Paper Days

It's funny - I think about this a lot, but it never occurred to me until recently to write about it.

I don't remember a lot about my youth.  I can't even blame Alzheimers.  I just don't remember a lot of what happened.  Maybe my childhood was so boring I've blanked it from my mind, I don't know.

But there are a few moments I remember.  Some of them good.  Not all of them.  But most of them have something to do with writing.

I still remember what these smell like.

When we lived in Peterborough (age 5-7?), I remember writing and drawing on papers my mother used to get for free from the grocery store.  I must have been in kindergarten at the time.  She was trying to get me to stop writing on the walls.  Whenever she bought a roast, they would wrap the meat in paper, but she would always ask for four or five extra sheets, so that the outer layers would stay clean, and I could use them for drawing.  Come to think of it, I remember the smell of the paper too, and I think I began to associate creativity with hot, yummy beef.  And of home - specifically, my bedroom, where I could sit in peace and play by myself.  I had rainbow crayons then, too - and I thought those were the most awesome things, because I could draw rainbow-unicorns with a single stroke of the crayon!

I remember Christmas and birthday presents of lined notepaper - sometimes as much as four hundred pages in a pack!  My family wasn't giving me cheap presents; they were giving me room to dream.

Back in Oshawa (ages 7-9 or 10), I wrote my first "full length" story.  It was thirty-seven pages long.  I even illustrated it myself!

And because they knew I was a writer, the teachers of my school let me go to the assembly for Grade Fives and Sixes (even though I was only Grade Three at the time).  They thought I would be interested in it, even though it was a bit old for me.

"Interested"?!  It was Gordon Fricking Korman! 

Twenty-eight years later, I still remember listening cross-legged on the cold gymnasium floor listening to him tell us how his editor used to call him up and say "You have to cut this part out," and how Korman would always reply "But that's the best part!", and how, at the end of the conversation, all the parts were the best parts.

I don't think I closed my mouth once the whole time. 

(For the record, his books were the rare few I actually read.)  By my rough math, he couldn't have been anymore than 20 years old at the time, but to me, he was something ancient and untouchable that had fallen out of heaven.  

And it wasn't until today that I found out he'd grown up in Montreal!

Then we moved away (again).  That's one thing I remember about my childhood.  All the times we moved.  After awhile, I stopped crying about losing my friends and just focused on making new ones when I got to wherever we landed next.  More often than not, I would leave with a story half-written, and finish writing it once we were moved in.  It helped to give me a measure of continuity.  Finishing a story and moving in the same month gave me too clean and too jarring of a break between "past" and "future."

I hate to mention this out loud (sorry, Mother), but I hated growing up in Kincardine, Ontario (aged 10-12, I think).  I had only one or two friends, and they didn't like to play a lot.  Most of my school friends lived out in the countryside, and we didn't have a car.  And since we lived in a housing project on the edge of farmland, there wasn't a whole lot to do, especially without friends.  I used to roll balls of wool, and play Monopoly by myself, to ease the boredom.  If I had liked to read, it would have been a fantastic childhood, I think.

But when I had blank paper...

I clearly recall sitting on the floor at the base of the steps between the front hall and the sunken living room, with an open three-ring binder resting three steps up.  I loved, loved, loved odd-numbered pages, because I could write on them without having to contend with the rings under my wrist.  I wrote about superheroes and unicorns and aliens, and once I even wrote about how a scary Communist could co-operate with a French-speaking spy to save lives.  (This was before the Wall fell, boy am I old, and I always find it weird that twenty-five years later I'm building on ideas I had so long ago.)  Spring, summer, fall, winter, it did not matter.  I could sit there all afternoon, listening to the radio while my mother crocheted, and I could write until my hands fell off.

Metal finger traps.

Around those same years, my mother bought a manual typewriter - I think she bought it at an auction over at the Complex...Anyhow, she brought it home, along with some Teach Yourself to Type book.  Then she presented it to me - after having blanked out all the keys with electric tape.  She wanted me to learn how to touch-type.

And that, ladies and gentleman, was the start of my most exciting summer vacation ever.  No.  Honest.  It was the '80s equivalent of an eleven-year-old sitting down to program utility software in C++, because there is literally nothing better to do...

I didn't do a lot of keying exercises on the old typewriter (aaa...asa...asdsa...asdfdsa...sss...sds...GAH - MAKE IT STOP!), but it did seem to give me an unfair advantage when I took typing in high school. (And electric typewriters were sooooo much easier on my pinkie fingers than that manual ever was.)

But then I got to meet another awesomely famous supercool author, whose name now eludes me.  She did a workshop on pop-up books.  She taught us everything we needed to know about how to make the mouths of monsters chomp when you folded and opened the book.  She taught us how to animate exciting chase scenes by having cardboard cutouts slide back and forth on strips of poster board.  I created Denny the Dragon (with real shooting flames!  made out of real orange and red construction paper and everything!) and I created Mr. Doobie, the annoying ghost that lived in my mother's upstairs closet, totally not realizing I had named the phantom after some funny-smelling cigarettes.
And then I wrote my next "full length" story (mostly on the stairs going down into the living room).  It was almost a hundred pages long - and someone actually typed it up for me.  My teacher submitted it to a contest for me.  I didn't win anything except honourable mention - for being so prolific!  Some things never change.

Oregon Trail.  Boy, this brings back dull memories.

And as for computers, at that time they were only good for two things:  Logo Turtle - a programming language for kids - and Oregon Trail - some game about pilgrims crossing the prairies.  I was the only one of three kids in the school who passed the programming test for Turtle.  (*siiiiiigh*)

Then we moved back to Oshawa (age 12-19).  Unfortunately, I remember a great deal about being in Grade Eight, most of which I'll probably never write about.  But there are still some few pleasant memories that I recall.

