Versatile Writer Award 2: I’ll stab you if you make a Breakin’ reference

Last week Mr. FAR gave me this Versatile Writer award. I’d previously received it from Mari Juniper last year, but it’s very affirming to know a year later I’m still dexterous at the keyboard. The game requires seven seldom-known facts about the recipient, and for it to be passed on to someone else. It’s a little like visiting an unlicensed brothel.

1. When I was very little my uncle would hold me over the edge of his apartment building by my feet. I was probably annoying enough to warrant it, but it instilled a decades-long fear of heights.

2. In high school I seldom swore, disdained any sort of misbehavior, and was generally grumpy. In my Business class they called me "Grandpa." They'd mockingly ask me to tell them about the war. My stock response was to ask, "Which one?"

3. Last Tuesday I listened to Beethoven's symphonies for six straight hours. It helped me knock out a troublesome scene. There’s probably a blog post coming soon about listening to music while writing. I’ve joked about sending Hans Zimmer a royalty check for all the help summoning emotion his scores have given me.

4. I watched and read through nine of William Shakespeare’s plays, desperate to find one I actually liked. I feared disliking so much of Shakespeare would invalidate some useless but socially desirable part of me. Thank God Hamlet was good.

5. I enjoy 24-hour super markets because I like to dance with the cart in the empty aisles after midnight.

6. I have the terribly offensive habit of seeing humor in sickness and death. Meeting a fibromyalgia patient, I told her we should get our medical records and compare, because, “It’ll be like a game of Yu-Gi-Oh, only with decks of shitty lives.” It’s taken years, but now I’m quiet during most tragedies and funerals, not because I’m mourning, but because I’ve tired of being chastised for going against the accepted mood.

7. I watch way more Japanese professional wrestling than you think. That might actually be “any Japanese professional wrestling.” Kenta Kobashi is my all-time favorite striker. Once per week I hook up with a fellow writer Randall Nichols online to watch a simulcast of Dragon Gate Infinity. When Dragon toured the U.S. and hit Boston, I sat in the second row. Shingo Takagi and I had a moment where he was about to destroy a dude and I gave him the double thumbs-up. He looked down at me like he wanted to eat me alive. It was a highlight of my year.

So now that I’ve admitted those things, I’m sure you’re highly interested in my list of versatile writers. Here are five:

1. Stephen Book has to be first. He attempts a new style or genre for nearly every #fridayflash. Despite shifting so much, he has a routine standard of quality in the upper class of the community. More people should be reading his blog.

2. Chuck Allen, whose blog includes arguments against auto-flushing toilets, activism against slave trafficking, and sometimes Westerns. Diversity! Versatility.

3. Danielle La Paglia was tinkering with some ideas, but decided to do a YA project just for her daughter. Think about that – could have written other stuff, went into this for her daughter. That’s pretty cool. Also demonstrates versatile. Her thematic serials also span an impressive range of emotions. Well worth checking out, especially since they pop like candy.

4. Tony Noland, the first writer I met through Twitter who actually conversed with me about versatility. He also blogged about the importance of experimenting, and fears of losing his audience for writing different sorts of things. As someone who has proudly lost plenty of people because he wrote one thing instead of another, I endorse this fella.

5. Now I mentioned Randall Nichols in the previous list, so he precedes everyone listed here, but he’s also last on this list. What does that mean? As Lex Luger would say, “I don’t know.” Based just on the scripts I’ve critiqued for him, Nichols has done modern kung fu, backwoods vampires, checkout clerk angst and nudie bar suicides. You should go talk to all of these people, but when you talk to Randall, ask him about his love for Clash of the Titans.