Before you write a book, do you heavily outline and plan it or do you sort of wing it and figure it out as you go along? #KylePhoenix

 

The Spherical Stages of the construction of a novel.

No, heavily outlined work, is generally an amateur writing design. Which isn’t a bad thing but after 30+ years of writing thousands of stories, over a hundred books, a screenplay I directed into a 2 hour film and countless work related projects plus thousands of articles/ blogs, reviews—-I “turn on the faucet” is the best way to explain my automaticity.

Automaticity is essentially knowing a thing on such a fundamental level that you can simply “do it”. Like walking—-at one point we all had to learn how to walk—-we watched others, did balancing acts, used objects to achieve balance and then kept trying it—-eventually standing and then walking and finally running. This is also mental in reading or math or thinking about things you know how to do mentally that had to be taught. Pretty much everything but your automatic bodily functions were taught t you and engrained so deeply that you can do it withiest thinking consciously.

I can write, near anything, without having to think about it.

To planning a short story or novel—-what I do is I sort of encompass the entirety of the idea.

I wrote a book Tranny—-about a transsexual character. My thought bubble was from my counseling students as an LGBTSGL Coordinator and several of them playing with sexuality, sex and gender presentation. The majority were Black/Latino and instead of being males they found it easier to be female—-even when they weren’t attractive enough to be in drag/trans. But it was easier, they garnered more positive sexual attention from men (technically those men are called skoliosexuals) because they were trying to distance themselves from being Black/Latino males who were NOT heterosexual. And to some degree, most being raised in single sex households that were female led, they identified and were mentored more by women and saw the (sexual attraction) privilege women to over men, especially as people of color. I’ll further this point to the weight of race and non-heterosexuality being a laborious burden to young men, men, older men—-it’s a twofer hard punch to the psyche, to one’s life, especially here in America, and people, young people do things to mitigate the impacts.

In the course of conceiving the idea for the novel and teaching, I met lots of trans folk and even got to watch some evolve and some not. I got to see, deeply personally, the trans identity—-and even got certified in counseling trans folk. I had a clear picture of the identity and its’ origin/manifestation.

My razor edge on the bubble idea—-the push I wanted to engage——was that culture/sex/sexuality question because it was a fascinating posit/question/conundrum.

That’s the totality of my “outline” mentally.

Now, the first time I’ve seen this expanded upon deeply was by Anders Ericsson, the expert on mastery (he is the “creator” of the posit of 10,000 hours leading to mastery—-which was popularized by Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers) in his own book Peak. Anders talked about how he actually wrote the book with a partner (Robert Pool) and that they did what he would call something similar to mental models/representations.

For me, it would look like this for Tranny:

1. What is transsexuality vs. transgenderism vs. homosexuality? (Foundational concept)
2. A Black male decides to transition. (Central character)
3. How do they know or not know about their sexuality/how and are they “confused”? (Question/conflict)

then from experience/expertise mentally outline the physical template of the book—-I make decisions:

1. I’ll write it in the 1st person. Why? It’s more immediate, more personal.
2. It will be short—-under 300 pages, there has to be an immediacy and intimacy and an intensity, to the book itself.
3. Physically it will be slightly larger font size (I experimented with using a font that looked like handwriting but it wasn’t clear enough)—-however I knew that it was a book that the constant/huge-personal “I-ness” suggested was a faux journal.
4. I physically experimented with the Header/Footer for my template and even tried to incorporate images and color—-but the size and colors were too price prohibitive—-to create interior pages that looked like a journal.
5. Chapters-how many? Now I’m having all of these thoughts/plans/mental representations in a smoosh===not in such a lined order, so I knew I would do about 10 chapters. I knew that limitation in the Word document would force me to maintain within a certain amount of pages—-there was no space or time to drone on. In this constructed mental form, I then know where I’m going to enter the story and exit—-approximately. By that, I have my opening line and further ideas to Chapter 1 and segmenting the chapters to points in Nicky K’s life—good, bad, men, money, work, all the areas a human, particularly, a trans person, has to navigate.
6. I also started looking for pictures for the cover. I played with one that was a gawky physical body in a dress, no head—-then I found a stock photo of a big head. But what I was looking for was something——off. It’s one of the ways trans folk who are trying to “pass” for female, generally—-get spooked. There is something off about their presentation—-so the cover pic had to have an odd quality to it that could be projected into the space of this person is presenting as female now but that wasn’t their sex of birth. (As an interesting aside from talking to so many trans folk—-Black and Latino trans people are spooked more often by their cultural kin and therefore gravitate into spaces with more White people. It seems that White people, less accustomed to seeing people of color often exhibit a sort of race blindness—-I can attest to this—-White people learn to blur us out unless we’re in a context they're interested in—-the advantage for a trans person of color is that focusing on them, White people tend to see what is presented to them.. I’ve seen it happen in person with a White man and trans person of color—-he couldn’t quite place what he was seeing of the person and asked lots of questions, eventually even hitting on had he seen her in a magazine or along 12th Avenue (the notorious NYC prostitution stroll—-but certain areas are trans heavy.) Which ironically said a lot about him too.)

