus protection was out of date. You really have to stay on top of that, Ms. Sternwood

“Please,” she cut in, “just tell me: did you reformat my hard drive?”

This girl knew her onions.

“As a matter of fact, I did. Partitioned and targeted the infected sectors. Recreated. In the end I just wiped it and reinstalled the operating system. But before you go crying murder, you should also know that I backed everything up and saved it beforehand, kid. I’m a troubleshooter from the old school. It’s all on your desktop, file name: ‘Old Desktop.’ I also took the liberty of jimmying the outer case open, had a look-see around inside. A girl like you can get an air duster at any corner store she sets her sights on, you know that?”

She feigned boredom as I went on; fiddled with her cell phone—Angry Birds, or some muck. I knew that game, alright. I also knew that the real angry bird would be her in a few minutes, when I told her what I’d dug up on her boyfriend. Eventually, her gaze wandered back up and settled right in my lap

“There are holes in your sweatpants,” she cooed.

She was the kind of girl who was probably used to the big outfits—Geek Squad, Genius Gang—along with all the other ritzy boys and girls in button-down Polos and khaki slacks.

“At-home laptop repair is an informal ball, sweetheart. I dress accordingly,” I shot back.

“You are as pale as a dead man,” she mused. Then, reaching in her purse: “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Sure, go right ahead,” I told her, “if the big idea’s to kill me, that is. I can’t be near smoke. I have asthma something awful, kid.”

“Will that be all, then?” she yawned.

“As a matter of fact, there’s one more thing, Ms. Sternwood.”

I slid her laptop across the coffee table, along with a white envelope. She opened it and began to sort through the whole sordid stack—photographs of screenshots of the videos I’d found on her laptop’s hard drive.

“Seems your boyfriend’s a bootlegger, Ms. Sternwood. A pirate, if you will. Up to some shady business when you’re not over-shoulder. A lot of illegally obtained torrents in there you wouldn’t want your mother to see, let’s just say. A real fetishist, this boyfriend of yours. The only thing that doesn’t jibe in all this is why he’d get into this stuff when he has a girl such as yourself on his arm. “

“I did not ask you to look into any of this. I find this disturbing,” the coy kitten purred. I was just another ball of yarn for her to bat around.

“Think nothing of it, Ms. Sternwood. I admit I have a weakness for dames such as yourself. I can’t say I’m used to being tied down, but for you, a private computer repair guy could make an exception.”

“You are frightening me.”

“Now the keylogger software I hid on your computer will tail your boyfriend’s every move, so that we can keep tabs on what he’s up to; no slinking around digital back alleys via TOR nodes for this sly cat. Don’t you worry, Ms. Sternwood, we’ll catch this mug at his game.”

“I am aware of the things he downloads. We enjoy them together. I am leaving,” she said, “and I am calling the authorities.”

And just like that, she ran out the front door. I watched her through the cracked Venetians as she beat it all the way to the curb and peeled right out of the parking lot. Somehow, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last I’d hear from Vivian Sternwood.

It would be a hot day, you could bet on that. The kind of day custom made for air conditioning. But I didn’t mind. I’d learned to love the heat; thrive on it. You have no choice in a line of business like mine.

But I also knew that electronics were best kept in a cool environment free of humidity, and that the pollen count would be exceptionally high that day, doing a real number on my allergies, and so after giving it a second thought, I got up from my futon, closed the window, and turned on the air conditioner, after all.

It was a little too hot, see.

Sample: Social Justice Op Ed, Governmental Criticism

This one was published in TIME online.

__

The recent story of two Transportation Security Administration screeners at Denver International Airport manipulating full-body scanners in order to grope men’s crotches is disturbing, but it came as no surprise to me.

Over the course of my six years with the TSA, the leveraging of rules and surveillance tools to abuse passengers was a daily checkpoint occurrence. Has the TSA screener searching your luggage suddenly decided to share with you the finer points of official bag-search procedure just as your final boarding call is being announced? There’s a good chance that he or she just doesn’t like you. Or in some cases, as we’ve seen, it may be that the screener finds you attractive and wants to use the TSA rules as an excuse to get his or her hands on you.

Amid all the jokes in comment sections, it’s easy to forget that the groping of these dozen or more male passengers by two conspiring TSA screeners is sexual assault, plain and simple. And while it’s easy to focus all the blame on the two unsavory screeners who are now no longer with the agency, perhaps the bigger issue here is a systemic one: There are far too many federal hands on people’s private parts in airports.

(The TSA agents involved have been fired, and a spokesman for the agency has said: “All allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated by the agency. And when substantiated, employees are held accountable.”)

