Bruce Holland Rogers

Research again...

hanovi@sff.net — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:57:20 GMT

Research again, five and a half hours worth. Not what I had planned for the day, and it was a shortened day because of a social engagement. But five and a half hours of research is better than nothing!

Tomorrow I'll use the plan proposed for today: an hour on each of my four priority projects.

Research-heavy day

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:38:24 GMT

I put seven hours in today. Most of it was research time for a project that will mix fiction and non-fiction. More later, when some of the fiction arrives in the mailboxes of subscribers!

I have four priority projects to work on. My plan for tomorrow is to put an hour in on each of them, and then spend the rest of the day working on the novel.

Onward!

hanovi@sff.net — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:35:11 GMT

I wrote a chapter yesterday, e-mailed it to my novel subscribers today, and spent most of today on research for a London writing project, which I'll describe in more detail later.

I want to get back to tracking hours and posting them here. Today I put in about seven hours on research, but I wasn't tracking carefully.

Tomorrow, I will track novel, column, and short story hours. I need to get in some good work on all three.

Cutting by two thirds, and then some

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:03:26 GMT

I'm back in London after a few days in Vienna, where I read at Vienna Lit 2008 and gave a lecture to a literature class at the University of Vienna.

In the lecture, I talked about the various methods I have for getting ideas. I took out the index card that I had been writing on the evening before and read out the notes I had made regarding things I had seen while walking around in the city. One thing that had made an impression was a big hydraulic excavator with a demolition attachment. This machine was taking down a building that, in America, would be an historic treasure. In Vienna, it was a run-of-the-mill 19th century building of the most common sort. I was particularly impressed by the sound made when the pincers on the machine punched through windows, prior to seizing the sills to pull down a section of wall. The breaking glass reminded me of breaking ice in puddles on my way to school in Colorado.

Often I don't get a story out of such an observation for months or years, but in this case, I started to think about the demolition site as soon as I returned to London. I began to see the outlines of a story, and I drafted a story of about 1,000 words.

When I showed this story to Holly, she evoked the words of our friend, Ray Vukcevich. If you ask Ray how he writes a story, he says something like this: "I just write. Then I go back and take out the boring parts."

Holly said, "There are some good things here, but this story is mostly boring parts."

We talked about what she did like: The idea of the sound of things breaking. Breaking ice. Later, windows breaking at a demolition site. And the idea that someone could make music out of these sounds.

What was left out? Almost everything that I had thought of as "the story." The idea that I wanted to get across. The irony about a man who didn't understand the entire purpose behind his brother's art. The whole elaborate business about performances that are, like the breaking of ice, never to be repeated in exactly the same way. Impermanence as an explicit theme.

I had spent two days thinking up all that stuff. Now Holly was telling me that the good stuff in the story was actually those parts that were closest to the source material and my first thoughts. I knew, as she told me, that she was right. I was still irritated by what felt like wasted time and effort. Except that it wasn't wasted. Without the draft that was wrong, I would never have come to the Jack Daniels, which is what pulls the narrative together in its briefer, simpler form.

Subscribers have just received the final version of the story. It's a third of the length of the story below. That final version is simpler and, I think, more interesting. But I thought a few might be interested in seeing the path that I had to take through a mediocre story in order to get to the better one. So here is that earlier draft:

Legacy

By Bruce Holland Rogers

I don't get interviewed very often any more. I think the music professors and art historians who thought my brother was some kind of genius, they're starting to forget about him.

What are you after? A footnote for a dissertation? No? Oh, a newspaper. Well, good. Maybe you don't think you already know it all.

They used to ask me, What about music in the house when you were boys? No. I don't remember any music at all, unless you want to count the nightly shouting as a concert. No violins. No Papa Mozart for us. More like a fist and Jack Daniels.

All this talk of genius... If anything, I was the sensitive one. Winter mornings, we'd start for school early, before the other kids, so we could find the places where puddles had frozen on top and drained from underneath. I'd race him. He was smaller. I'd get to the best ice sheets first, and I broke them slowly, deliberately. I listened to the ice groan and crackle under my foot before it shattered and the pieces tinkled together like glass. Aran, he just wanted to smash through as many sheets of ice as he could. He liked smashing.

I don't think he was even aware of how bad it was between our parents until, one day, our father was gone. Meanwhile, he was sassing his teacher, knocking food trays out of the hands of other kids in the school cafeteria. He lit the living room drapes on fire once, for no reason. He never had a reason.

