A high school musical

Sarah and Scott are playing in the pit for their school's musical, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. I enjoyed the old David Morse movie, and I know some of the kids in the production, so I would have been slightly motivated to attend even if my children were not involved. They were, though, so off I went tonight to see the show.

I was worried. I was going on preview night, and the play had lost a day of rehearsal due to snow.

To my pleasant surprise, my worry was ill-founded. I quite enjoyed myself. I can honestly say that I thought the play was better than many college and some local theater productions I've attended. The leads were always at least solid and often quite good, the supporting cast, particularly the young women, generally strong, the choreography fun, and the production staged better than I would have expected given a high-school budget.

None of that is to say, of course, that the show came off without a hitch. It's not a preview night if you don't have some dropped lines and tech glitches, and both occurred tonight.

Overall, though, I had a good time. These kids should be proud.

I was also reminded once again that the best reason to do art is for the sheer joy of doing it. No one paid these kids, but the joy on most of their faces at the end was, I believe, genuine. I fret over sales, over how well I'm writing, and over all manner of things extraneous to the creation process itself. I should instead take joy in the act, be thankful that anyone is willing to buy my books, create the best possible art I can, and then do it again.

I'm going to work on that. I expect to fail for the most part, but I'm going to try.

The scary part of this phase

Each phase of writing brings, at least for me, its own particular set of demons. The chief demon in the plotting stage is the big ugly of uncertainty: What if I can't come up with a strong enough plot? What if the concept I've been contemplating is no good? Most frightening, of course, is this one: What if I never finish figuring it out and never start writing again?

Once I'm writing a book, the fear changes to concerns about the quality of the work, but I know that if I slog away at it, I will finish. After all, I have an outline, so all I have to do is write my way through it. All I have to do.

In the outlining stage, though, I never know exactly how long it will take to crystallize the plan, much less to feel good enough about it that I'm willing to start the book itself.

Kyle remarked to me that anyone who reads my blog will know how crazy I am. I disagree. I think any reader will know how neurotic I am about writing--but being neurotic and being a writer have, in my experience, a perfect correlation.

Back to the happy days of contemplating the next novel.

The early days of a novel

A few folks have asked me what exactly I do on a book in these early days, before I'm actually writing the novel, even before I'm writing the outline, so I thought I'd try to explain.

The bulk of the time I spend on a book at this stage is simply thinking. I do this as much as possible, while driving, walking, sitting and staring into space, or anything else that permits free-ranging thought. I ponder what I know of the book, what I don't, and I try to let my subconscious shift from the last book into this one.

I also spend time reading, staring at pictures, and consulting any source that seems relevant to the work I'm creating.

Finally, I sit with a notebook and a pen, and I write notes, usually a dialog with myself. Maybe someday I'll scan some of these for a past book and show you; if you're interested, let me know. I will write notes about the flow of the book, potential scenes, and issues I'm facing. I'll ask myself questions, answer them, then dismiss the answers and try again. It's more or less the writing equivalent of talking to myself--but with a written record of the conversation and the good bits marked for later use.

From the outside, except when I'm writing in my notebook I'm sure I appear to be doing nothing. Trust me, though, it is work, and it's a vital part of the process.

And now, back to it.

On chapter length

A few folks have asked if I've moved to shorter chapters so that I can write one chapter in one day's writing session. The answer is most definitely, no. I thought I'd give a bit more information, though, about why that's the case.

First, I don't plan chapters during my outlining. Instead, I plot in a sort of top-down fashion. I start with a very brief, almost elevator-pitch version of the whole story. I then break that story into what strike me as the major parts of the tale. (Overthrowing Heaven has eight of these.) I then write key action, characterization, and setting notes as text summaries in paragraphs in the plot outline. It's tempting to believe that these paragraphs would turn into chapters, but they don't; again, there's no relationship.

