Author Archives: sydlogsdon

Symphony 85

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Cooperation

Cooperative learning is a great deal more than just working in groups. It is a whole array of techniques to assure that students learn from one another, motivate one another, and learn to work together.

He arranged his groups so each would have one good reader. When he ran out of really good readers, he chose Lauren Turner and Rosa Alvarez for the last two groups. Then he chose one poor reader for each group and filled in the rest with children of middling abilities.

The children knew none of this. To them they were simply in groups.

The presenters at the cooperative learning conference had given Neil a load of papers to read. He worked through them over the Christmas vacation, rearranged his room, and made himself as ready as he could be to begin the new technique. It looked like a good way to teach some things. He could take a literature book for children, say Island of the Blue Dolphins, and with groups he could see to it that all the children fully understood everything that happened in the book, reacted to it, and made it a part of their lives.

But — and this was the critical problem — the non-readers and poor readers would be little closer to reading independently than when they started.

There was nothing Neil could do about that.

# # #

Since the Christmas holidays had not started until the twenty-fourth, they lasted well into January. On Monday the ninth the children returned, cranky and unwilling to go back to work. They found the desks moved and set about looking for their own.

“Hey, what’s with the desks?” Flavio asked. “I’m up front. That’s cheap!”

“Mr. McCrae, can I move? I don’t like it here,” Carlos said.

“I don’t want to sit by a girl,” Greg complained.

“Well, its better than us having to sit by a boy!” Dixie replied.

When these children had come to Neil’s room in August, they had not dared to complain about where they were seated. Now that they knew him, they hoped to sway him into putting them next to their friends. Their complaints were in vain.

Only Lauren and Lydia were happy. They were back together for the first time since Neil had discovered Lauren prompting Lydia.

Neil read the introduction and about half of the first chapter of Fog Magic aloud. It included a description of the main character’s home village. Afterward, he told the class that each group was to write a description of their classroom, and he explained how they were to go about it. First, they were to list as many words as they could think of that would describe the room. Then they were to choose the ten which best described it.

It was an insipid exercise. Neil hesitated to use it, but the presenters had assured him that even this would be too hard for some groups at the beginning. He didn’t want to believe it.

As he wandered around the room watching the children work, his education as a teacher really began.

Not one of the students he had tagged as slow had anything to contribute. He watched Pedro Velasquez. First Pedro had been disinterested, then he had looked worried when he thought he was going to have to participate. But when Tanya Michelson said, “Big, green, crowded, full-of-desks, hot, cold, neat, yucky . . .”, and would have rolled on forever if Casey and Olivia had not forced her to listen to two or three of their suggestions, Pedro relaxed again and sat back to do nothing. As usual.

Pedro thought this group stuff was going to be easy.

Neil thought, “Not if I can help it.” more tomorrow

460. White World

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“Welcome to Black History Month,” said the old white guy.

You might wonder what I know about black history. The answer is, actually, quite a bit. I was a teenager during the height of the civil rights movement. I wasn’t involved, but I was watching and learning.

I grew up in Oklahoma in the fifties. That isn’t the South, but it’s close enough. We didn’t have blacks-only facilities in my town, because we didn’t have blacks. There were blacks in Tulsa where we shopped, and a few in Claremore, the county seat, but not in the rural areas I inhabited.

We called them negroes in polite conversation, but niggers most of the time. Sorry. It hurts my fingers to type that word, but I’m not going to lie to you. Nowadays, I use the term blacks because that is what they chose for themselves in the sixties. African-American came later, along with Native American. Both those terms sound to me like something made up by embarrassed white guys. I’ll stick with blacks, because that is what blacks wanted to be called when I first became fully aware of them as real people.

When I was very young, I didn’t have much of an opinion. I had never met a black person. There was one black man who farmed somewhere in the area. I saw him go by in his pickup once in a while, but that was as close to a black person as I had been.

I had also never met a Jew. I had never met a Spanish speaker, nor an Italian, nor a Mormon. Certainly not a Muslim; actually, I had never heard of Muslims. There was one Catholic boy who attended our school briefly. He wasn’t well treated and he didn’t stay long.

We didn’t have segregation. We had apartheid. I just didn’t know it at the time.

You get the picture. Not just white — WHITE. And not just Protestant, but Southern Baptist. And not just Southern Baptist, but small-town-Southern-Baptist; not like those liberals down in Tulsa. There were so many Baptists in town that the local high school didn’t have a prom.

That’s who I was when I was at ten. That’s not who I was by the time I was fifteen.

When those black people down south went marching, and were met with clubs and dogs and firehoses — when my father (and everybody else’s father) said it was their own fault, I couldn’t buy it. When I saw them bloodied and beaten, yet standing firm for freedom and dignity, I knew they were right and we were wrong.

When they fought for their own freedom, they also gave this Oklahoma white boy his freedom. They gave me a new way of looking at the world, and I am grateful to this day.

So the first year I was blogging, I wrote a month’s worth of posts on civil rights. Check any post between January 18, 2016 and February 18, 2016 if you want to see them. Last year I didn’t try to repeat myself. I had said everything I had to say.

This year, everybody who doesn’t look like me is in jeopardy all over again.