Outside our excruciatingly tiny basement apartment on Myers Street, there was a pear tree.  After a massive spring storm, the tree broke at the base, but it continued living on the one side.  When life was at its worst, I used to hide under the boughs of the fallen pear tree and be utterly surrounded by leaves.  I couldn't see anything else; I couldn't see the house where I lived, I couldn't see the neighbourhood, I couldn't see the rusty cars parked on the side of the street.  I used the limbs of the trees to hold my construction paper and poster board and markers while I designed more pop-up books.

But during this time, I stopped writing about happy, bounding ghosts and their friends, and started writing about gunmen, muggers, and real dragons that swooped out of the sky and consumed my enemies with liquid fire.

Despite all that, though, I still recall reclining in the arms of the fallen but flowering pear tree, writing.  My shelter.  My secret hiding place.  My all-natural office.

In high school, we moved into the basement of my aunt and uncle's house.  Writing was still my escape, though year after year, I was also determined to get something published.  And our household technology did, in some ways, help out with that.  First, we upgraded to a daisy-wheel electric typewriter (and BOY, was that thing loud).  Then we got a one-line word processor.  I could write away, then hit a print key and a bazillion letters would appear on the line before coming to a screeching halt.  I still preferred hand-writing most of my stories while lying on my stomach on my bed, feet up and crossed at the ankles over my backside, while listening to the Best of Louis Armstrong.  Oh, the stories I wrote then - stories about shape-changers, aliens, mutants...the Fog of Dockside City, Hawkeshaw...Packs of lined paper were reserved for school now; no, my new best friends were folders with stylized dragons and wolves on them, and later, anonymous (non-geeky) spiral bound notebooks.  Every blank notebook was an unexplored universe.

Anybody else remember the high-pitched whistle?

Then came the computers.

I fondly recall a trek through the galaxy on a multi-species cargo ship called Pilgrim's Ark.  I wrote on our first computer, an XT.  I had to launch Microsoft WordPerfect by a DOS command!  I even remember having to use the F-keys to highlight text and change it to italics.  I used to change the screen colours so that the background was black, the letters were white, italics were highlighted in a disgusting purple shade, bold in green...Filenames that could only be 8 characters long and contain no spaces...Man, those were the days...

I used to write fan fiction, too, all the time.  And when I say "millions of words" of fan fiction, you can believe me.  Boy, this is embarrassing but...*kaf*...I had a thing for The Flash, The Rocketeer, and the Shadow.  (GEEEEEEEEK...)

In our day, we used to call Wikipedia "Books!"

I used to have to save each chapter in a different file; and after awhile the stories got to be so long I'd have to put one book on two 5 1/2 floppy disks!  Then along came the amazing 3 1/4 disks, and I could put more stories on a single disk!  I lost count of all the disks I had.  New, bigger computers meant longer, more vivid stories.  I was connected to technology for hours on end while my mother sat on the couch beside me, watching the TV; I had enormous headphones plugged into the cassette player / turntable on my left, disk in the drive, keyboard smoking, and an orange-curtained basement window above me on the right.  That was before we moved the computer into my room, in time for me to co-found the high school newspaper.

I wasn't writing exclusively at home - at least, not in the mornings.  I came into the high school computer room about an hour before first class, and with such regularity that once, our high school science teacher posted a sign on the computer room door saying, "Patti, you're late!"  It was 8:15.  School started at nine.

And because I was in there so often, I was the school's IT group.  Gosh, I don't know how many times I had to clear a printer conflict on the network...and no matter how often I wrote out a manual, people still found ways of breaking the laser printer.

I didn't mind.  I got paid in free access to ink and paper.  I think I still have some of the dot-matrix manuscripts kicking about.  Lord knows - as do some of my unwitting moving partners - I've carried them around long enough from one place to the next.

I even took on my first "writing contract" for a friend of mine.  Young Mr. Jim Zubkavich asked me to type out a story he and his friends had put together - a kind of D&D tale.  I had a BLAST...even though I didn't understand a quarter of the inside jokes.  Now that guy is like some kind of world-famous comic book creator guy or something, and I design databases for a living.  (Recently, he gave me the first season of Skullkickers for free, and they're really, really good, so when I say there's no jealousy here, I mean it.)  (Okay, maybe just a little bit of jealousy, but the pride I have for my old classmate is, like, a bajillion times stronger.)

In university, not much changed.  I didn't write much that wasn't "for the sake of publication", though I did another crack at Hawkeshaw and nearly landed an agent.  But writing was my escape, especially during first and second year university.  It was my sanity.  Nothing gets rid of anxiety, stress and near-homicidal frustration like shooting up vampires, werewolves and zombies, or like making their heads explode using psychic powers.  And nothing gets the brain firing like a 9:00 a.m. deadline on an essay I don't want to write. 

Loved it so much I destroyed two of them!

But in the second and third year of university, I was working full-time (and part-time with the Canadian Army Reserves), working mostly evening and midnight shifts.  Uneventful swing shifts, plus my first Journada (the precursor to a netbook), was like splashing gasoline on an open flame.  I filled floppy disks at an extraordinary rate - while still maintaining a geekly-high GPA (because I had literally nothing better to do...).  During those years, I discovered I could write radio plays.  Since I wasn't sleeping for weeks on end, this seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Not mine.  But almost as bad as mine.