And then I consider tone (I can only compare this to how when you’re making something you decide if it will be a sweet BBQ sauce, spicy hot with cayenne, a dry rub, etc.). I’m considering the texture, the way it will be received by the way I get into it, the story, the character, the other characters. The sound, the tune of the voices, the narrative, which one of my writing Voices will I use, which style?—-I’ve developed a few. Hard, soft, sharp, smart, dumb?

1. I knew the title Tranny for this idea, one because in the city and my workshops, so many of my charges-students used the word. And then in clubs and so on and so forth—-but I also, well educated, know the divide in the world between street-slang lingua and formalized language. I know this also because I own Dick Gregory’s Nigger book and know that Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians was originally titled Ten Little Niggers. But in the writing I knew that trans is subversive and I’m not so much of trying to explain being trans—-more of elucidate this character Nicky K’s experience and the huge conflicting questions and external conflicts.
2. I heard the first line of the novel ten years prior to its’ publication, sitting in the room of a transsexual, with two of her trans friends—-her explaining having her testicles removed, illegally: “I paid $500 to have my balls cut off.” (Baby, what else is there to say to open a novel, to lead the blurb? I held that line like a diamond in the back of my mind for years it was so raw, so treasure laden to unearthing a character.)
3. Following it being in the 1st person and “I paid $500 to have my balls cut off.” —- I knew it had to be motherfucking raw. I’m talking Donald Goines, Zane, Iceberg Slim raw. Which meant Nicky K had to tell you, me, the reader, the writer, a harsh unvarnished truth even in their own self-delusions. I figured if it was going to be cut off, the balls to the wall, had to be unapologetic. I knew that it had be somewhere between X-rated to NC 17—-graphic, advanced, sexually provocative, which meant that I had to really think about how descriptive I would be—-what would be the line? Would there be any lines?
4. In that studio apartment room near Times Square, the trans person, Valencia, explained sitting in that apartment staring at the pilot light of the oven with a bottle of Vicodin, contemplating suicide after the illegal, back alley testicle removal. She was actively warning the other two trans folk with me that they lacked the mental fortitude and resilience that she possessed to have testicles removed illegally—-they were all doing illegal silicone injections and black market hormones—-they should follow the steps—-psychiatric care, psychologists therapy, medical/hospital surgeries by board certified doctors. To Valencia's underhanded credited, she presented with deep narcissitic, malignant, mentality, which perhaps lent to her resilience. The others were extreme narcissists but more from their identities over time than what seemed to be almost a birthed trait from Valencia. (Yes, she was extremely odd.) But her scenario framed the first chapter—-what if Nicky K were in this studio, on that bed, clutching the pills, crotch piled high with bloody bandages, looking at the pilot light of the oven—-reviewing the irrevocable decision, the life circumstances, that had gotten her/him to this point?
5. I knew I wanted the final chapter to be experimental and contain a picture of glitter filled pill capsules. If Nicky K had 100 Vicodin at the beginning of the novel——what did each one of those represent? And if I listed each individual pill as a representation—-Body, Love, An ex boyfriend, family, work, breasts, women, men—-could the reader infer that I was implying Nicky K was measuring the pills out on the bed, assigning them labels. Was Nicky K taking these pills?

