You know how Tosh puts 20 seconds on the clock and rattles off as many responses as he can to a video?  I’d like to try that with a quote from the recent Jezebel article about fundraising for IVF.

For most of us (devout Catholics aside), it doesn’t have anything to do with the actual procedure, since undergoing IVF has become a very common practice. It’s more that being asked to fund someone else’s fertility treatment feels a little bit, well, annoying—like being asked to give money instead of gifts at a wedding. I think it’s because IVF seems so entirely optional and personal. While chipping in to someone’s adoption can be seen as an altruistic act, paying for a friend’s IVF seems closer on the spectrum to being asked to help pay for a chin implant to help make their dream of not hating their face a reality.

And… go.

Aside: my feeling is that we walk a very slippery slope when we deem some personal fundraising as altruistic or admirable (or understandable) and others as gauche because the worth is always in the eye of the asker.  All receivers of the message can choose to ignore.  I’m all for the author pointing out that all money requests make her uncomfortable, but think it just makes her look heartless to write about how this request like… gags her with a spoon.

Last week, Tertia posted about the Warrior Eli story, namely because her children’s pictures were utilized in the hoax.  Hoax.  I actually don’t know if the story is fully fiction, a fake life and a fake death for Dana Dirr.  I spent the weekend trying to reconstruct the chain of events and characters since so much of what had been posted online is now gone excepted in cached form.  Combing through deleted Facebook pages and pictures taken from other people’s blogs and Flickr accounts, I tried to understand how someone could create a dynamic, somewhat-involved Internet trail that is… fiction?

It began with two people… or characters (depending on how much of this is fabricated — I truly don’t know): Dana and JS Dirr.  The couple had Facebook accounts linked to numerous friends, who may also be fictional.  They also had ten children (with an eleventh on the way), one of whom was a son named Eli who was experiencing childhood cancer.  Dana connected with other mothers blogging about their children’s experiences with childhood cancer.

I am not sure how many people interacted with Dana Dirr prior to her death, or whether they only became sucked into the story during the events on Mother’s Day. (There were definitely people who followed Dana Dirr’s story prior to the death because donations to cancer organizations in Eli’s name stretch back several months.)  Last weekend, Dana Dirr died in a car accident, but not before delivering the child she was pregnant with at the time.  The story made the rounds on Facebook — it was simply too cruel for people to comprehend.  A family who was already dealing with the tragedy of childhood cancer had now lost their mother — on Mother’s Day.  The family insisted they needed nothing but if people were moved to do something, they could make a donation to one of several childhood cancer organizations, including Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

I only learned about the Dirr family because two of Dana Dirr’s children were portrayed with pictures of Tertia’s children from So Close.  I’ve read Tertia’s blog for about six years and have watched her twins grow up in photographs.  So what is truth and what is fiction in this story remains to be seen, though what is fact is that the photographs of two of Dana Dirr’s children — Lily and Jade — are an infertility blogger’s children, Kate and Adam.  And in poking around, other people have stepped up to claim ownership of other photos used on Dana Dirr’s pages.

Since people started noticing their images stolen, all of the pages from the Warrior Eli Facebook page to their fundraising page on Alex’s Lemonade Stand have been removed, which doesn’t bode well from a truthfulness standpoint.  And that’s about all I’ve been able to figure out from reading the various blog posts by people who were sucked into Dana Dirr’s story.  It doesn’t have the closure yet of a Beccah Beuschausen nor does it have an explanation for how the images of others ended up being the visual aids for someone real, therefore, the story lingers in truthfulness purgatory.  Who really knows what to believe?

Deep breath.

Fraud on the Internet is hardly a new invention.  We’ve seen the same scenario come up time and time again: a tragic story (more often than not  involving a child and/or a woman) gains traction on the Internet.  No red flags are raised because the only things asked of those emotionally involved are prayers, attention, or donations to a well-known organization such as the American Cancer Society.  At some point, the story takes a very upsetting twist and people start feeling as if something is amiss.  And then it is revealed that the entire situation was fabricated — there is usually no mother and/or child at all, and if there is, the mother and/or child is not exactly in the situation portrayed.  From Little April Rose to Kaycee Nicole* and other  Münchausen by Internet cases.  The fraud is usually perpetrated not for financial gain, but for the attention, support, and care the person creating the hoax receives.  The situation may not be real, but the love flowing towards the fictional story is.  And real attention, support, and care are all desired human wants (and some would say needs) that cannot be bought.

