It's been one of those weeks where I struggle with any kind of satisfaction with my own writing.  My characters say and do things that are either stupid or just don't make any coherent sense.  It's exhausting.  It makes me question the whole gig.  When the writing sucks, it's easy to start looking at other ways to add meaning to your life.  Maybe I could be better, more productive, more meaningful if I spent the time taking long walks, solving the Theory of Everything, or contemplating the fate of the universe.

And along those lines I started indulging a new distraction in the last couple of weeks.  I had my eye on this eight volume "History of Philosophy" set that's at the University Book Store.  They've been sitting there beckoning to me for months and I finally bit the bullet and got one of the volumes.  I couldn't start with Volume I because it was already gone, So, I have to intuit some of the basics about Greek philosophy and dive directly into medieval philosophy, which I find to be mostly about the struggle to make a distinction between philosophy and theology.  And I LOVE it.  Which means of course that I'm a hopeless geek.  For the most part it's completely useless information; so much counting of angels dancing on the head of a pin.  It has more to do with attempts to construct a false sense of certitude even though ambiguity reigns in the real world.  But it's utterly fascinating to me.  I'll probably buy the rest of the volumes as I feel the urge, but I don't want to read them all at once.  My brain needs a little time to digest it's food.

But, even with interesting brain candy out there trying to distract me, I'm not willing to give up the writing.  The occasional decent stuff I produce is enough to keep me going for now.  And I also draw some perverse encouragement when I watch TV and realize that people are actually getting paid to write some of that nonsense.  I watched an episode of NCIS the other day and they had a female agent looking for her 16 or 17 year old "contact" in Baghdad.  The contact's father had tried to help her brother (a marine) and was killed by other marines for his troubles.  The agent was of course grateful, so she bequeathed this amazing and touching gift: 

"What?  You are giving us your laptop so my younger sister can have contact with the world?  Never mind that you haven't given us a power cord.  Never mind that the conditions of the community don't look like they even have power, let alone any kind of connectivity.  But, thank you, O wise and gracious keeper of holy technology.  This more than makes up for the loss of our father."

At least, that's how it came across to me.  I wanted to throw something at the TV.

And then I watched an episode of Shark.  I love James Woods acting, but the writers are killing his credibility.  They have him diving to the floor to avoid sniper bullets that are shattering the windows of his home, and then a day later he gets upset and takes a walk alone on a dark and deserted road.  He gets picked up in a limo (miraculous timing) by the same guy who was trying to kill him.  But NOW, with nobody watching, the bad guy only wants to give him a low-ball bribe.  Is it too much to ask for just a little bit of intelligent consistency in characters?

I would be embarrassed ... or maybe I should say I am embarrassed to write such ridiculous dreck.  But, I'll continue to plug away with the hope that some day I'll reach a level of competency that doesn't make me cringe without twenty rewrites.  It will probably take years and makes me wish I had started much earlier in my life.  I don't want to become a competent writer just in time to keel over with a stroke.  I might have to make plans to live forever just to get it right.  Or, I can always give it up and become an irritated TV critic.

 I stuck my neck out a bit over on a blog that I really enjoy called Depleted Cranium.  The blog focusses on bad science and crazy alarmist fears and such things as that.  But, they had a post about a particularly nasty looking cult and one of the commenters expressed a desire not to hear things that makes her question her faith.  The Atheists that hang out there immediately jumped on it and told her that the only conclusion she could draw was that "everything she had been told about god was a lie, and god didn't exist."  Now, I'm fine with letting people believe whatever they believe, but I couldn't let that stand as the only option. Not, when someone's faith was hanging out there, blowing in the wind.  

Chances are, the commenter didn't even read it, but I took at least a little bit of pleasure in it.

When we are writing fictional characters we are told to make them real, by making them more than one-dimensional.  A character who is bad and has no redeeming qualities may work in fiction up to a point, but when we want some kind of lasting depth to the story, we need to recognize that even the bad guy is a hero in his own story.  We don't have to agree with his motives or fully understand his reasoning, but simply knowing that the character does things for a reason is enough to give them depth. 