To this point—-I still haven’t written a thing—-this is all still mental, nothing written down, but I have started a digital file folder for the cover pictures I’m considering and the master MS Word template. I tend to handwrite 80% of my work first so there are pads of each chapter generally. 1 fifty page legal pad generally types up to 30+ pages so I know by pad count how many pads to get to my ideal page count.

(All of the above is in a mental egg-bubble, Anders in Peak, being one of the first places I’ve seen it so accurately described——so that when I get to the page/writing I can flow out (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s writing in his amazing book Flow of how certain actions and creativity take place.) 20, 30, 50 pages at a time because I literally know the chords, music, notes, arrangement—-I’m just filling in some lyrics, tightening some of the transitions, adding a bridge).

Tranny came out in maybe a dozen writing sessions, across several states, and I completed it a few hours after my mother died. Ironically in the editing, I showed some pages to a friend and their sister, who is trans (possibly), mentioned a term said to her by a man—-a “Kabuki nigger”—-I damn near pissed on myself, stopping the (editorial) presses, going back and finding a delicious space for that slur in the book. It resonated so fundamentally with Nicky K’s self insights and attacks.

I generally write for a handful of hours at a time, so I would call it one of my fastest Draft #1 to Draft #12 and then edits, projects ever—-call it 15 sessions—-which is about 60 to 100 hours in total. It took less time, by a third to a fifth, than other novels because it was so obsessively focused on one character and it was a stream of consciousness, relating of experiences and ideas——the main other characters being other trans folk, along the spectrum, in a therapy group—-to give breadth of experience. At the end is a glossary/explanatory framework that I generally teach, but I thought someone might pick this up and need to have a clear picture of this for themselves or someone else. Ironically, it’s like my 4th highest selling book.

A (Spherical) Process

To backwards design tracking to how I construct a protect—-most of them happen in the above way—-what tends to get me to constructions beyond simply mental representation constructions are when it’s a larger project (more characters, more pages, research needed) or some sort of collaborative effort where I have to gather data from other people/places.

I mostly though have chunks of the work mentally “worked out” and then I simply write down those chunks—-which is why in examining my process, the process is not linear, it’s spherical.

Stage 1:

By “spherical” I mean the 5 Stage process above. First a global idea—-transsexuality/sexuality/race/conflict—-that’s the first Stage.

Stage 2:

is finding a locality, a central workable point in that—-individual identity in regards to race and sexuality and how that is eased or complicated by homosexuality vs. transsexuality.

Stage 3:

Is comprised of all of the individual segments that comprise race, sexuality, identity more acutely identified in either scenes or perspectives or characters. Each one of those segments are scenes that I’m sewing into a cohesive narrative.

Stage 4:

Is laying the pattern-segments against/onto the Stage 1/2 goals or foundation. I know I want a character to go through this, I know that the character has to represent these things as it will be first person, so I need the character to have:

• a beginning point—-discovery of this state of being, and then
• a conflict point—-why aren’t they happy with this state of being?, and then
• a final end point—-what challenges this happiness and can it be overcome?

In Beginner writer lessons/classes/books it is often simplistically reduced to the conflict point being resolved in the final end point. But for different works, for varying reasons, I often decide no, I’m going to leave this open ended.

Another novel Stay With Me—-I had some back and forth editorial discussions with how I was going to end the novel—-Kirk is awaiting his husbands return from China with two adopted babies and discussing with his therapist how all of love is faith based and there are no guarantees except that it will end in divorce, death, separation.

I thought that was an excellent faith based ending so that like life, the story is without resolution—-as so many other characters in this exploration of five different parallel relationship multiverses—-both ended, resolved and were left, unresolved. It was also the first novel where so much (600+ pages) had moved/evolved these characters, that I wanted sort an ending where we thought we knew a possible ending, a happy ending, and it was not guaranteed—-much like the therapy session. Then it was pointed out to me that there was an undercurrent story to the book in all of this multiverse jumping that I could snag to several other books (S, Hush and the forthcoming Myriad)

which would be connective tissue and still a treat for the reader, if I extended a bit farther, and then put in a chapter from the forthcoming Myriad series. I liked the linking in direct and circumspect ways so I did it. Creating spherical novels.

