Why Am I Now Writing Fiction: 4. Surrounded by Einstein and His Friends

One way to describe a character in a story is through setting—showing the reader how your character surrounds himself. Another way is by the company he keeps. Today, I learned that Quantum Books had featured The Aremac Project on their website.


Naturally, I had to look at the page, and was I ever surprised to find myself surrounded by two books about Albert Einstein. I shouldn't have been surprised, because I'm surrounded every day by the Man of the Century. Any time I am temporarily paused in my writing, I can look up and see no less than four pictures of Einstein, plus one action figure. From this information, you, the reader, may surmise that Albert's writings have been a great influence on my life and writing. In this essay, I want to make some of those influences more explicit in terms of quotes by Einstein and some of his friends.

Social Change and Technology

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." - Albert Einstein
Not just the atom, but all technology, could lead us to unparalleled catastrophe, including the computer technologies to which I have contributed. I feel a deep obligation to write books that may help change our thinking about how we respond to technology.

What We Owe Each Other

"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving." - Albert Einstein
I feel this same sense. Before each meal, I say a silent grace, thanking all those people who have worked together to bring this food to my plate. And before each book, I think deeply about all the people who might read it, and how it might influence their lives, written this way or that.


Style

"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor." - Albert Einstein

I try to write truth, so I try to write simply. I will never win any prizes for eloquent prose, but perhaps I will be understood. Perhaps, if I write untruth, people will more easily see through my words.


Why Science Fiction?

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."- Albert Einstein

I can think of nothing more depressing than the thought that our world is limited to what happens to exist today. At many miserable moments in my life, I've been kept going by the thought: "It doesn't have to be this way." I could never allow myself to be constrained to writing about the way things are. (In no way does this denigrate the great book, The Way Things Are, by Nobel Prize Winner, Percy Williams Bridgman. This is one of the ten books that has most influenced my life.)


Humanity and Technology

"Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations." - Albert Einstein

My goal in fiction is not to write about technology, but about human responses to technology. I write about how we make machines and how machines, in turn, make us—but primarily how we can and do make ourselves. You won't find many equations or diagrams or scientific explanations in my fiction, but any that you do find will first serve the goal of making us more fully human.

Charlie Chaplin

One of the photos facing me as I write is Albert Einstein with Charlie Chaplin, each dressed in a tuxedo.

Humor

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” - Charlie Chaplin

Nobody who has seen a Chaplin film will be surprised by this quote. He was a man who could leaven the most serious subjects with laughter: Greed (The Gold Rush); Tyrannical Power (The Great Dictator); Dehumanizing Technology (Modern Times). I will never be one-millionth the comedian he was, but I am committed to leaven my serious fiction with as much humor as I can sneak in.


Character Creation

“I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.” - Charlie Chaplin

This is exactly the way I create my characters, in a virtual sense. I dress them with the character, brilliance, and personality of the people I have known, then I let them walk on the stage—the pages of my manuscript—and become fully born. Perhaps this is why my villains are, as one critic said, "a bit wooden at times." I simply haven't known many villains in my life, just people trying to do the best they can with what they have.

Rabindranath Tagore

Another photo facing me as I write is Einstein with Rabindranath Tagore, the poet from India.

The Limits of Logic

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it." - Rabindranath Tagore

I write about the people I know best, the scientists and engineers whose primary tool is the sharpness of their minds. To do that truthfully, I must also write about their deviations from logic that both complicate and enhance their lives.

Systems Thinking

"By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower." - Rabindranath Tagore

A system is more than the sum of its parts. I write about how properties and behaviors not seen in parts of a system emerge surprisingly from their combination.


Facing Problems

"Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on." - Rabindranath Tagore

I am not awfully interested in writing about victims. I want to create characters who face their problems—though often wary and fearful—and deal with them using the powers of their minds. I want characters who know, or discover, as Tagore also said, "You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. "


Unconventional Solutions

"The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous." -Rabindranath Tagore

My characters not only cope with the problems that face them, but they cope with them creatively. Theirs are not the tried-and-true solutions that may or may not work for others. Instead, each solution is like an engineering problem, with opportunities to choose among, and tradeoffs that constrain the choices.

The Hopi

The largest of my Einstein pictures has him standing in front of the Fred Harvey Hopi House, at the Grand Canyon, Arizona, with his wife and a half a dozen Hopi Indians. Incongruently, but humorously, he is wearing a Plains Indian headdress and holding a "peace pipe," but the message is clear enough. Einstein once said about racial bigotry, "What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias."


