October 11 2006

This is my last blog entry and the start of something new. The decision to stop came suddenly. Or maybe not. I really have nothing to say in the way blogs need saying. I actually wrote a blog entry last week about how I had nothing to say - oh, it was more artful than that, but mainly it only fooled me - and it bugged me for days.

The impetus, however, was Battlestar Galactica. I am a great fan of the show, but I have canceled my cable service so that I don't have the distraction of video. (Thanks Jonathan Leaf for this suggestion, even if it took me four years to adopt it.) I have both philosophical and technical problems with using BitTorrent (it's theft and in my experience it's slow), so my only source is Apple's iTunes.

Last season files appeared regularly two days after initial broadcast. As of this Tuesday morning the season opener still hasn't arrived. In frustration last night I searched on "when battlestar galactica season 3 on itunes," and I'm not alone in my grumbling. In reading the posts I found others, complaints from Canadians about being locked out of the webisodes, complaints from Australians that you can't even get the show there in any fashion remotely timely... and I realized I'm just not a blogger.

A blog is either a diary, an ongoing column on a subject of interest, or crap. I'm too private, and my life too simple, to write an interesting online diary. My main subjects of interest are my writing and other writing. And I don't want to invent crap just for something to post.

The problem is, if you don't put up something regularly, a website is pointless. I don't want to write serially - I hop around too much and the sense of deadline is tough on someone with absolutely no other support staff (unlike columnists who have, you know, an entire newspaper, and usually researchers too). Hence my persisting so long in such a quixotic enterprise.

Instead, something new. From now on, every few days I'm going to post a few hundred words of my most current writing. It might be good, it might suck, it might not even be complete sentences. But it's the only thing I know anything about and it's the major part of my productive life. If it's not blogworthy, then nothing in my life is.

July 4 2006

"...from very early in my career, I knew I could do really good work. I didn't know exactly how, and I didn't know when. I just had this vague feeling my work was going to improve."

David Galenson's affirmation hit home for me when I read it last week in a Wired magazine article, "What Kind of Genius are You?" by Daniel H. Pink.

An economist at the University of Chicago, Galenson has the fascinating theory that creativity manifests itself in one of two distinct, though not absolute, approaches. These different approaches tend to peak at different ages -- by peak to mean the period when artists produce the works of greatest value to society, measured by quality, popularity, academic citation or even auction price.

Conceptualists figure out in advance what they want to create, then execute their finished plan. Conceptualists tend to peak in their twenties and thirties.

Experimentalists go through long periods of trial and error, and only figure out what they are doing by doing it. They peak much later in life, beginning only in their fifties.

Like Galenson, I think I'm an experimentalist. For one thing, it's distressingly late for me to be a conceptualist. My habits of working, a charitable phrase, are when best those of an experimentalist. I don't form detailed plans nearly as often as I wing it.

I've had good fortune and some success in my life (though I'm still not beyond the occasional boneheaded move) but it's only lately that I have a faint idea of what I'm doing with my life and my writing. Yet when I look back over my life it doesn't seem random. More that the choices I made had much greater consequence than I could have imagined, wildly so, like some folk tale in which a vow or promise takes on supernatural significance.

I wonder if the difference isn't merely a methodological approach. Perhaps the source of the difference is a deeper duality in the creative perception of the world, something like handedness or sex. I imagine a conceptual approach as the ideation of a fully manifest object, something wholly visible. I have experienced flashes of completeness, like a suddenly obvious outline for the next few pages ahead of me, but these are rare. I don't see the work in my mind as much as I hear it, like a streaming pattern, something I have to listen for through my own and the world's static. I'm unearthing or repeating a vibration that's already there, something I am shaped to resonate. Of course there's no duality in the end, no more of an "or" than that of waves or particles of light. A bias. My bias.

The downside of being an experimentalist, of being a late bloomer, is that eventually you die and the older you get the more likely you'll die. Also, a late start isn't evidence of a late finish. As writer Daniel Pink reminds us, "not every unaccomplished 65-year-old is some undiscovered experimental innovator." And who says I'm not a late slow conceptualist anyway? I've spent so much time in this novel it's hard to imagine I ever or ever would write other than this.

For now though I'll stick with the experimentalist diagnosis and see if there aren't useful accomodations I can make now that I know my particular attractor. (I am once again trying out new software called CopyWrite that seems better suited to the structure of Nation of Airports. I'll wait to see if it's useful before writing about it.)