Interventions by Social Services, a stint in Juvie, jail when he was old enough. Does that sound to you like the life of a genius? Our mother was no gem, but it's not like she didn't try. I managed to turn out all right, you see. I had a steady job, wife, kids. Aran wasn't messed up because of our mother. It wasn't that single-mother business you hear.

Out of jail, he knocked around a while. This and that. I wouldn't hear from him for long stretches. Eventually he got his heavy equipment training, and he told me he was working demolition sites, operating something called a hydraulic pulverizer. I saw him at work a couple times. The pulverizer was a mean set of pincers at the end of a hydraulic arm, and Aran's job was to pull down buildings a little bit at a time. When he'd come to a window, he would punch through the center of it, and the sound reminded me of our childhood winters.

After years of demolition work, he came to me about the music. He said, You know business. How do I do this? How do I sell tickets and advertise and make it all work?

I didn't see how his idea could work at all. He had put wireless microphones on his machine and around his work sites to record the sounds of buildings coming apart. And that was music? Who would want to hear it? And he rejected a lot of what I did suggest. If he did get an audience, I thought he should try to sell them CDs, but he had this thing against recording. He said that if you heard a window breaking in his performance, you heard it once. You might hear a sound like it, but that was a different window. You can't break the same window twice. And once the performance was over, it was gone. No recordings.

I pointed out that the whole noise symphony was recorded, and he said, No, only the notes were. Like that made a difference. To him it was a big deal that there was no repetition of sounds, no duplication of performances. Demolition sounds were edited and arranged in sections, on different machines, and there was no master recording, no single digital medium containing the whole work. The sounds played from different sources, through different sets of speakers around the performance space.

I don't know why it caught on. His music was different, a novelty, sure, but to pay what people were paying at the end? For the sound of things breaking? And there was an arms race between my brother and people who were trying to sneak in recording devices at his concerts. You had to go through a metal detector. The performance couldn't start until his security guys swept the room for microphones.

Granted, it was a success. But Aran was also a bonehead. The way he drank, smoked, and did the other, which he never admitted to me, but I wouldn't be surprised...the way he did those things, you'd think he was trying to kill himself. And with his success built on all these recorded sounds, he stores them all in one place? No backups? That's genius?

After the fire, I even said to him, I said, What were you thinking?

You know what he said? He said, Ta-da! Like he was taking credit.

After that, he burned through all the money he had made. He went back to working demolition, pulling down walls and popping windows, but without recording the sounds. He died before he was old enough to retire. People who heard his music, if you want to call it that, can sort of remember the overall feel of a performance, but not the details. We'll go on forgetting the little bit we do still recall. The last of us will die.

I loved my brother. I don't have anything against calling him a genius if people want to think that. But, come on! Good luck calling something a work of genius if it doesn't last.

Labyrinth

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:13:15 GMT

Last Sunday, I spent an hour walking a Labyrinth. http://www.labyrinthuk.org/page3.htm

As with all meditative practices, sometimes an insight or two bubbles up during the process. My insight was that somehow in recent years, my spiritual practice of writing has become a job. I have been happiest when thinking of my writing as my ministry, and lately I've been acting as if it were a career.

So part of why March sucked was the burglary and the incapacitating illness --- which turned out to be this year's relatively wicked influenza. But getting kicked onto my but by those events provided the context for realizing that I am spiritually off track as well.

I don't know what this is going to change, exactly.

On the positive side, spring has definitely sprung, and even thought the London days have been gray lately, it's definitely a springtime gray. That helps me feel that I may muster the energy and emotional resources to do whatever it is that I have to do next.

Not my favorite month

hanovi@sff.net — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:51:24 GMT

I had an experience yesterday that told me I was spiritually ailing. For the last couple of weeks, I have been physically ill. I see the doctor day after tomorrow, and I'm almost hoping for a diagnosis of walking pneumonia so I at least can say, "Well, no wonder I've had such a difficult time!"

More about all of this later. Starting with the burglary and ending sick of soul and body, I am really looking forward to having March 2008 in the past.

Taxes. Bleh.

hanovi@sff.net — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:01:07 GMT

Sorting through tax records that I got rather sloppy with in 2007 has been absorbing a lot of time, but I have been writing a little every day, too.

Today's a day of more taxes and a short local trip to meet my Polish translator in London. I will get some writing done, too!

