My equipment

Small and light...

Race car enthusiasts talk about them.  So do skiers, pool players, musicians and craftsmen (and women).  So why can’t a writer talk about his tools?

A few posts ago I mentioned that I wrote most of draft I in notebooks, starting in the Italian Mediterranean (how romantic!) last year.  I’d been wanting a laptop but battery life (or lack of it) was a serious issue that stopped me from plunking down the scratch.  I have a full-sized desktop, an iMac, but writing at home in my little study is something I oftentimes can’t bring myself to do.  It’s too quiet, too still.  You’d think at first this would be the ideal environment for writing.  So would I.  But too much stillness can be depressing.  I need some chaos to work.  Coffee shops are perfect.

So I set out in search of a laptop.  I’ve noticed the struggle for electricity in coffee shops, as fifteen people vie for the same four outlets.  So I decided that long battery life is the key.  That disqualified a lot of models.  In order to save on battery life, I decided early on that I did not need a machine that did a lot of things (CD and DVD drives, high-end graphics card, yada-yada) but rather one that did the things I did most of the time, very well.  I also wanted a full-sized keyboard, or as close to it as I could get.  Many of the ultra-portables, the so-called “netbooks,” have keyboards that may be okay for short bouts of typing and texting, but aren’t serious contenders if you’re going to write all day.

...But a big keyboard for my thick fingers

I am very picky about keyboards.  The backspace and shift keys must be full-sized.  The keys must be full sized squares.  Some keys are smaller and thus closer together and that won’t do with my pudgy little fingers.  Gone are the days (thank heavens) when keyboards went clack-clack-clack (think early IBM and Wang machines), but when they were around they also would not do.

I rejected a lot of models, and thought maybe I’d never find something that worked for me.  Many even low-end computers came with Windows Vista pre-installed.  No thanks.  A 2MB machine with Vista, that’s a doorstop.  (And Windows 7 hadn’t yet come out, but even that is overkill for my needs.)  The machines that best seemed suited to my needs came with slimmed-down versions of Windows XP, my favorite MS OS by far.  Since Microsoft was then discontinuing support of their most popular operating system ever, that means not many computers, even netbooks, were still sporting it.

But at least one was.  I finally settled on this:  It’s from a company not well-known in the U.S., Asus, but that may soon change, as I’m seeing a lot of these models in coffee shops and other places that boast wifi.  It’s not blindingly-fast, but fast enough for most of my needs.  The trackpad works reasonably well, though it can get slick from human perspiration sometimes.  (The whole machine is in a really shiny buffed hard plastic that looks very beautiful in the showroom but becomes a smudge magnet.  How smart a design decision this was will be debated by different people with different tolerances to fingerprints.)  The buttons for mouse-clicking are the “rocker” type rather than two discreet buttons, and for some reason I like this one-piece design better, though I couldn’t tell you why.  The display is very bright and battery life is remarkable–a full ten hours.  If your main requirements are a light (3 lbs), portable machine for writing, email and web access, that lasts the whole day without a recharge, this is your box.

It comes with enough freebie software that I haven’t needed to buy anything extra.  No MS Word, but it has MS Works, a sort of dumbed-down MS Word that’s good enough to write a complete novel on.  I downloaded Safari for PC, Google Chrome and Firefox as my browsers.  I could even install one of several other operating systems if I want, but so far I haven’t bothered.  It runs cool, looks cool and is well-built.  It sports 170 GB of storage.

But most of all, I really enjoy sitting in that coffee shop unconcerned, while others scramble about looking for the few power outlets available.  Being above the tangle of cords is most enjoyable.  i just have to be sure I don’t trip over other people’s crisscrossing wires as I walk about.

Just like a favorite pen and a favorite notebook, a favorite laptop is essential for a writer to be comfortable.

Did I make it???

Okay, I’m sure you’re all waiting with baited breath to find out if I made my self-imposed deadline of finishing draft 2 of Entertaining Welsey Shaw by today, January 18th!  Did I do it?!

No.

This is why I stay away from New Year’s resolutions.  I don’t know anyone who’s successfully quit smoking this way either.