Some people respond that the damage done by fraud on the Internet is hardly on par with the damage inflicted by people such as Bernie Madoff who destroyed lives with his scheme.  But just because life savings aren’t wiped out doesn’t mean that Internet fraud doesn’t inflict irreparable damage to the trust that is the foundation of the online world.  From trusting WebMD to provide us with useful information akin to what we’d gain from our face-to-face doctor to building friendships over time-space via blogs, we spend every single one of our online minutes walking a trust tightrope without a safety net in place.

When we’re in the face-to-face world, our body actually has a physical reaction to things that don’t seem right.  But the Internet is a medium that restricts almost all of our senses from in-taking useful information.  Imagine conducting your face-to-face relationships without your sight, smell, taste, or touch.  The only thing you’d have is the ability to hear without tone or inflection — the equivalent to words on a screen.  The Internet places us at a very large disadvantage, and therefore, all we have to go on is that foundation of trust.  And when it is broken, we realize just how vulnerable we are every time we accept information from a computer screen.

Even knowing this, some of my closest friendships have come out of the Internet.  And I trust them.  Even knowing that there are people in the world who would take someone else’s photographs and construct an online existence for themselves out of them.  I can’t really explain how or why I can make this leap beyond pointing out the fact that there are deceitful people who exist in the face-to-face world, and yet even after our core is shaken from their deeds, we still are able to love, to trust, to connect with others afterward.  Because we need to as humans.

I think it’s important to go into the Internet with an open heart as well as the remembrance that you are unable to utilize so many of the senses you use in your face-to-face world to make those gut decisions.  And therefore, proceed with caution.

* In a heart-stopping moment as I wrote this post, I found something that Theresa Erickson wrote back in 2009.  Completely missed that until now, but it makes the surrogacy scandal that came to light last year all the more chilling.

Welcome to MFA Sunday School, a once-a-week, free, online writing workshop. MFA Sunday School posts are uploaded on Sunday mornings, though you can read them or participate any time — the comment section is always open for people to post a link to their work or ask a question. You can subscribe to blog posts via the RSS feed, or look for them under the category heading “MFA Sunday School.” If this is your first time in “class,” you may want to jump back to the first post in the series in order to understand how things work, or peruse all of the past lessons as well as a glossary of terms by reading the MFA Sunday School Glossary and Course Archives.

Hopefully you’ve tried your hand at writing a sestina, the first fixed form poem we’re going to work with (after we get a few fixed forms under our belt, we’ll switch to looking at imagery, sound, etc) even if you haven’t posted one yet.  Surely with several thousand tuning in for this series every Sunday, there are more than four smart, brave souls willing to post their poem?

Moving back into the world of fiction.

Brian Christian wrote a book called The Most Human Human about the Loebner Prize Competition’s version of the Turing test which pits humans against computers to determine whether or not a “blind” third subject can accurately label which is the computer and which is the human as he/she communicates with both.  The computer that is able to most closely imitate human communication receives the label, “the most human computer” and the human who is chosen most often as sounding like a person is labeled “the most human human.”

Okay, so I haven’t actually gotten to reading the whole book (though baby steps — I’ve downloaded it for iBooks), but I love this concept of a contest to determine who is coming across as human, and I think it is something that all writers need to grapple with in creating characters.  Are your characters believable?  Do they make very human choices (which usually means complex choices) or are they more two-dimensional and go for the obvious?  Do they have tiny, unique traits — especially in their voice — which help the reader keep all of your characters straight in their head?

Let’s take the Harry Potter series as an example since it’s a widely read series, and you’re likely familiar with the characters.  Who said: “I enjoyed the meetings, too. It was like having friends.”  There are only two characters who could have uttered that line: Neville or Luna.  Certainly Harry has never struggled to find friends.  And noticing a lack of friends isn’t very Ron-like or Hermione-like.  Can you imagine Draco Malfoy saying that?  And now, having narrowed it down, you realize that Luna is much more blunt, much more self-deprecating, much more likely to say exactly what she is thinking than Neville.