Then, university done, and literally nothing better to do, I took a course at Durham College:  a certain creative writing course as taught by Tobin Elliott.  I'd been working away on a brand new laptop - a real, live, battery-sucking laptop.  I wanted Tobin to check something on my computer, and the first thing he saw was that there was no paint left on most of the keys.  Sweaty fingers had done to my laptop what my mother had done to the keys of that first manual typewriter.  On my laptop, the space bar wasn't just polished from use - it was dented.

So there you have it.  In all the craziness that was my youth, all the moves, the new schools, the friends gained and lost, there has been one constant

I leave you with one final memory.  I've probably written it before, but it's important to say it again.

During high school, I came out here to Montreal, staying only a few blocks away from where I live now.  I was hired by a family to work as a live-in babysitter for one full-month. It was the most formative adventure of my life and of my career.  Much of who I am today is because of that month.

I wrote constantly in my free hours.  I wrote in my journal.  I wrote Scarlet Unseen - a story about a girl who could turn herself invisible and walk through walls.  I wrote stories for the kids I was looking after.  And one afternoon, I took the kids (all five of them) to the park, and while I watched them from a park bench, I gabbed in my journal about the unfairness of life.

An older gentleman came and sat beside me.  He had sad, rheumy, turtle-eyes, a stooped walk and a bittersweet but wincing smile.  His clothes were too big for him.  He told me a story about a friend of his, who was slowly dying and in constant pain.  "I asked him," he said, "'how do you survive all this pain?'  The answer was, 'I write.'"  Then he smiled at me, bid me good day, and limped away.

Publication is not the point.  Making sense of the world while escaping from it - that's why I write.

Once more from the top! With feeling!

By day, I design databases.  I design a lot of databases.  And boy is it so much more fun than writing thrillers and mysteries!  (I can't complain.  Because of database designing, I can write in warmth and comfort, with a full stomach and a pot of coffee.) 

Each brainchild is larger and more complex than the last; with use, updates, add-ons and fixes, they become even larger and more complicated.  Sometimes, they outgrow their own stability and go kaput.

When that happens, there are two things I can do:  find the problem(s) and fix the database, or I can rebuild the whole danged thing.

The first time I rebuilt a database, I did it out of sheer frustration.  I was tired of making countless little changes, running tests and still finding it was wrong.  So I said, "Screw it!" and I gutted the database.  When I rebuilt it, it was four times faster and only took up a quarter of the space.  It was so efficient, I thought I'd done something wrong!  But no, all the data was there, it ran correctly, and better still, it was a little more robust in its operation - at four times the speed and one quarter the size.

So these days, I make a habit of rebuilding all my databases from the ground up.  If I do this every half year or so, it streamlines its performance, it allows me to check my methodology and verify my calculations, and hot diggity does it go faster afterward.  Sometimes I need to make minor changes between overhauls, but that's okay.  If they're important changes, they'll survive the next rebuild.  If they're temporary or unnecessary, they'll slough off during the next rebuild.

It's a big investment of time, and it hurts every time I do it - but each time I do, I learn something new.  I learn a new way of compressing four or five queries into one, or some sneaky way of eliminating unnecessary data that's been choking performance.

But the important thing is, I rebuild from memory.  Why?  Because memory is flawed.

Memory is finite. Your memory purges itself of stuff you don't need, and you retain only what is most salient (most important, most unusual, most often used).

I can remember what the output is supposed to look like; so in rebuilding the query to get the output I need, I have to refine the query knowing what I know now.  The rebuild automatically incorporates new knowledge and new skills.

I can't remember all the ad hoc queries I've designed in response to one-off requests here and there, so they don't get built in.  And since I don't need them, I don't need to port-over the old data associated with those requests either.

Unfortunately, I can't always remember all the output fields required, nor the best way to format date fields based on weeks and months, nor the best report layouts.  So, what I do need, I can go back and copy/paste over to the new database.  Everything else gets archived and buried.

In the end:  the utility is neat, tidy, faster, up-to-date - and, my database design skills are kept sharp.  Something I discover in the rebuild of this database could be the key to repairing that database over there.

So what, you may ask, has this got to do with writing?

Loads.

Take your manuscript, for example - that lump of musty papers in the corner that has been driving you crazy for months and years.  It took you X-amount of time to write it, and it's been taking you 6 times that to edit it.  You go back to it now and then, fixing this scene, updating that grammar, toying with a character here or there, adding a paragraph or two of back story.  Maybe you've edited it from "One day" to "The End" five or six times over, saving each draft individually.  Still, it doesn't feel right, and you're tired of trying to figure out why.  You know the story is there, but you just can't get it out.

Now, you also have a couple of choices here.  You can continue on picking at scabs until you're covered in blood and styptic pencil marks, or you can rebuild it from memory.

This is exactly what I'm doing with Man with the Silver Tongue, the second in the John "Mummer" Stillman series. I'm scrapping all the work I've done up to now (all three drafts), and I'm rewriting it from word one.

You see, I've already written the first draft for eight manuscripts in this series.  I could theoretically just edit them and send them off.  But since writing those drafts, I've also written Her Poison Voice, the novelization of twelve radio plays, the entire Helix series, Lady Butcher and the Accidental Saint and a spattering of short stories.  After well over a million words written in the last four years, I should say I've learned a few new skills; between writing, editing, reading and receiving feedback, my writing is a quantum leap ahead of where it was in 2007.  I have infinite room for improvement, but I'm not the writer I used to be. 

I've also gone back and overhauled Mummer's the Word, which has affected every character in the series.  That means, if I edit, I'll have to change every line of dialogue, every motivation, every action and reaction.  In short, if it has letters or numbers, it needs to be reworked.  But if I don't do something drastic, The Man with the Silver Tongue will fall far behind its predecessor, and I run the risk of being a bit of a one-hit-wonder.