One of my over-goals in writing, in each novel, is that it be different in some way—-in the sex, sexuality, gender of the main character (s), and/or, in that it be sci-fi, magical realism, straight thriller, horror, drama, first person, third person, experimental, mixed forms, news articles as meta-fiction, and/or, that I do something experimental with the form, the format, of the book itself with design, layout, graphics. I, Kyle, must be challenged. Tranny’s challenge was first person, inside the mind of a trans person who is confused and build her perceptions and world on what is a disfiguring day, that potentially ends in death.

Stage 5:

is the summation of all of the above elements, both fleshed out and connected across space and writing space-time. I may not write, rewriting or edit in chronological sequence—-Chapter 1, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

Chapter 10 I wrote after Chapter 1, then I re-did 7,8,9 after I’d completed 1 to 6 because I needed to get to Nicky K sitting in the City Center auditorium—-where I've been many times—-watching the Alvin Ailey dancers perform and seeing bodies move—-male, female, athletic, pronounced and supremely comfortable. people of color centered in, enjoying and expressing their bodies in such a direct, spectacularized way—-much like a trans presentation to the world——to someone who is not comfortable in their body, who has been accepted and rejected and rejected and accepted and questioned, to the point of a form of madness—-so that the reader understands they’ve read through to Chapter 9——and that the next chapter—-chronologically (upended to when you the reader entered—-you truly entered the novel at the decision from Chapter 9, so that the movement to Chapter 10 is logical and you have all of the information to understand it—-because you now understand and have experienced a spherical sequencing of Nicky K’s reality—-you know completely how and now, in and out of time, when Nicky K got to the decision that led to Chapter 1) would be Chapter 1 and Chapter 1 is a call and response

(In music, call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually written in different parts of the music, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or in response to the first. This can take form as commentary to a statement, an answer to a question or repetition of a phrase following or slightly overlapping the initial speaker(s). It corresponds to the call and response pattern in human communication and is found as a basic element of musical form, such as verse-chorus form, in many traditions. ——Wikipedia)

so that when you turn to Chapter 10—-you, the reader understand glittery pills and 100 “Reasons”. And then the reader decides (response), because they now see into and across and through the novel.

(Yes, I’m consciously playing with the form of how you receive and perceive the text itself in your mind. Yeah, that’s when you’re really writing at a higher level—-when you understand how to manipulate unwritten text/responses.)

I would offer that the pedantic writer/writing comes from following the cliché linear design, especially when trying to envelop a reader into a character-world.

Almost like a physical globe one should be able to hold a book—-in it’s written form—-as the writer and see how every portion—-or space connects across the novel to the next—-this character to that, that one to that idea, that idea to that outcome.

To me, at this point in my writer “career”, it would be a form of limiting to think of a work as directly linear-chronological because I’m constructing it as large patches of connectable real estate—-like assembling a bookshelf or a musical piece or a gourmet dinner.

The Inevitable Change

It never is at it is imagined into the ending that I first conceived. I think this is because in a novel there are more time gaps of writing. I might get to a conclusion, an end, but it’s never how I thought I would get there or what I thought the end would be. It’s always different. I didn’t know Chapter 10 of Tranny until writing Chapter 1 and the clutching of that bottle of Vicodin—-and I was like: this is the ending, the conclusion, the choice, the precipice. BUT how do I design it so that I have an ending in mind, you, the reader, have one too——and we’re BOTH right?

There’s my Writing Construction Challenge raising like a slumbering phoenix—-how you gonna make this different, make it dance, make it unique, Kyle?

Then I discover that and I have these two buttresses that allow me to play in the center. I get to play with a character living or dying, pro or con, yes or no, maybe, maybe not——and I’m not going to answer what I think happens or I know, doesn’t happen.

