My iPhone is Stalking Me

Last night I pulled down the "Today menu" on my silver and white iPhone 5S with iOS 7.0.3 loaded.  I'm not sure that that is what it is actually called but I call it the "Today menu" where it has the choices of "Today" "All" or "Missed" and usually gives you a little talk about the weather and your schedule along with stock prices.  (A Google search indicates it's called the "Notification Center.")  But last night it said something like, "It will take you about 15 minutes to reach . . ." and an address I didn't recognize.  I touched the text (not even sure that would do something) and it opened the Apple map app showing a route to that address.  I zoomed in.  It was a restaurant that, coincidentally, my wife and I have gone to the last  two Sunday nights in a row.

Now it is saying "Right now it would take you about 15 minutes to drive to . . ." and an address.  I assume the "right now" means it's looking at traffic (which I don't think is available in my little town) and figure it out.  But the address is where I go to Toastmasters every Monday night.

Unbeknownst to me, my iPhone seems to be figuring out my schedule and, in an effort to be helpful, letting me know how long it would take to get where I usually go.

I'm trying to decide if I should be happy with the convenience or annoyed at the lack of privacy.  Is this information going to Apple's servers?  (If it were an Android phone, I would assume Google had the information and was trying to figure out a way to monetize it.)  And if it's going to Apple's servers is it going to the NSA's servers?

I suppose I could turn off "Location Services" on the phone but that would eliminate so many convenient functions, including the map apps (I have the default Apple and the Google maps).  If I were a criminal that would be the first thing I would do.  Before the phone says, "Right now it would take you 35 minutes to get to the place you normally dump bodies."

And what else is my phone learning about me?  How long until privacy is a quaint notion people used to worry about, you know, before smartphones and dumb governments made it null.

College Footbal Will Break Your Heart

I'm a little angry with Steve Sarkisian at the moment.  The University of Washington Husky football coach chose at the end of last nights 59-7 victory over Colorado chose to quit instead of kicking a field goal.  A successful field goal would have brought the score of the game to 62-7.  Rather the Huskies took a knee on 4th down with less than a minute left in the game.  The Colorado Buffaloes didn't even try to advance the ball and the game ended with a whimper.

Why did I want 62 points rather than 57?  Because I wanted every point we could get to show that the Huskies are back after losing three in a row, including a blow-out at Arizona State.  Yes, Colorado is the second worst team in the Pac-12 (California, who we beat two weeks ago with a bye last week, is the worst) but still, the more dramatically we destroyed Colorado the better we'll look going into bowl selection season.  And last night's win made the Dawgs bowl eligible.

I like college football and, of course, love my Huskies.  But the thing I like about college football breaks your heart at the same time.  You watch these kids grow and learn and get better over their time playing or a team.  But then they leave and go to the pros.  We had Jake Locker for four years (he started at quarterback as a true freshmen) and watched his ups and downs.  But then he left.  Current quarterback Keith Price is a senior.  He has one more game in Husky Stadium and, including a bowl game, four games left.  And he's been amazing this year.  These kids come up, turn into wonderful players you love to watch (such as Bishop Sankey) and then they leave.

 So what's great about college football is also what will break your heart.

The Dawgs have three regular-season games left: next Friday at UCLA, a game I think they have a chance to win; then at Oregon State where they should win; and finally the Apple Cup against Washington State that they'd better win.

When the Fantastic Becomes Mundane

This morning it was 37 degrees outside.  Inside the house it was 72 degrees.  With a turn of a knob hot, clean water rained down on my body, allowing me to clean myself.

That mundane, every-day experience would be, 100 years ago, an unspeakable luxury.  And 200 years ago it was unavailable to the richest person on the planet and, if the term existed at the time, would have been thought wild science fiction.

This is why science fiction writers have it so tough.  What mundane yet amazing thing will people experience 100 years from now?  From my work in progress, Treasure of the Black Hole, comes this sentence:

"Thanks, doll," I said, and walked through the dilating door to my office.

No comment, no reaction by my character, just a regular mundane thing that would be, in this age, science fiction.

Another example from the real world.  Before the invention of the steam engine, the fastest thing around was probably a galloping horse that went, what, 35 miles per hour?  Then with steam came trains, then internal combustion gave us cars and propeller-driven airplanes.  Finally jet engines routine fly people around at over 500 miles per hour.  Cars, airplanes, trains are all mundane to us.  To an 18th Century man, they would have been fantastical.