But it wasn’t from lack of trying.  I wrote every spare chance I got, and that’s a lot.  But I got sidetracked twice by an illness (the same one!), and there were some day where I put words down, but they weren’t the right words, and the following day was spent retreading ground.  I have made lots of progress and am pretty close, but I won’t be done by midnight, that’s for dang sure.  I have about five thousand more words to go.

So I’d better get back to work.

Decisions…

"Everyone loves a parade!"

While writing and simultaneously listening to a new recording of the Mahler 3rd Symphony, I began thinking about the strange decisions we are called upon to make continuously when we are working on any artistic attempt.  Sometimes strange decisions.  Always tough decisions.

Mahler’s 3rd, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it (which is probably most of you), is two hours of savage symphony sounds, primal goop (as opposed to other GOOP).  Well, much of it, anyway.  But in the middle of the first movement, which begins with the creation of the cosmos from dissonant and indistinct rumblings, we suddenly switch to…a jaunty parade melody.

I’ve been listening to this symphony for years.  But yesterday I really started thinking about what I was hearing, as I was trying to decide on different directions to take in my novel, and I thought, “What on earth inspired him to segue into parade music?!  And how did he know it would be successful?

How did he know he wouldn’t be laughed out of the concert hall and be called a fool?  Of course, you could argue the same thing with Fellini, who loves to put circus parades in his movies.  But with the surreal Fellini, the absurdity seems to fit.  Mahler’s 3rd is in the midst of somber gurglings of the primal earth when suddenly a jaunty little march breaks out.  And don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing deliberately fey about this music.  No irony or post-irony or post-post-irony.  Mahler is taking it all with upmost seriousness and gravity, and wants you to, too.

I realized for the first time yesterday what balls ol’ Gus had to do this.  (I wonder if Alma had an opinion.)  I remember when I took driving lessons to get my license many years ago.  The instructor said that as a driver you have to make decisions every few seconds.  It’s that way with creative endeavors too.  (Many would argue that driving these days is a creative endeavor in itself, especially finding parking.) When you’re writing or composing or creating in anyway, you make a decision about some aspect of your creation every few minutes.  ”Do I go this way or that way?  Does this end here or there?  F Minor or B-flat Major?”  These decision can make or break a work—in several ways.  First of all, if you make a choice and you quickly perceive it as the wrong choice (“I knew I shouldn’t have killed off the detective’s girlfriend here”) you lose days of writing.  You have to go back and correct.  I have many crossed out pages in my notebook.

But the bigger issue is if you take a wrong turn and do not become aware of it.  Your work ends up very different than how you planned, of course, but that’s not always a bad thing.  However, when it is, well, that can be anxiety-inducing.

I kept fixating on the question of how Mahler knew turning the bubbling creation of everything into a gay little parade wasn’t the dumbest idea ever after moving Jay to prime time.  Where did he get the self-assurance to know his decision was right?

Can one ever have that self-assurance, really?

People laugh at all the stupid television program ideas, but consider a nun who flies.  A romance between a jeanie and an astronaut.  A crime fighter with a talking car.  A bunch of people stranded on the weirdest tropical island in the history of the world. They were all smash hits.

Dancing cops.  A boy whose next door family is literally a living, breathing TV sitcom.  Moving Jay to 10:00pm.  All flops.  Not just flops.  Stupid ideas.

Who could know?

I think of that that every time I am faced with a new direction my plot could take, no matter how small. Will I lose everyone?  Will they hate me now?  I guess I’ll find out the hard way. Like everyone else.

Never again

I tried an experiment when writing this novel.  Now I know it was a bad idea—at least for me.

I wrote about two-thirds of it longhand in notebooks.  At the time I didn’t have a laptop, just a desk computer.  And I hate being chained to a desk when I write.  So I decided to write in small (paper) notebooks, in what was then my favorite coffee shop.  (It’s my favorite no more; see what happens when you move all the furniture to stupid positions?)

Actually the notebook switch happened earlier, but it was supposed to be temporary.  Last year I was leaving for a month-long trip to Europe.  Not wanting to not be writing that long, I impulsively bought a small notebook at the airport just before boarding the plane.  I thought, Yeah, I’m really going to be in the Italian Mediterranean or Vienna writing.  Uh-huh.