Now, I can go back to the original draft of the Man with the Silver Tongue, print it off, make a gazillion red doodles, then go transfer the changes to the soft copy - or, I can save the environment (and my sanity), and I can rewrite the danged thing, knowing what I know now.

There is a disadvantage, of course - time being the primary problem.  Once this net-new draft is done, I'll have to go back and do two or three more rounds of revisions for continuity, grammar and clarity.  Then there's the heartsick groaning at having "wasted" all the time I spent on the book up to now.

But there's an advantage too.

In the process of rewriting Man with the Silver Tongue, I've been forced to remember all the salient points (the essential story, what makes this story unique from the rest of the series, what holds it together as a unit).  Because I've already done this story before, I know where I'm going with it.  I already know how the story is going to end, which means I already know how it's going to build toward its climax.  Tobin Elliott would probably call these Key Scenes.

As I review what I remember of the essential story, I can test the very core of the plot for flaws.  And what's funny about this step is that I'll often "remember" exactly how the plot resolves - even though that's not how I wrote it originally.  In fact, the original story may not have made sense to begin with!  Memory is flawed, not only because it's finite, but because it's subject to change - and the writer can use this to his or her advantage.

Also, knowing what I know now about the personality of my main characters, I've had to make subtle changes to the plot between Key Scenes. This gives me the opportunity I need to drop in sparks, tension and chemistry, which I use to build those transitions and add depth and realism to the plot.

On top of that, having written eight books with these characters, I have a much better idea of where I want to go with the whole series.  And yes, I do know how the series ends.  What I don't know is how many books it'll take me to get there (or rather, how many books publishers and readers will let me get away with in this series).  With that in mind, I can set Silver Tongue in line with the series arc.  I'd been writing in the dark the first time around.

Once I have in my mind for this book the Key Scenes and the transitions between them, I can see a general shape of the whole story; i.e. 1/4 of the manuscript takes me from this scene to that plot twist, the next 1/4 needs to be about how he begins to investigate "this", then right at the midway point "that" needs to happen, and "this" needs to happen immediately before the midway point, which means I have to explain how he knows "that" at around the 1/6th mark, etc. etc.  Believe it or not, I do all that in my head, and rarely on paper.  If I forget something, I probably didn't need it; if it was important, I'll remember it as I write, and I can always go back to drop in those few lines I'd missed.  (Ah, modern technology - ain't she grand?)

All of this allows me to keep the manuscript nice and lean.  I don't fall into the trap of adding gratuitous back story or action for the sake of shaking up the boring scenes.  If you keep only the good stuff, there are no boring scenes.  I also know what to leave out of the story, before I write it (or what to take out as soon as I realize it's derailing me from the character's true personality or the real plot).

 Once the Silver Tongue plot was refined in my head, I realized I had to dump a dozen superfluous characters.  I would have spent hours surgically removing them from every scene and snippet of dialogue, had I edited the story.  Now, I don't have to reassign actions or re-attribute speech.  Those characters, actions and speech bubbles are simply gone.  But had I gone back to the original draft, I would have fallen in love with those characters all over again, and I would have bled every time I put red pen to paper.  It's easier to cut out what you can't remember.

And because I'm rewriting it from the top, I'm putting into practice what I've learned since writing the original draft: how to animate of action and dialogue in the mind of the reader, how to add conflicting character motivations, how to modify sentence structure to improve pacing, how to add keynotes instead of catchphrases to help distinguish one character from another in dialogue, and how to slice out unnecessary characters before they bog down the plot.

Finally, because I'm re-writing, I'm actually flexing my creative muscles, and not just the self-critical ones.  Every time I write a new story, I improve the way I edit; likewise, the more I rewrite stories I already know, the better I get at writing fresh material in the first draft.

So is this the solution to your cranky manuscript in the corner?  It might not be.  After all, I've written five distinct and complete versions of Hawkeshaw/Her Poison Voice, each with different characters, settings and plots.  I still haven't captured the story I want to tell.  I may end up doing a sixth incarnation.  But, bad as they might be, not one of those drafts has ever been a waste of time.  Even when I'm writing badly, I can learn something new.
But think about it:  if it took you 1000 hours to write, and it's taking you 10,000 hours to edit, you could have rewritten it by now. 

If it's "sooooo close" to what you want, do not rewrite it.  Add the subtle brushstrokes required to bring out the light, and muscle out any errors.

And beware of gritty reboots.  Yes, it worked for Batman Begins.  But look what Van Helsing did to all the classic Universal monsters!  In going for the funny/gritty/action-adventure blockbuster, Universal went over the top, and destroyed the essential characters (click here and watch between 4:02 and 5:08, and you'll see what I mean). And, it made me cry for three months straight. Your rewrite should hang off the essential story and characters, and not on a desire for "more action!" and "more drama!" and "more special effects!"

If I don't know what I wrote or what the story was about, I don't rebuild it.  I only rebuild what has kept my imagination, despite those 10,000 hours of editing.  If I can't remember how the story goes, it gets archived, buried and left behind.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is sigh, turn your back, and try something new.

You say you want a Resolution...

Like I said in my previous post, resolutions are no fun unless you can make fun of 'em.

But they are more fun when you go out for a "Resolution Forging Coffee Klatch" with Mady Virgona and Mike Lorenson!  Thanks to them both for some good planning and loads of laughs!

Below is an abbreviated but public record of my resolutions for 2012, so that this time next year, we can all sit back and chuckle uproariously at them.

