But there’s a few ways not to care about things like that. Some kids were offended that their brilliant artistic skills were being ignored by the teacher, who of course had a duty to educate all the people in the room, rather than simply lavishing attention on those who were the most talented (those whose parents were convinced they were, anyway). Then there were the kids who were convinced that it was all bullshit, a dodge or a game. This blank canvas is a statement, you know? It’s art — how can you say I did it wrong?

I was one of those who simply couldn’t believe that any of this stuff had much to do with me. I had decided that I certainly wasn’t any kind of artist, and therefore had no real need to retain anything the teacher said after the semester ended. I just wasn’t a creative person. Lacking ideas, I let the mechanics of art slip through my fingers because I thought I would never need them.

I even took a creative writing class (laugh if you want to — I did). Sure, why not? I was doing all right in my English class, why not get an easy mark in what, I figured, would basically be another one. I was reading for fun almost all the time, but the thought of being a writer was horrifying to me. Creating  coherent written material was something I found grueling, at best. I liked school essays and papers, though, because my teachers presented us with a strict set of rules about how to do them. Topic sentence, supporting sentence, reword your sources until you met the page/paragraph minimum, and then wrap it all up and be done with it.

Things got really easy once I learned how to type.

I regret all of that not paying attention, now. It didn’t occur to me, as time went on, that I would change. Over time, a couple of developments occurred that made me reconsider my failure to work at developing any sort of artistic skill.

I admit, it was mostly hormonal. Most teenagers have trouble dealing with the newfound intensity of their emotions, and I was no different. Searching for an outlet, I started taking guitar lessons, and spent most of my weekly sessions talking about my life with my instructor, who was kind enough to realize that, really, I needed a sympathetic ear more than a musical mentor. (I imagine how difficult it must be to be a guitar teacher, when you have to do double duty as some kid’s therapist.)

The lessons lasted about a year, but everyone involved kind of realized that they were going nowhere. I plateaued pretty early on, and I wasn’t doing the work needed to improve. I got what I wanted from physically bashing away, but the subtleties of the instrument were beyond me. Also, the money ran out. I eventually grew up and learned to deal, mostly.

Later in life, two things happened to me that I did not expect.I began to experience the first of a series of sudden realizations that I was getting older, and that we all have a limited amount of time to work with. Everybody has those moments. Eighteen, twenty-five, thirty — you wake up in the night, thinking that time is running out. Some nights, when I misbehaved a little too badly, I was quite sure I was going to die, and had no accomplishments to point at to make myself feel a little better.

The other thing that happened to me was that I began to react to things more than I’d used to. I’d been listening to the news for years, but I had almost nobody I could to talk to about what was going on in the world. I had a lot I wanted to say, and these things stacked up. I felt like I had a pile of smoldering embers in my head that I needed to get out. So I started a website, so I could have a place to dump the stuff in my head.

I soon realized that I just didn’t have the skills necessary to make sense out of what I was thinking. I was grinding my brain into paste, just to produce some 500 words or so. I couldn’t organize my thoughts, and I couldn’t make the words line up in a sensible way. But I couldn’t stop. I kept at it for years. I’m still terrible at it, but at least it’s gotten easier. I’ve written more than a thousand posts, between my various ventures, and some of them are kind of all right. Maybe five or six of them.

The moral of the story is that I should have paid better attention to the mechanical aspects of the craft — any crafts, really. I had mistakenly assumed that artists are full of ideas, all of the time, which is not something that’s true for everybody. The problem was that I assumed I would never have an idea that I needed to express, so I never got good at using the tools. Eventually, when I started feeling a powerful urge to get to work, I went out to the shed to find what might have been alien artifacts, for all I knew about using them.

Well, now I know better. But I am old, and so, so tired. 

On the other hand…

The io9 poll is coming from a place of very real disappointment. (Which is the inevitable response whenever Dune is mentioned, these days.) There is a very real sadness that comes with the knowledge that there will never again be another book from your favorite author or your favorite series. But that’s not what caused me to feel a distinct chill in my veins almost immediately after my initial delight.

It is possible (so I’ve been told) to love what you do for a living, if you’re lucky or clever enough. For many others, however, work is that thing miserable thing we are required do in between bouts of heavy drinking. And, for some people, there is an eventual realization that they’ve fallen into a trap: They find a job doing something that they used to love, only to find that love poisoned by the addition of professional responsibilities.

