I just got back from teaching my Writing for Digital Media class, and I went through Orson Scott Card’s 1001 ideas in an hour with them. It worked out really well. I’m not nearly as good as OSC at pulling more and more ideas out, but we came up with some doozies. Very cool ideas.

The main one was about an alien coming to earth to desroy it since she is the last surviving member of her species and world. But she falls in love with the president of the world, who is 96, but she gives him a treatment that makes him look 30. Then, they must contend with the destroyer alien coming to finish the job he started with her planet.

Yeah, they were in a weird mood today. But, it was fun, and we got out some good ideas as we learned about brainstorming and loglines.

I am really enjoying learning all this new lingo and style in the digital media world.

He talked about lots of different things, but it was mainly about archiving records, since the reason he was speaking was the 30th anniversary of Ender’s Game and the unveiling of the OSC exhibit with lots of first printings and original manuscripts and such.

He mentioned about the importance of keeping artifacts of our lives. He pointed out that this is especially important for our descendants (genealogy, in other words). He talked about how important it is to save these things for our children so we (or others) can see why they became the person they did. In fact, he said that his writings and artifacts are more a statement about his children than about him.

Someone asked him what the most important thing in writing is. After a wisecrack about words, he replied “clarity”. Several people around me were trying to guess what he was going to say, and they were all shocked at his response.

He talked about when his fiction is worthwhile: a person reads it and then applies the lessons to their own life.

It was a very enjoyable couple hours. I didn’t even care that I was supposed to be at work. :-}

What an awesome experience