Health resolutions
-  The inevitable "lose weight" resolution goes here.  For modesty's sake, I won't say how much I plan to lose, but it is an accomplishable goal.  I know, because I accomplished it a couple of times last year.  I just kept putting the weight back on.  And then Christmas happened and I discovered the joys of cooking foods with yeast in it.  Mmm...bread...
- Go to the gym 2x a week (or more).
- During the spring/summer months, go play tennis at least one week with Mike and Mady.

Creativity resolutions
- Write 500 words daily.  While it doesn't seem like a challenge to someone who can write 60,000 words in a weekend, it is more of a challenge than you'd think.  It's the "daily" part that will be the problem.  I'm like the whippet of the writing world:  a 50-mph couch potato.  Once I actually get off my butt and do something, I do it fast and relatively well; but the problem is that I spend more time goofing off than creating something.  Which brings me to the next two resolutions.
- Zero Facebook games in 2012.  I'm well on my way, actually - I haven't played any in the last three weeks.  YAY ME.
- As with last year, no more than 1 hour of TV or movies daily.  Hours can be banked, though, which means I can watch a whole movie in one sitting, if I haven't watched any TV the day before.  Because nothing says LOSER like leaving the theatre after an hour.
- Read two books a month, and post a *brief* review after.  I'm going to try and split my reading into 50% fiction, and 50% non-fiction, because I have such a backlog of research to do...If I do more than that, I can read more fiction!  Especially the classics.  I love the classics.  But reading is a real challenge for me, because I do have a short attention sp - ooh!  Squirrel!
- Bake more.  Buy no store-bought bread.  My bread's better anyhow, and comes free with a sense of self-satisfaction.  Self-satisfaction burns calories.
- Paint one picture.  I used to do that all the time, back when I had no floor space and nothing but carpets.  Now that I have space and hard wood floors, I should be painting more!

Other resolutions
- Learn sign language!  If I can find a good (and cheap) course, I can claim it as research for Mummer.  Barring that, I have ASL dictionaries at home, and I can always access that fabulous repository of all common experience:  YouTube!
- Volunteer 1-2 hours a week as a literacy and/or ESL tutor.  A) I have to get out of the apartment from time to time, and B) since I can't donate as much, financially, as I used to, I'll donate more time instead.  I'll see if I can volunteer through the YWCA.
- Submit more short stories and novels for publication.  That means a focus on critical editing, synopses and proposals.  This is more of a business and self-discipline thing, and less of a creative thing.


-----


Now, I've made resolutions pretty much every year, with varying degrees of success.  But I have discovered there are five keys to increasing your chance of success.

1.  Make them SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely).  "Be kinder," does not qualify as a SMART goal.  "Volunteer for 1-2 hours weekly at a YWCA literacy program starting the third week of January" is a SMART goal.  Lose weight does not count as a SMART goal.   "Lose 15 pounds by June 15th" is SMART, as is "go to the gym twice or more per week".
2.  Make them known.  Doesn't have to be public, but do discuss them with friends and/or family.  Don't just state your resolutions, but make it clear - to them and to yourself - why these resolutions are important and attainable.
3.  Have a resolution partner (or two) - preferably someone else who has also made resolutions and is determined to keep them for the whole year.  Be accountable to someone for your success, because if they ask you "Have you been writing 500 words a day like you wanted?" you're forced to account for why you haven't been upholding your resolutions.
4.  Review your resolutions and success with your resolution partners in a regular and structured way, throughout the entire year.  If you don't, by March you'll have forgotten all but one or two of your resolutions.  Besides, it helps you, it helps your partners, and it's a great excuse to get out for more coffee with friends.  More importantly, it helps you to stop, reflect and digest your year so far, and it allows you to re-track if you've been derailed.
5.  State your bad excuses out loud, then keep your resolutions anyhow.  I'll bet you buckets of money, if you were to make a list of excuses, "Too tired," "Too busy" and "Too broke" are going to hit the top of the list.  Structure your resolutions - and your year - accordingly.  If you know well in advance that you're going to counter your resolutions with one excuse or another, then you can either change the goal or ignore the excuses.

I already have two resolution partners, but if you're interested, drop me a line in the comments below, and I'll check up on you, too!  You don't have to list all your resolutions in the comments field, not unless you want to make your resolutions public.  But don't forget to make them SMART goals, first.

Thus concludes the 2011 series of blog posts, and I'll leave you with one simple New Year's Wish:

Your new year may not be an easy one, but here's hoping the laughs outnumber the tears.  You have control over that much, at least.

How resolute were you this year?

Resolutions are no fun, unless you can make fun of them.

Sure, a lot of people make resolutions, but how many keep tabs on them?  How many actually go back at the end of the year to see how well you've kept them?

Well, in this case, I actually kept a record of my resolutions for 2011 - and because of it, I can look back on my year to see how well I've kept them (or not).  And for the longest while, Mady Virgona and I were checking up on one another's resolutions every Monday night, until we fell out of the habit.  I think if we had kept it up, or at least, if I had continued to look at my resolutions through the year, I would have accomplished more.

So without further ado, here are the silly, and not-so-silly, resolutions I'd made in 2011.

Take 4 singing lessons.  Failed!  It's okay, though.  I think "singing solo in church, at a baptism and at a funeral, and leading songs at Easter and Christmas" outweighs "didn't take singing lessons".  Grade: C-.

Take 8 dance lessons.  Success!  Unfortunately, it was at one of these dance lessons that my wallet was stolen, so that puts a big black mark on the whole experience.  Fortunately, my dance instructor was cute and very funny.  I don't think I would go back to that studio, though.  Too upper crust for me.  I think if I was to go back to dance, I'd return to Cat's Corner on St-Laurent. There, dance was more than an artform.  It was FUN, man!  And excellent exercise.  Grade:  B+.  (I'd give myself a higher grade if I had taken the last two of the lessons I paid for.  But like I said, when your wallet is stolen from a place like that, as rich and hoity-toity as it is, you really don't want to risk it twice.)