I’ve been professionally involved with the computers for over ten years now, and I’ve seen this happen to a lot of people. I’ve seen bright-eyed hobbyists wither and burn out as they slowly realize that working with machines is nowhere near as fun when caught between a business’s unreasonable demands on one side, and the inevitable organizational requirement to spend as few resources as possible, on the other. What do you do when your job is to make miracles happen, only to be rewarded with even more impossible missions?

I imagine this happens in other fields. I’ve certainly met plenty of graphic designers who wind up designing catalogs, who therefore spend the bulk of their days printing out posters for their bands on the large-format plotter, and trying to convince themselves not to take that flying leap off the roof garden.

Of course, I’ve read plenty of interviews or personal essays from writers who love their jobs, but I don’t know if that’s a common attitude in that profession. What I do know is this: As a fan, I derive enjoyment from reading my favorite series, and I doubt I would much care to have the responsibility for writing them. Leave aside the question of talent for a minute. Even if I had the ability to do well, taking over someone else’s franchise seems like a pretty thankless job.

Back in 2005, thousands of fans’ hearts turned a slight shade of green upon learning that Russell T Davies would be reviving Doctor Who. At that point, any one of us would have gladly switched places with him. Now? Probably not so much. He’s said that he still loves the show, but from the most recent episodes he’s written, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s a little burnt out on it. What supports this theory, in my mind at least, is how genuinely happy he seems when he says that he is looking forward to being able to watch the show again as a mere fan.

And that seems right, to me. Producing and writing a television show is hard work, and Who fans are notoriously bitchy on top of that. Even if Dune or Pern fanatics are more low-key, it’s impossible to avoid disappointing somebody. Worse, unlike fiction written purely for love (like fan fiction), you can’t simply drop it when you decide it’s not working, you can’t quit when it’s not fun anymore, and you spitefully (yet cathartically) kill a series that doesn’t actually belong to you.

If you write a story based on someone else’s work, they’ve got every right to tell you to knock it off–but, they can’t come in and demand fiddly little changes. Unless someone is paying you to write that story. And if other fans don’t dig your Captain Scotty of the USS Walter Mondale,  novel, well, to hell with them. Unless you’re doing publicity, and the nail you while your trying to market your book.

But imagining what it would be like to take the reins of an existing franchise is harmless enough, I suppose (even if we’d never enjoy the reality of such a task). In it’s own way, that’s part of the fun of reading books that take place in a well-defined, attractive, imaginary universe. That’s what most of us do anyway, in our own imaginations. We tell ourselves stories that the original writers didn’t write, and we do it secretly, in our own brains. Unless we write fanfic, which is as honest an expression of love as there is for a fan, and is also highly fraught with ethical questions and bad spelling.

Still, everyone loves a good story–whether they’re reading it, or writing it.

So, now I am quite sure I am watching My Dinner With Andre on YouTube. Sorry, but I’m not feeling well.

- In a world where even the cheapest professionally produced TV show can afford a little CGI here and there, YouTube is one of the few places that we can all reconnect with a style of video production where things like chyrons are a huge technical achievement. Many videos are made with single camera setups and minimal post-production. What this means is that, even if we are now a society so well versed in the language of visual representation that we innately understand its rules, YouTube artists often have no choice but to break those conventions due these technical limitations. And, when you’ve watched as much television as I have, there can be a pleasurable frisson in watching something that doesn’t quite achieve that level of polish. You see the rapid zooms, the poor framing, the stumbles and flubs (no second takes, here) and soft or weak focusing, and it’s a little charming.

- Too much of that sort of thing can be annoying, however. I enjoy semi-pro video production in the same way I enjoy fanzines: I think their attempts to rise to a professional level make these videos… I don’t know, cute? I don’t want to just say “charming” again, but I suppose that’s the better term. Anyway, I’m predisposed to be a little affectionate about this kind of thing.

- Conversely, while some people might enjoy it, I can’t get into the jerky home movie handicam style of video. The wild panning, which results in nothing so much as a wash of psychedelic smears of color, the bad audio, the incomprehensible purposes behind these creations – it’s just not for me. Do a search for “I’m bored” on YouTube sometime (if you happen to be bored), and you’ll find some really unwatchable shit. But, it’s an aesthetic that might grab some people. At least they know where they can find it.