Or think about the Internet which is only about, as a consumer product, 20 years old.  Yet we all use it, take it for granted, and it's become a mundane part of our lives.  In 20 years.

Of course, you don't want to write about mundane things.  A description of my shower, even published 200 years ago, would be rather boring.  But you, as a science fiction writer need to decided what is mundane to your characters and what is extraordinary.

WIP it Good

My WIP (Work in Progress) first draft is done.  I finished yesterday early afternoon after waking up at 3:00 A.M. and not being able to go back to sleep.  I wrote 8,440 words yesterday.  That's 14.7% of the total final length of the novel.  I was aiming for 60,000 words but it only ended up 57,478 or 2,522 words short.  I'm not worried.  Gods of Strife (my last completed novel that is now at my publisher) had a first draft that was about 77,000 words and the final version ended up being 88,000 words or 11,000 words longer (another 14.3% longer).  So the current WIP will, after re-writes, edits, and proofreading end up being over 60,000 words easily.

The problem is NaNoWriMo.  I pledged to write 30,000 words and I'm part of a group that is counting on me to put out a bunch of words.  And yes, I've written 17,274 words so far in November (including 160 words today on slight revisions to the WIP I made this morning) which is over half my goal of 30,000 words and not a bad start on 50,000 words, I pretty much have nothing to write about to get the remaining 12,726 words needed to reach 30,000 (32,726 to reach 50,000).  Yes, I'm ahead of the curve (I've written 10 days worth of NaNoWriMo writing rate in less than 4 days) but I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO WRITE.

In a week or so I can start doing revisions and re-writes on my WIP, but that's slow and doesn't add a lot of words very quickly.  If I could come up with an idea for a novella or something else to write, maybe I could reach at least 30,000 words.  I don't know.  I am, unfortunately, not a writer who can write on demand.  I need to have a good idea at least to start with.

So my first attempt at NaNoWriMo maybe be a crash and burn.  But mostly because I had my WIP nearly finished by November 1st.

Oh, and the WIP is called The Black Hole Treasure (although I may change that to Treasure of the Black Hole) and is a hard-boiled private detective about 5,000 years in the future.  Sort of a "Sam Spade in Space."

NaNoWriMo . . . Kind Of.

I know I said I wasn't doing NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month).  To be specific what I said was:

So this year I'm in the middle of a work in progress (WIP).  It's tentatively titled The Black Hole Treasure.  My goal is for it to be at least 60,000 words long.  As of this moment it is 37,855 words long.  For NaNoWriMo I promised to produce 30,000 words on this WIP (which is not what you're supposed to do).

So I'm keeping track of the words I'm writing in November and hope to write at least 30,000 words.  I have as of this moment, written 8,123 words in my WIP in the two days of NaNoWriMo.  So NaNoWriMo is working for me in that it is motivating me to work in my novel.  I went to a "write in" last night and had a blast (and wrote about 2,000 word for a total of 6,345 yesterday).  So I am doing NaNoWriMo . . . kind of.

The only problem is, on October 31st, I only had 19,538 words left to reach my word goal for The Black Hole Treasure.   So I am going to be 10,462 words short of my 30,000-word goal if I just reach the length I'm aiming for in the novel.

Now, it'll probably be longer.  I was aiming for 80,000 words for Gods of Strife (which is still at my publisher) and it ended up being over 88,000 words.  But I don't think this novel will be 17% longer than planned.  In fact, I'm a bit worried about getting to my 60,000-word goal.

So I'm sort of doing NaNoWriMo (and I have not killed my inner editor because I am still trying to make everything I write as good as possible and not just WRITE WORDS).  But toward the end I might have to find something else to write to meet my 30,000-word goal.

 

Why I Started Writing

I don't believe I have ever told, here at least, the story of how and why I became a writer.  And doing so was inspired by a tweet I received on my Twitter account (see picture at left).  I was asked "what got you started in this wonderful field?" and I replied "Legos."  Which while both true and accurate, is not the complete story.

In circa 1966 I received a set of Legos for Christmas.  It was a pretty extensive set for the time, with wheels and lots of blocks and different pieces.  At that time they did not give you instructions (at least I don't remember any).  Now they have a picture on the box of what you're supposed to make and instructions.  I think that's just stupid.

Anyway, the first thing I remember doing with my Legos was building cars, trucks, airplanes, helicopters and making up stories about the worlds I built.  (My mother once observed that while I preferred making vehicles, other children seemed to build houses; even then I liked fast things.)