Back in the saddle...which way is forward?

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:46:25 GMT

Well, I did get back to work on the novel today. I revised and emailed two chapters of Steam to my novel subscribers. I don't know how long I was at work though, because once I started, I forgot about setting the timer.

Two chapters revised. That's all I can report with certainty. Anyway, it's concrete progress, however imperfect the day's statistical report!

Back in the saddle

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:07:42 GMT

Back in the saddle at noon today. I'll report later on hours of writing.

Burglars suck

hanovi@sff.net — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:57:53 GMT

A burglar was lucky enough to pick exactly the right half hour in which to case our flat yesterday, the one time when we were out and our downstairs neighbors were out, too. Holly and I returned home to find our back door in pieces and our computers gone.

As I walked on my way to buy a new computer today (no insurance, so...ouch!) I found myself singing, with the burglar in mind: "You're a f**king f**king a**hole, a f**king f**king a**hole, a f**king f**king a**..." I sang this through several iterations before I stopped myself and tried to identify the tune I had been singing the words to.

It was "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz. I laughed out loud. It felt good to laugh.

I felt amused again when Police Constable Rebecca paid me a visit and we talked about security. "Queen's Park is a safe ward," she said, "and burglaries are rare here. But I can't say the same for some nearby areas, such as Harrow, Harlesden, Kilburn High Road, or Willesden." Those happen to be the neighborhoods that surround us on four sides.

But even after the burglary, I'm glad that we live where we do. I like all the above-named areas. Those are all the places where I do my shopping, go to restaurants, or just walk for exercise. I like the diversity of this part of London. I just wish we'd had a stronger back door.

Obviously, this has thrown a wrench in my work plans for a while. My computer needs to be loaded with software. I have to try to restore various lost records. Taxes are going to be an extra challenge this year...

So I intend to get back to work as much as possible as soon as possible. But this isn't going to be quite according to plan.

Skipping three days

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:14:37 GMT

Today should have been Day Nine, but I'm leaving town for two days, and today I saw Things That Needed Doing before I could go. These swallowed the day. I'm sure I could have fit in an hour or two of writing, but I didn't. I did, however, send out a story.

Sunday will be Day Nine. And I intend to do some writing on the train to Oxford and back.

I joke with my students, when they aren't making sufficient thesis progress, about the condition of the batteries in my cattle prod.

Turns out that my students have acquired cattle prods of their own and are reading this blog.

Uh-oh.

Day Eight

hanovi@sff.net — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:30:55 GMT

I cheated, and paid for it. I thought I'd read a little bit of news while I was still waking up. As a result, I didn't start writing until after noon. I got in three hours of writing and drafted a story, but this is the kind of day I'm trying not to have.

Discipline is hardest in the mornings, when I need it. :-)

Days Six and Seven

hanovi@sff.net — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:26:31 GMT

I was tired last night and forgot to report in.

I started writing at 11:00 (after walking a friend's dog for the last time. She came home yesterday. Hooray!) and was writing by 12:00. I didn't check e-mail or the web until after 18:00. I put in a total of six hours, which consisted largely of outlining and researching a story, then realizing that to get the story right, I should really go visit the Old Bailey and have a look at a court room and the environs. Knowing that I couldn't yet write the story I wanted to without further research, I started outlining a different story.

So today, I started moodling and making notes at 9:00. I wrote notes for one story on the underground, then tried to see a court room in the Old Bailey. However, my timing was such that I couldn't get in to see anything. I *did* get to see the reporters and photographers waiting outside to get photos of people emerging from the sentencing of serial killer Levi Bellfield. I knew nothing of the case at that time, but saw photographers swarm around a young woman whom I now know was Kate Sheedy, one of Bellfield's surviving victims.

Since I was already in the neighborhood, I continued west to the Royal Courts of Justice, which I had always wanted to see on the inside, anyway. I watched an informative video about the building, about the divisions of the Royal Courts, and about court procedure. I wanted to see the stone dog and cat that decorate one entrance --- they snarl at one another and are meant to represent litigants! But no one could tell me where the dog and cat were. Not the woman at the Enquiry Desk, not any of the lawyers I asked. I sat in on a civil case until it recessed for lunch, and I still wanted to see that dog and cat. I asked a man who was pacing in the main gallery if he knew where I could find the dog and cat "over the judges' entrance." He told me he had been coming to the court for years and knew of no such sculptures, but he told me where the two judges' entrances were. Then he asked where I was from, and said that if I wanted to sit in on an interesting hearing, there was a murder appeal reconvening in Court 9 at 14:00.

