Update

LIGHTSPEED took my story "Eliot Wrote" within five hours of my (finally) uploading it. Again, thank you all for your offers of help with my computer problems. For those who wanted to know how I found an alternate ending that worked, the process had three steps:

1) Go back to the last place you're excited about the story (in this case, 2/3 of the way through) and toss out everything after that.

2) Think of a different, but still logical, way for a secondary character to act. Secondary characters are, by definition, not as completely delineated as the point-of-view character and so the author has some wiggle room as to how they might behave. Change something major here.

3) Return to your protagonist -- how does he react to this change of behavior in someone important to him? If nothing sparks for you, try different behavior from the secondary character, or perhaps a different character.

This can sometimes veer the story in a more promising direction, and in this case, it did.

Another note on digital publishing: Sheila Williams has asked me to mention that ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION has just published its first digital anthology, ENTER A FUTURE: FANTASTIC TALES FROM ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION. Sheila is the editor and the anthology is for sale exclusively at Amazon.com. It includes my story "Safeguard," as well as fiction by Connie Willis, Robert Silverberg, Ted Kosmatka, and others.

The Digital Age of Publishing marches on.

Word and Words

Thanks to -- or perhaps despite -- all the suggestions I received for finishing my story that wasn't working right at the end, I did finish it. I then tried to submit it to Lightspeed, which led to a whole new host of problems.

Why can't Microsoft ever leave well enough alone?

I have, against my will, the latest version of Word, because a virus ate my previous version. The new version saves all its documents as ".docx" files, despite the fact that ".doc" files are now the industry standard all over the world. Lightspeed would not take a .docx file into the bowels of its automatic electronic submission system. Forty-five minutes of wading hopelessly through Microsoft's "Help" sections failed to help me with this. So I interrupted my son's workday to ask what to do. After giving me the lecture on how he told me I wasn't going to like the new Word, he gave me three options:

1) Build a time machine out of a DeLorean and go back to before my Toshiba got a virus.

2) Get the recipient to alter its compatibility protocols.

3) Convert the story to an earlier version of Word, thereby wiping out all the fancy things I paid money for in the new version.

Naturally, I took Door Number 3, following Kevin's instructions, and Lightspeed absorbed the story. I hope.

So I have words for Microsoft: $*(#%8&@$*%

Lake Superior State University in Michigan also has words. Every year on New Year's Day they issue a list of words that have, in the previous year, been so misused or overused that everyone is sick of them. On the current list includes:

"friend" used as verb
teachable moment
tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhead, twittersphere
toxic assets
"In these economic times"
sexting
"It's all good"
bromance

This leaves some people I know with nothing to communicate. Too bad they don't work for Microsoft.

Passion

A few blogs ago I wrote about my writing dry spell. Since then I started, persevered, and finished a story, but the story isn't working. Or, rather, two-thirds of it is working -- characters, voice, incidents -- but the ending is wrong. And I have no idea what the right ending might be.

This is partly a consequence of the way I work, which is the only way I can work. I never know the ending when I begin, being incapable of thinking something through until I'm actually writing it through. Usually, however, the ending occurs to me as I write, and I know it's the right ending because I'm excited about it. Passion is the literary indicator that I'm on the right track. This time, it's just not there.

Passion can take many forms. Yesterday's newspaper included a story about a woman who constructed a fourteen-feet long by four-feet high replica of da Vinci's "The Last Supper" completely out of dryer lint. She bought and repeatedly washed towels of various colors to collect the lint in the shades she needed. The project to0k 800 hours of laundry and 200 hours of gluing on laundry lint. That is passion. (It could also be several other things, but let's focus on the passion.)

My story needs a new last third. I will set it aside and hope something comes to me, but I'm not sanguine because in my experience, that doesn't happen too often. Either the right end occurs to me as I'm doing the first draft, or I never get it. Sigh. And I really liked my character, young Eliot Tremling.

If I could, I'd make Eliot a collector of dryer lint. But that isn't going to work, either. Too bad.

Cranky at the Movies

I like country music. The reasons for this are (1) I do not have a sophisticated musical ear, and (2) the songs tell little stories. So I was very disappointed in Gwyneth Paltrow's new movie, COUNTRY STRONG. I have no idea whether or not Paltrow sang well (she sounded fine to me, which means nothing), and Tim McGraw never sings at all, but the main problem is that the story sucks.