The way I pick chapters is simple: As I'm writing the book, I look for moments that will both close one door and almost--almost, but not quite--open another, and I end chapters at those moments. My goal at the end of each chapter is simple: To entice you, to pull you along, to make you want to read the next one. That's it. I love reading books at night, and I love books that always make me want to read one more chapter, so I'm trying to write them. If I can do that, I'll be happy. My test reader is me; if a chapter ending doesn't make me think hard about and yearn to write the next chapter, it isn't right yet.

Finally, I routinely stop a day's work well before the end of a chapter. I don't think I've ever stopped in the middle of a sentence, but I've stopped in the middle of paragraphs, sections, and chapters. Time and, occasionally, stamina determine when I stop writing, not chapter boundaries.

And now, back to the middle of one of the final few chapters of draft 1 of Overthrowing Heaven!

Why do I write?

Frequent commenter Maria sent me an interesting question, which with her permission I have, after some thought, reproduced in its entirety here:

You seem to have a very dynamic work life--a history with Ziff Davis in a pretty nice position, your current company--what was missing that made you write? Obviously it was something you felt you *had* to do. But why? I know you wrote a lot of stuff for Ziff...so is it just about communication, something you are good at? Is it an outlet for something that you miss otherwise? Do you even *know* why it is you have to write? I ask because...I don't know why I write. I know why I started writing. For a while I know why I kept writing. But the last year or so? I keep doing it, but I honestly no longer know why. I'm much more informed about the industry; the pay, the odds, the hours of effort, the ups and downs, etc. I've had some short stories published in e-zines, generally steadily better paying ones and some podcasts...but darned if I know why I keep at it.

Before I answer the question, I want to address something to Maria: Keep writing. You clearly need to do it, so while you're figuring out why, keep doing it. You won't be happy if you don't. Most of us also get better with time, because there's just so much to learn, so you'll probably like the results more and more (to the degree that any of us can like our work).

As to why I write, I'm also honestly not sure. I'll give you my best guesses, but please understand that they are just that: guesses.

I suppose part of it is related to the fact that I've never been able to shut up. My mom tells a story of coming to the first parents night when I was in first grade and seeing the classroom in an odd formation: one desk in the rear left corner facing out the rear window, and all the others in the upper right corner facing front. Yup, the one was mine. The teacher had put me there because I wouldn't stop talking.

Another factor is that I'm a natural storyteller. When I'm traveling, for example, I may forget my camera, but I always remember to collect stories. I love telling stories, and I love listening to them.

When I push on myself to get to the truth, I also encounter this feeling: I have important things to say. How arrogant, eh? I don't mean that they're important in the "oh, look, here's the meaning of life" sense. It's that they're important to me. Sometimes, the world is so much--so much anger, so much joy, so much love, so much of so many things--that I feel as if I don't get some of it out of me I will burst. I rarely write when I feel like that, but I think the times when I am writing are ones in which I'm bleeding off some of that pressure.

I know one reason I write is that I love books, love the written word, and it's just so damn cool to have written.

Finally, one of the reasons I write is that it's one of the best ways I know to get something out of my head and into someone else's. You know how you can look at someone you love and see them, really see them, every wart and blemish and flaw, and yet your heart is so full with love that you wish they for one second could see how you felt? Words are the only way to transmit that feeling across distance. The same is true for a momentary joy in a cool autumn night or the crash of waves, for outrage at an injustice, for the longing for a lover's touch. When I read something I wrote and it is, even if only in that moment, exactly what I felt, exactly what I wanted to convey, then every bit of pain in writing was worth experiencing.

Of course, if I look again a few seconds later, it's all crap, I'm a failure, and all I can do is slog onward in my talentless journey to oblivion, but, hey, that's part of the joy of writing, too!

Yo, Maria, as I asked once before: Aren't you sorry you asked?

On the road again: the conference and the way home

The conference today was good, with interesting content and chances to meet with a lot of friends who happen to be clients. Technology really has changed the world, and a great many more changes lie ahead. I’d love to live longer than Jon Moore and be able to see the next century and more of changes. The odds are high that I won’t get that chance, but I’d love it if I did.