I checked the two entrances, but saw no dog and cat. I went to Court 9 at the appointed hour and discovered that the man who had told me about the murder appeal was the presiding appellate judge, Lord Justice Hooper (Sir Anthony Hooper). About the appeal, I can say only these things: 1. It was very interesting. 2. It concerned the alleged murder of a 45-year-old legally blind man, Colin Greenwood, by two 14-year-old boys, Leon Gray and Lewis Barlow (all of whom have been identified by name in the press) The boys had been convicted in September. 3. The defense succeeded in overturning the conviction, and a new trial has been ordered.

More than that, I cannot say without violating the court's explicit prohibition on reporting any details of the appeal. I don't think I want to experience the courts as a defendant!

I made notes, as the details of the case suited my fiction-making needs wonderfully, but I will, of course, make up my own imaginary flesh to hang on the bones of this actual case. I have two fully-developed story ideas, and have been writing or actively researching for eight hours today. Still no draft, but I account this a really good day. This is what I once imagined it would be like to be a writer: satisfying my curiosity about the real world, and then lying about it artfully.

I did finally meet someone who knew where the dog and cat were. I had to go look from a back street. Actually, the dog and cat were anti-climactic, but they had brought me to Lord Justice Hooper's court, and for that I will be forever grateful.

I first logged onto the web at 17:00. I still haven't looked at e-mail. That's next. And then I hope to draft at least one of these stories after dinner tonight!

Days Four and Five

hanovi@sff.net — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:09:07 GMT

Saturday (yesterday) included some time-consuming chores and a night out. Today was better, but on neither day did I keep good track of when I started writing, when I checked e-mail, etc. On weekends, I seem to have this tendency to act as if I have the day off.

On both days, I did track writing hours. Two yesterday. Four and a half today. Most of that time was devoted to developing a story idea.

Third Day

hanovi@sff.net — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:06:55 GMT

I started writing at noon.

I did a brief check of e-mail at one and still have not done any web surfing that wasn't related to teaching or writing.

I failed to track my writing hours properly, but I was in the saddle for three or four hours and finished a short-short story --- a fable. Holly is reading it even as I write this.

A satisfactory day. I might have written more in the evening, but we went out to dinner and to a play instead. "The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other." I'd give it three out of five stars. Interesting idea, a play with no spoken words. It needs cutting. The best parts were marvelous, but it was just too long.

Mulligan

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:46:54 GMT

I'm declaring today a Mulligan. Don't ask.

Tomorrow is Day Three. Today didn't happen.

Second day

hanovi@sff.net — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:58:16 GMT

Today I let myself start by checking the news for election results, so I first went online at 9:15 and didn't start writing until 11:30.

First checked email at 17:00.

Just three hours of writing today.

With no elections in the U.S. for two weeks now, I should get much more done!

Day One

hanovi@sff.net — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:17:34 GMT

I started writing today at 9:15.
I first checked e-mail at 17:00.
I first looked at the news online at 17:00.
I wrote for five hours, finishing a chapter and getting started on outlining the next one.

Thirty days on track

hanovi@sff.net — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:28:48 GMT

I have become addicted (and I don't use that word lightly) to political coverage. I'm not only reading news and blogs about the U.S. Presidential campaign, but the idiotic comments by partisan supporters of one candidate or another. Just because this addiction of perfectly legal doesn't make it any less destructive. I'm throwing hours and hours of good working time down a rat hole of obsession.

So for the next thirty days, starting with tomorrow, I will post at the end of each day the following data:

1. What time I started writing. The earlier the better.
2. What time I first checked e-mail. The later the better.
3. What time I first looked at news, market reports, blogs, or any other web site unrelated to research for my novel or my MFA teaching. The later the better.
4. How many hours I spent writing (to include hours spent pacing and pulling my hair).

I have got to stop paying so much attention to the U.S. elections!

Third story for June

hanovi@sff.net — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:24:43 GMT

The third story for June at www.shortshortshort.com is, as I said in the introduction, based on the meaning of a Tarot card. In this case, I didn't say which card because this is one of the two cards that people bring a lot of preconceptions to. This story is based on The Devil, which represents not evil per se, but the temptations of superficiality and materialism. (The other card that tends to give people the heebie jeebies is the Death card, which is meant to represent cataclysmic change and a recognition of one's limitations. I'm over-simplifying, of course.)