May 26 2006

I haven't touched this site for five months. This is not because I haven't been writing my novel, or because I am discouraged. This is because I skied four weeks this winter and took a ten-day trip to Europe. Despite the crushing vacation schedule I have completed several chapters.

So where are they? Not here, I've decided. Were I to put more on the site, I would in effect be publishing the book online as a serial. I tried that once before and it really messed me up. I've decided to ignore and avoid anything that smacks of a deadline imposed on me. My creative process is steady but I think it spooks easy.

A few friends have read the new work, however, and they've been encouraging. I've gone to both local and national workshops and talked with people who do this for a living, and they've also been encouraging. People like what I'm doing, and more at least want it to be good. This inspires me.

There are also new sources of energy. Since the subject of this site is my creative work, I won't detail the recent happy changes in my personal life, but they've helped. Also, I've made ergonomic improvements, most notably standing to work. It's been two months now and I like it. It is more tiring for my legs and lower back, but it's more comfortable for my body all around. It also makes me feel like I'm active, not just a lump melting into my chair. I think I breathe better when I stand.

My desk has sentimental value - it was the x-ray table in my father's medical practice - so I won't abandon it easily. Besides, standing desks are pricey. After a period of experimentation on phone books, I've rigged a comfortable workspace using some wood shelves on top of my desk. Here's a picture:

The typing surface is about 42" (107 cm) off the floor, with the center of the screen about 12" (30 cm) higher. This is higher than most people would like but I'm 6'4" (193 cm).

In the picture you see not only this note on the laptop screen, but marked up text for Chapter 5. I suppose that represents another improvement, in that it's part of a consistent pattern of labor that answers some of the gripes I have with digital technology.

There's no question I prefer to work on a computer. It's faster, easier, and more freeing. But analog work has physical existence, which stores a permanent on-going record of change. One advantage this gives is psychological. It can be depressing when the object of your heated labors bears no sign of your effort, just the eternal word-wrapped crispness of a well-pressed suit.

Another is utilitarian. Once you delete a passage in a file, it's gone, and with it the potentially recyclable (even potentially better) original turn of phrase. A standard word processor is mainly designed with the final paper product in mind; it's hard to create annotations that you don't want in the printed work. There are change-tracking tools, but I've had a difficult time with them.

My current solution is a compromise, as jerry-rigged as my standing desk, but also comfortable. I write in the book in Microsoft Word, which on the whole behaves well for me. I suppose I could use a text editor but I like seeing virtual manuscript, and Word does the best job (for my purposes) of automatic numbering and date-stamping. I write the book as a single file, and I keep it lean (simple formatting, no change tracking). Every couple of days -- more frequently if I'm on a productive streak -- I save softcopies of the book under a separate filename including the date. This gives me a good working record of ongoing progress, and when I miss something I removed, I can find an earlier draft. (I also periodically save the files as text.)

I still need to touch and mark the work, so I sometimes print hardcopies. As a rule going to hardcopy is a sign of major progress, with the change in medium providing new perspective. They're printed two pages per sheet, a system I took from my friend Shannon Clune. I go through the hardcopies three times, using a different color ink on each pass, and key the changes back in the file.

I also have moved my years of notes into a freeware (donation requested) note and calendar program called Journler. I was hoping that the newest generation of desktop search programs would find relevant files for me. The problem is they find too many, especially with my tens of archived copies of the book. Journler is a good compromise between ease of entry and tagging notes usefully.

Finally, a friend complained about the inability to post comments on the site. I've decided for now to be old-fashioned and take as a magazine does. I'm not interested in managing a forum and without management they grow weedy with solicitations. When I get my first letter I'll build a page for them.

December 8 2005

It's been a while since I wrote anything other than the novel -- yes, I am writing, not complaining about how I'm not writing -- but since I don't work in a truly linear fashion (that is to say, I write in one big file and jump around a lot) there's no real way to update the site with new fiction content. The thing is, without documenting my process I have a hard time learning from my mistakes. So here goes, and sorry about the four months between this and the previous entry.