Or even what became of Valencia, in real life, a decade ago, because we’re now in Fiction Land.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenix

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Can a genius spot other geniuses? by Kyle Phoenix

 

Yes but I would add that the caveat to my ability is that I not only teach but have focused on learning how to teach people and therefore gone much deeper into cognitive strategies (what people are actually learning by example of outcome) and the neurobiology of learning.

Two examples:

First Example:

Wandering around on Facebook doing marketing work, I’m a member of several “writer groups”. Sometimes, maybe 1 out of 10 posts are interesting, garner interesting thoughts, ideas. Most are amateurs lamenting that when you place the pen to the paper or finger to the keyboard, you then have to make an effort to make a mark/letter—-very basic ideas-questions.

Occasionally though someone will ask something or illustrate something brilliant. it’s generally done very softly, almost casually with a short reference to something else, a good bibliography to a writer that might not fall into the 100+ contemporary schlock writers. They generally catch my eye. Sometimes in writing sample—-it’s thoughtful, deeper, pushing towards…something. rarely is it someone going on and on, lamenting about their writing or worldbuilding or some such—-it’s generally someone not so much struggling—-as progressing. Good writers progress, bad writers lament and sigh and whine. In sometimes a very short forum/post I can see someone doing something interesting, pushing a boundary. Like I said it’s rarely to see in action online.

Second Example:

Several years ago I was working at Wal-Mart—-I was in Charlotte to help with my terminal mother—-but ironically folk don’t die as fast as their imminent death is seen—-so I rush down in August—-lock, stock and barrel——and along comes February—-still alive. I have cleaned the 3 bedroom close form top to bottom—-I’m starting to crawl around with nail clippers to do the grass; the highlight of my day is whether to walk 8 country blocks to the Lion King supermarket or to expand my walking sojourns (I didn’t buy a car because who thought I would be there that long.) to find other stores, life, people, something—-I find that there’s a Walmart where the bus that literally stops 50 feet form the front door will take me to for ninety cents. At first I was going to work for a pawn shop at a mini mall—-I would stop there to buy DVDs to take to my mother in the hospital but Walmart offered more in terms of benefits. I wander in apply and they literally snap me up like lobster meat at a wedding reception—-like the local plasma joint where I regularly donate plasma—-I am a unicorn—-educated, responsible, able to do all of their wonderful Computer Based trainings.

I land at Customer Service, the front desk because I can pass so many of the If/And trainings about returns, exchanges and I really didn’t want to be a cashier on anything but spot days—-for an hour or so (I know it’s odd but I enjoy being a cashier——I have since high school. If I could make $100k doing it—-I’d be there in a snap! lol)

So I’m whizzing through customers with a variety of items and issues—-there are 3 Basic Rules for a Return Exchange so for me it’s not that difficult of a job and it gives me something to do other than writer, shop and go to the hospital.

A young woman, about 19, 20 brings to me an item, an issue and next to her is her son—-maybe 3–4 years old. I explain the rule for whatever the issue is, what I can do and the little boy asks me a question about the computer console—-I probably had to look up something against her receipt.

It’s a deeply intuitive question—-like is the price different today than it was the day she bought the item?

A jump for an adult to make from my silent finger machinations but a LEAP for a child.

I answer his Yes and explain that it’s from another store so I have to cross reference it.

Are all of the stores connected? Do all of the stores have different prices?

Yes, little boy they do. Yes, they are.

Are the prices shifting on sort of a wave—-a predetermined sequence?

Ok, the first couple of questions and more importantly his enunciation of words, his direct pronunciation of words, his ability to visualize what I am doing—-what MY questions are and how I’m using the computer system proof him as exceptional.

Why Exceptional?

One, I rarely change the level of my intellectual language towards children, especially if they show an ability to understand me. I might simplify—-I’m talking about the red ball moving from this space to that—-but I don’t lean down and do the whole goo goo gah gah bullshit and talk slower or pitch my voice higher. I talk to children the same way I talk to animals, adults, inanimate objects. So the fact that he’s tossing back not only cogent questions but clearly understanding me, not parroting words back at me catches my teacher “ear”—-measurement eye.