Sew one dress (with sleeves).  FAILED.  And "ha ha ha!" for thinking it up in the first place. Grade: F.

Pay off student debt.  Success!  Grade A+, for paying it off one month earlier than expected according to my budget, and for paying it off a full eight months before the regular payments finished.

Pay off the credit card.  Success, believe it or not!  And then I moved and went to IKEA to stock up on furniture. Grade: A, but a month's detention for racking it up again.  Darn you, IKEA!  Darn you all to heck!

Go to dentist.  No comment.  Grade: F.

Land a publishing contract (or, pay for self-pub by end of year 2011).  Nope, but close.  I still have high hopes for a certain short story, but as for a book...Well, if you were to read back through several blog posts of 2011, you'll see I went through a big BLAH that knocked me right off my feet.  Now, entering into 2012, I'm cautiously optimistic.  And I won't be self-publishing for a while yet.  Grade:  N/A.  The important thing is, I'm back in the game.

Be a better CWC RVP.  Unfortunately, the same BLAH that affected my writing hopes was the same BLAH that took over the rest of my life.  Fortunately, I've been doing a lot more volunteering.  Unfortunately, I didn't do half as much as I wanted to, and only a quarter of what this role deserves.  Grade:  D.

Complain less.  You know, I think I will actually give myself a passing grade on this one.  Any time I have complained, I'd like to think I did it sparingly, and with a lot of sarcasm.  But I have been exercising optimism.  Like a muscle, optimism needs to be exercised; without exercise, it atrophies and becomes a withered, dead thing in the bottom of your soul; but when exercised, it becomes more resilient against injury, and it becomes easier to hope for bigger and bigger things.  Grade: B.  (I'd give myself a higher mark if I hadn't substituted optimism with sulky silence so often.) 

Read twenty books (5 sf/f, 5 crime, 5 non-fiction, 5 whatever else I want to read).  Sadly, I lost track of the books I'd been reading through the year, but I do know I read about 22-25 books, so yay me!  Grade: A- (points lost for not keeping track and not ensuring I had a well-rounded reading list).

Lose ten pounds.  Well, if you get really technical, I lost about 40 pounds - 2 pounds here, 1 pound there, 3 pounds another week...But, if you balance that against the pounds I gained during other weeks, I lost a total of nothing.  I'm at the same weight I was at the beginning of 2011!  So, I'm going to have to give myself a "meh" Grade of C-.  Bonus points for actually going to the gym regularly during the months of July, August, and part of September.  A kick in the pants for not going more than five times total in the months of October, November and December combined.

Get a mentor from CWC.  Please refer to the "Great BLAH of 2011".  Failed! Grade: F.

Keep house clean.  Actually, in the end of the year, I've been doing pretty darned well, if I do say so myself.  Now that I have a much larger apartment, I have enough closets, shelves, cupboards and storage units to put stuff where it belongs.  Also, because I've become a neat freak when it comes to the floors, I'm sweeping and mopping like a maniac.  Still some work to be done, but A for effort.  Overall Grade:  B-.  Next step:  empty the storage room downstairs.  Heh heh heh.  (See, this is how I scare away writer's block.  I threaten it with chores.)

1 hour of TV daily, maximum.  Actually, yes!  If you average out the days I've watched 2 hours or more of TV against the weeks (yes, weeks) when the TV wasn't on at all, I come out at 1 hour of TV daily.  Grade:  A+.

Out of bed by 7:15 every day.  HAHAHAHAHA!  Okay, that was just a dumb thing to suggest in the first place.  7:15 a.m. on Sunday mornings, yes, giving myself exactly 45 minutes to shower, dress, take the dog outside, get coffee en route and be there by 8:00 a.m.  All other days...8:45 has been the norm.  Grade:  D-.

Sunday afternoons, zero internet / TV / computer games.  Reading only, four hours.  Well, I have to split this into two halves.  In the first half of the year, yes, actually, I was doing exactly that.  And then, for whatever reason, I fell apart.  Grade:  D-.

So overall, how was the year?  I give it a C-, maybe a D+.

When I stop and think back over it, it's actually been a pretty eventful, but up/down kind of year, where the downs zeroed out the ups, and vice versa.

In terms of work, I moved to a different role, and within three months of joining the new team, I had a commendation from not one but two TELUS Vice Presidents (and a lot of leftover pizza).  And things have been pretty good since then, though, I will admit, there have been days when I've cried real tears of boredom.  The good days more than make up for it, though.

In terms of life, I had my wallet stolen, I lost my apartment, I gouged both sides of the car, and I lost my grandmother, all within 8 weeks.  From the beginning of September to the end of October, it was like being slapped, punched, kicked in the groin and then eviscerated, in that order.  Then November came, and I was as low as I could get, exhausted, criticized and full of malaise.

But then again, I moved into a much bigger apartment, and I got my first dog!  And even when I was criticized and my work torn to shreds, I still managed to come out ahead.

In church, we've lost a lot of people, some of them who had been with us since the first founding days of our congregation; but then, we've gained some, too - people who are committed, engaged, and volunteering.

In terms of writing, I haven't been so close to publication before - short stories, and now two very solid mystery series, with Lady Butcher being a surprise new arrival in 2011.  And most importantly, I overcame two of the longest, bleakest struggles I've ever had, and came out stronger for it.  The revisions to Mummer's the Word I think are awesome - character development, plot twists, clarity of narration - all that came about because of the "crisis of the heart" I'd had at the beginning of the year, which led to me falling in love with the essentials of storytelling.