The marked plainness of this site is an aesthetic choice, or maybe philosophical. I'm a writer, not a designer - it's words for me, not fonts or icons. These small notes and works in progress merit little beyond the simplicity of manuscript; my indulgent readers deserve better than flashing images and complicated navigation. As I noted at its launch, the design also has the advantage that it can be viewed on even the lowest-power devices.

I am however a serious geek. I started using computers in the early 1980's, when a portable machine was the size of a suitcase and screens came in monochromatic green. I was as good with those machines as most people are with modern graphical interfaces, but in the days of ten-megabyte hard drives and 1.2K dial-up connections (at $12.00 an hour, in 1989 dollars), home computing was a hobbyist's preserve and a rare skill-set. It gave me my first career. Of course the machines are so much better now that they don't require nearly the fidgeting they used to, just as modern radios don't require minute adjustments of crystals. Still, a decent percentage of my time on a computer is simple play, and the day they work perfectly will be a sad day for me. I may have to start watching television again.

It's been hard to resist the temptation to indulge my geekery in my novel, and the earlier drafts put a few predictions about future tech in the hands of my characters. I worried that without a look forward the book would quickly look backward. (On a side note, I think that the rapid change in commonplace technology is driving the resurgence in fantasy. Your Walkman may now be an iPod, but your magic wand is as powerful as ever.)

I've realized that it's better to age than to date. Old novels are old novels. Maybe now you can fly across the country in hours, but no one faults Westerns for the many dependencies their plots have on obsolete stagecoaches. Of course you could do as Nancy Drew books and Star Wars films, continually updating the technology in reference or in production, but I can't count on issuing box sets. Moreover, it saves me a lot of effort. I can say "phone" or "laptop" (the latter word, no doubt, will be as quaint by 2030 as a "horseless carriage" is today) without being more specific, and the reader can fill in the blanks without worrying just how the laptop finds its connection or the phone travels to so many countries.

There is however one piece of high-concept tech that has required more working than I first thought - Elisabeth's Polyglot, the little demon that translates all languages for her. In a workshop last summer, the teacher suggested that I wasn't clear how Elisabeth felt having a demon in her head. A fellow student summarized my ambition better than I ever did: "It's like software," he said. "She doesn't think about it, she just installs it."

It turns out, though, that the Polyglot is an actor in the plot, and a presence in the story. It has an intent and a consciousness, not quite that of an animal's but more than a program's. It isn't sentient enough to be evil, but it's toxic. If you generally think of demons as analogous to humans then the Polyglot is a demonic tick.

(My book doesn't, by the way -- my cosmogeny puts demons and angels nearer to universal physical laws than cognitively accessible beings, which has required a weird approach to the angelic manifestations near the end of the story. But that's for another entry.)

So, my teacher was right, no surprise. Elisabeth does have feelings, and eventually fears, about her little passenger. They develop over time though, as any relationship.

As for my product-development jones, I found a way to indulge it after all, but that awaits the first meeting between Michael and Elisabeth, and there's a hundred more pages to write before that happens.

July 24 2005

I'm remiss in my blogging. I'm calling it a blog now because that's what it is.

I've decided against publishing the entire novel as it develops. People just aren't interested in pages of cryptic notes. They want a taste of the book and if they want more they'll wait for the published version. I suppose that's as it should be.

The current version of the first two chapters, July 7 2005, is already out of date - I've gone back to calling the chapters "Chapter" and numbering them. But the text is the most recent. It was greatly helped by my new pal Tim Mohr, an editor for Playboy who I met at the Aspen Summer Words festival. Several people had told me that the opening was weak, but their comments were unspecific. This happens - people are better at feeling that something is missing than knowing what that missing part is. It was Tim who suggested describing Elisabeth's apartment as a way to introduce her better, and that provided a solution.

I'm now leaving it alone, save minor changes that the later chapters demand. But I have to let it go because I have too much new writing to do. I am getting good feedback from readers and professionals, and really now the only thing to do is to finish the book. I've vowed to be done July 4 2006. To anyone who knows my work habits this is laughable. To me it is monstrous and scary.