Falling for material temptations is a sort of spiritual enslavement, but one of the features of the Ryder-Waite deck's Devil card is that the man and woman who are enslaved by the Devil are wearing very loose chains around their necks. They could free themselves just by lifting the chains and walking away. But they don't. And neither does Sienna, the character in the story, just walk away from the material pleasures that she has come to expect from life.

The techniques of workshops

hanovi@sff.net — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:12:01 GMT

In SF and fantasy, the "Clarion" model of offering peer critique of manuscripts is so dominant that some writers in the genre think of it as the only right way to offer criticism in a group. The model: You read one another's manuscripts, ideally with either your own copy or a copy that you share but don't mark up (so your comments can't bias another reader), and then you sit in a circle and each person in turn offers his or her response to the story. After each person who wants to speak has done so, then the author may speak, asking for clarifications, expressing gratitude, or (not recommended) making excuses.

There are other ways of talking about a manuscript. Some classes have a free-for-all discussion in which people converse freely as a group. There are workshops that allow the author to participate in the conversation right from the beginning. A workshop that I sat in on once uses the Clarion structure, but adds to it the tradition of having members chime in "ditto" when they hear a comment they agree with or "dissent" when they want to register disagreement with a comment.

I'm a fan of trying different workshop techniques and methods, but I have decided that there is one method that I want to avoid. Last month, I participated in a workshop in London that takes a very different approach to the key matter of the manuscript. They read their work aloud to one another, then offer immediate critique based on what they have heard.

My exposure to this method had been limited before this to workshops that were not very good, workshops filled with not-very-serious writers for whom the experience of having a live audience was the main point. Until I visited this group, I had heard only vague and impressionistic criticism offered in workshops in which the manuscript is read aloud.

By contrast, both the writing and the criticism in this group knocked my socks off. These are serious writers, and they are very good at delivering a detailed and helpful critique based on what they have heard. They are adept at making notes and continuing to listen, not missing the fourth paragraph because they have something they want to write down about the third. I don't have the skill of hearing, evaluating, figuring out how to explain what I'm experiencing as the listening, and taking notes all at the same time. I told the group that I was amazed by their skill. They agreed that it was something that they had to learn.

Fast forward to a conversation I was just having with one of my students about the risk of reading critically, which is that at some point you begin to lose the pleasures of the naive reader. I've heard Connie Willis talk about not being able to enjoy short stories after she learned, from a writer's perspective, how they worked. She can't get caught up in the dream. She hears the movement of the machinery. As I said to my student, a writer who is in danger of losing the pleasures of reading thanks to an over-developed capacity for criticism might be saved by audio books. I find that when I listen to a story or novel, I do so as a naive listener. When I am read to, it is story time. I am caught up in the fictive dream, and I don't notice nearly as much about how things are done in the story. I mostly just enjoy the story. If I do start thinking about technique, the story goes on without me. I don't want to miss anything, so I drop the technical thought.

The ability to listen and be critical is an ability I don't want to cultivate. Audio books are the one way I have of assuring myself that I can always re-enchant myself with stories. I don't want to lose that escape hatch from becoming too unrelievedly critical.

Another writing tool

hanovi@sff.net — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:48:13 GMT

...and while I'm talking about tools that I find useful, here's another one.

FreeMind is a freeware mind-mapping program. I have long been in the habit of creating a mind map of a story idea before writing the story, but I always did this on paper. I'm finding that there are many advantages to mind-mapping on the computer. My work space is infinite, and if a part of the map that I'm working on gets crowded, the electronic version expands to allow for the new ideas.

The mind map is also a good adjunct to "fractal" outlining for writing a novel, which I will discuss in a future post.

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Watizit

hanovi@sff.net — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:39:22 GMT

The first subscription story for February, which I will send to subscribers in a few hours, was written today from a Watizit exercise that I started last night.

Watizit is an online creativity exercise created by Dave Dufour. It works very much like the "guided brainstorming" exercise that I had used in many workshops. (For those who were present for the session I did with a workshop in Eugene, Oregon, this is the exercise that resulted in Jerry Oltion's story, published in Analog, "The Pain in the Ass.")