What a mess...

But I did.  I filled the book, both sides of the page, tiny print.  And when I got home, I decided I liked the freedom of just toting a lightweight book wherever I went.  So I bought some more notebooks and finished the rest of it that way.

Even as I was doing it, I realized the downside: eventually this is going to have to be in manuscript format, so I’m going to have to reread these sloppy books and transcribe it into a computer file.  And my handwriting is such that I sometimes can’t read what I wrote the day before.  Even when I can, it’s an ordeal sometimes.  Much of the time.  Okay, most of the time.

But I continued writing in books because I enjoyed the freedom.  I eventually made a pile of five of them.  The first third of the novel stayed on the computer in the form of a basic Word file.

Revising said file for draft two was relatively easy.  When I got to the books, however, my pace slowed.  I found I was just blowing through a lot of it, doing quick rereads, highlighting any stuff I really loved, and just rewriting the rest from scratch.  I wouldn’t be doing that if I were reworking a word processing file, but transcribing from the notebooks took forever and frankly, it was both easier and more fun to just rewrite the general gist.

From now on I stick with using the word processor.  Especially since I have this cute little netbook now—weighs three pounds, has a ten hour battery!  (And yes, I’ve tested it.) Meanwhile, the notebooks sit piled on my desk, with key points I don’t want to lose highlighted in yellow marker.  Sometimes it takes so long to decipher my handwriting that I lose the actual flow of the ideas.  It’s hard to skim and to search for things on the fly.  I feared this might happen.

Sitting there with a few modest notebooks writing a novel that probably won’t break 100,000 words, I marvel at how Tolstoy, Melville, Dickens and those chaps wrote the tomes they did by hand.  It’s hard keeping track of changes: one alteration can throw a whole chapter out of whack.

So the notebooks were an interesting experiment, but I think I’m going back to all-word processing for my next creation.

My New Year’s resolution

Okay, so I’m a little late with this one.  But I do have a New Year’s resolution, and it’s pretty serious.  The nice thing is I’ll know in just two weeks if I’ve achieved it, and then I can go about the rest of the year the ambitionless little sloth I normally am.

My resolution is simply to finish the second draft of Entertainingly Welsey Shaw by January 18th.  I have a specific reason for setting that date, but that’s not important.  What’s important is that, at better than 80% of the way through the second draft and with a good knowledge of where it has to go (even with a new ending), I’m fairly sure I can accomplish this goal.  Fairly sure.  But then again, I never thought it would take this long to write the thing to start with.

I need to finish this draft soon.  As much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, I’m getting tired of the thing.  I want to go on to other projects.  (I don’t anticipate draft three will be as much work; for the reason why, see my next post when I post it.)  So I’m going to try my darndest to make this deadline.  And that’s my New Year’s resolution.  What’s yours?

“Pretension”

Some pretension from the author's collection

It’s a word that can stop any concept, or insight, or book, in its tracks: “That’s pretentious.”  The declaration is usually accompanied by a disdainful turning of the head or waving of the hand.  Pretentious.  It’s pretentious—and by extension, so are you.

In America, it can and is often be applied to anyone who disdains American Idol and Michael Bay.

I was talking to someone I’d consider pretty educated—upwardly mobile, uses a salad fork, all that—about authors, and I happened to mention my love for Milan Kundera.

“He’s pretentious,” she said, and the discussion ground to a halt.

To another person later that same day I mentioned liking the movie The Hours.  (I admit I’ve not yet read the book.)

“So pretentious,” she said.  ”It didn’t want to admit it wasn’t about anything.”  Plus, she added, any movie that starts with someone filling her pockets with stones and drowning herself in a river is, “just too much.  Come on, give me a break.”  Never mind that it actually happened; I felt like asking her how many Pulitzer Prizes she’d ever won.

Let’s define our terms here.  Pretension is about, well, pretense, pretending to like something we don’t to create some sort of affectation.