- Whilst looking for Joy Division covers (I’m a hopelessly nostalgic goon, I’m afraid) I stumbled across a video by a 15 year old kid who does these amazing note-for-note recreations of songs from some of my favorite bands. (At least, when I was a teenager, they were.) This inspired a certain amount of joy ("Hurray! Maybe kids today don’t universally have terrible taste in music!”), but also a corresponding amount of pain (“Boo! This kid is a freaking musical prodigy with a home studio, who can play every rock instrument that exists, while I’m an fat old bastard who takes twenty minutes to work his way through an eight-note scale, and hasn’t ever played a barre chord without completely farking it up!) Then I remembered how I’m not supposed to look upon the successes of other people as opportunities to beat myself up, but it didn’t help much. Still, good for ya’, wunderkind.

- I can’t claim that my viewing of an official music video from some random band is likely to make me run over to the music store to pick up their CD, but I can still make a case for bands and record companies to allow their videos to be posted. Google let’s one find music by simply typing in a lyric or two of a song whose title and artist has completely slipped my mind; but YouTube allows me to confirm almost instantly whether or not the song in question is the one I’m after. These special, earworm types of songs are the ones I’m most likely to buy off iTunes. So, people, please post your songs (with lyrics, if applicable) so I can send a buck or two your way, huh?

I like a book where an author can stretch out, allowing him or her to play with the language without having to worry about getting anywhere quickly. One of my favorite series is Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which comes to around 3,000 pages over three volumes. If you look at the story being told in that series, it could lose about a thousand pages or more without seriously impacting the plot, but I would sorely miss the digressions, the asides, and the somewhat meandering explorations of coinage, commerce, stock markets, and insurance. It creates a sense of place that you could move your whole imagination into for a while.

On the other hand, I’m really trying to read shorter books this year, because I feel I’m missing out on something. There’s a great deal of pleasure in reading a book that must accomplish its aims with great economy. And, stylistically, a short book must make its words count since its got so few of them to spend.

I’m not sure how I got sucked into the idea that a great book needs to be a lengthy one as well. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and The Dubliners are all fairly short, for example, but they stand up. It may be that I am, I confess, more of a consumer than I am a lover of literature. In deciding which of two books to purchase, I often abandon any thought over which book might be better or worse, and instead,  focus on the value-for-money aspect of the decision, at least in terms of raw page numbers. “Well, $15.99 for Pnin, or $7.99 for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell… hmm.”

Am I a philistine, then? Unquestionably. This is no proud declaration of ignorance, mind, but rather a resigned confession; I may be too old to change my ways, or to develop sophisticated tastes. Anyway, I’d rather be fun at parties – even if they’re the wrong sorts of parties. Still, I am concerned that I’ve put aside too many worthwhile books for no better reason than the fact that they seemed too expensive by weight. Even with my debased preferences, I realize that one shouldn’t buy books the way one buys meat. Besides, I get most of my books from the library anyway.

So, any recommendations for small books?

Over the past month or so, I’ve been dipping into an old copy of The Portable Beat Reader, just as something to do whilst in between more un-put-downable books. Don’t worry: I am well aware of the trepidation inspired by any stranger’s expressed interest in the Beat writers. It’s the same look of fear and ennui that acts as reply to any claims of the personal discovery of such subjects as Nietzsche, Atlas Shrugged, Jesus, Scientology, John Zorn, and so on. Suddenly, you find yourself worrying about whether or not you have the stamina to humor somebody whose life now revolves around a thing you long ago dismissed as hoo-ha or meh.

Don’t worry. This isn’t about how I’ve drunk the Beat Generation-Kool Aid (which is laced with Benzedrine, cough syrup, and jockey-shorts in any case.) No, instead we’ve just been thinking about the behavior of generations in a more general way.

Ah, "generations". That’s a loaded word; its dictionary definition doesn’t really do justice to all the baggage we’ve piled on it. But the sense I’m looking towards in this case, however, is merely the one that describes the waves of children born every year, and not any of those more profound senses.

It’s interesting to watch how, as those never-ending waves of children grow up, reach adolescence and then early adulthood, they inevitably recapitulate the discoveries of their elders: love, sex, drugs, art, learning for its own sake, joy, despair, finding a place in the world, humor … all the twists and turns of life. As somebody’s mother (David Sedaris’s?) once said, "You kids think you invented sex." She could have said that about aspect of existence, and been right on the money.

