Computer Shopping
I hate doing it. Mainly because no matter how many times I read about it, I still don’t fully grasp the nature of memory, RAM, processor speed as it pertains to what I need. I know that higher numbers for each of those means better, but I hate the idea of spending money on more than I need. I have no concept of how many gigs is suitable for what I do, or how fast the computer should be to give me what I need. None. And it’s hard to research something that is so specific to an individuals needs.
Maybe if I did all of this more often. You see this is the first time in eight years I have done this. Eight years this month, in fact. No, I am not exaggerating; I have had this eMachines T6528 for eight years. The company had only just been sold then, and according to my recent research, it no longer operates, even as a subsidiary of something else. My type of computer, literally, no longer exists.
Before I got this, I hadn’t really shopped for a computer much at all. Usually I just inherited computers from family members who didn’t wait eight years to replace their desktops.
It has had its quirks and pains in the ass over the years, as you might expect from a bargain computer. (Which even when new, it was.) Many a times I have had to stop myself from putting my first through it. Yet with some expanded memory here and there, it has held up more than one would think given the time frame of its use. The fact that it remains functional enough for me to do my everyday computing on it falls somewhere between amazing and miraculous.
But it is time for it to go. I need to move on. Should have before now, I suppose. But money is always an issue. Almost as important as that though, is that I’m used to the damn thing.
Even if I had the money, I don’t think I could change computers every two years. (They say that is the national average.) I spend a lot of time on my desktop, and I get accustomed to its look and feel. Changing something so intimate so frequently is not my style.
Well, that’s almost true. I actually threw away the keyboard that came with this machine. I never got used to that. I went back to the keyboard I had been using for years previous. The key board, in fact, was inherited when I was in college. I have been using the same keyboard for most of my adult life. 99% of my fiction as well as my blog posts, (all three blogs I have kept over the years) was composed with this keyboard. They don’t make this thing anymore either. I doubt it will be compatible with the new computer, so its days are probably numbered as well. That will be the real thing to get used to. The physical sensation of writing each day with a new keyboard.
But then again it’s not the only thing one gets used to after working on the same desktop for eight years. There’s the specific pitch of the clicks on a keyboard. The screen resolution. A computer takes up a certain space in your room, and it becomes in some ways like a piece of furniture. You just don’t move it that much. You’ve perfectly calibrated the sound in the speakers the way you want it. Plus a lot of emotion happens near or with a computer. I don’t have an emotional attachment to it per se, but when I think that I have had the computer longer than I have had Facebook…when I realize how many people have come into and out of my life since I have owned this thing, it’s kind of profound.
All the love notes and fights that have taken place solely by way of this machine…this eMachine in fact that nobody makes anymore.
Not to mention all of my shit is already on here. The thought of moving it from one machine to another gives me a headache.
But not as much of a headache as what I have to go through to boot this thing up in the morning. This is one of the main reasons I can’t wait for a new one. Here is the process…
I push the button. It whirs and clicks to life, but it’s a bit of a lottery. You see about 50% of the time since I have owned it, it fails to boot up. Which means I have to perform a cold shut down and start over. (Never really a safe thing to do.) I’ll know right away if the next boot up is going to take by the lights flashing on the keyboard. But this is not the end. Because for whatever damn reason, if the boot-up is not successful the first time, it must be done twice in a row for the computer to function properly. Otherwise, the monitor goes nutty. So as soon as I know the second boot-up has succeeded, I have to perform another cold shut down, and boot it up yet again. I have to hope that the second one also takes. If the lights come on, I am good to go shower, and give it the 15 minutes it needs to warm up.
If, however, the lights do not come on, I need to cold shut down again, and again wait for two consecutive boot-ups to take. The record (so far) for times I have had to boot up and cold-shut down this thing before it got it right? Twelve. (12). Took me close to have an hour between booting up and being able to do anything on this computer.
If the new one boots up in less than ten minutes, it may just throw off my entire day.
I’ve been reading up on Windows 8, which any new PC comes with now. (I cannot afford the absurd prices for Macs.) Looks weird, but that’s what it is now. Same with Word 2010. Though I may look into some free office software that isn’t Microsoft-based. Either way, Word 2003 isn’t going to cut it anymore. I am very much used to that as well, but the world as a whole is moving on from it. If I don’t make the change now, it won’t be too long before my documents aren’t compatible with anything anymore.