So, why do we try to ignore that in real life?  Senator Obama says that Rev. Wright is characterized by so much more than those few statements that are being played by the media.  He feeds the hungry and generally helps others in need.  But many of the pundits continue to tell us that Senator Obama must reject Rev. Wright, not just the statements, but the man himself.  But you can only do that if you believe those few statements define the man, and Senator Obama has already assured us that they don't.

Back in the 90's I attended a couple of Promise Keeper events, where Christian men came together and encouraged each other to a masculine approach to their faith.  I must honestly admit that I didn't come away with a whole lot of new insight.  I believe all of us, men and women have characteristics that can be defined as feminine and masculine and we need to work effectively with what we have, what God has given us.  I've never been a "manly man" and am perfectly comfortable with what that means.  Manly men get together and talk about football over beer.  I'd rather talk about the future of humanity over a bottle of water. But, one of the things that Promise Keepers pushed quite a bit was the need in this country for racial healing.  It recognized the biblical pronouncement that the sins of the father are visited upon the children for up to nine generations.  The consequences of the enslavement and degradation of a race of people does not end when the next generation comes along and says they aren't going to do that anymore.  We have created two separate realities and it will take a lot of work from future generations on both sides to bridge the gap. 

So, when I read the full transcript of Senator Obama's recent speech, it literally brought tears to my eyes.  It is simply the finest statement on race from a politician that I've ever seen.  He is standing in the gap and sees both realities, and knows that abandoning one side for the other will never bring the two sides together.  His approach is ultimately Christian, demonstrating forgiveness and love for one another, as we've been instructed to do.  And yet, I don't see the outspoken "religious right" flocking to his cause.  If Bill Clinton was bad for the country because of his moral failings, then shouldn't they be supporting the candidate with the highest moral integrity?  I suspect (but have no proof) that this is where Senator Obama is getting the majority of his cross-over from the "other side". 

It's my hope that over time, this country will abandon its obsessive desire for politicians that can be portrayed as one-dimensional caricatures, but we're going to have to find our own depth of character to get there.

I love music and I really try to keep what I'm listening to as fresh as possible.  I went through high school in the 70's but I'm not one of those people that thinks they stopped making music after Kansas or the Eagles.  I loved them then, but I rarely have the urge to listen to them now because there's always someone new and creative who speaks to us for today, this very moment.  I try to pay attention to new artists when I can, and I recently discovered that channel 101 on DirecTV had 24 hours of music programming from the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin.  And that's where I found Justin Nozuka.  He is simply the most amazing artist I have come across in a long, long, long time.  And he's only 19. 


Here's a sample.

Spread the word!

One of the standard requirements of a story is having a character or characters with some kind of goal or desire.  It's their drive to reach their goal that pushes the story along.  So, I recently started reading Undertow, by Elizabeth Bear (my first try with this author), and I struggled with the beginning of it, lots of characters, and lots of description.  I could only grab fifteen minutes here, twenty minutes there, to read the book, and I found myself completely confused after about forty pages, so I started over and really paid attention to the different characters and slowed my reading down so I could fully grasp the world that the author was building.  I rarely start over like that, because if the story doesn't grab me, I'd rather spend my limited time reading something else that does, but people I respect continue to praise her writing, so I wanted to give it a respectable try. 

I must admit that sometimes I grow impatient with descriptions, because it often gets in the way of the story (for me), but when I slowed myself down, I really couldn't fault any of the descriptions as being out of place.  They did a good job of coloring in the strangeness of this world.  And by starting over and slowing down, I kept better track of the characters and found of course that they all had goals and desires.  And yet, I still wasn't hooked into the story ... until I got to somewhere close to page 100.  And then it grabbed me and I'm running with it, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

So, I had to scratch my head a bit to figure out what happened, and I realized that prior to that point, the characters all had their own goals and desires, but for the most part, everyone was trying to do their own thing, meet their own needs.  But, then it was revealed that their were bigger things going on in the galaxy, things that could have dire consequences for everyone, human and alien alike.  It sets up lot's of questions where you have to ask if the bad guys are really bad and the good guys really good.  But mostly what it does is moves the goals and desires from a strictly personal level to something that is important for a lot of people. 