What most people don’t realize is that the full-body scanners the two agents used to assault those passengers — the scanners that millions of people pass through each day — are practically useless. The TSA, in its rush to replace the controversial “nude” radiation scanners that they phased out in 2013, swapped out one poorly functioning line of machines for another. The current millimeter wave scanners, with their outrageous false-positive rates, regularly cause unnecessary pat-downs: The agent running his or her hands over you after you pass through the scanner is almost never doing it for a good reason.

ust a few weeks ago, the TSA reached an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union after a flurry of complaints from African-American women whose hair was too-frequently inspected after passing through the scanners. The reason? The scanners single out areas on passengers’ bodies for pat-downs for just about anything, from the hair of people with braids or barrettes, to the crotch areas of people whose pants are slightly sagging (usually due to the fact that the TSA makes people remove their belts). The scanners even misidentify perspiration as a potential concealed weapon (have you ever walked into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in July without a slight perspiration problem?) When I worked the millimeter wave scanners, we averaged false head-area anomalies on what I’d estimate was about 1 out of every 8 passengers.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the sexual assault of male passengers at Denver International via full-body scanners is that the victims will likely never even know they were assaulted, since so many passengers have their private parts fondled when passing through the scanners, anyway. It’s difficult to tell where airport security ends and sexual assault begins these days. Pat-downs of people’s sensitive areas should be much rarer than they are at the airport.

he TSA should scale back its use of the ineffective full-body scanners. While there is a need for the capability to detect non-metallic threats on passengers going through checkpoints — especially after the failed Underwear Bomb Plot of 2009 — forcing every passenger to get inside costly, poorly functioning full-body scanners is not the answer. The TSA apologists who claim that 100% full-body scanning is the only way to prevent a terrorist from sneaking non-metallic weapons aboard an airplane haven’t given the matter much thought.

Though if the TSA were to do away with the faulty full-body scanners tomorrow and revert back to walk-thru metal detectors, there would still be half a dozen ways a passenger could find his or her crotch being patted down per the TSA’s current system, including:

  • The presence, oftentimes mysterious, of an “SSSS” on a passenger’s boarding pass, which prompts enhanced screening, including a full-body pat-down.
  • The determination by one of the TSA’s controversial Behavior Detection Officers that a passenger is acting suspiciously while standing in line.
  • False alarms on the explosives trace swab that officers use to swipe passengers’ hands and luggage.
  • And of course, there is the elephant in the room of every behind-closed-doors TSA agency meeting: The fact that no technology currently on the TSA checkpoint is capable of detecting an improvised explosive device stashed inside a body cavity. There simply is no way to stop a “butt bomber.” The idea of 100% safety that TSA agents try to sell us with their commands to step inside full-body scanners is just an illusion.

Adequate deterrence against a theoretical terrorist with a non-metallic weapon on his person is all the TSA can and need provide at airports. One or two full-body scanners per terminal, through which the occasional passenger could be randomly directed (alongside passengers on watch-lists), would provide that adequate deterrence. The vast majority of the traveling public need not pass through a full-body scanner, and need not be groped at all.

Sample: Scientific Paper Editing

The author gave me permission to post this. She is an authority in this agricultural field, born in China, and so at times in need of editing. This is just a small snippet I could find of the voluminous work we did together.

Researcher’s version, pre-edit: This proposed research is closely tied to the department research priorities. 1. Develop and screen turfgrass for improved turf performances and environmental biotic stresses and develop enviromental sound turfgrass management practice. This project will address drought stress issue and is supposed to provide turfgrass management of genotypes as chosen

My Edit: This proposed research is closely tied to the department research priorities:

1. Develop and screen turfgrass for improved turf performance and environmental biotic stresses, and develop environmentally sound turfgrass management practices. This project will address drought stress issues and proposes to provide turfgrass management of selected genotypes.

Researcher’s version, pre-edit: During a heavy production season nut prices tend to decrease and because of substantial tree stress nuts tend to underfill and are graded to an even lower price – a clearer understanding of how trees fall into the “on (large production) /off (small or no production)” cycle of production will suggest management practices needed to overcome AB and provide more stable year-to-year production scenario:  

My edit: During a heavy production season nut prices tend to decrease. Due to substantial tree stress, nuts tend to underfill and are graded to an even lower price – a clearer understanding of how trees fall into the “on (large production) /off (small or no production)” cycle of production will suggest management practices needed to overcome AB and provide a more stable year-to-year production scenario.

Sample: Using Different Forms For Humor

This was published on McSweeney’s, the most prestigious online humor site, with a brutal rejection rate. This shows how I can think outside the box to deliver a story. And there’s a sequel later on!