I’m certain I could write out twenty more random quotes, and you’d be able to identify the speaker even without a tag.  That is because Rowling creates characters that would win in my version of the Loebner Prize for “most human character.”  There are plenty of other very human characters in literature to television writing: from Ramona Quimby to Foreman on House.  And there are also plenty of characters who would fail the test and have their two-dimensional “characterness” come through more than their ability to imitate a real person.  They’re the characters that just don’t ring true.

So how does one construct the “most human character?”  Through observation, retention, and utilization, or what I’ll keep returning to as ORU.  Note to self: create a glossary of all my made-up writing terms*.

So what is ORU — it’s the process that writers go through for bringing elements of the real world around them into their fiction.  (1) Writers observe.  They notice the small details.  If you don’t naturally notice the small details yet, you can hone this skill with the practice homework below.  (2) Writers retain information, filing it away for later use.  Some writers can do this in their brain, other writers keep notebooks or notecards with tiny details they want to use in a story later.  (3) Writers utilize those tiny details to create believable characters.  That is ORU in a nutshell, and we’re going to be returning to this concept and practicing this concept over and over again throughout this online course.

Later on, we’re going to go on an observation field trip to observe space (because you also want to create believable settings), but right now, we’re just focusing on people.  And we need to narrow this down even further: today we are only looking at how humans move; what their movements say about their internal state.  See, there are dozens of tiny working parts to observe, so it helps to narrow our focus for the moment to just one aspect of being human.  No extra points will be given if you diffuse your focus and try to write about how humans sound or how humans choose words — you are only looking at how humans move.  Ready to start your homework?

Homework: Go out to a public space with a partner — a restaurant, coffeehouse, park.  Leave all distractions at home (especially… I’m sorry Wolvog and ChickieNob… kids).  Set the timer for twenty minutes and without talking to each other (and try not to even look at the other person), write down everything you notice about the people’s movements around you.  Does someone keep scratching their neck?  Tapping their pen?  Rubbing their hands over their eyes?  What are you picking up from their small movements?  Can you sense that the neck scratcher is nervous, the pen tapper impatient, the eye rubber trying to hold back tears?  What small traits are you picking up on that give you a piece of information about the sort of person you’re viewing.  After twenty minutes, match up what you observed based on what your partner observed, and like Scattergories, you get no points for the things you both observed and processed similarly.  You get one point for the things that you both observed but processed differently. (For instance, if you both noticed the neck scratcher but your partner thought he looked as if he was nervous whereas you thought he looked bored.)  You get two points for everything you observed that the other person didn’t observe at all.

If you ended up with the low score, ask yourself whether it was due to where you were sitting (if you’re facing the person, you’ll notice more about them than if they’re behind you and your partner is facing them) or if you were distracted.  Did you check your Twitter feed during the 20 minutes?  If you did, you probably missed noticing small moments.

This exercise is about:

• Seeing how good you are at seeing the small movements. [OBSERVATION]
• Recording/remembering the small movements for later use (along with what information they convey.  A note might look like: “people scratch their necks when they’re bored and distracted.  If I have my character scratch her neck in the scene coupled with the right words, I will be able to convey boredom without ever using the word bored.”)** [RETENTION]
• And in the future, you’ll utilize these notes to create believable characters. [UTILIZATION]

See?  ORU — observation, retention, utilization.

If you get more time this week, additionally do this exercise on your own.  While you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, while you’re talking with a friend, while you’re looking for books at the library.  Keep a notebook with you at all times so you can jot down these small observations and have them in a single place to use later.

* I paused from writing this lesson in order to compile terms and past lessons on a single page which you can now find here and will be linked to on my right sidebar as well as the top of each MFA Sunday School post. Now you can quickly see a lesson where each term is used so you don’t have to wrack your brain trying to remember what ORU means the next time I use it.

** We’ll come back to this concept, but it’s a popular idea in writing: showing and not telling.

Perhaps it’s because I’m the blogging & social media editor for BlogHer as well as a sap for a wedding, but I totally jumped when I saw that Mark Zuckerberg married his longtime girl, Priscilla Chan, today.

What do you give as a gift to the founder of the largest social network and the newly-minted doctor?  Since it’s near impossible to think up tangible gift ideas for twenty-something billionaires and newly-minted doctors, and since we could all use each other’s collective wisdom ourselves… leave your best piece of marriage advice.  What makes for a successful marriage?