Is there genus? No, not the way people casually mean it but you have to give space—-as I do in discussions with adults—-that most people know learning of higher concepts from TV and movies. So they take a false/fictionalized projection and layering it onto reality——assuming that their projection is right because of the layering.

Subpoint:

All them Facebook writer posters also needing validation for writing and a lot of the pat answers being to write more—-are true to a point. You also need Deliberate Practice to enhance, challenge and guide over and over for thousands of hours to become even the schlock writers they worship. No one wants to hear that. They just want Anne Rice to be a “genius” because her book has been written well enough, better than they can write—-so she must be a genius—-as when the curtain is parted and she’s standing there with her book——millions of people applaud it.

What this does is one, put some folk into a special category of ability which explains their creation/output and two, it sort of determines that you, when you find what they’re doing hard to duplicate—-are not a “genius—-you weren’t born that “special” way so when you quit—-like a couple of months in—-are at no fault.

Rather than the truth—-the people you see as geniuses have stood still on a stage for you—-the curtain was pulled back and you saw them and screamed “Genius!”

The curtain closes and that person goes back to thousands upon thousands of hours of practicing all of the micro actions, with help from teachers and mentors and schools and ever increasing challenges and outline by people with greater ability——then the curtain parts again and you see them standing there with another creation and you scream “Genius!”

What this does its it allows you to let yourself off the hook for not being good at something rather than going backstage and seeing all the things they do for that unveiling.

So that little boy in Walmart—-I pulled him and his mother out of line and gave her directed advice about how to raise and educate him—-how to fan the spark in a true flame that I spotted in him——generally in poverty children of capability POTENTIAL—-just potential—-like a supermodel who is 14 years old—-she COULD be pretty with the right training, make up, clothes, exposure, modeling agency—-that little boy COULD be very intellectually gifted IF she:

• encouraged and didn’t discourage his questioning of the world
• his intense verbiage and communication—-he’s picked up on the world MORE words than normal for his caste. Generally, it’s about 1000 words in totality, a child in poverty is regularly exposed to—-go ahead listen to some. But a child in Middle Class or higher—-gaining MORE words—- is exposed to 25,000, and 10x more—-up to 250,000 in wealth. (You just learned the difference between public school, parochial school and private school.) What they are learning ultimately are more words to describe reality and their internalized feelings, intellectualizations, etc. Those additional words are coming from books and teachers and such, that are saying things like “Okay, yes, that is a tree but now here are different kinds of trees by season, by region, by species, etc.—-now where you had the base identifier of “tree” you now progressively have say 100+ different kinds of trees—-by name AND you have information about seasons, weather, colors, surrounding fauna—-another 5000+ ideas that attach to the idea of “trees”.”

The little boy in Walmart sort of presented knowing multiple kinds of trees—-an associative connection and that there were seasons that affect the trees in his reality—-summer, Christmas, his birthday—-spotty——but he’s picking up some stuff.

In many ways what I was hearing/seeing in him is a form of the fertility of his mindscape. Yes, going around I hear the depth, growth, deadness and potentiality of everyone’s mindscape——because I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours listening to people, comparing them, assessing them, reading about the mind, about the neuro-biology of humans, etc.—-I’m not just in this for shits and giggles.

I sometimes take students with me onto the NYC subways and I point out to them the gradation of education of potentiality I see and hear in people. Some of my bolder students will go up to the target and ask them specific question—-my teacher says you completed high school, got your associates degree; that you got a four year degree and that both of your parents have degrees; that you have a masters; that you’re currently in school; that you dropped out. I’m never wrong.

Think of it like frequencies—-I’m listening to—-and other teachers are listening to the frequencies given off by children and adults. I can hear in that little boy potentiality—-his frequency is burst much higher than most children his age.

Talking to his mother—-she had a high school level education—-that level of education, without further education, dimming (Yes, in that short time I could hear her frequency.) So, say she was a solid A to B student by the end of 12th grade. She hasn’t done rigorous course work so she’s slid down to a 10th grade level, maybe a B- student, if we stuck her into a testing situation right now—-(I taught GED classes to adults for years and what the real challenge was was evaluating where the adult was at, inserting appropriate materials and enhancing—-sort of looking for where they had “atrophied to”—-what they knew, were good at, had picked up——all different “levels”.)