Writers are creatures of habit in many ways. As are actors. And in most cases I myself am as well. Since I am all three of those things, (writer, actor, and me) you can imagine there will be a bit of an adjustment period to all of this. But it’s for the best, right? I already have a nice, middle of the pack Dell picked out that seems to be suitable. I’m just afraid of making a mistake I have to live with for the next decade or something. These things don’t grow on trees anymore than money does.
But hopefully I can figure it out. It feels too much like luck lately that this computer hasn’t just blown up. I guess all mediocre things must end.
Nanowrimo 2013 Update
I am going to do it.
On the one hand, the higher standard I have set for 2013, (complete a story, and not just 50,000 words) is somewhat daunting. But on the other, more significant hand, I need to work on not being as hard on myself over such things. I need some more writing in my life that is simply for the exploration, and not the deadline.
Most of my writing this year has pertained to some sort of pre-existing obligation. Which is good; a writer must not wait until inspiration strikes before doing their work. Otherwise, very little fiction would ever get produced. One must work on something most days, and I do. That being said, this year I haven’t gotten to explore as much as I might otherwise like, because of deadlines I have imposed on myself, (and some from others.)
There is the much troubled Novel 2. While I feel confident I have fixed it to the point of being able to at least complete the rough draft sometime next year, much of my writing time was spend making such fixes in the broad outline. Then there is Flowers for Dionysus which is in it’s final few revisions, but still needed attention this year. That was more editing than writing, but it was still an obligation I set for myself. The novels have hung heavy over my writing mind this year.
Then there is the short story collection that I am writing as a companion piece to Flowers for Dionysus which I have spoken of before. It’s a series of ten short stories that take place in the same setting, and last week I completed the rough draft of story number nine. I have one more to go that I’d like to finish before I start Nano. (Another deadline.) It feels rewarding to have set such a goal, and I think i can edit those stories into something enjoyable. But it has been a specific goal I have been pushing towards for several months now. It’s taken a lot of mental energy and perseverance to get so many stories done in that time period. I’m proud of the accomplishment but again, it has taken some creative energy away from a few other things for a while.
Then there is the rather unpleasent experience I had over the summer with a freelance client wherein I had to adapt his atrocious screenplay into a novel in about six weeks. I got it done, he didn’t like it, and he tried to stiff me on more than one occasion. I got my money at last minute, and concluded I would never work with him again, but the whole experience was time and energy consuming, and I need a break.
Please understand that if I didn’t adhere to this level of self-discipline, I’d get a lot less writing done. In the end, a writer must write things and complete them. I can never allow myself to slide into a lackadaisical approach wherein I just write when it feels good, or when there is nothing better to do. I need to do things this way. That doesn’t mean though, that I can’t sometimes feel that I’m getting too far away from the adventure in my own imagination that writing can be as well, and lately I feel perhaps I have closed myself off to it what with all the work and the deadlines.
Enter: Nano.
The challenge may officially be to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I’ve added the extra goal of completing a whole story in that time. (I haven’t managed to do that yet in all three of my Nano attempts.) But the biggest challenge of them all may be letting myself just enjoy the process of whipping up a novel in 30 days. A novel that is not in my official bibliography as it were. This one is not intended to be part of the “Ty Collection”. (How’s that for pretentious?)
No, this one is about embracing both the thrill of trying to establish a plot quickly, (something I could use some work on in general), and having a good time along the way. Which means I need to not give a damn if I don’t get it done in the 30 days. There will be times when I will think this was a bad idea, but I must remind myself that I have plenty of time in my life to worry about the “official” works. For 30 days at least, I need to make it about frenzied creation. And of course the very act of doing that can, and hopefully will open up doors in my imagination which will help with the more official work I will be doing in the coming months.
I can tell you I am going to try my first mystery. (Mainly because you need to get on with a plot PDQ in a mystery.) I know the protagonist, the seven other characters, how the victim died, who did it, and why. I may sketch a few brief character traits, but no more. I don’t want this to become like all of the other complicated writing tasks I’ve given myself. Simple and fun. Process over product this year.
Ten days to go…and I have one more short story to write in the mean time.
All Fiction is Alternate History
One my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation is called “Parallels“. In it, one of the characters is accidentally thrown into a series of alternate realities. Each universe differs from his own due to past events having turned out differently. So the entire trajectory of history in that universe ends up altered.
One of the interesting things about the episode is that at the beginning, the character doesn’t know he is moving through alternate universes. That’s because initially he is transported to realities that are “next door” to his own, so to speak. In other words, entire universes wherein only one small recent detail is different. (In an early example, the flavor of the cake at a birthday party changes before the party is over, indicating that in all likelihood just about everything in the history of that universe was exactly the same as the character’s true universe…except that tiny detail. The character could have probably lived the rest of his life in that universe, and never known the difference.