I like Dufour's version of the exercise because it works with an image, whereas the version I have used operates entirely with words. But in either case, the point of the exercise is to generate concepts that have nothing to do with your problem, and then consider them as vital clues for solving that problem. My problem was that I had plenty of story ideas for February, but I didn't feel like writing any of them. So I wanted a new idea that would surprise me.

For writers, the key to making an exercise like this seems to be a combination of rigidity and flexibility. That is, the writer has to be committed to writing the story inspired by the exercise, and has to be willing to stick with some of what the exercise generates while abandoning the rest. Like so much in writing, much depends on both discipline and selection.

Here's the URL for Watizit:

http://www.du4.com/dave/watizit/

Deadline Neurosis

hanovi@sff.net — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:48:23 GMT

The ways in which writers can be neurotic are almost beyond measure. Or perhaps I should say that the ways in which I can be neurotic seem to be almost without limit.

Since falling behind on chapters a few months ago and feeling driven to catch up, I have raised the emotional stakes for finishing new chapters as the end of the month approaches. This month proved particularly difficult. I knew that I wasn't likely to get much writing done during the ten days of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA residency, though I did hope that I would do at least a little writing. In fact, I did very little. I can't really blame the sudden death of my laptop on the first day for my lack of production. I had paper and pen. One student generously let me borrow her own laptop. But there were too few hours in every residency day for me to meet as much with my students outside of class as much as I had planned. I felt perpetually pressed for time, and even when I had a little time to myself, I found it difficult to shift into thinking deeply, letting myself be absorbed in my work.

Then when I returned home, there was the new laptop waiting to be configured. There were files and programs to restore on the new machine, and it was the twenty-first day of January before I sent out my first subscription story of the month. By the time I had the computer running, there were still enough days left for me to write two new stories and two new chapters. But day after day, I found myself sitting down at the keyboard and feeling a great wave of anxiety wash over me. What if I didn't get the new stories written? I'd have failed to keep up with my story subscriptions for the first time ever. And if I didn't write two more chapters of Steam before the first of February, I'd be even further behind my intended pace of at least three chapters a month.

When I tried to work, I felt so anxious that I couldn't concentrate very well. I kept surfing the web, doing a crossword puzzle, and entertaining myself by doing nothing with the thought that if I just let myself fiddle about for a bit, I'd feel less anxious and be able to work.

I managed to write one and a half stories. But I didn't make real progress on another chapter of the novel until today, and I was able to make that progress because I finally gave up.

“That's it,” I thought. “I'm going to miss my deadline. It's already too late. It's out of my control.” And then I did what I wish I had done a week earlier. I said to myself, “All right, so how do I write productively when I don't have a deadline looming so close?” I set up a schedule for myself. I focused not on what I would produce, but how long I would spend writing today. It has been a five-and-one-half-hour day. I thought about my chapter without fear. Rather than pushing myself to be productive, I just pushed myself to keep focusing on the next question about this chapter and how to write it.

At the end of the day, I have a clear outline of exactly the chapter I'm going to write tomorrow. I have also re-entered the novel emotionally. I'm again inside the novel helping the story to unfold, rather than on the outside trying to tear off the wrapping and shouting, “Come on! Unfold, damn you!”

Deadlines are essential to me. I don't work without them, generally. But once the deadline pressure builds to a certain level, the deadline begins to work against me. When the pressure is high enough, I actually work less. Even with some insight into how this happens, I still let it happen.

The smart thing for me to have done would have been to recognize that the residency and computer failure combined had knocked me far enough out of my game that I might fail. If, after that admission, I had committed to just work a certain number of hours each day without any thought for the outcome, there's a good chance that I would have met my deadlines anyway. I sure would have written more than I did. And those online computer crossword puzzles would just have gone unsolved.

Pakistan!

hanovi@sff.net — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:45:46 GMT

I already felt that my trip to Frankfurt was worthwhile, with or without signed contracts. I now have one solid offer to point to from that journey. My agent is in negotiations with a publisher in Pakistan who wants to publish Jasmina's memoir there in two editions: English and Urdu translation.

I doubt there will be much money in this, and the agents take a cut, and I'm one of three collaborators. Jasmina, naturally, gets more money since it's her story. There's no way this will amount to enough to pay for the trip to Germany.

Do I care?

We will have many, many more readers for Jasmina's memoir. And Pakistan is a country that can really use her perspective, a view that favors reconciliation over retribution.

I will now dance the Happy Writer Dance. Too bad I don't have a web cam so you could see what it looks like.