But I could tell the little boy’s mother wasn’t busting no intellectual moves—-she was regularly only watching TV, movies, playing on the internet—-not even reading books regularly—-which would help sustain her intellect, but not increase it greatly as she might not challenge herself with more and more complex books. Zane is one level, with dozens of books—-Toni Morrison is another level, with a dozen books too.

(I once gave a young mother the Morrison books I had on me—-we were on the 2 train and she was sitting with her baby, trying to get through Sula, frustrated. I told her to keep on pushing and here’s some more when you’re done with that—-go get the others. That’s what teachers do.)

Mothers, Children, Fathers and Grandparents

The young mother at Walmart had probably been slightly derailed by having a child so young. Some of his high propensity/potentiality might have to do with having her as such a close parent when her educational infusion was so intense——high school—-so while she might slowly dim—-there’s a point-place where it’s like her mental sunlight is over-focused in his direction—-maybe not intentionally completely but enough——to get some buds sprouting. The education of children, pointedly in poverty happens in two dimensions—-if the maternal father—-my mother’s father——encourages his daughters to educate past 14 and then mothers directly sharing that education with their children. Which is what my great-grandfather did with my grandmother and her sister, and then my grandmother did with my mother—-the last of four children and the first to go seriously to college. Imagine how gratified I was to be able to track my own prodigiousness when I started learning the social classism and psychology of education.

I also told the mother at Walmart to:

• not be frightened of her child’s burgeoning intellect—-it is useful, winning in life, not a threat to her. I told her this because something parents don’t know how to discuss is smart children will bust you in your bullshit. It’s one of the reasons why poverty self-perpetuates—-adults, who might be wrong—-tell their thinking children to shut-up, to not question, to not investigate——and all of the world and advancement is about thinking, questioning, investigating.
• Provide him with as much stimulus as she could in books and games and coloring books now and more importantly when he got into school keep adding stuff—-from the Walmart book aisle——BUT do it TWO grades beyond where he was at—-force him to advance, to operate at a higher level.
• I was teaching her a rough formation of Deliberate Practice.

The elements of deliberate practice:

1. Deliberate practice is structured and methodical
2. Deliberate practice is challenging and uncomfortable
3. Deliberate practice requires rest and recovery time
4. Deliberate practice involves constant feedback and measurement
5. Deliberate practice is most effective with the help of a coach or some kind of teacher
6. Deliberate practice requires intrinsic motivation
7. Deliberate practice takes time and can be a lifelong process
8. Deliberate practice requires intense focus
9. Deliberate practice leverages the spacing effect (the spacing effect refers to how we are better able to recall information and concepts if we learn them in multiple sessions with increasingly large intervals between them.)

Or, concerted cultivation:

• Concerted cultivation is a style of parenting. The expression is attributed to Annette Lareau. This parenting style or parenting practice is marked by a parent's attempts to foster their child's talents by incorporating organized activities in their children's lives.
• Concerted cultivation is a middle class style of parenting that involves deliberate cultivation of a child's development. In contrast, the accomplishment of natural growth is a style of parenting more common among working class and poor families.

What I was trying to convey to her—— at her level of understanding—-from the incredibly odd man at Walmart Customer Service—-(I explained some of my resume, teaching background)——was the above—-little things she could do that he would latch onto until most importantly, he was in school, in an environment where other teachers would notice him and encourage his development. Luckily there was another teacher in line who came over and helped me talk to the mother——so she wasn’t freaked out—-because from her perspective, we just told her her child was a mutant and could one day be an X-Men….. but we needed her to get insight into him——and in some ways stop ignoring his prattle—-something was potentially happening there.

In sum then, genius is concerted cultivation—-the environment the child grows up in supporting them, married to Deliberate Practice.

Mozart

His father was a music composer. He and his sister were taught music from toddler age then pressed to perform all around Europe. The bread and butter of the family was dependent upon their performances. He supposedly composed his first serious piece at 4. But consider this—-your child is good at something you’re very good at—-before you let them show it to the world, would you help them make corrections, clean it up a bit, help translate what they mean?