I was thinking about this concept after the most recent meeting of the writers group I’m in. One of our newer members is writing a novel of historical fiction, part of which takes place during the American Civil War. She feared she wasn’t qualified to write the story she wanted to write. She was nervous about the historical sticklers who stand ready to point out the slightest inaccuracy in a novel. Despite her diligent research, she was concerned she couldn’t get everything right.
I told her not to worry too much about it…that especially when it comes to the Civil War there are people out there who will find fault with every little thing. The tiniest mention in passing of the wrong kind of belt buckle for a Confederate soldier, and they go nuts.
I essentially told her to not worry about those people. They are more worried about being detailed historians than novelists. Not that there is anything wrong with being a historian, but fear of their expertise shouldn’t keep anyone from writing historical fiction. What matters most is the story. She seemed to agree with that, as did several others.
What I wish I’d said is what came to me a few days later. I’ll share it with you today, though.
When we write fiction we are in essence bringing to life something that did not happen in our world, but did happen in one of the infinite possible universes of the imagination. Fiction therefore is, for all intents and purposes, an alternate universe. We don’t travel there physically, but in good fiction, don’t the created worlds seem real to us? Alternate realities. This holds true even if you aren’t writing science fiction, by the way.
Now, as much as some would like to believe otherwise, this applies to historical fiction as well. Fiction as a whole doesn’t proceed exactly as real life does, or else it wouldn’t be fiction. In most cases, our characters do not actually exist in this world. Also people speak a bit more efficiently in good fiction. (Imagine reading through all of the “umms” and stutters real people go through when they converse.) There’s no pizza place around the corner from that specific park in Chicago where your short story takes place. Yet in your realistic but nonetheless alternate Chicago, you put one there.
A reader familiar with Chicago, (or at least Google Street View) will indeed point out to you that there has never been a pizza parlor a block from where your story takes place, yes. But you know what you can tell them? Tell them is it’s an alternate Chicago in a nearby universe.
With any luck it will weird them out, and they will then leave you the hell alone. But if they are intrigued and want to know more, tell them what I’ve told you here; all fiction is an alternate universe. Even if it’s a universe that is nearly identical to our own, the tiniest shifts are present. For example, your character, who doesn’t exist, lives in this Chicago. If you went no further than that you’d have made your point. Does anyone check census records to see if anyone by your character’s name ever lived in Chicago? Hopefully not. Again, it’s a slightly alternate Chicago, and dammit it has a pizza parlor down the street from this park.
Why? Because your story needs it, and it’s not a stretch to think a pizza parlor would exist in a Chicago neighborhood. The history and essence of Chicago is not blown up by having a pizza parlor on a given street that does not actually have one today.
Same goes with Civil War fiction, or any historical novel. Your story takes place in a universe that is almost exactly like our own was at that time. But wouldn’t you know it, in your alternate reality that type of hairpin was invented three years earlier than it was in our universe, so your character is wearing one. But you remain faithful to the essence of the time period as well as the essence of your story.
Obviously, if you wish to remain within the realm of historical fiction, you can’t wander off too far into alternate universes. You can’t have the Confederates wearing orange uniforms, or write a black Civil War general into the narrative. That’s several universes too far removed from ours to qualify for historical fiction. (Though it would make a great entry in the “alternate history” sub-genre.) But don’t sacrifice an otherwise solid narrative because you’re afraid to compress time a bit, or make a horse black instead of brown. The history buffs may not like it, but you’re a writer, and your first duty is to story.
Perhaps in an alternate universe, I decided not to post that, so as to not upset the history buffs. But knowing me, I probably did post it in most of the other universes as well.
Overcome by the Randomness
I admit that in the writing world, I am sometimes overcome by the randomness.
Why does any given book that ignores all the rules of “good” writing become a best seller and make its author rich? There are plenty of books out there that are excoriated for breaking the exact same rules, their author’s deemed poor writers.
Why do books that follow all of the confining rules of three act structures and protagonists in trees with antagonists that have one appealing trait often not sell, even as editors, agents, and “experts” demand that new writers follow these golden keys? If they only work a fraction of the time, why are they still peddled as advice?
How can I detest a story submitted into my writers group that everyone else present adores? How can there be that much variance? Is the story any good, or isn’t it? And if I see it so differently as compared to the rest, is that saying more about the story, or about me? Or about them? Does it say anything? When I don’t like it, even if I can point out its flaws in light of writing craft and structure, does that mean it’s bad writing? It feels like bad writing, but does that matter?