And on top of that, I was tickled pink (and humbled) to have received both the Most Prolific award and the award for Best Adult Fiction in the Muskoka Novel Marathon 2011.  Currently, the manuscript (Lady Butcher and the Accidental Saint) is sitting with Marc Cote of Cormorant Press, awaiting a full critique.  It may or may not lead to a publishing contract - but the important thing is, only good can come out of the critique.

And in terms of the world, look what's happened so far!  Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, and the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong Il.  But then again, Greece is still in turmoil, the Euro is in a death spiral, and we've also lost Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Falk (Colombo), Andy Rooney, Harry Morgan (Col. Potter), Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Steve Jobs, and Jack Layton.  And there was also Amy Winehouse, but was anybody really surprised?

And think of the inventions!  Quantum levitation.  Flying carpets.  Jetpacks.  Glasses-Free 3D Television.  The sky is no longer the limit.  Human imagination is the limit - and I don't think human imagination has a limit.  I can only imagine what "science fiction" will become reality next year.  Wireless energy ready lamps, cell phones and televisions?  I've already seen solar powered backpack laptop chargers, so why not?  (And yes, I've actually met someone who owns one.)  On the other hand, Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, and that's just dumb, in my opinion, though I know the rationalizations behind it.
 
Overall, in 2011?  A few regrets, a few successes.  There's so much more I could have done.  I remember long, dull, ugly days when all I did was sit and play computer games, lacking the spiritual and mental energy to just get up and do something.  But I overcame it - I forcibly pulled myself out of it - and that, I think is going to be the big memory from 2011.

The year has balanced itself out.  It was like winning $10,000 in the lottery and using it to pay of $15,000 of debt.  I'd have been happier to win $100,000, but I think I would have wasted most of it.

If 2011 has taught me anything, it's this:  it's okay to be sad, but do not despair; the end of a chapter is not the end of the story.  And it's okay to be happy, but keep your feet on the ground, or something will sweep them out from under you.

All things zero out in the end, but at least you can keep the good memories and deliberately forget the rest.

It's been a good enough year.  A "meh" year.  But because I've learned how to avoid and overcome the "mehs", next year will be that much better.  I needed 2011 in order to prepare for 2012.

Now...please bring on 2012.  I want to see what I can make of it.

I read a book! The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm not often moved to talk about a book I've read - mainly because I don't read enough.  But in this case, Paolo Bacigalupi has really inspired me to actually write a short critique / reaction thing.

The Windup Girl is a fantastic piece of futuristic science fiction, published in 2010 by Night Shade Books. It's been highly acclaimed as one of the best books of 2010, and was the winner of several sf awards, including the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the Compton Crook Award and the Hugo.  In other words, it won pretty much all the sf awards.

You might call it cyberpunk, or post-apocalyptic - you might even make an argument for steampunk - but I'd say, just read the darned thing and call it science fiction.  And it's the kind of science fiction I like: thoughtful and mildly disturbing.  Not a utopic Star Trek kind of science/future, nor a post-apocalyptic dystopia like The Time Machine.

It's a scary kind of fiction, the kind that comes across as "it still could happen."

Part of the blurb on the back reads:  "What happens when calories bcome currency?  What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?"

There's a term for this genre:  It's ecotopian fiction, wherein the world has undergone (or is undergoing) massive changes because of an environmental shift.  It's also dystopic, which is a fancy way of saying "Life really and truly sucks in this world I made up."  I won't give it all away, because it's worth your while reading it and discovering it for yourself.  Suffice it to say that the plot revolves somewhat (a lot) around the genetic engineering practices that are happening right now, today. 

If I were to compare this world of Bacigalupi's to anything, I would say "Take the moodiness and overcrowding of Blade Runner, throw in an High Altitude Nuclear Explosion so that all or most of the technology is destroyed, add in some famine, flooding and fires, and sprinkle liberally with political interference by major corporations."  I really enjoyed the world he created.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I'll say this much:  I almost loved this book.  It's rare that I think about a book I'm reading, once I put it down.  Not the case with The Windup Girl.  Considering the shortness of my attention span, I'm actually surprised at how much I've been thinking about this book, after the fact.

First of all, in terms of style, I'm on the fence.  Some of his scenes are brilliantly written, honestly they are.  The action scenes are worth your time.  The pacing is fantastic - almost.

I have two beefs with the book:  the beginning and the end.

His world is beautiful, vibrant, noisy, claustrophobic, smelly, brilliantly laid out.  But you need to take lessons in Cantonese, Thai, Japanese and anger management to get through the first, oh, 50 pages or so.

You pick the language up as you go along - if you're willing to stick it out.  You learn new words like farang and jai and bodhisattva, and I'm still not sure if they're all actual words or if they're figments of Bacigalupi's imagination (or mispronunciation), but that again is what's so compelling.  I can't tell where reality ends and Bacigalupi  begins, not without doing my own research.

But dang it, I nearly gave up on the book in the first 50 pages, because there were too many new words, too many new people, every chapter began in a new location with new characters - and while it's well executed, it seems like we're picking up part way through the story.  I wouldn't mind it so much if it was only one or two characters, but that many?