So if I pretended I didn’t like Kundera or Fassbinder, and instead raved about the Twilight books and Michael Bay, I’d actually be pretending something I don’t feel in order to reach consensus with my peers.  But I don’t like Twilight and I don’t get my kicks out of watching the earth blow up.  Or seeing Owen and Luke Wilson embarrass themselves.  So acting as though I did would in fact be pretending, or displaying pretense…or pretentious.

In other words, there are people who really like the music of György Ligeti.  And I am most definitely one of them. On the other hand, I once went to a Xanakis concert and couldn’t stop giggling. Still, I’m not ready to conclude the music is pretentious. I doubt I understood it even a little.

Not that there isn’t a lot of pretension out there.  Sure there is.  But it seems we call pretension based on external and unconnected elements such as socio-economic status (perceived or otherwise).  Rock music is about as pretentious as you can get.  Yet would you lob that grenade at a devotee of Pink Floyd or Dead Can Dance or Bon Jovi?

Oddly, sometimes pop culture very suddenly changes what it views as pretentious.  Prior to the mid-80s, you’d be considered pretentious, at least in America, if you thought listening to Mozart meant you were smart.  But after the popular motion picture success that was Amadeus, Mozart was cool.  Even with rock stars.  Even with young people.  And so when “researchers” (and boy the word deserves quotes around it) decided that listening to the kid from Salzburg made you smarter, no one laughed, no one thought it pretentious (as well as outright ridiculous) and for a while some Mozart CDs were selling briskly on the pop charts.  Mozart was “in.”  He wasn’t the stuff of limousine stuffy folk anymore.  The younger set claimed him as one of their own, sort of an 18th century Mick Jagger, complete with swagger and wild hair.

And sometimes things really are, of course, pretentious.  Just listen to the way most athletes talk about themselves when being interviewed after a game.  Empty bullshit and flying cliches.  Yet when was the last time you heard the word “pretentious” describing a sports figure?

I was thinking about pretension the other day; I think about it a lot, and worry whether I’m guilty of it in my novel.  Or more accurately, I wonder if I would recognize it, and recognize the difference between it and writing to and at a high level, or as high as I am capable.  (I’ll let others judge how high it actually is. Lord knows rereading the past day’s output makes me wince oftentimes.  In the meantime, I think I’ll just have to conclude that pretension is a lot like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s classification of pornography: I don’t know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.)

I don’t want to wear pretension on my sleeve, but I also don’t want to turn out something stupid.  And so that got me thinking: when is pretension really necessary?  And I’ve concluded it is.  Yes, Virgina, there is a place for pretension.  To some extent.  The real world is noise, and dirty, and confusing.  Things happen on top of other things.  Life is rarely clean-cut, with every element in the universe pointing in the direction of the thought or viewpoint you want to highlight in your story. So you, the author, have to make everything point the way you want, have to exaggerate, have to be unnatural in your work.  Even “naturalistic” artists, or those who have a reputation for being naturalistic (Robert Altman), really aren’t, when you look closely at their work.  (For as much as I love MASH, do I really believe that’s how army surgeons acted in 1950s Korea?  Watch some documentaries on the real Korean war to see that it clearly isn’t.)  You have to twist things and make them “more real than real,” and studied, “affected,” to get your point across.  After watching the film The Hours, I did walk away feeling it was a bit pretentious–the cross-cutting, the long silences, the Philip Glass music.  But then  asked myself how I could make the same points without using such artifices (or others that would be judged, no doubt, equally “pretentious”).  I couldn’t think of a way.  Sometimes when you’re handling a massive piece of construction, only power tools will do.  Sure, Shakespeare wrote crowd-pleasing comedies in the common tastes of the day.  He also wrote epic tragedies and histories that are very templates of “pretension” today.  Every play can’t be Much Ado About Nothing.

Maybe pretension is just a tool that, sometimes, is necessary.  Sometimes you have to telegraph the thought, “Pay attention; this is something important!”  Too much is no good, but too much red pepper is no good either; however, oh, I do love hot sauce.

(PS: Two additional points: I admit I haven’t gotten around to Herzog yet, but I’m looking forward to it, and Lulu is not only not pretentious, it’s practically porn!)