Josh and I showed the twins the Time magazine cover last weekend.  Beyond inquiring if people were upset with the cover because the boy was biting his mother (our conversation: Um… he’s breastfeeding, not biting.  But he’s standing on a chair.  Is that how older kids breastfeed?  No, not exactly.  Then why is the boy standing on a chair?  I don’t have a good answer for that.  Why are breasts sometimes called private parts and we’re not supposed to look at them and other times mommies show their private parts and that’s okay?  Can we get back to the discussion I wanted to have?), we asked them if they would be okay if they were the boy in the picture.  Based on their reaction, we guesstimated correctly when we said we couldn’t imagine the twins being cool with having their picture out there.

And before you get your panties twisted, it had nothing to do with what the boy was doing.  I asked them if they would be upset to have me post a picture of them smiling nicely in the camera and they shouted yes.  Eating a lollipop, yes.  Playing baseball, yes.  Would they ever be okay being on the front of a magazine for any reason including winning a big award, and the answer was no.  The reason being that neither wanted strangers  looking at them, or people talking about them.

They gave us their hard limits, which were what we were already doing: no pictures or videos online, especially in publications and no stories about them unless they were the sort we would tell everyone anyway (the evolution story was fine, medical information is not).  I asked them if they were okay if I continued to tweet from time to time amusing things they said because I use the medium to quickly record these moments for myself, and they gave me the okay as long as I asked first.  We talked through past posts about them from the ones about the Wolvog and Steve Jobs to poor Mr. Whiskers of earectomy fame.  And for the most part, they’re comfortable with what is out there.  They know that all of you know about them, and sometimes you may even talk about them in this detached sense, but you don’t know them unless you have met them.  They were okay with the idea of themselves floating out there but not the concreteness of names and images.  Which pretty much falls in line with a lot of other life choices they’ve made.

Maybe I do know them after all.

*******

Want to know when I write?  I participated in She Started It’s author series where she asks writers to talk about when they write.  It’s a really cool project.  If you want to see my answer, click here.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Warrior II” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Are You Mom Enough Time Magazine Cover” (Stirrup Queens) – thank you, Lori!
• “On Being Left Behind & Rooting for All Babies to Be” (Writing for Life)
• “Hole to Whole” (Aiden, Baby of Mine)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Waiting for Little Feet has a post about waiting for the first ultrasound.  As she steels herself for the possibility that she could go through the same devastation she felt after her first loss, she also makes a promise to herself: “Although there is nothing I can do to avoid being scared between every ultrasound and chance to check on the baby, I refuse to waste my entire pregnancy feeling as petrified as I do right now.”  It’s a promise she’s now going to have to keep…

Still Life with Circles has a heartbreaking thank you after a recent loss.  She writes so beautifully: “I cannot tell you what the notes, condolences, comments, and the emails we have received have meant to us. We feel held. We feel loved. We know we are not going through this alone. Thank you. Oh, loves, thank you.”  It is a post about the aftermath of a loss, about the grief of a child who wants her sibling, and a family carrying on knowing they aren’t alone.

Write Mind Open Heart has a fantastic post that pretty much everyone should send along to anyone and everyone to read during the months of May and June.  She gives a heads up to everyone who holds a Mother’s Day or Father’s Day celebration about the section of their community they may not be reaching (and, in fact, may inadvertently be needling).  I also love that she admits that she knows the person didn’t know; but after reading this, people can hopefully bring even more compassion to their speeches at this time of year.

A Thousand Oceans wins for best title with “The Grinch Who Stole Mother’s Day.”  Okay, so she admits that it wasn’t her best moment, but I actually think the rawness reflects what so many people are thinking inside their head.  That maybe people do need to hear in order to understand.  Life can’t always been roses and breakfast in bed; sometimes it’s thorns and spilled coffee.

From IF to When has another amazing post about finding resolution.  I think it’s a must read for anyone who is infertile.  Period.  Even if they think they’ve resolved their infertility.

Lastly, An Engineer Becomes a Mom has a post about a shopping trip which was ruined by someone’s insensitive questions.  It is realizing when you’re speaking with someone who is not going to be deterred from their questioning as well as that desire to simply be honest, for your child’s sake.  Since there is nothing to hide; no shame in the multitude of ways people build their families.

The roundup to the Roundup: I guess I was right about my kids not wanting to be featured.  When do I write?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 11th and May 18th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.