Nothing adds up. It's unclear why Paltrow's character, country superstar Kelly Canter, is having mental difficulties. She's an alcoholic, but unlike last year's CRAZY HEART, this is not a convincing movie about alcoholism. She is supposed to be mentally unstable, but unlike BLACK SWAN, we never get into her delusions or know why she is having them or what they are. The characters form alliances, turn away from each other, punch each other, turn to each other for help, all without discernible reasons other than the need for a dramatic scene. For most of the movie, it's not even clear who is or is not sleeping with whom.

Worst of all, though, is the movie's message, which the characters repeat solemnly to each other and which the ending bears out: "You can't have both fame and love." Why not? Not even the movie shows why, let alone real life. But when the only answer to being famous [SPOILER ALERT!] is to kill yourself, it's less a sign of profound depth than of film makers desperate for an ending.

Not recommended -- although I did enjoy the music.

A Dry Spell

Some writers have "a million ideas" and "merely lack time to develop them." I am not one of those writers. Yes, ideas drift randomly across my brain every time I read a newspaper or SCIENCE NEWS or even PEOPLE (in the dentist's office), but they are not really strong enough to write about. More like, "Hmmm, how would that be if...no, that's dumb." Or trite. Or something I'm not really interested in. So when I do get an idea that excites me, it's an event and I write the story or novel.

Right now I have no such idea.

The fall-back activity, which I'm currently engaged in, is called "noodling around." It consists half of sitting on the sofa with a clipboard on my knees, pen in hand, and starting snippets of possible stories -- a character sketch, a dialogue exchange, one of those germs that rubbed off from SCIENCE NEWS. The hope is that something will catch fire. So far, nothing has. The other half of noodling around consists of fill-in distractions: moving furniture around. Cleaning under the sofa. Taking the dog for very long walks. Alphabetizing spice jars.

I hate this period. And, of course, the worse thing about it is always the fear: What if NO idea ever presents itself to me again? The fact that that hasn't happened before is no consolation. What if it does this time?

Then what?

Planes and Ian McEwan

On my way back from Buffalo, I saw a huge sign painted on the wall of an airport: KEEP YOUR SMILE IN ITS LOCKED AND UPRIGHT POSITION!

Mine was not. My flight from Chicago was canceled due to -- get this -- a lack of pilots. We were all seated on the plane when the flight attendant removed us all, explaining that the pilots could not legally fly because they were one hour over the flight time allowed by the FAA. So United put up an entire Airbus 320-A of people at O'Hare hotels, gave them meal vouchers, and brought them back the next morning to the same plane, which had sat there empty all night. Nobody in scheduling could notice a problem sometime before we were due to take off?

All this put me in a perfect frame of mine to read Ian McEwan's latest novel, SOLAR. Its protagonist, Michael Beard, is one of the most unlikable viewpoint characters in fiction: lying, cheating, gluttonous, and not in the jolly way of a Falstaff. Beard, a physicist and Nobel Laureate, steals the work of a post-doc, sees that an innocent man goes to jail for the post-doc's accidental death, lies to his business partners, cheats on five wives and innumerable mistresses, neglects his daughter, and finally betrays the cause for which he is ostensibly working (climate control).

The novel is extremely well written (this is the brilliant author of ATONEMENT and SATURDAY, after all) and possibly meant as black comedy. In addition, I usually don't mind unsympathetic protags if they are interesting. But whether or not it was my bad plane karma, I didn't like this book. And [SPOILER ALERT] Beard doesn't even get a comeuppance from any of his moral transgressions; at the end of the book he dies of a heart attack just before the cops and lawyers close in.

McEwan's smile is not in locked and upright position. That's usually a good thing. But this time out, neither was mine.

New Year Round Up

Happy New Year! This blog is a follow-up to previous blog entries in which some of you might (or might not) have had an interest. First, Phoenix Pix, a new-ish small press that occasionally gives away copies of its publications as a promotion, is now giving away free copies of my novella ACT ONE as a download, during the month of January. You can order one at www.PPickings.com There are instructions and download link The Coupon Code for January is 9992365.

Walter Jon Williams and I now have eight accepted participants for Taos Toolbox, the two-week intensive workshop for fantasy and science fiction that we are teaching at Taos, NM in July. Judging from the quality of the submission manuscripts., this is going to be a very promising group of writers indeed. If you're interested, go to taostoolbox.com for more information.

My story for the Poul Anderson tribute volume was accepted by editors Gardner Dozois and Greg Bear. I don't know when the volume will be out.

And on a personal note (as if one's writing wasn't personal!), Jack Skillingstead and I are engaged and will be married in February in Las Vegas. NOT, however, by an Elvis impersonator!