Why is Nobel Prize material considered among the best writing? I’ve read Alice Munro and find her work both dry and ponderous in most cases. I am not an expert on the matter, but I’m not sure what is so earth-shattering or society-changing about her work. Sounds a lot like talkative “day in the life” stuff to me. You know, the sort of “tell, don’t show” naval gazing we are told not to write. Except, I guess, when you win the Noel Prize in Literature for it.
So, is it that I don’t like what is considered classic or important? If that is so, why do I love Shakespeare? Why is the The Old Man and the Sea among my favorite novels? How do I appreciate Dickinson? (A poetess, not an author, but there’s a point being made here.)
If the true gift of language and its usage is beyond me as I read Steve Berry or Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, how can I consider The Lion In Winter to be one of the best scripts ever written by someone other than Shakespeare? It’s thick, verbose, complicated…lacking in action by most standards, yet it is, to me magnificent.
But The Great Gatsby ? I get nothing at all from what is called by many experts the best novel ever written in English. Certainly the best ever in America.
I usually don’t seek out authors merely because they are praised by the literary intelligentsia, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid them either. But is that fact indicative of my not knowing good writing when I see it-that I don’t seek out Nobel Prize literature by default?
Am I then more of a “genre” fiction, low-life? Maybe. One of the best novels I have ever read is a Steve Berry suspense novel called, The Third Secret. But I have yet to really feel drawn into a Dan Brown novel. If, as the experts say, both authors are merely connecting the dots in the same predictable bestselling formula, why do I like Berry and not Brown? What’s Berry doing differently than Brown? Anything? For that matter, what are the thousands of formula suspense authors out there who have not made it big doing differently than either of those two very rich people? Is it merely luck?
Is it all personal taste? Does the simple fact that some people like one thing and dislike something else account for all of this? If so, what’s the point of labeling something “genre fiction” or “literature”? Is that determined merely by whether or not an English professor happens to love your novel? Or is there more to it than that?
It feels like it has to be more to it than that, though. Otherwise, why work on writing craft? We’d all just write a first draft and put it out there, and hope that the select people with the correct brain chemistry will find it and love it as it is. (Because somebody would.) Which then brings up this question…is all good writing merely good marketing? Get enough people out there to buy it, and you’re a good writer? Or do they have to be certain people? Or a certain number of certain people…who the hell knows?
Do I like some high literature because it contains traces of genre fiction? Is the genre fiction I have enjoyed possessive of some undefined literary quality?? Surely there is an X-Factor…or else why do I like some Hemingway, and not the rest of Hemingway? Why Berry over Brown?
In the end, when I read something that is poorly written, though, I know it. I can point to these things which make it a bad novel or story. I have confidence in my reasons why I don’t like something. Reasons that feel as though they transcend mere personal taste. I can point to the flaws. But perhaps it isn’t the presence of flaws, but whether or not the reader is bothered by them that makes writing strong or weak?
Even if we stipulate that that is true, nothing more is resolved because then we begin asking what makes flaws in one piece of fiction overlooked by a majority or readers, when the major flaws of another book sink it in the minds of most readers?
Makes one wonder if it’s ever worth looking for flaws in our writing. It sounds like heresy to say, but in a world that has millions of examples of flawed and (by some metrics) terrible fiction that succeeds, why do we writers wrack our brains to edit our stuff into perfection? Because every “Ask the Agent” advice column out there pounds into our heads, “polish polish polish, and when you think you can’t do any more, polish again. Make your manuscript shine. Get it to me perfect.“…Yeah and then maybe your intern doesn’t toss it away instantly. IF they are in a good mood on the random day your “polished” manuscript arrives there…
Bad writing is more than simply writing I personally do not like. Munro getting a Nobel Prize would seem to indicate that, if we are to put any trust at all into the Nobel selection process. (Maybe we shouldn’t, who knows?) And something isn’t brilliant because I like it. That would be narcissistic in a way. Yet everything I like (and you like) possess something that everything I dislike (and you dislike) is lacking. An unknown something that would seem to make all of the studying, practicing, experimenting and class taking obsolete. It’s going to be random whether or not you strike oil in the end, and that applies whether you are hoping for a Nobel, or hoping to become an author of “airport fiction”.
The only hope seems to be to write as much as you can, and to make sure you, in your highly subjective, non-scholarly tastes, love it. Maybe we all need to just write for the reader that is ourselves to create stories that matter to us. And hopefully, one day, that means it will achieve something more important than either the Nobel Prize or the prominent display at the airport…it will become a story that matters to other people as well.