DO YOU LIKE ME?
CLICK YES OR NO

by JASON EDWARD HARRINGTON

To: Alice

First day of school. Sucks, huh? This class is so boring. I hate long division. Anyway, I like you. I set up a Tumblr for you while we were supposed to be doing #5. Just a poll with your name as the site’s title:

ALICE
Do you like me?
Click yes or no.
Yes: 0 votes
No: 0 votes.

– – –

To: Bobby

Yes: 1 vote
No: 0 votes

I’ve liked you ever since we had recess together last year. This is awesome! Can’t wait for lunch next period. We should hold hands. Here’s a heart I just downloaded for you: ❤

P.S. I just liked the Alice site on Facebook.

– – –

To: Alice 

Thanks for the heart, and I can’t wait to hold hands, but I really didn’t want to take this to Facebook, yet. The Alice site isn’t ready, and I didn’t want anyone linking into it at this phase. I can see over Tim Mackey’s shoulder that he’s looking at the Alice site right now. My problem with this is that a good portion of the class got the news that you like me before even I did. Communication is key, here.

– – –

To: Bobby

Sorry I Facebook liked the Alice site. I honestly don’t see why that’s such a problem, though. The comments have been overwhelmingly positive. I was even putting the finishing touches on a joint Tumblr account, in case we really did go public with this before the bell rang, but I’ll just put the brakes on that for now.

P.S.— The site Nestor set up for Jen had links going in right away, and he didn’t make a big deal about it.  And that site was SEO, too.

– – –

To: Alice

I like you–-not in a search-optimized way, but in an old fashioned, authentic way. I’m not sure you’re understanding our brand. I see you went forward with the Alice and Bobby site anyway, and just now tweeted a link to it on top of it. We’re not status official on Facebook yet, so this is all just going to come off as confusing with the other kids. If this is going to work, we need to coordinate across platforms. I’m mentioning you in a tweet, tagged #alicenbobbyclarification.

To: Bobby

I retweeted your tweet, and take full responsibility for this. The buzz was forced there, and I see that now. We have to keep expectations low on a venture like this— position ourselves to exceed expectations (think Brad and Jess).  We’re on the same page now: mum’s the word, at least until next period.

– – –

To: Alice

Well, the cat’s out of the bag, and we have backers, now—the Alice and Bobby site is being overrun by comments— so we may as well just stay the course. There’s a lot of interest in us; I’m even seeing some comments from the 5th graders. We’re hot right now, Alice, but my main concern is overvaluation— a roomful of kids expecting chocolate milk, and we show up with plain. We’re not even sure if we look good on paper at this point, let alone how we’d scale to the lunchroom were we to go public at the bell, which is why I really wanted to stay bootstrap on this, crazy as that may sound.

– – –

To: Bobby

I’m a little confused. Are you saying you’re embarrassed to be seen with me at lunch? You’re right about one thing, though: we do have a lot of people backing us on this, and I think it would be a mistake to show any skittishness on your part. With so many of the other kids invested in Bobby and Alice, do you really want to appear bearish, now? We could at least try pivoting and re-launching, if worse came to worst.

– – –

To: Alice

It’s not about how we look in the lunchroom, Alice. Just read the comments. “Are you two going to kiss at recess?” “Alice and Bobby sittin’ in a tree.”  “Love.” “Marriage.” There’s even talk of a baby carriage, here. Do we even know the first thing about any of this? I mean, really? I heard how babies are made from Joey Demetrelis during recess, but I’ve seen people trying to collapse baby carriages, Alice, and I’m not sure we even have the right skill set for that. And k-i-s-s-i-n-g? In a tree? Neither of us can get even halfway up the rope in gym, for God’s sake.

– – –

To: Bobby

You know what? FINE. You’re right.  We were in over our heads to begin with on this—now we’re underwater. I guess it’s true what they say: it’s hard to recognize a bubble until after it bursts. I’m posting the announcement on our ill-fated Tumblr. We owe everyone at least that much.

– – –

OVERVIEW
The Alice and Bobby Bust:
Problem Analysis, Where We Failed

  • Inexperienced management.
  • Critical communication problems between Bobby and me.
  • Grew too fast, too early.
  • Should have built on WordPress.
  • Lack of passion and motivation (especially on Bobby’s part).
  • Unconventional accounting metrics diminished our integrity with the other kids.
  • Ultimate inability to translate our popularity into a viable relationship model.
  • Failure on my part to take into account the inherent intractability of the total grossness of boys

Hello! My name is Jason Edward Harrington

As a writer and editor, I have worked and written for the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, TIME Magazine online, and Politico. Yes, you can Google this. And no, I did NOT make my own Wikipedia page! It’s very hard to do that without external links to top tier publications, as well as having been on or in the news. One day I made the mistake of Googling myself and there it was. I hope to work with you soon, because my goal is to make this my full time job.

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