1) Where are you from? Why?
A little bit of New York, a solid helping of Dallas, a collegiate stretch in Cambridge/Boston, and now San Antonio. So, mostly Texas. The why includes things like my father’s career, cheap real estate, no state income tax, lots of good roads, mild winters, and a very reasonably priced state medical education. My wife and I miss the Boston of our memories, but we know deep down that it’s way too cold up there.
2) Generate a relevant formula.
Amount of disposable (“free”) time X Creative energy = Creative output, a constant.
The inverse relation. As one goes up, the other, in turn, must go down. When we say all the things we’d do if only we had more time, we are kidding ourselves. The math doesn’t lie.
3) On your website, it says that you study medicine. Describe what you’re currently learning in med school (or something you’ve learned that completely blows you away) with as much attention to esoteric medical language and detail as possible.
I am sitting in a genetics lecture. The most interesting moment of this two hour stretch so far is the discussion on uniparental disomy (UPD), a rare random event during gametogenesis and/or embryogenesis that results in a chromosomal abnoramity of varying phenotypical significance. Generally, one chromosome in each homologous pair is inherited from each parent. In UPD, both come from a single parent. Uniparental disomy requires a combination of two opposing meiotic or mitotic errors, such as a combination of nondisjunction in one gamete and compensatory chromsomal loss (e.g. anaphase lag) in the other. While viable UPD embryos are often phenotypically normal, they are prone to disorders of genetic imprinting (e.g. Prader-Willi and Angelman Syndrome, both from the long arm of chromosome 15) and rare autosomal recessive diseases (because they can carry two copies of the recessive allele). So while two parent-carriers are usually necessary to inherit a recessive trait (e.g. Cystic Fibrosis), UPD children can actually inherit the disease from a single parent if sequential genetic errors take place in the specific chromosome that contains the abnormal gene.
…or something.
4) As Sartre asks, “Why write?”
Because my wife hates it when I play videogames.
5) What is there, and what should we do about it?
Sometimes, not enough. In these cases, we should endeavor to make more and share equitably.
Other times, there is too much. Here we need to find better ways to tune out the noise, to focus with laser intensity until there is just enough. I am making a sly reference to this site and other things like it, as well as Twitter and other evils of web 2.1 beta.
6) Finish the following sentence with as many words as you want: “The future of literature is…”
…just like the literature of today except there will be even more to read and probably less time to read it. Also like today, everyone will either think that it is dying or is exploding with neverbeforeseen vitality or will be totally oblivious to its existence.
Also, we’ll all write using the next generation of speech-to-text dictation software. It will use electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the subvolcalizing neural impulses you send to your larynx to speak (even when no sounds come out) and convert them directly to words. It will be awesome. You will see.
7) Describe your favorite feeling or sensation (rules of syntax and/or decency may/should be bent and/or broken).
Unexpected or surprising happiness. The news media and many scientists simplify the dopaminergic system of the brain as “the pleasure center” in part because it’s what’s responsible for behavioral and drug addiction. In reality, it seems to be the center of unexpected reward. It’s the part of brain that says, “Wow, what was that? Let’s do that again!” When you think you will succeed and do succeed, that’s no big surprise. When you think you’ll fail but succeed anyway? That’s dopamine. It’s why gambling is so addictive.
Do you remember the difference between eating your favorite meal and discovering your favorite meal? That’s the feeling.
Ben White lives in San Antonio and squeezes fiction into Twitter via Nanoism (a thrice-weekly publication for very short fiction) and Midnight Stories (a daily story journal in 140 characters or less). His recent writing has appeared in PANK, matchbook, and elimae, among others.
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