I hope I am of sufficiently good will to combat each of these prejudices in my novels, particularly by showing what can be done if we shed them, but also by showing the sad consequences if we don't.


Natural Law

"The supreme law of the land is the Great Spirit's law, not man's law."  - Hopi saying

My novels are all fantasy, but not in the "fantasy" genre. I want to confine myself to natural laws that are at least plausible in terms of what we know. No gods emerging from machines, no ghosts, no vampires or werewolves, but, from time to time, aliens. No magic, except in Arthur Clarke's sense that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


Teamwork

"One finger can't lift a pebble. " - Hopi saying

I am particularly interested in writing about teams, for that is what I know from half a century of working with teams of brilliant people all over the world. Like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, those teams, when good, are very, very good. And, when bad, are horrid. I hope to help them by showing what it takes to be very, very good.


Story Telling

But, in the end, why tell stories at all? I believe the Hopi deserve the last word:

"The one who tells the stories rules the world."

Why I am Now Writing Fiction - 3

On Monday, at long last, I received my author's copies of my new novel, The Aremac Project.

On Monday, I also received news that a disturbed student at Virginia Tech University had shot and killed more than 30 fellow students.

I immediately felt a visceral connection between those two events, a connection I need to write about, if only to help me cope. Perhaps my thoughts and feelings will prove helpful to other writers.

The first connection is obvious. The Aremac Project is about a terrorist plot, killing people and destroying property seemingly at random around the city of Chicago. But that's not all it's about. It's not even the main theme—which is technology's role in crime, both its propagation and prevention.

Fiction Can Show Us The Way, or Ways

I've been a science fiction fan for as long as I could read. I always believed that a better world was possible—better than a world where bright young children were abused by adults. One of my favorite books was Dr. Seuss's, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, where a young boy conjures up imaginings far more wonderful than the simple horse and wagon he saw on Mulberry Street. That boy was me. Those imaginings—of a wonderfully better world—were mine. And, sadly, the adult who squelched those imaginings was mine, too.

A second favorite book of mine (one whose title I cannot remember—and for which would give a reward to some reader who can) told the story of an awful, messy town where one day, a pied-piper-like character arrives and initiates a clean-up campaign. This Mr. Clean, with a few tiny interventions, causes a revolutionary change in the people of the town. When he leaves, they have cleaned up everything and created, yes, a wonderfully better town.

Half a century ago, when I began writing about technology, I was convinced that technology carried the promise of a utopian future. I was further convinced that the only reason that wasn't happening was inferior technology, so I set about becoming a Mr. Clean who wrote about how to do technology (software, in my case) correctly.

Any Technology Can Be Misused

Alas, after many successful years helping make better technology, I began to realize that any technology could be misused—and that better technology in the wrong hands could lead to better mass murder. And most fiction today treats mass murder as an exciting plot element, something for the authorities or amateurs to solve—but not to prevent except by mass murder of some other parties.

I believe that the role of science fiction or techno-fiction is to offer possibilities of other ways of being—other kinds of technology, yes, but more in the way of how we can invent and use technology to help us build a better society—not just hardware and software, but "social technology" that engineers new ways for people to interact.

One problem that social technology will have to address is learning how to prevent atrocities without locking down everyone until the entire country becomes a vast prison (though prisons have their own atrocities). And how to provide the meta-technology to minimize misuse. The protagonists of The Aremac Project are trying to do just that, but are learning how difficult a job it is.

Things Don't Have to Be This Way

I will to continue to explore such possibilities in further novels. I believe I will have to make them interesting and exciting novels in their own right so that people will come away thinking, as I did years ago, "Things don't have to be this way. We can think our way to a better society."

Preaching that message doesn't seem to work. That's the next reason I've decided to write fiction.

Miscellaneous Useful Writer Links

It's a spring-like 65 degrees today, so I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning. I actually removed ten books from my overcrowded bookcases, then the pain grew too great so I switched to cleaning up a few links in my link pile and passing them onto my readers.

Dean Wesley Smith

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/mt/

Dean is one of my fiction mentors. He has a forum section there where he answers questions about writing. He says he gets sort of blunt at times, and that's one of the reasons this site is always worth visiting.

There are a lot of posts that have discussions about different aspects of writing and selling and agents and just about everything anyone can think of to ask. No need to sign up. You can read it without doing that.