Tip of the day, a warning to those who talk on their cell phones while in bathroom stalls: It is not a good idea to loudly say “I love you.” The men walking by your stall will generally not be happy to hear this. Really.

I weirded out a very lovely, thirty-something blonde woman tonight. That wasn’t my intent, but it’s part of what I did.

She was ahead of me in line at airport check-in. She’d been flying for most of a day, was exhausted, and was counting on getting to rest in the Admiral’s Club. As it turned out, despite what her original airline had told her, its partnership with American didn’t extend that far. She was quite upset, but eventually she gave up and headed toward security.

As I caught up to her (when alone, I walk quite quickly), I told her I’d get her into the Admiral’s Club as my guest, no strings attached. I directly stated that I was not hitting on her. She accepted but asked why. I just shrugged.

The security people stuck several other passengers between us in line, so I told her I’d wait for her after I cleared security. I did. When she was done reassembling her luggage in the usual post-security dance, I walked in front of her, and she said, “You waited! You really did.”

I said, “I said I would. When we get to the Admiral’s Club, I’ll tell them we’re traveling together, which lets me bring you in as a non-paying guest. Just smile.”

She said, “Will that work?”

I said, “You’re blonde and beautiful. It’ll work. It’s probably worked for you for most of your life.”

She laughed, stared at me for a few seconds, and said, “Yeah, it usually does.”

We proceeded into the Admiral’s Club, where my line was probably enough to get her in and her smile certainly would have closed the deal had it not been.

I went off to work.

She tapped me on the shoulder and said, “That’s really it?”

I smiled, said, “Yup,” and found a place to work.

I never saw her again.

Did I do it because she was a beautiful blonde? No, despite mentioning that fact several times.

Why did I do it?

She was upset, I could help, and I believe in practicing random acts of kindness. That’s it.

By the way, I’m writing this on the red-eye flight from SFO to ORD. I was lucky enough to have my first-class upgrade requests granted by the mysterious gods of the airlines, so I have a reasonably comfortable seat and an annoyed attendant who wishes I would fall asleep but who nonetheless brings me Diet Coke and water each time my glasses near empty. My seat’s light is the only one still on. Everyone else is sound asleep. I just finished PT work and am about to start writing. I will not sleep tonight due to a combination of too much work to do and my inability to sleep soundly on planes. (At best, I can doze, and even that is rare.) I was in bed only 4.5 hours last night and woke up four times due to my typical anxiety about having an early alarm (6:30 a.m.). I’m exhausted, but I will keep working.

People often ask how I can have a hugely demanding job as a tech-firm CEO and still write every day. A day like today, when I’ve now been up for over twenty hours and slept very little the night before, illustrates the core of the answer: You do it. No matter what, you do it.

You do the job in front of you. You try to be kind when you can. You regret your failings and try to correct them, even though you know you will never get it all right. You do it.

Which is what I’m now going to do now instead of yakking at you.

Correcting myself on writing

In multiple conversations with others and in blog entries, I've noted that I write every day. I do so with a neurotic passion born of the fear that were I to stop, I might not resume for decades. In my typical compulsive fashion, I feel compelled to confess that I did indeed miss multiple days--to be precise, eight--due to my back injury.

I'd been hurt before and sick before and kept writing, and I'd planned to write through this injury. Typing while flat on your back is not a particularly efficient practice, but I have a MacBook Air that would have been just the ticket for that sort of work. I could also have resorted to longhand, which though nearly unreadable and incredibly slow does allow me to keep making forward progress. Ultimately, however, I chose not to write because I became convinced that the combination of the pain and the pain medication would result in poor work. Yes, my fear of writing badly overcame my fear of not writing at all.

Or, maybe I was just a big old whining wimp, which is what I truly feel even though I try to tell myself otherwise.