This is where art imitates life.  If everyone cares only for their own issues, tries to solve only their own personal problem, we don't get very excited about it.  For instance, let's say it's my goal to get ahead at work, but I have a crappy boss trying to keep me down.  Maybe if I watch the boss very closely, I can find him doing something really bad and work through the inherent roadblocks of the system but eventually cause him to be fired.  If I make myself really sympathetic to you, you might be interested in my story simply because you want to see me win.  But, let's assume that I'm not so sympathetic.   I make a decent living already and there's lots of people who would love to have my job, so going after the boss can become very petty ... unless ... I'm going after the boss because he represents all that's bad with the company and by going after him, I'm making changes in the company that will benefit everyone.  It's the idea of doing something that's greater than ourselves that resonates.

I need to remember this in my own writing.

I hate reading anything by the popular press that has anything to do with something I actually have some knowledge about because almost 99 times out of 100 they really screw it up, especially if it has anything to do with science.  Take for instance the recent announcement from the TimesOnline about the death of Arthur C. Clarke.  In the write-up the reporter states:

The visionary author of more than 70 books, who was nominated for a Nobel Prize after predicting the existence of satellites ...

What a flaming dumbass.  Every creature on earth has a front row seat to view one of the largest satellites in our solar system.  It creates our tides, affects our moods (ask any ER worker), and established one of our primary senses of the passage of time.  But according to this reporter, the existence of the moon had to be predicted!

What the reporter should have said was that Arthur C. Clarke was nominated for the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for the intellectual work leading to the creation of communication satellites.  I fear for our future when it seems like the people we've entrusted to keep us informed are too stupid to understand the basic reality of the world they live in.

The computer screen started warbling back and forth and I pushed the chair back to let my eyes refocus.  It helped, but I could tell something was very wrong.  Could this be a stroke, or something else neurological?  It was Saturday, and I was working my "other" day job, alone in an office on the UCR campus with the front door locked.  If I passed out, it would be difficult to get to me, so I grabbed my cell phone so I could keep some access to communication, walked to the front door and unlocked it, then went on outside and took a few deep breaths of fresh air. 

Everything seemed OK, so I went back inside.  But when I tried looking at the computer screen , the view shook back and forth again.  It was about 4:30 PM, about time to eat, so I thought maybe it was some kind of blood-sugar thing, and I laid on the floor and even propped my legs up on the chair.  It felt better, so I called my wife on my cell phone, and told her I had something really weird just happen to me.  She offered to come pick me up, but I told her no, I'm going to let it clear and then I'll come home.  I just wanted to give her a heads up in case it got worse.

And boy did it get worse.  The view of the room began to shimmer and shake.  I would say it was spinning, because that's what people seem to understand, but there was really no "spin" involved.  My eyes couldn't stay tracked on one point, so from my vantage everything was shaking back and forth at a rapid rate.  I began to feel nausea, so I closed my eyes and took some deep breaths.   I checked the movements of my arms and legs which felt normal, and put my hands to my face to see if there was anything out of the ordinary with the muscles on my face.  Back in 1973 or 1974 I had an issue which resulted in temporary paralysis of one side of my face, so I knew what I was looking for.  Everything checked out, which was of some comfort, but by this time I couldn't get up from the floor.  If my life depended on it, I might have been able to claw my way up to the desk phone, and I might have been able to find and punch out 9-1-1 to get the campus police, but I'm not certain of it.  But, I still had my cell phone with me on the floor, and I managed to find the button to redial.  I don't think I could have connected any other way.

I told her that my problem had just gotten much worse.  She offered to come pick me up again, but I told her it had gotten to the "call 9-1-1" stage.  She used her conference calling skills and tied me in so we got the ball rolling.  My wife asked me if I knew where they would be taking me, but I didn't know.  She said she would drive on up (from home, 35 miles away) and she'd have her cell phone.  She would try to find me when she got in the area.

The campus police were the first to enter the building a few minutes later, and they asked me all the standard questions so they could fill in their report as well as see how lucid I was.  I don't know what they looked like because I couldn't open my eyes without getting exceptionally nauseous.  I puked a couple of times in a small blue plastic recycling bin that I was able to roll/lean into for a moment, before the paramedics finally arrived.  More of the same questions as they took my vitals, then managed to get me on the gurney and out the door. 

