It's a Small World After All.

John Seel spoke at today's convocation and invited anyone who was interested to come have a discussion over lunch after chapel hour. He mentioned a connection with Walden Media, and so, since the last Walden representative I spoke with had a lot of helpful things to say (such as the fact that Walden was thinking of starting a publishing faction), I decided to go.

But we didn't talk about Walden at all. We talked about changing individuals by changing culture, rather than the other way around. We talked about how to change culture: by changing the institutions that form it. We discussed why evangelicalism doesn't work anymore. It's because we live in the "third world," and the first two consisted of societies founded on spirituality, but ours doesn't want to be, so we can't communicate with people as though they belonged to the second world. "We are surrounded by nothingness," says society; "we stand alone."

Seel also happened to mention that a book cannot just be written; it has to be institutionalized. What the heck does that mean? I had to approach him afterward to ask.

He explained that when you write a book or make a movie, it needs to reach people or there was no purpose in creating it. It must be distributed, and writers and filmmakers have to consider this when they publish or produce their work. If the producer has no way of getting the movie on more than 2000 screens and the publisher has no means of putting the book on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles everywhere, you've got a problem.

So writing institutionally simply means that you have to consider that you are writing within certain boundaries set by institutions, and you have to play by their rules.

Then he asked me whether I had an agent (I'd mentioned that I'd self-published two YA fic books) and, when I said I didn't, suggested that I contact a man by the name of Rench. He said he does some agenting work himself, but he's mostly a producer and thought Rench would do a better job. What a fantastic opportunity! And to think, I wanted to sleep through convocation this morning!

Then he asked where I went to high school. When I said Cohasset, he was amazed and pointed to the address on his business card: Cohasset. That's right, my tiny little 8000-population town that I always though was only home to rich snobs (except for my friends, of course). He goes to St. Stephen's church, where I went when I was REALLY little and where my friend Rob and his family go now. I asked if he knew them, and he did! What are the odds? It's a small world, after all.