Regardless of which factor really led me to not write, I was greatly relieved the first day I returned to writing. (I have, of course, written every day since then.) It wasn't until I closed the file with that first day's work and saved it to all the places I make copies that I realized I'd been holding my psychic breath just a little.

This confession may not seem necessary to you, but ultimately admitting my own weakness seems necessary. I feel a lot better having gotten that off my chest. I sure hope I don't skip again. (If you happen to be someone helping me to a doctor one day, please grab a notebook and a pen, just in case.)

Noise, noise, noise

In the past day and a half, I've encountered a variety of loud events related to writing: a major review (mixed), a royalty statement (good), and some other almost news (good). These are exactly the sorts of things that distract me, churn me up inside, and make it hard for me to write. Similar, albeit lesser, events, such as a critical comment or a rejection slip, once could stop me from writing for a year or two at a stretch. Correct that: I reacted to them by not writing. I am the only person who can stop me from writing.

What I've learned is that all of these things, good or bad, are just noise, complex wave patterns assaulting the brain space where writing needs to live. Sometimes they feel good, because they do, after all, represent attention, but even then they are fundamentally damaging.

The work is the thing. My desire, my job, my passion, what I must do is write the best work I can, put it through a reasonable number of drafts, and move on to the next piece. If the result attracts a huge readership and makes me as wealthy as King or Rowling, I'll be stunned and happy indeed--but I'll still need to write the next book. If the result instead appeals to no one, if I stop being able to sell anything I write, as painful as that would be, I'd still need to write the next book.

I must do a better job of remembering what matters and what is merely noise.

Work in progress

I've come to believe there's no winning when it comes to work in progress.

My policy, which I don't plan to change, is never to show it to anyone. No matter how far along I am in a book, regardless of how desperate I am for feedback, I keep the book to myself. Until, that is, I've finished my second draft, at which point I run it by Dave. Other than Dave, no one sees it until I turn it in to the editor.

The problem with this approach is that part of my mind constantly inhabits the world of the current work, so naturally I want to talk about this nifty place I'm living. I want to discuss the cool ending of the first chapter of Overthrowing Heaven, or this amazing place that figures centrally in the book, or, well, you get the idea. And, I want to talk about it without being the kind of tease I just was (though, I have to admit, being a tease can be fun, too).

So, why not talk about it?

Because doing so would create its own set of problems. For one thing, talking about a book or story almost inevitably colors the reader's perceptions of that work, and I want reader reactions that reflect only the words on the page, not what I've previously said. And then, of course, there's the fragile state of my writing ego. What if I show this draft to someone and he or she hates it? Would I be motivated to go back and change it? I certainly hope not, not unless the reader found a genuine problem, because I have to stick to my vision and trust in it, but I can imagine myself succumbing to this weakness.

There's no winning. I'm going to stick with my current policy, but every now and then it will bug me.

The wisdom of indirection

I am by nature a very direct person. I say what I mean. If I say I have no preference about what we eat for dinner, then I really have no preference. My instinctual approach to anything is to go directly for it.

Yet I have learned that sometimes an indirect or even apparently off-target path is the best route to a goal.

For example, if you want to sell someone a service and make a business that will survive for the long term, the last thing you should do is try to sell that person. Instead, you should focus completely and utterly on the person's needs in your service area and try to figure out ways to help meet those needs. Trust that if you do that well, the sale will be a natural by-product of the discussion. If you don't maintain that focus, even if you sell a service, you're likely to sell the wrong one and thus ultimately end up with an unhappy client.

Similarly, if you want your fiction to talk about issues that are important to you, the worst thing you can do is try to make the fiction be about those issues. Instead, tell great stories, the best you can possibly manage, as well as you can manage. Trust that your concerns will find their way into your prose.

Trust doesn't come easily to me, but I've learned that in the above cases and in many others, you often have to trust the winding, indirect trail will prove to be the best way to your goal.

A simple realization

I've always said that were I ever to reach a certain level of wealth--a level I am now convinced I will never achieve--I would quit working in tech. Thinking recently about that claim, I asked myself this question: If someone gave me all the money I could possibly ever need, vastly more than my goal, say $100 million or more, what work, if any, would I do?