Meanwhile, I was a television junky.  I loved TV even though we only had two channels in southeastern Idaho (we got a PBS station around 1973 and finally an ABC affiliate around 1976).

I loved stories.  I loved watching them on TV and I loved making them up with my Lego worlds.
When I was about 12 I decided I should write my stories down.  I taught myself how to type using my older sister's high school typing manual and "borrowed" my older brother's typewriter.  I'm assuming whatever I wrote in those days was pretty jejune.  Nothing has survived, as far as I know (thank God).  But I kept writing,, for almost 40 years I kept writing, working on it off and on as I went through the stages of my life, including 20 years in the business world.

It took me nearly 20 years to finally be published, and now I have four books published (and 6 written, but we won't talk about that).  I'm working on a science fiction novel now.

And that's why I started writing: Legos.

Which is interesting because I'm sure my parents never had any idea that Legos would lead me to writing.

NaNoWriMo . . . Not!

Friday is November first and that means it's the start of NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month).  The object is to write 50,000 words of a novel (can be a complete novel or part of a novel) in the 30 days of November.  You're not supposed to start the novel, however, until November 1st.

I tried to do NaNoWriMo in 2011.  I did it unofficially on my own because at the time I was not part of any organized writing group.  The result: I wrote about 30,000 words in November, hit a research wall (i.e, I needed more research to go on), and it ended up taking me about five months to write the approximately 81,000-word novel which became Book of Death.

But, in the spring of this year, I wrote an 77,000-word first draft in 35 days ending March 23rd (the final draft was 88,000 words).  That's about 66,000 words in 30 days which obviously exceeds the NaNoWriMo goal.  I just did it in February and March instead of November.  That novel, Gods of Strife (sequel to Book of Death and part of the Adept Series) is at my publisher.  So, I can write 50,000 words in 30 days if I want to.

Last Friday I went to my local writers' group's NaNoWriMo kickoff gathering.  I learned more about NaNoWriMo than I knew before (I first joined the writers' group in December of last year).  And I know, now, what the goal and philosophy of NaNoWriMo is.  And, to be honest, I have some problems with it, now.

They have you sign an "Agreement and Statement of Understanding" which states, in part:

During the month ahead I realize I will produce clunky dialogue, clichéd characters, and deeply flawed plots.  I agree that all of these things will be left in my rough draft, to be corrected and/or excised at a later point.

In other words, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to just get words down on paper (or hard drive).  I realize some people need this.  They even talked about "locking up" your inner editor that tells you that what you're writing is crap.  Just keep writing!  They say don't go back and edit/re-write.  Just keep writing!  Don't worry if what you are writing is actually crap.  Just keep writing!

I see some validity in this.  Some people just need the push to write without their self-doubt stopping them.  But some people need their self-doubts because they aren't very good.  Combine that with the ease of publishing these days, and a lot of crappy NaNoWriMo books are being published because people are forgetting the next stage: edit and polish your work.

For example, the Gods of Strife first draft was written in 35 days.  But there was over three months of editing, proofreading, beta reading, and just plain re-writing before I thought it was ready to be submitted.  Yes, you may write 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo, but you have probably 3 months of work to do polishing it into something decent.  Don't forget that step.

There is some validity to the NaNoWriMo philosophy.  I keep seeing a quote attributed to Hemingway: "Write drunk, edit sober."  Pounding out 1,666 words per day is pretty much writing drunk.  Also a quote attributed to Hemingway: "Everything is shit in first draft."

But a lot of NaNoWriMo participants forget that, and go ahead and publish their crappy first draft, which reflects badly on all authors, especially those independent authors who actually strive to put out a quality product. (Seems I've discussed this before.)  NaNoWriMo, to me, encourages bad writing in the name of JUST KEEP WRITING.  It does not teach new writers the skills they need to make their work good.  It's quantity over quality.  And that's never a good combination.

So this year I'm in the middle of a work in progress (WIP).  It's tentatively titled The Black Hole Treasure.  My goal is for it to be at least 60,000 words long.  As of this moment it is 37,855 words long.  For NaNoWriMo I promised to produce 30,000 words on this WIP (which is not what you're supposed to do).

For the new writer who needs a push to actually write, I see NaNoWriMo can have some usefulness.  For me, I write anyway and I don't need prodded to write.  My inner editor is alive and well and tells me when I need to fix problems.  But I have not given it the power to stop me from writing. 

Sure, sometimes months go by when I haven't been writing.  But NaNoWriMo is not going to make me write more.  So while I'm sort of doing NaNoWriMo, I'm not doing it, really.