And music was all these kids did all day—-there was no TV—-and it was also a way to not only get audience cheering/feedback/fame but also their father’s loving, devoted attention.

Simple. Now you know how geniuses are developed and created.

All of that to say yes, real knows real—-I could spot that little boy (and others on the subway and online)—-I could see their sparks because I’ve studied looking for sparks and nurturing that to fires. Is it based upon my own prodigiousness? I would say that what I’ve personally done is dissected my family of origin, their education and its’ effect because I’ve studied and taught the effects of education. In the examining of myself, my college educated parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents in comparison to my lesser educated cousins, aunts and uncle—-I can see distinctive differences in the handful of us, including several college educated cousins based upon that education.

I can even see, now that I reflect on it, though two cousins went into education—-one with my help and an older one as her second career—-that their education-prodigiousness was to the goal of work/career. Mine has been to an edification end AND my career. I like understanding things, ideas, myself, education, students, teaching, learning, how people learn, how to teach. One of my strengths is Ideation (from the Gallups Assessment.) I get off on learning/knowing things. To that end having been marked as prodigious since about that boys age in Walmart—-smart, genius etc. for decades form teachers, peers, social workers, therapists, parents, frailly, coworkers, lovers, professors—-I know I’m smart.

I recently had a conversation with a coworker—-we were doing something completely unrelated to the discussion we were having about my having attended Long Island University as a teen=—-as part of an extension program from high school—-a soap opera club where me and my best friend Sean were filming a student soap opera (I’d written the 200 page screenplay.) The advanced program went on for 2 years teaching us all about lights, cameras, filming—-we did great projects and met Spike Lee and his partner Monty Ross—-it was a great experience. (and yes, I heard the professors/teachers discussing myself and another young guy as the “best” in the class with the most potential.)

My coworker a few days ago looks at me, like she’s discovering something and says—-”You are smart.”

I laughed because we’d talked about this before—-I told her that the a beautiful woman and a smart man KNOW they’re beautiful and smart, it’s unnecessary to tell them. In fact, I have a beautiful friend—-she’s startlingly beautiful,, and knows it but doesn't live in that vanity—however she dismisses people—-men and women—-when they tell her that. She knows. She’s 50 and has known since she could understand language and deference and privilege.

I’m the same way about smarts. So what I think of my own genius is that really it’s YOU in the audience masturbating to the curtains popping open and you think you’re seeing fireworks spontaneously come out of my butt. Curtains close and I go back to logging another hour or reading, thinking, writing, over 50,000+ hours now, into the Genius Machine of Kyle.

What I was trying to convey to that young mother, sort of a seed within a seed implanted into her to implant into him, is for her to normalize his abilities as they develop. To encourage and foster them, concerted cultivation, but not squash them or masturbate to them.

Being smart, testing really, really, really high since I was a child, I know how useless the term genius is—-unless you’re getting that Macarthur Fellowship! lol What is more important is learning and doing the work that interests you, that feeds you, that allows you to travel and explore with other smart, wise, useful, good people.

So yeah, I spotted another genius—-and right in front of everyone I slipped him (hopefully) the secret seed, inception, of how to be free of such a bullshit term.

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15 Lessons Rich Parents Teach Their Kids That The Poor Don’t on the Kyle Phoenix Blog

1. Understanding how money works 2. The difference between an asset and a liability 3. They’re not entitled to anything 4. How to be sociable and connect with other people 5. Stop expecting immediate results and avoid magical thinking 6. How to create daily habits that on the long run, give them incredible advantages 7. Money is a tool and a good thing 8. Increase income instead of lowering expenses 9. Knowledge is more valuable than money on the long run 10. Don’t work for money, have it work for you 11. Solving problems is the quickest way to get rich 12. Don’t waste time on things that correlate to the real world 13. How to use good debt instead of bad debt 14. 80% of results come from 20% of effort 15. Having money does not make you a better person, it just solves some of the problems.

Smile, Kyle
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