But as each generation winds its way through the discovery process, most of its members — content or not — follow in the footsteps of the traditional Western narrative of growing up: Birth, childhood, teenhood, marriage, parenthood, middle-age, dotage, and death. The rest lash out, bridle, and resist; and in doing so, many create art.

I don’t mean the kind of art that so-called "creative professionals" produce for hire. I mean the kind of art that arises from the revolutionary impulses of the disaffected, the struggle to create something new in the world that the creator thinks will engender a change in it. To find frameworks, niches, or new definitions of old things that one can live with. The drive that makes the young try their damnedest to never get old — at least, not in that way (whatever it might be).

These communities have made some grand contributions to culture: Farewell to Arms, Tropic of Cancer, On The Road, rock music, comic books, commercialization of underground dance parties, YouTube as the new theater of the macabre — our world is richer for these things, possibly. Probably, we’d miss them.

In days gone by, a lone kid in a library would find a dusty tome that spoke to his or her dissatisfaction, finding guidance or a model for a way to live. Or else they’d find inspiration elsewhere. Maybe they’d group up, form a scene of some kind. In time they might even start bands or magazines, or small publishing companies. Madness! Most of them will be Doomed! But they do it, because it’s worth doing anyway, or because the hubris borne of intellect, youth, passion, and talent forces them to.

Nowadays, you can find all that shit on the Internet.

In a way it’s great; you can find a sympathetic voice from the past, lickity-split. You can group with like-minded individuals from half a world away. You make art and share it as fast as your inspiration can quicken your brain.

You can, of course, go back a look at the fates of all of the movements that preceded you; you can watch them crumble, explode, fade, sell-out, or become bitter. And for what, in the end? At first blush, it would seem that most of these lights were bright, but short-lived, and changed nothing, really.

The pill had as much to do with the sexual revolution a Elvis and the Beatles and 50′s style repression did. And what would the hippies have been without Vietnam? It’s enough to make a prospective artist give up and get a job; 50 years on, the military-industrial complex is still going strong, in spite of the Beats. The only thing that art seems to have much influence on, after all these years, is, well, art.

But it would be a tragic mistake to give up. It doesn’t matter that past counter-culture movements have built us only an incomplete paradise. We still need the occasional freak with a messiah-complex to rock the creative world. The alternative would be ghastly. A world in which most of us realize that we lack the physical and spiritual fortitude to effect any modification of the machine in which we live, but have no complex distractions to get caught up in, once we’ve plumbed the shallow depths of popular entertainment.

So what if 99% of all revolutionary, kicking at the pricks style of art amounts to not a jot of political or social progress? Most days, I’ll settle for solace — even if it’s the kind that comes from being jolted out of my preconceptions, shocked out of my sensibilities, or bewildered by previously unconsidered concepts. You know, the kinds of reactions that powerful art can provoke. Hey, anything that can distract us from our own mundane concerns for a minute is useful.

You may think that I’m proposing some kind of willfully ignorant, art-based children’s crusade: "Go on, kids, and make art like you think it’ll change the world, even if you don’t stand a chance, just because we like to be amused by things." But no, that’s not what I’m suggesting. Rather, I propose three justifications for shunning a comfortable existence in favor of a life of artistic pursuits: First, it seems a worthwhile gamble to me — someone, somewhere might improve the world with a book or a song or a poem, though the odds are long. Second, art can support and console the folks out there doing the hard work of change and progress. And, lastly, I still believe (idiotically, probably) that some lost causes are worth fighting for. (Hello, Saint Jude.)

Don’t let the fact that so many groups and artistic movements ultimately failed get you down. Who knows what’ll happen? Who can say for sure?

Cameras can be a money sink, but photography doesn’t have to be expensive. You can have a lot of fun with a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera. With practice, you may even be able to make money selling digital photos online. I know several people who do this (and I’ve done it myself).

Great advice. And, while the digital revolution has given anyone with a computer the ability to process and retouch photos, we do have a kind of retrograde suggestion on this subject: if you’re new to photography, um, maybe you should buy a 35mm film camera.

Why? Oh, lots of little reasons. For one thing, the initial investment cost is lower… sort of. If you compare the image quality of a film camera and a digital camera at the same price range, you’ll find that film looks better — at least for the lowest priced, entry level models. Better still, you can often find perfectly good 35mm cameras on the used market, making them cheaper still.