The sunlight on my closed eyelids was almost too much to handle, then we were finally inside the ambulance and on our way.  More questions (actually, the same questions) and I overheard someone say we were going to Riverside Community Hospital.  I asked if someone could call my wife.  They said someone would call when we got to the hospital.  When we got to the hospital, we had to wait somewhere for a while for a bed to open up.  I don't know if I was still in the ambulance, or if they had moved me inside somewhere or whether the people near me were the paramedics, or nurses from the hospital.  I couldn't open my eyes long enough to get any kind of bearing.  I asked again if someone could call my wife and they said as soon as I get checked in to the hospital.

After awhile they moved me again and when they stopped, they asked me if I could scoot myself onto the bed.  I could not, so they had to do it.  They took off my shirt and hooked up to new equipment, then stuck me, in first unsuccessfully in the left and then successfully in the right hand to get an IV going, and gave me something for motion sickness.  Somewhere along the way they drew blood for tests as well.  I asked again if someone could call my wife and they said the doctor would call as soon as he saw me.  Lights would go on and off and occasionally I would open my eyes, but I never got any firm sense of where I was other than some kind of a space that had a curtain pulled across the front.  The doctor finally showed up repeated all the questions and I heard something about virus and he said they were going to give me different medicine to get the nausea down.  I asked again if someone would call my wife and the doctor took her phone number.

I listened to bits of conversations that came and went from beyond the curtain and I finally heard my wife's voice.  It was comforting to know she was there along with our fifteen year old daughter.  Apparently I looked very pale.  I asked her if the doctor had it figured out yet because I knew she would get to that point very quickly with them.  She asked if anyone had told me what was wrong and I said I had overheard someone say something about a virus, but I wasn't sure if they were even talking about me when I heard it.  She confirmed that they thought a virus had gotten into my inner ear and was playing havoc, giving me vertigo.  Someone showed up a while later with a new medicine, this time in the form of a pill, and asked if I could take it without water or could I sit up and take it with a swallow.  I said no, and no.  She said I needed to take the pill.  I said I didn't know what else to tell her.  She said I didn't have to sit up on my own, they could lift the bed (or gurney or whatever I was on) up, I didn't have to lift myself.  We tried it, and I managed to get it down, and it stayed down.  No small feat. 

An X-ray tech showed up to give me a chest x-ray and I had to lean forward enough for him to slide something behind my back.  I wanted to get a look at the equipment, but still couldn't open my eyes.  When he was finally through with the abuse I got to lay back down.  We asked someone what was going to happen next, and they said the doctor was waiting for the results of the blood work and x-ray and for the nausea to subside.  They injected something else into my IV and said if the nausea didn't go away in about an hour, they'd do a CAT scan to make sure there was nothing wrong with my brain (other than the obvious problems familiar to friends and family). 

The X-ray tech came back one more time because the first shot didn't take, but the abuse of leaning forward was a little easier to take this time.  And after an hour or more had passed and the nausea was still quite present, they wheeled me into another room for the CAT scan.  Again, I would have liked to see the equipment, but I only stole momentary flashes.  The scan came back clean and they were ready to let me go with a doctor's note and instruction to stay home for the next four days.

The ride home was uneventful except I learned that if I pressed my head against the back of the seat, it secured at least one direction of possible movement and every little bit helped.  When we got home and pulled into the garage, I asked for a folding chair that I knew was near by, and used it like a walker to steady me and allow me to pace myself.  I found that holding onto someone was just too unsteady.  But, by the time I got to the stairs I was pretty much out of it.  There was no way I could walk up the stairs and there was no way anyone was going to carry me to my bed.  I got on all fours and crawled a few steps, then rested to let the nausea pass, then crawled a few more and repeated, until I was eventually up the stairs and by the side of the bed.  My wife helped me get my shoes off as I lay on the floor, and I declined the offer to get out of my clothes.  With one final push I got into bed and rested my head on my very stationary pillow and was asleep in minutes.  The time at that point was almost midnight.  From onset to crawling into bed took a little over 7 hours.  With my eyes closed most of the time, it seemed like a lot less time had passed.

It's been two days now, and while I haven't had any nausea to contend with since the first night, I still walk like I'm drunk and I rely heavily on walls and railings to keep me upright.  When our understanding and expertise in biology is sophisticated enough to deal with a stupid virus, I'll be a happy camper.