Chris York

Chris and her husband, J. Steven York, are two of my writing buddies up in Oregon. Their blog is posted irregularly, but always provocatively. Chris's latest post is on how writer's ought to behave at conventions—an essential read. http://cfyork.blogspot.com/

The London Times on Bestsellers and how they're promoted

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1056-2202068,00.html

Mistakes Writers Make

http://www.vickihinze.net/
Author Vicki Hinze's blog has a whole series of posts about mistakes writers make. Maybe you never believed there were so many.

Professor Paul Brians' (Washington State University) has a most useful online book, Common Errors in English <http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors> Using the reference, you'll never get wrack and rack confused, or prostate and prostrate, or literally hundreds of other common confusions.

How to respond to a publisher's offer (lucky you)

Agent Kristin Nelson is starting a series in her blog about how an unagented writer should respond to an offer from a publisher. Great stuff here! It's called Agenting 101. Here's the first post:http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2006/06/agenting-101-part-one.html

Are these helpful?

Add a comment to help others evaluate these sites. Especially add comments about other useful writer links.

Tools for Keeping and Organizing Fieldstones

A Compliment

A reader writes: "I recently picked up your book on the Fieldstone method of writing, and I realized that it exactly fits my style. I've been collecting fieldstones for years but didn't realize it and therefore haven't used them or collected as effectively as I could. Several years ago I even threw away a good-sized notebook full of what I now realize were fieldstones, just because I didn't really know what to do with them or how to use them and they seemed to be just sitting around and taking up space [sigh]. I'm still working my way through your book, taking on the exercises as you describe them and working to internalize the process. Always having pen/paper available is again something that I've sort of done, but now I'm being adamant about that with myself. So, as always, thank you for a thought- and action-provoking read!"

A Complaint

I blushed to read this, but this kind of feedback is the food that energizes a writer. It also sets them up to listen when the reader continues with a complaint:

"One question: you mentioned in Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method that you eventually transcribe your stones to the computer. I've often deliberated about how best to do that, even going so far as to look at unstructured database-type tools (such as Ask Sam, for example). I found the reference to EndNote (that was worth a stickie. I'm one of those 'can't yet highlight books' folks.) , but I didn't see any reference to the tools that you use for actually collecting and searching your stones. Did I miss it, or am I just trying to complicate something simple? I've always wanted a marginally structured way to capture the basic information, then add date, tags (and possibly links to websites, images, etc.) and later organize/search for what I want. I'm now experimenting with a simple web application to allow me to do that. Anyway, I was wondering what tools you used for your basic stonepile."

A Response

After that complimentary feedback, how could I refuse this request?

Well, you didn't miss it. I guess I didn't say exactly what tools I use because

1. there are so many available

2. I have changed over the years, as new and better tools became available

3. I use a combination.

So, because of 3, my first criterion is that the tools don't use esoteric/private formats that can't be ported to new tools that come along.

Right now, my primary tool is a Mac app called Mori (an upgrade from a previous tool called Hog Bay Notebook). Mori doesn't seem to be available on PCs, but its makers recommend a similar PC app called NoteLens. It's like an internal wiki and more, so I can organize in various ways at the same time, with links, outlines, and easy shuffling and sorting.

Mori seems able to store anything, but sometimes I keep large files (drawings, pictures) as regular Mac files (though sometimes these same things go into Mori later). It also offers many customizable views of the data, though I haven't played much with those. It's such a rich system that it would be easy to lose oneself playing around with it, but for me it's just a tool, not a plaything. I do use a different view for novels than I do for non-fiction works. I also use a Mori notebook to store all my contact information, like publishers and agents and plumbers.

I keep a separate Mori notebook for each different project, but, as you know, lots of stones don't immediately suggest what pile (past or future) they might go in. I have one Mori notebook for misc. unclassified stones, but these tend to wind up in ordinary Mac files and folders, which I peruse every so often to see if some of those stones now fit some project. (I have maybe twenty projects going at the same time that are sufficiently well-conceived to have their own Mori notebook.)

Now that storage is so cheap, I save all notebooks (and, of course, back them up regularly in several ways), even for completed or abandoned projects. I'm almost to the point where I'll create a separate Mori meta-notebook cataloging all my Mori notebooks. I could keep them all in one huge Mori notebook, but that somehow doesn't seem prudent or efficient. I may change my mind on that, but as an old-timer, I still fear losing every stone if somehow Mori should choke on too large a database.