As for the ending (the last 50 or so pages), it has the exact opposite problem.  I'm not going to give it away, but, in terms of style, I really had the sense that the last forty pages were rushed, as if Bacigalupi suddenly looked at his watch and said "Oh crap, look at the time!  I'm sorry to have kept you.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Right, that happened, and then some more stuff happened (and that was very sad), and then it ends."  And that's a crying shame, because I was willing to commit the time to reading the "extended version", if he'd written one.  It's like his pen was running out of ink, so he sacrificed quality for getting-it-done.  Or worse:  like he'd grown tired of writing and researching the danged thing and just wanted it done.

As for the middle 250+ pages, , I couldn't put it down.  The middle makes the book worthwhile.

What I really found refreshing about the book is that it's not set in a place I'm familiar with.  Quite frankly, I'm sick to death of futuristic stories set in the U.S., to the point where I probably won't read it.  Children of Men at least is set in the UK, but even then, it's familiar territory.  (For the record, I watched most of the movie, haven't read the book yet.)

But The Windup Girl is set in Thailand, a place I know almost nothing about (save from what I learned in The King and I), but which has its own rich history and future-history, and which has its own neighbouring rivals and pressures, its own ecosystem, its own weather patterns, its own personality relative to the countries that surround it, and its own aspirations.

And it's not homogenous either:  there are all manner of cultures - most of the Asian, for which I'm glad - plus a wide range of religions and beliefs.

On top of that, you have people from similar backgrounds who have differing personalities - an absolute must, when you don't want to accuse one ethnic group or another of being corrupt, or greedy, or cowardly, or saintly.  What you get, then, is a kaleidoscope of characters - and a fresh pair of eyes to go with it.

The personalities of each character affect their reactions to evolving situations; their actions affect other characters, who act and react according to their personalities and to the changing situations; and the situations in turn influence their personalities.  Oh, and just because he does it right, Bacigalupi also gives characters back stories that show how many of these concurrent personalities have evolved over time, and why.  Brilliant.


The characters themselves are not static, either.  They may or may not learn from their experiences; they may or may not be redeemable; they may be 60% good and 40% rotten, or 40% rotten, 50% selfish, and 10% saintly - you never know, and you won't know as you turn from one page to the next.  It's like...you know...real people.

Character driven?  Plot-driven?  Understatement.  The Windup Girl is the ideal blend of plot and character, where the two are simply inseparable.  Character drives plot, plot causes characters to react.  Very elegant.

Cover of German translation

And like I said in the beginning, what he's writing about - bio-terrorism, genetic engineering, corporate greed versus ecological sustainability - it's already happening now.  Read up on companies like Monsanto, who, on the surface, are trying to overcome real-world challenges, like drought, poor soil conditions, and disease.  Then step back and realize that the genetically engineered (read "patented") seeds are actually sterile, meaning you are utterly reliant on the company to buy fresh seed, season after season.  More importantly, cut away the debate about genetically modified foods and give a harsh, critical look at the practices of the companies that sell them.  (I highly recommend reading this article, even if you don't read The Windup Girl.)

In the olden days, you'd plant a field of wheat; some of the wheat you grind up and make into bread and pastries and spaghetti; some of the wheat you keep, put back in the field, and lo and behold, you have next season's field of wheat.  The ultimate in renewable resources.  The harvest begets itself. 

Now, with genetic engineering - more specifically, with unethical genetic engineering practices - the corporation begets the harvest.  Once you're a farmer and you have nothing but a field of sterile grain, you have no choice but to sell what you've reaped, then take the money back to the corporation to buy next season's workload.  You no longer work as a farmer; you work as an employee of the unethical corporation.

Worse even:  if you're a salaried employee and if your computer breaks, the corporation goes out and buys you a new one.  But if you're "self-employed," if your harvest is lost to a fire, if you've lost a year's worth of labour and you have no money to show for it, you can no longer go out and simply plant another field full of grain.  You have to go back to buy more seed, because the stuff you bought the first time was sterile.  No harvest, no money; no money, no seed, no harvest.  You are SOL, through and through...unless you've invested in insurance, which feeds off your bad luck, etc. etc. etc.

And of course, if the company finds out you've been saving and reusing seeds from one season to the next, you could get sued; or better yet, if the corporation finds its patented products in your fields, even if it was transplanted by natural means (seeds blown across fences, deposited in bird dung), you could be in a world of hurt for unauthorized use of patented products).  It sounds ridiculous, and it's happening.

In a sense, in places where the genetic is king, farmers have become serfs once more, slaves to both government taxes and to the thuggish corporation.

In Bacigalupi's story, he takes it a step further:  these corporations have played god - but they're playing with their own food supply.  I think what he captures most brilliantly is the raw, blind greed of some zealous corporate executives, who are perfectly willing to trade their own sustenance for the prospect of total market domination, even at the risk of massive loss of life.

Finally, what I really found fascinating about this story was the moment when I let go of guessing and let Bacigalupi tell the story.  Usually when I read, I'm trying to anticipate what's going to happen next, sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm close.  But in the reading of this story, I realized I no longer wanted to guess.  I just wanted to know what happened next.

Beautiful DeviantArt by SharksDen

The plot is well engineered and dynamic.  Character A plots X, but independently, Character B plots Y - which will undo X.  Then along comes Character C, who for perfectly rational reasons does Z, which forces Character A to do something spontaneous, which in turn forces the hand of Character B - around and around and around it goes - not confusing, not jarring, just...very, very well done.

Honestly, if he had balanced out the overly busy beginning with the too-minimalist ending, I would have loved this book inside and out.

But who am I to criticize the guy who won pretty much everything you can win in speculative fiction?  He won those awards for very good reasons:  ex-patriotism, research, realism, probability, and an excellent eye on human nature in the 21st century.

--  With thanks to Michael Lorenson for loaning me the book.

-- DeviantArt by SharksDen:  More info here.