A somewhat shoddy 35mm camera will produce photos with chromatic aberrations, streaking, and blurring (especially along the edges of the frame). A similarly shoddy digital camera will give you photos with chromatic aberrations, streaking, blurring, and grotesque pixelation. If you’re committed to pursuing hobby photography, certainly you should buy the best digital camera you can afford. If you but dabble, however, you’ll get better pictures in the short term with a point-and-shoot 35mm camera.

Even with the cost of printing, your initial investment won’t be that large. Many film processors can put your photos on CD if you need them in a digital format. And they can print individual pictures for a cheap as 25-cents a copy (less, if you get more copies).

Even so, the equipment isn’t what makes for good photos. I’ve heard stories about photojournalists going into war-zones with not much more than a duffle-bag of disposable 35mm cameras, and coming out with some of the greatest shots of their careers. The trick is to keep your eyes open, look for interesting things, and always have a camera on you.

But if you just want to test the waters, you shouldn’t feel compelled to make any kind of major purchase. Go grab a disposable 35mm, keep it with you at all times, and consider going someplace you haven’t been in a while to take a few pictures.

Happy snapping.

I sometimes imagine that the hypothetical reaction of the hypothetical bystander is something along the lines of the feelings that inspired the Family Guy writers to pen a scene in which two self-important, irritating, laptop-owning douche-bags go on about how writing doesn’t count if there’s nobody around to watch them do it. With the number of free-lance writers I’ve read who are oh-so-willing to admit that they do their writing in coffee shops, I must confess a certain amount of eye-rolling whenever I see some coffee-soaked individual delicately tapping on the keys of a portable computer. Are they real writers? Or is the creation of words suspended in a liquid crystal matrix some sort of identity-signifying accessory, with no eventual literate purpose?

This, of course, is something I feel terribly guilty about. Who am I to judge — I who shouldn’t even be out in public, clumsy oaf that I’ve become? Me and my murse, and the fake leather-covered notebook within; a notebook I am terrified to engage with in when others are around. I slip it into my back pocket, with a pen that won’t start, and hide in a bathroom stall in order to jot down a seed phrase or two that will hopefully germinate into a blog post or more. I am the public writer’s opposite, the unconfident non-artist: I am furtive.

I’ve occasionally heard or read some wit or another suggest that reading, as a solitary pleasure, is much like masturbation. An activity grown respectable due to its ubiquity, but only so long as it maintains its fortress-like discretion. We accept — and some laud — the fact that everybody does it, but public exhibition of one’s talents in this area is truly the shining beacon of an unhinged mind. And, while a case could be made that reading is kind of, sort of, possibly like self-abuse, a greater case could surely be made for the similarity between it and writing.

Except … I don’t believe that the comparison really holds up. Reading and writing are clean, neat activities; even if writing produces some sort of end product, that product itself need never trouble anyone. Reading the right book in the right place may even inspire socialization — whereas its supposed brother-in-solitude can only produce ostracism on a city bus or in a dentist’s office.

And writing — well, that’s a different thing altogether. The public writer (assuming the goal is to write, rather than to impress) doesn’t give a damn what others might think; they have the confidence in their skills that one requires in order to execute a craft in full view of others. The writer can tell the difference between the worthwhile and the worthless, even if his audience can’t.

In this way, writing is not like the crown-jewel of furtive self-pleasure; the confident and the talented practitioners of the former need not fear the public ridicule faced by the latter. Oh no, it’s something else entirely.

Have you ever tried to learn how to juggle? Whether you eventually gave up or not doesn’t matter — surely you remember those first, desperately bad, admittedly hilarious attempts. As far as you — or anyone else who might have been watching — could see, you were doing something foolish, and funny. The same sort of situation applies if you’ve ever tried to learn an instrument: Patient and supportive your teacher may have been, but practice requires solitude, even if it’s only of the most imaginary kind. We laugh at others to prevent them from looking stupid; in evolutionary terms, we warn others away from danger by laughing at them. It’s a sound that can stop a person in his or her tracks before it’s too late.