In any case, I'm always looking for ways to improve my handling of fieldstones, and I would be pleased to hear readers' comments on what they use and how they use it.

Why I Am Now Writing Fiction - 2

Some of non-fiction books have been directed specifically at people in the information technology (IT) business. Some have not. Generally, the ones that have sold best and longest have been the ones not so specifically directed at IT people (The Psychology of Computer Programming is the exception, but think of An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, The Secrets of Consulting, Are Your Lights On, What Did You Say?, Weinberg on Writing, even Exploring Requirements and Becoming a Technical Leader). In other words, my audience is larger than just IT folk.

I no longer write books for the money, but I do like my books to sell because I like to think people are reading them and learning how to be happy. I was upset when the IT market declined during the dot.com bubble burst, because my books declined along with the rest.

One of my happiness lessons says, "It doesn't pay to remain upset for too long, and I can usually think my way out of useless emotions." Applying this lesson, I figured out that there are still lots of smart, talented people out there, in addition to the many remaining IT folk. They were the people for whom I've always written, and as long as I made my novels general enough and appealing enough, there would never be a shortage or readers.

Well, there's no limit to how appealing a story can be. All I had to do was learn the craft.

Sending Messages

"If you want to send a message, go to western union." Attributed to Ernest Hemmingway, Harry Crews, Sam Goldwyn, David Lynch, "they," "oft-quoted sentiment," "old Hollywood saying," "old saw,"

It was good advice for novelists, script writers, children's writers, and actors, but not for me. My whole purpose in writing is to send messages about how to be happy though smart. I would have to take this advice as a caution, rather than a prohibition. I would have to make my messages interesting, embedding them in compelling incidents that would be worth reading even if you didn't care about the messages they contained.

My novels carry messages that are fiction in one sense, but non-fiction in another, more important sense. Every incident is based on one or many incidents I have observed in the hi-tech world over more than half a century. That's the non-fiction. But the specifics of each incident—the technology, in particular—have been changed. That's the fiction. The people's names and appearance are changed, as are the settings in which they operate (fiction), but their personalities, aspirations, character flaws, and behavior are the same (non-fiction).

Experience is the best teacher, which is why my classes have always been experiential, based on simulations of reality. I want my novels to do the same. My goal is to make reading one of my novels like having the experiences of the characters, compressing, say, six months of experience into six hours of reading—fun and interesting reading.

Problem Solving

What makes fiction fun and interesting to me, and to my audience of smart people? Some audiences are transported by long, detailed descriptions of exotic settings. Others adore romantic encounters, horrible crimes, or supernatural phenomena. My audience, the smart people, might enjoy these features of a novel, but deep down, when they love is problem solving.

In my novels, as in my life, my characters engage in at least four types of problem-solving:

1. Technical problems: making stuff work.

2. Personal problems: coping with their own emotions and mental limitations as they try to make stuff work.

3. Interpersonal problems: dealing with people who may be envious of their success, dedicated to their failure, attempting to inflict help, elevating them to godlike status, stealing their creations, working other agendas, or simply blundering around in a way that impedes their progress.

4. Global problems: coping with the intended and unintended effects of their successes and failures.

Most non-fiction technical books concentrate on (1), and that was true of my earliest books, starting half a century ago. As I tired of books becoming obsolete through the advance of technology, I began to look for the deeper human issues underlying the technical problems. My novels are merely the next step in that process. The first one—The Aremac Project—is due out any day now. I hope you let me know if I'm getting a few messages across to you, but most of all, if you enjoy the experience.

Dealing With Critics of All Ages

Another writer wrote to me recently complaining of the negative messages he was giving himself about his unworthiness. In conclusion, he said, "I'm sure you recognize the inner critic. If I could somehow kill it with a blunt object and spare myself bodily harm, I'd do it in an instant."


Coping With Your Inner Critic

This isn't a helpful way to think about your inner critic. Killing a part of yourself never is.

The critic is something you built up when you were a little kid. It's 4- year-old thinking carried around in a 30-year-old body (or older). Killing 4-year-olds is actually just another 4-year-old way of thinking.

Instead, what you need to do is get your 30-year-old to work talking as adult to child with that 4-year-old. Stay rational, the way a 4-year-old cannot be. You are the adult here. Think about what would you say to a kid who worried about such things as "Am I talking to much? Not enough? Am I making sense?" "Will people think I am stupid?" Then do it.