As much as I like "change" in my life (because it's that's the part that's interesting), when it comes to my writing, I need to have consistency.  By which I mean that I have to get myself into that writing space in my head as well as my body so that the focus is only on the writing.  This can be very difficult at times since I do the bulk of my writing on the bus or train.  But my ritual is to try and get the same seat (or similar seat) that I've found to work best for me, put on the headphones, crank up the tunes, and let the rest of the world fade into the background. 

On the bus, I like seats that have a certain amount of clearance so that I can open my laptop without hitting a chair.  I will need to lose quite a few more pounds (23 and counting) before that's possible in every seat, but I have all the good ones scoped out.  In the morning, I'm generally the first one on the bus, so I have my pick of seats, but in the evening I have to scramble a little before my train stops to be the first one out the door, then walk briskly to stay ahead of the everyone else walking across the parking lot to get into the bus. 

On the train, I like to get one of the few seats with a table.  Again, in the morning, I'm generally the first one on so I get what I need.  I've also experimented with different cars on the train because of various distractions.  For instance, one car has a lot of very boisterous people that are hard to ignore even with headphones on, and another car has two ladies that just annoy me simply because they have probably 60 or 70 open seats on the upper level of the train to chose from and they always take two of the eight seats around tables and then lay their glasses or a book on the table (preventing use of the space) and promptly doze off.  That kind of unthinking selfishness is just too hard to watch.  In the evenings, I have to scramble to get a table, but I've settled into a particular car where the regulars leave the tables open unless they are actually using them and there are usually one or two spots open by the time I arrive.

But, yesterday was interesting.  Yesterday, I went home on a different train, so I had to explore a little before I found a seat.  I started in the last car but quickly saw all the tables were taken so I moved to the next car.  I found a table with two gentleman sitting next to the window which left the two aisle seats open.  I prefer the window seats because the table is in a wedge shape and doesn't quite extend it's length to the aisle, so the computer has to be used at a slight angle and offset just a little bit.  But, I still like that option better than using my lap, so I grabbed the seat and started setting up shop.  As I turned the computer on and got out my headphones, I listened to the two men talking to each other.  The man next to me appeared to be Hispanic and had a slight accent.  The one across from me was Black, also with a slight accent, probably from Africa.  I didn't pay attention to the content of their conversation, but I got the sense that their was a certain familiarity between them.  Not that they were necessarily "friends" in the standard sense of the word, but more like "train friends", people who spend an hour together every day, but otherwise lead separate lives. 

So, the train got rolling, and the tunes were drowning out the conversation and everything should have been right with my world.  Except, I couldn't write anything to save my life.  It turns out, both of the nice gentlemen next to the windows were hand talkers.  One would lean forward and punctuate his end of the conversation with hands and arms and fingers, swinging and sliding and curling in the space just over the table, then lean back and let the other do the same to make his own point.  I felt like I was at the free throw line trying to shoot a basket and the crowd behind the left side of the basket all got their psycho wheels spinning and thunder sticks flapping.  I simply could not ignore the visual distraction.  I tried for quite a while, but eventually gave up, and by that point, I just didn't have the energy to pack everything up and start over in a new seat, so I cleaned up some files on my computer instead.

But, if I ever ride that train again, I'll be on the lookout for those two.

I had an enjoyable time at CONDOR XV this weekend.  Highlights included seeing fellow Clarion alum, Shweta, and moderating a panel that included one of my favorite authors, Vernor Vinge.  I also thoroughly enjoyed a one hour work shop on dialog, led by author Kay Kenyon, who's work is now receiving some critical acclaim.  In fact I liked her as a person and a teacher so much that I marched down to the dealers room and bought one of her latest books.  I'm looking forward to the read.

But, it makes me wonder how many authors actually hurt their careers at cons because of their own bad behavior.  I must say that when I see an author being arrogant or selfishly monopolizing the time (often without adding any valuable content), I'm much more inclined to stay away from their work.  On the face of it, that work should stand on it's own, but unfortunately, once I've seen the author in action, I won't be able to get their face and voice out of my head when I'm reading and it will color everything. 