I'd write, of course.

But I'm already doing that.

True, I'd write more if I had all that money, and I'd not be running a tech company, but I am writing now.

I would also train more in a gym, which I'm not doing now.

So, obviously, I must get back to doing that.

Now, I just have to figure out where to make the time in each day, but as I do so I should take more cheer in the fact that I am getting to do what I want--write--each day, even if for only a little of the day.

Why so many more people want to write than do write

I'm risking a blog theme with this and the previous two columns, but I figured I might as well reveal this dirty secret of writing while I was addressing the job.
The answer is simple: it's way cooler to have written than it is to write.

Writing is not an exciting activity to watch or, often, to do. You sit alone, you stare into space a lot, you concentrate hard, and you type or take pen to paper. Stamping labels on green bean cans might be less intellectually demanding, but it's also more active.

Having written, however, you get to show off your creation, discuss it, hope for praise (and cringe at criticism), and generally be a writer. Ooh. Aah.

As I've said before, if you can possibly not write, don't.

If you must write, however, then shut up and do it.

As I will now.

Why so many writers don't want to discuss works in progress

Last night's entry prompts an obvious question from friends, family, and acquaintances of writers: if talking about your writing is so tempting, why don't you discuss it with me? Most of those people, as well, believe it or not, as almost total strangers, would be happy to discuss works in progress with writers, to offer their inputs, to make available their services for proofreading or story development, and so on.

So why don't more writers take up people on these offers?

The answer is simple but harsh: we don't want their input. In fact, in many cases, we not only don't want it, it has the potential to infuriate us. If it's bad input, it's distracting and a time waster, because now you have to explain why it's bad. If it's good input, at certain moments it can be quite useful, but at others it can be devastating, because sometimes all that keeps a writer going is the belief that if he or she can just hold together a bit longer the fragile world web in his or her head, it can make it onto the screen/paper/whatever. An idea that points out a flaw can trash that whole world.

Now, with a complete draft in hand, that same idea might force a major rewrite, but it's now a useful idea, one that you're applying to something real--a manuscript--to create a better draft. It's no longer a nuclear bomb headed at the ethereal creation in your mind. (Put differently, critiques may be useful and important, but timing matters.)

As best I can tell, the union of all of these behaviors means that writers are frequently unfair and even unbearable on the topic of their work to those closest to them. I try hard not to be that way, but I know I sometimes (often?) am. I've seen a lot of artists of all sorts use their art as an excuse to be assholes, and I don't believe in that excuse at all; no one has a right to be a jerk. Of course, all of us sometimes are.

If nothing else, maybe these two entries will help explain some of the behaviors of writers--and remind those of us who are writers to keep trying not to put our friends in these difficult positions.

Micro literary history

I started writing fiction by hand, and then on a manual typewriter, and then, when my budget permitted, I transitioned to what I at the time considered to be the greatest writing machine conceivable: the IBM Correcting Selectric II. (I still have that red metal beast, though currently its main job is to hold up graphic novels.)

Now, like most writers I know, I work on a computer (well, actually, on many of them). I've done that for over two decades. For most of that time, I worked the same way: open the file of the piece in question, work on it, save it, work on it, close it, and repeat the next day. I'd start a new file only when I started a new version of the piece. The result was that the online files and the paper files of any story were identical.

When I started One Jump Ahead, however, I knew I was invading foreign territory: the novel. I was afraid of losing an entire file and having to face rewriting a whole book. For that reason, and because I thought it might be interesting, I started saving every day's version of the file on which I'm working. For speed of file opening, I also broke the book into chunks of roughly 350K bytes each; for example, OJA comprises two full chunks and one partial.

The result of this process is that one could, if one chose, carefully reconstruct every change I made to that book and know on which day I made it.

