Most news are completely unworthy of attention.

Jokowi, DKI Jakarta's new elected Governor

I think it would be interesting to just hide from the globalization for a few years and see what's changed afterwards. I started getting into politic news in general recently and I'd recommend you do not make the same mistake. The discussions I've had with my buddies (recently Jakarta's New Governor candidates' backgrounds, plans and governing strategies) made me realize what an enormous circlejerk the whole thing is - just confirmation bias everywhere . In these discussions, most people don't ever think critically about what's being said - they just recycle the stories and infos provided by whatever ideology they subscribed to, and disregard the rest - to the extent that debate just becomes a series of reflex actions. I've caught myself a few times supporting or criticizing things I've never actually thought about.

Unless another 9/11 scale incident is happening, don't watch CNN- all you'll get from 24/7 news is random babble. Most international affairs is also fairly unimportant because you're simply not effected by these things as much as you might think nor are you capable of effecting them as well. If a war is about to start, read the papers. If a massive scandal like Indonesian Bank-Century Bank is breaking, read the papers. Other than that, just skim the headlines until you find something which actually sounds interesting. Business news is for investors, not stricly though. Science and technology news can be summed up with simply fact that science always makes breakthrough and technology is always advancing. However, you won't gain any true understand of science or technology by reading up on current research. Unless you're a researcher, just ignore most of this stuff. The only kind of news I would recommend that you keep a constant eye on is local news.

By all means, keep yourself updated with world events, but stay away from politics. Invest your time in something useful like the arts or science or anything else really. There is a moral duty to keep up with politics and related "news". Because ideally, each has to be an informed citizen. Our fate relies on the whole of us.

We're taught to think, but not how to think, or how to think well. We're told we've got to pick a side though.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish

Tips On becoming a better writer of short stories

Read everyday, write everyday, foster a sense of curiosity, become a careful observer. There's no secret formula; diet and exercise are how you stay healthy, reading and writing regularly are how you become a skilled writer. Writing is about recombining disparate parts, so read a wide variety of material. Learn to love what you do. Read short stories from different authors, genres, and styles. 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' is a good example. A good place to start is Joyce Carol Oates' anthology.Specifically read anthologies of good authors, find the ones you really love, and get their collections. Write notes as in, pages of notes about how stories that you love work. Examine their mechanics, their technique and structure. Simultaneously write based on what you're learning. Ignore everything else and write. Then read what you have written. You can always add further detail as necessary after the fact. Keep it simple. Not the writing necessarily, but the plot. Most good short stories are good because the idea is a simple one but done very, very well. (I have a lot of ideas but lately I have no idea how to write my thoughts into fiction that don't wash over the points too quickly without necessary build up.)

Ten thousand hours

Does it really take 10 thousand hours of practice to become a good reader or writer?

The definition of "mastery" is 10,000 hours. You can certainly become good at something before that. Although by that logic and definition, most 18 year olds in the US today are masters at video games.

I'd say that there are different readers and writers, painters and politicians, roofers and cement masons, and that anybody who actually believes some catchall rule about an artistic endeavor is full of shit.

I don't know about being a "good reader," but I'd say it takes that much to develop a sophisticated sense of literature. Doesn't matter how many books 10,000 hours is, as long as the reading is close and not just skimming. Reader no (quality/diversity not quantity), but writer yes if /lit/'s output is anything to go by. I have probably spent 10,000 hours reading. Since i was a kid my mom had me reading anything i can get my hands on and forced me to join the library and to borrow 2 books every time i exchanged the old ones.

People are different. They have different brains that are good for different things. The amount of practice required to reach full potential differs from person to person. Sentence structure written across the Internet, Blogs, Forums, and comments is no accurate reflection of one understanding of literature or other academic fields he/she may have studied. I imagine very few people proofread their posts let alone write them in a formal manner. Personally I couldn't care less for one need to inform us about his/her erudition. I never understood why so many people have to provide useless information on Internet.

One thing that is absolutely true is that if you want to be good at something you need to practice. There might be people that write amazing stories the first time they write but that is only because they got lucky and happened to write in a style that happened to appeal to others. So either practice or pray to god you where born with amazing taste.

You write a book. It gets published. It gets decent reviews. People come up to you and tell you they like your book. You can buy some food with money earned from your book. You are a good author.

For those who casually bragging about an intuitive understanding of plot, not prose. One could have checked out dozens and dozens of trashy pulp novels. Plot is not nearly as difficult to comprehend as prose is. 

Amber Lamps

"Lamps? Lamps? Amber Lamps!" she said sharply, slamming her ruler down on the desk.