Over time, I’ve come to realize that my unwillingness to publicly acknowledge my own few creative leanings comes not from any association with myopic, hunch-backed, hairy-palmed reprobates who make private functions public; instead, it’s the shame, humility — or just outright embarrassment — of the Novice. The beginner at the piano, the freshman at clown college, the understudy’s understudy … we all know that mixture of secret pride and public shame that comes from the first, faltering steps in the skill-building process, and the protection that private practice affords us from all of those influences pushing us to end before we begin.

We need a shield, and we need to hide, sometimes. That way, the first time somebody says to us, “You’re really bad, you should quit,” we might just have the wherewithal to ignore the philistine; but, to hear such things too early in the process, our response might very well turn out to be, “You’re right. I’ll quit.”

So, go on: sneak, dissemble, hide, disappear.

But don’t quit.

The answer is coming, please bear with me. A clue might be the fact that I haven’t told you these things about myself in some kind of effort to toot my own horn. The novel? Think Bulwer-Lytton. The screenplay? Think Basic Instinct 2. The album? No comparably bad example exists in this universe.

And that’s why I don’t do these things professionally. In order to improve a skill, one must practice. Practice takes determination. And, whenever I complete a task, in the moment that comes afterward, the inevitable self-assessment and reflection, I discover that all my effort and thoughtfulness has produced utter garbage, too poisonous even for composting. And that drains the determination right out of me.

I’ve said before that artists must have an incredibly high tolerance for crap, that they can’t let it get them down. Well, I don’t have that tolerance. Because when I look at the trash I’ve produced, it’s not informative. All I see is what’s wrong, all I know is that it felt right at the time, and I can’t make the connection between these two facts work out. How does something go from “Okay, this will work,” to “This is the worst thing ever produced,” in the space of one night’s sleep?

The answer is to practice. Over and over again. To build a mountain of offal in the hopes that, somehow, it will teach you right from wrong. But after failing so badly, so utterly — I lack the will to try again.

That’s what makes a great artist; what destroys my resolve is what fuels their ambition. To be able to look at their own shit and say, dammit, I’m going to try again. Oh, and talent, that helps.

If I wanted to fix this problem, I know what I’d do: I’d pick one thing and try to do it a million times. I would avoid the distractions that new opportunities represent, with their promises of potential, instant virtuosity — hey, you never know until you try, right?

Except, there’s still that nagging doubt: writers are anointed by God, not created through education and practice. But talent must sometimes be nurtured in order for it to blossom. Thus, the question: am I nourishing some latent, buried aptitude? Or am I just shoveling shit?

Oh, I know the answer, for myself at least. And, if you’ve read this far, you know exactly what that answer is.

Not all acrostics are poems, of course. But here’s an example of some acrostic doggerel:

I saw a word — very short
Somewhere in a book report

Just awful — but, technically, it’s a poem. However, the acrostic form has leaped from the fairly benign world of verse, and has infiltrated certain print ads, greeting cards, and that most disgusting abuse of language: the company mission statement. It’s bad enough that these things exist in the first place, but most of the time they are clunky and unappealing.

Many of them violate a key rule; key, in spite of the fact that we just came up with it just now. But if you’re going to write an acrostic, and if it’s going to have to be composed of a series of single words, then take our advice on this. First, we’ll illustrate the kind of acrostic that we don’t like:

Commitment
Objective
Keenness
Eagerly

Just awful. But why? Because, in this case, the mind rebels against the close proximity of different parts of speech. Verbs, adjectives, nouns and so on can all sit next to one another — in a sentence. But when you throw them together in a list with no obvious order or connection (other than the fact that the first letters of each word make up another word), it can hurt the reader’s brain a little bit.

So: Commitment is a noun; Objective, in this case (since the purpose of the acrostic seems to be laudatory, and it’s hard to argue that the noun form of the word is much of a compliment) is an adjective; Keenness is probably intended as an adjective, but is actually a noun, so that’s confusing; and Eagerly is an adverb, but the reader is so confused at this point that he or she is just glad the damn acrostic is over. Let’s take a look at that example one more time, only now, we’ll try to use the same parts of speech for all four of the lines:

Committed
Objective
Keen
Eager

Just… awful.

Now, while some of these words could be classified as nouns, it becomes obvious in context that they are all, in this situation, being used as adjectives. You can “be” all of them — where as in the previous example, you can’t “be” keenness.

Anyway, we hope that helps. You might think that this kind of problem will never come up in your life — but you never know, do you?