For me, this is useful when I'm rewriting a section and want to look at earlier versions. Were someone to be interested in dissecting my work, however, it could prove to give an unprecedented level of insight into how I work. (I don't expect that to ever happen, but it is an odd thought to contemplate.)

A simpler and more automatic version of this practice would come from what's known as a journaling file system, one in which behind your back the operating system saves every version of every file. With disk capacities soaring, such file systems may well become commonplace because of the automatic data backups they provide.

Were such file systems to become common on systems writers use, writers would unknowingly be leaving on their hard disks complete records of their work.

I have to confess two reactions to this notion: discomfort at anyone seeing my work, and great interest in seeing that level of detail about the work of writers I adore. Predictable, of course.

Privacy is, I fear and mostly believe, rapidly becoming a thing of the past, so I suspect this small technical change is but one tiny aspect of that fading of a once-beloved aspect of life. It does intrigue and trouble my writer's soul, however; it really does.

But not enough to make me wipe out all those files. For whatever reason, I just can't do it.

Why so many passes over a book?

A friend recently commented that four complete passes over a book seemed like an awful lot, particularly given that my basic writing skills are solid. As near as I can tell, however, four's the minimum. Here's how it breaks down:

Pass 1: Writing the first draft

This is far and away the hardest work, because this begins with nothing and must end with a complete novel, albeit one not ready for publication yet. I know some writers can stop here, but far more do so than are capable of doing it well. I do this pass on a computer unless I don't have access to one, in which case I'll write longhand and key it in later. (Power outages have necessitated this in the past on a few occasions.)

Pass 2: The massive clean-up

In the rush to finish the first draft, I make all sorts of mistakes. Some are simple: grammar errors, missing words, etc. Some are plot mistakes, often bits that were right when I wrote them but wrong due to changes I made later. Other errors require more work to fix, such as not being fully present during a scene or relaxing my imaginative concentration. I do this pass on the computer as well.

Pass 3: The sanity check

Up to now, I'm the only one who will have seen the book. At this point, I recruit the help of one very skilled reader (Dave) whom I trust to spot plot weaknesses I did not, give opinions on language, and generally provide advice designed to make the book better at being what I want it to be. Most of all, he tells me what's working and what's not.

In parallel, I print the book and do a complete pass on paper. Seeing it on paper is different than seeing it on the screen.

Pass 4: The fusion

I start with Dave's input and my hand edits. I make specific changes on the computer to address both. I then start at the front and read the whole book again, cleaning and polishing as I go. You could count this as two passes, I just realized, but I think of it as one.

Then, off the book goes to the editor, from whom I want absolutely no input. If I've done my job well, the book should be ready to go to print--and that's how I prefer it.

If the editor has input I must address, we hit Pass 5, of course.

Oh, yeah: at some point I'll receive a paper copyedited ms. (Pass 6) and at last the galleys (Pass 7).

Isn't writing a novel easy?

And I'm still on Pass 1 of Slanted Jack. Back to it!

Passion or skill?

Tonight, we attended Sarah's end-of-camp celebration, at which many of the young writers, including Sarah, read poems and story sections they had written during the camp. As I have each year, I found the writing of extremely variable quality but the passion uniformly high and admirable.

It's easy to poke fun at teen writing, and there's certainly plenty of bad examples. I know I contributed more than my fair share to the world when, as a young poet, I churned out a few hundred poems, most of which were heartfelt and poorly executed. Many folks also like to decry teen writing, especially teen poetry, for its raw, direct, and frequently unskilled nature.

And yet.

And yet there's a passion in a great deal of teen writing that I find powerful and alluring and praiseworthy.

All of which made me confront one of those hypothetical questions that is useless in any real sense but nonetheless interesting, at least to me, as a sort of directional guide:

If you absolutely had to choose one, would you pick passion or skill?

I'm talking about writing here, but the question extends naturally to other areas.

I know that skill will produce the better product. I also know that reading extremely passionate but unskilled work can be downright painful.

All that said, if I had to pick one, I'd go for passion.

Passion every time.