Nanowrimo Contemplations
It’s time once again to think about the annual National Novel Writing Month. Didn’t I just go through all of this mental tennis with myself last month? Generally, I wouldn’t say this last year has flown by, but in the context of Nano, it feels like the year never happened almost.
Probably because I agonized over whether or not to do it last year for over a month.
If you will recall, last year the issue was whether to use Nano to jump start Novel 2, which is my next official big project. I was concerned that doing so might sink the project. My first two Nano Novels have not again seen the light of day since. And those two were mostly cold turkey starts. This was an ordained project, that I intended to be a part of my body of work.
I decided, however, that I could do it. I could write the first 50,000 words of my “legitimate” next novel under the umbrella of Nanowrimo, and have a solid head start on the rough draft for same.
I was about 70% wrong.
The plot got away from me. Quite a bit away from me, in fact. The partially outline I worked from takes some of the blame. But the worst of it is when I had to go beyond the outline in order to get to 50,000 words. Once I got to the total pantsing part of the process, the wheels started to come off.
Only at the the time I didn’t realize it. If I had known, I could have stopped. But I kept plugging away towards 50K. (That rhymes. The Nano people should put that on a shirt.) But once I started regular writing work on Novel 2 at the start of 2013, it became clear in a short time that it had a yoke around it’s neck. Or perhaps a millstone is a better metaphor. Call it what you will, Nanowrimo-ing was the main reason it was there.
I pressed on for a while. I slogged. Took breaks. Forced myself. You have to do some of that when you write a novel. But I realized it was no mere writer’s block. It was, in fact, an unsustainable plot, even through a first draft. Normally I complete a first draft without looking back. (Nano helped me do that, in fact.) I wanted to do that with this. Press to the finish line. But after much thought and regret I concluded that I wasn’t simply the injured last-place runner who insists on crossing the finish line. There was no finish line. As though the track had blown up and caught fire before I got there, and the whole place had been evacuated.
Thankfully, after a lot of brain wracking and severe editing, I was able to reboot the narrative in such a way that I now feel I can write the novel. The first draft will still be rough, and will need many revisions, but I can see the road now. Though now I think my brain might need to rest from Novel 2.
Enter, maybe, Nano 2013.
I didn’t intend to participate this year. Last year I “knew” I’d be working on revisions and latter drafts of Novel 2 by now, and that is priority. But after last year’s Nano, plus the sputtering, the gutting and the total rebooting of the broad outline of the plot, I have for a month or so felt weary of Novel 2. Also relived that I seem to have stumbled onto at least a broad road map (though some specifics are still unanswered). But not relived enough to jump in and write it. Perhaps I should, but if I learned anything form last year, it’s that sometimes resistance is there for a reason. I’ve forced work on this novel before and it didn’t take. I don’t think i should do it again.
So I’m thinking about Nano this year as a pallet cleanse if you will. Pure cold turkey writing again. Writing a novel that I had no previous plans or thoughts about. Something that will keep my long-form writing gears turning, but not derail my dedicated work on Novel 2. A return to writing-high. A high that I hope will have a residual effect on the rest of my writing.
No thoughts about legacy. No important “Novel 3” designation. No scheduling of its revisions. Just reckless, harried writing of a novel in 30 days. A novel to which I have no previously existing emotional attachment. A novel which, if I don’t like it can go in the pile with the rest of my forgotten Nano stuff. But if it turns out to be something, I can put it away, let it simmer, and work on it again after Novel 2’s long delayed first draft is complete. No pressure on myself.
Well, a bit of pressure on myself. There needs to be some in order for it to be fun at all, right? I’ve already proven beyond doubt that I can produce 50,000 words of a narrative in 30 days. What I have not proven is that I can produce a completed arc in those days. For though in all of my Nano experience I have gotten enough words, it has never been a complete story. If I do Nano this year, I hope to change that. I hope to have a completed, 50,000 word story arc in 30 days. It puts the challenge back into Nano a bit, but without the importance of starting Novel 2. And it will give me good practice on plotting, (which is probably my weaker component for novels.)
My only concern is that it will de-prioritize Novel 2 in my mind so much, that I will never return to it. Then again, it is a novel, a collection of words. And a currently incomplete one at that. It is not a prom date that I have stood up. I will be back to it. I just have those residual worries. But if I can convince myself in the end, I am helping my writing as a whole by taking this short detour, I might be able to do it.
So there you have it. My once again complicated thoughts on Nanowrimo. Are you doing it this year?
Ty Unglebower 