But, the thing that I've been struggling with since the convention isn't about obnoxious panelists, in fact it's the opposite.  For the last two or three years, I've been going to the San Diego cons, and I keep running into two local writers (one probably in his late forties/early fifties, the other probably late fifties) who I've either sat with in the audience, or watched speaking on various panels as they proudly display their latest book.  They are both kind, polite gentlemen, who never provide any great insights on panels, but seem to add reasonable input to the dialog most of the time.  They are certainly not the type to ruin their careers because of obnoxious behavior.  But, It wasn't until last year that I finally did a little investigation and discovered that both of these men are published through AuthorHouse, which is a self-publishing company.

So, this year I found myself on a panel about manuscripts being "dead on arrival" which included a literary agent who immediately launched into a plea to all writer's in the audience never to self-publish because it would greatly harm their career in terms of being taken seriously by editors and agents and published writers, and also in terms of the loss of appropriate feedback about the quality of the work.  In short, most self-published books couldn't be published otherwise because they're crap (my words).  One of the friendly self-published authors was sitting in the front row, so I watched him closely for a reaction and got nada!  He listened calmly and even participated in discussions later, but he seemed unaffected by the complaint against self-publishing.  But, I've read excerpts from his book and the other self-published author and both do nothing to change the status quo.  They are both writing unadulterated dreck that no publisher in their right mind would touch, even if one of the books was awarded the San Diego Book Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy in 2005 (An award limited to contestants who live in San Diego County and pay the $25 submission fee).

Later on, I saw the gentleman in a hallway and we had a short conversation.  I asked him how the writing was going and he told me it's been hard because of the problems with the book.  I dug deeper and he told me that he had been "lucky" to get the book published because the editor he hired (yes, he paid his editor) also happened to be on the board of the publishing house and managed to use his influence to push the book through (imagine that).  But, then the publisher went out of business and kept his money for publishing the book.  Now, I don't think he was talking about AuthorHouse because it still appears to be in business, but clearly the original company was in the self-publishing business as well since the money never flowed towards the writer.

So, while he's telling me this story, my brain is screaming at him, "don't you see you've been duped?"  And if I knew him better, had some kind of real relationship with him, I'm sure I would lay it out for him as clearly as possible.  But, I almost believe, because of his story and his reaction to the admonition during the earlier panel, that he doesn't think what he did was self-publishing.  But if you go to these conventions for any length of time and you're paying attention, it's not really very hard to figure out.  So, are they in denial about the reality of their credentials and the quality of their work, or are they the kind of people that enjoy getting free access to conventions to sit on panels and being "published" helps them do that?

I think I'm going to go with "denial" on this one, but the sad thing is by they time they realize the truth (if ever), they probably will have wasted ten years of their life in pursuit of marketing and exposure instead of learning the craft of writing.

Jeff and Ann VanderMeer are looking for weird personal stories, in promotion of their anthology The New Weird. Post, and then they'll pick three winners with a cool prize. Check it out:

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/02/10/contest-tell-us-your-new-weird-story-win-tons-of-cool-stuff/

Here's my story:

In June of 1971 I was sitting in my seventh grade language arts class and a friend of mine, named Frank, got into an argument with the teacher. Now, Frank was the son of another teacher in the same school (same as me) and was considered one of the “good kids” who never got into trouble. And the teacher was your prototypical school marm, a small, gray haired, little old lady who never had a cross word to say to anybody. So the whole class was a little bit in shock when the argument erupted and resulted in Frank walking defiantly down to the principal’s office. He had never been in any kind of trouble before (and nothing like it ever occurred again).

But here’s the weird part. About two months earlier I picked up a how-to book on precognition which made the case that the way to predict the future was to practice predicting the future. So all I had to do was make predictions and see if they came true. I guess there was supposed to be some kind of psychic feedback mechanism in place; the more you did it, the better you would get. So, I promptly made a few predictions that had a snowballs chance in hell of happening, like “In two weeks I will have a million dollars” (I’m still waiting) and “Arlen will become Student Body President” (a goofball friend who never ran for anything) and lastly “Frank will be sent to the Principal’s office in June”.

I never told anyone about it and never tried to make predictions again because avoiding the “freak” label in Junior High took way more precedence over some useless (but really cool) psychic ability.