In other news my search for the perfect word processor continues. I hoped to stay with Word (Mac 2004) despite my continuing gripes (its labyrinthine layout, the ridiculous HTML it writes, its boneheaded method of opening files at the top instead of where I left off) because it was the devil I knew. Lately I've had real concerns about its reliability and the completeness of the files it writes. While Word starts with relative spryness, it chokes on the Nation of Airports file, taking forever to load it fully. The file itself is massive - it reached half a meg, which is monstrous, and a third of it apparently junk. I recreated the Word file by copying and pasting the text and got it down to 300Kb, which is more reasonable but still bloated. I already had to abandon using the change-tracking features because old versions would disappear and reappear in the list. Recently I noticed a couple of paragraphs missing on pages I hadn't touched in some time. Losing text is unacceptable.

For now I am using the first official release of NeoOffice/J, an independent project porting OpenOfficeto Mac OS X. OpenOffice is an open-source suite of office software (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation). It is free, and good, though a little rough around the edges, but certainly it is reliable and able to do much of what Word does in a manner that is comfortable to Word users. (It even reads and writes Microsoft formats, though very complex layouts won't fully translate.) It's already become the major office software suite for Linux, and is growing in popularity among Windows users. 

There is a Mac OS X version of OpenOffice - both Linux and Mac OS X are offspring of Unix - but it doesn't run in the Mac desktop environment. This means the keystrokes are wrong and the general look and feel is unsatisfactory to Mac users, akin to replacing your steering wheel with bicycle handlebars. Hence, NeoOffice/J, an independent project that takes the most recent stable version of OpenOffice and successfully makes it more Mac-like. I hope they'll be able to do something about the utilitarian gray color scheme and the Unix-looking dialog boxes, but the windows and keystrokes behave like Mac programs should. 

On the whole I like it. It's a third slower to load than Word, but once loaded, it opens the file where I last left it. The navigation pane is unobtrusive, unlike Word's giant drawer that takes up a quarter of the document window. Setting up styles and automatic numbering is easier, even just by reducing the numbers of windows to click through. The file size is one third of Word's. It even writes much cleaner HTML.

I worry that if OpenOffice doesn't take the NeoOffice/J code under its much larger wing, Mac users will always be playing a bit of catch up, but for now NeoOffice/J gives me all that I need and much of what I want. Keep your fingers crossed.

June 5 2005

I'm completely in love with my new writing method. It's liberating and helpful. I mentioned it in the page about my novel but I decided to explain it in in more detail.

A year ago William Gibson spoke at a local bookstore to promote Pattern Recognition (a fine read). He said that he kept his novel in one single computer file.

Yeah, that's it.

I learned my computer habits twenty years ago, when you'd never entrust that much text (half a megabyte!) to a single file, both for risk of file corruption and because your computer would slow to a crawl. Now my laptop is more powerful than what they called a supercomputer twenty years ago. So, in March 2005 I put all the current draft into one single file.

It may not seem like much, but it offers several benefits. One is that I no longer feel bound by the text that's gone before. If I have to change something, I scroll up, change it, and get back to what's going on "now."

Another is that now I can work on later passages if I have an idea, and not worry about losing it later. The problem isn't saving (I have a hundred little notes) or searching (that was a problem, but not now - props to Mac OS 10.4) but simply remembering that a while ago I already wrote that dialogue in order to search for it. If it's all in the same file, it's already there.

Twyla Tharp uses a similar method. In her book The Creative Habit she says that for each show she creates she has a box, and everything that goes into the show, goes into the box. Unlike a box for choreography, though, a box of writing can itself become a book.

A third is that I am not an outlining kind of writer. I know that this is stupid, sort of like saying you're not a blueprint kind of builder, but it's true. I heard Ann Patchett on the radio. She said that she spends two years developing the outline and then writes the book. If I had to avoid writing prose and dialogue for two years I would never write. I write like an ant walks, with a couple of basic purposes and a basic impetus forward. Individual files for chapters and notes made that an unwieldy process, especially when I wanted to work on different sections at different times and leave them both unfinished - but also share what was somewhat finished.

Finally, it makes the whole enterprise seem more grounded. The thing about a book is that it's a book. It's a unit. As a constellation of cryptically named files it didn't feel like a unit, but a big whirly thing that was dizzying and discouraging to contemplate. Now I click on an icon labeled "Nation of Airports a novel" and it's a unit. It's a book.

As a bonus it's made the novel easier to post online. One Word file, one conversion to HTML.

I'm now starting to reread all those notes. Anything I like I'll paste in the appropriate place. I'm not quite saying that the novel will write itself, but I expect it will take me less time than I would have spent otherwise. Which is good because it's taken way too long.