You can't kill this kid anyway, so you might as well educate him.


Some Outer Critics

Besides, why would you want to listen to a four-year-old critic inside of you when you have so many excellent critics outside of you, critics with a track record. For example:

Some writerisms by C.J. Cherryh

Elmore Leonard's 10 rules

Do you have any other good outer critics to add to my short list?


How to Test Your Outer Critics

Here's an excellent test to perform before listening to any critic, inside or outside:

What have they written that shows they have the credentials to justify the worth of their criticism?

This test excludes most high-school and college teachers of English, most of your friends, lots of editors and agents, and your mother.

It also excludes your four-year-old, who's never written anything.

Any more criteria to add to my critics test?

Why I Am Now Writing Fiction - 1

"Why would someone who has a long, successful non-fiction writing career suddenly shift to writing fiction?

I've been asked that question numerous times in the past couple of years as I've learned the fiction craft and business. Heck, I've asked myself the same question. So, if you're curious, too, stick with me as I work this out on my blog.

Let me start by questioning some of the assumptions in the question. First, let's question the word "suddenly." I wrote my first fiction at least 55 years ago, and up to 2002, I'd written four novels, a dozen or so short stories, and a score of fables. But except for the fables, none of those were published. (I'll tell more about that in a later post.) For now, let's just say that there's more to writing fiction than simply sitting down and cranking out words on the keyboard.

Another assumption is "non-fiction." In addition to the fables, most of my non-fiction books contain quite a number of made-up stories. Some of them are jokes to make a point memorable. Some of them start as true stories, but have details changed to protect my clients and keep me from being sued. Some of them are combinations of two stories, while others are fractional stories, leaving out parts that seem irrelevant to the point I'm making.

The third assumption concerns "success." Although I've been successful financially, that wasn't why I started writing non-fiction.

To continue my previous work by another means.

I remember sitting in the bushes when I was eight years old, trying to reason my way out of my misery. I believed I was "smart," because that's what everyone told me, but it didn't make sense. If I was truly smart, I should be able to figure out how to be happy, not wretched. Apparently, I didn't know how to use "smart" to create "happy."

I vowed, then, to learn how to use my smarts to become happy.

One of the things I learned rather quickly was that the people abusing me weren't very happy either. I decided to surround myself with happy people, but soon learned most smart people were also tortured by their smarts. To reduce the number of potential torturers, I resolved to teach other people what I was learning. That was the mission I carried into freshman English composition, where Bill Gaffney taught me one way to accomplish it.

One way for smart people to be happy is to express themselves, to put out in the world the vast melange of thoughts and feelings whirling in their heads. For me, that wasn't easy to do verbally. My voice was squeaky and my mind always ran ahead of my mouth. As for singing, I was told quite early by the music teacher to move my mouth but never to make a sound in the chorus. I might have been a painter, but my hand and eye didn't seem equal to the task. I dreamed of becoming a dancer or an athlete, but my klutzy body wouldn't cooperate.

That left writing. Writing has brought me a cornucopia of happiness over many years, but in recent years, I've become aware of two reasons not to continue writing non-fiction:

a. Many people I'd like to reach with my happiness lessons don't non-fction.

b. Many of my happiness lessons are too difficult to communicate in non-fiction.

Stories as Experiences

Writing is not my only way to communicate my happiness lessons. For many, many years, Dani and I and our colleagues conducted workshops based on simulations—experiential learning: Problem Solving Leadership, Organizational Change Shop, Systems Engineering Management Groups, Satir Writing Workshops, and many others. Unfortunately, as I've grown older, my stamina has faded, making such workshops much more difficult. So, I asked myself, "Is there another way to offer experiential learning without the strain on my aging body?"

I'd like to say that I immediately recognized that reading fiction is another kind of simulation, but I'm not that insightful. Only gradually did I come to realized that a great deal of the popularity of my non-fiction books (and the books of a few others, like Tom DeMarco) is in the stories. They make for lighter reading, and some people object to them, but overall, those of us who use stories manage to communicate lots of hard stuff. Why? Because a good story takes the reader into a trance where s/he can "experience" events just as they can in a teaching simulation.

So, I finally figured out that if I could create powerful stories—the way I have created powerful simulations for half a century—I could carry on my teaching without the real-time strain on my body.

And that's the first part of this story—the story of how I decided to write novels. I'll continue the story in later blogs. Perhaps, if I do it well, you'll be able to share the experience with me and learn a happiness lesson or two.