Amber jumped at the noise, looking up surprised. She had been drawing in her notebook. She had a Cindy Lauper song stuck in her head, and she couldn't help drawing little pictures of Cindy in her notebook. It was the eighties, and she was young, truly innocent, and pretty. "I asked you, Ms. Lamps. Is your essay on the Reagan Administration finished?" said Mrs. Finley sharply, adjusting her tiny square spectacles. For a moment, Amber pondered on how much she looked like an owl.

"Yes, ma'am." she said, flipping through a folder with a picture of Duran Duran on the front. "Put that on my desk after class." She said passively, continuing with her lesson. The rest of the class was a blurry drone to Amber. She wished she had her headphones on so she could listen to a mixed tape of David Bowie music. Or maybe "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive.

Music was everything to Amber. Sometimes she would just listen, and let the world drift away around her. There were times that she was surprised when a song ended to find someone standing right in front of her. Or that she had missed something like a school fight, while she was feet away from it. Music let the complexity of the world untangle.

Amber jumped slightly at the sound of the school bell, "And don't forget! Tomorrow we're doing our classroom debates!" Finley called at the quickly exitting class. Amber stepped out the stifling school, out onto the concrete steps leading down toward the road. She smiled putting on her bulky 80's headphones as the soothing sounds of her music filled her personal world. Everything seemed to drift away, and she became mildly aware that her feet almost felt independantly walking home. But no worries. She had her music. And that was enough for her.

In time, her mixed tape came to an end. Amber blinked looking around. She was in a field, all alone. She must have mindlessly wandered away from the sidewalk. She had a habit of going random places while listening to her music. She looked around, realizing it was unusually bright out. It was like being in a room with a bulb much too powerful for what was needed. She looked skyward, gasping innocently.

In the air hung what could best be described as maybe a hole or a maybe a tunnel, bending in on reality and space itself. It was like the sky was folding in on itself in a tunnel shape leading up to a blackness. Not space, almost anti-space. Just a hole.

Amber screamed as she felt her body lifting slowly at first, gaining speed as she approached the hole. There was a terrifying moment where she hung between Earth and the uncertain heavens before being pulled through the blackness and through the recesses of time and space.

Amber woke up, finding herself sitting on a bench in a city. It wasn't her home. She knew that much. She lived in a small, God-fearing town. A sort of Leave it to Beaver community. This was big city. Off to the side of her "Keep Our City Clean and Safe! Do Your Part" sign was a small metal frame rack with free newspapers. She pulled a fresh paper from the top reading the date.

February 16, 2010.

She gasped. This couldn't be happening. She had actually travelled in time. 2010! She was in a time of flying cars, cloning, and almost 30 years later, man had surely made contact with aliens! Maybe Emilio Esteban was the ambassador for Earth! She took the time to look about her. No flying cars. It looked alot like the eighties actually, except the fashion on everyone wasn't quite as colorful. She decided to take the time to explore, putting the paper back.

After walking for about a block, she found a record store. She smiled to herself, walking inside. There were records that she recognized. Some she had personally. There were some she had never seen or heard of before. These probably came out some time after her. There was also an assortment of earphones and batteries and tape players that would have been old for now. But not for her. She bought a new set of earphones, and a fresh set of batteries and made her way to the nearest bus stop. That seemed like the best way to see the city.

The bus pulled to a stop, accompanied by the sound of a hissing airbrake. She walked onto the bus sitting next to a black man and across from a guy with a big bushy Santa beard, and a shirt proclaiming him as Tom Slick, who was apparently "A Mother Fucker". She turned her walkman on, and the sound of music filled her world, filtering out the reality. Her conscience mind drifted away. And in the void of unconsciencness she was aware of music and violence. As the music drifted around her, she was only vaguely aware enough to keep out of the way a bit, while the black man was royally beaten down. It was okay, she was aware when the Beard Man was struck first. It was him or the black dude.

The bus pulled to a stop, as the Beard Man exitted, and some wicked black woman rifled through Beard Man's bags, and the black man continued to bleed. She was vaguely aware that he said her name when he said, "Bring da Amber Lamps." but she didn't dwell on it long.

Soon she began to feel strange. Reality for her, had been odd today, but she felt as if she were literally drifting out of reality itself, and not just ignoring it. Time and space drifted away from her. She was aware she was drifting through the space time void again. Reality seemed to phase back to her. She was back in front of her school where she started. Well, she certainly had a long way to walk home. She wondered who the Bearded Man was. He seemed like he would have been nice, had he not been too busy defending himself from rabid black men. She walked home, walkmen playing, and reality nowhere to be found for her.