I’m an American white male. I have all the civil rights in the world. I also have an obligation to see that I am not the only one who has them.

So here I go again. Welcome to Black History Month.

Symphony 84

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Language was not the problem; Carmen could translate. The problem was culture. Should he sit down? Should he expect a cup of coffee? If they offered him one, would they expect him to take it or to refuse? Would they be insulted if he refused? Should he treat Carmen as an equal, or take charge of the conversation? Should he come right to the heart of the business and give the gift, or would it be more proper to talk a while first? If he were in the home of any of his Anglo kids, no matter how rich or poor, he would not have been so much at a loss.

Carmen sensed his discomfiture and took charge. She spoke to Mrs. Alvarez in Spanish. Although Rosa’s mother spoke fair English, she was more comfortable in Spanish, and it let Jose share in the conversation. Then Carmen said, “Give her the package.”

Neil held out the package to Rosa and said, “Merry Christmas.” For the first time, Rosa and her parents allowed themselves to become aware of its existence. Before that moment, only the younger children had stared at it.

Rosa held it in her hands for a long time, admiring the paper. “Its really pretty,” she said. Neil wondered if she would open it now or at Christmas, but he had no way of asking without appearing pushy.

Then Carmen said, “Go on, Rosa. Open it.” Rosa tore off the paper, pulled open the box, and extracted the jacket. Her face was full of hesitation. She loved it, but she wasn’t quite sure it was really hers until Neil said, “Go ahead, see if it fits.”

Rosa spoke to her mother — asking permission? — before she slipped it on. Her face lit up as she smoothed the fabric around her. Then she had to ask; she had to be sure. She said, “Is it for me?”

“It’s yours,” Neil assured her. He started to add that Carmen had picked it out, but his good sense stopped him. It would detract from the moment, so he remained silent while she showed it to her parents. Rosa’s father crossed to Neil and shook his hand again, mumbling something in Spanish of which Neil only caught, “Gracias.”

Rosa’s mother said, “It is really nice, but you shouldn’t have.”

Neil looked at Rosa’s beaming face and said, “I wanted to.”

Things had gone well so far; it was time to retreat before he said something clumsy to ruin everything. Neil made a tiny motion toward the door and Carmen spoke to the Alvarez’s in Spanish one more time, then took Neil’s elbow and eased him toward the door as the conversation bounced back and forth between her and Rosa’s mother.

Rosa and her mother followed them out onto the stoop, then Rosa made a quick, shy motion forward and threw her arms around Neil’s waist for a moment. She said, “Thank you, Mr. McCrae.”

Her heart was in every word and her voice made it a song.

Neil and Carmen drove away in silence. Neil was not a man to accept gratitude easily; it made him uncomfortable, and out of his discomfort he said, “Giving her a jacket won’t change her life.”

Carmen was beginning to understand him.  She recognized the source of his uneasiness. She replied, “Giving her a jacket won’t change her life, but knowing that you cared for her might.” more tomorrow

Symphony 83

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Neil was not willing to proclaim his innocence yet again; especially in view of the damage that had recently been done to Alice Hamilton’s halo. He was a tenured teacher in his old district. They could not fire him without cause, and they had been unable to find such cause. If he chose to return in the fall, he had that right.

If he went to see Hawkens now, it would be an admission that he needed his permission to return. Cooperation was one thing, but he wasn’t going to roll over on his back like a dog.

# # #

Carmen drove by to pick him up at six. His own car was packed to drive to Oregon in the morning, so he tossed the colorfully wrapped present into her back seat and they went out to dinner. Afterward, she drove him out to the Oaks Apartments.

The scene was forlorn. Neil had seen this place twice each day as he drove to and from work, but he had never turned in. Two sycamores, a giant and its still considerable smaller brother, grew in the courtyard between facing rows of small apartments. The structures were of concrete block, two stories high with an open walkway at the upper level. There were four apartments on each side in each level; sixteen in all. It looked as if it had been a motel some time in its early history. The grass was still green and trimmed, even at Christmas time. The ragged palms out front were immune to the changing seasons, but the sycamores were bare.

Someone had wrapped the swing set in tinsel garland, and there were decorations in some of the windows. No children played outside so late on a winter evening.

When Neil got out of the car, he could see his breath. It was in the forties, which was about as cold as Modesto got. It would seem mild to an easterner, but to a little girl without a jacket, it would be just plain cold. Neil reached into the back seat and picked up the package. Carmen led the way without hesitation; she knew most of the families here.

The door opened to her knock, and Maria Alvarez appeared. She spoke with Carmen in fluid, rapid Spanish, then drew the door open and motioned them in. Neil stepped into the living room and looked around. Jose Alvarez was a slim, dark man in jeans and an undershirt. He got up swiftly and shyly from his place in front of the television and looked at his wife, who said something to him in Spanish. Neil could only understand a few words. Jose offered a brief, limp handshake, yelled, “Rosa!” and spoke sharply to his younger daughter, who quickly turned down the volume on the TV.

Rosa came out of the kitchen dressed in ragged jeans and a faded sweat shirt. Her face lighted at the sight of Neil and Carmen, then fell instantly. Was she embarrassed by her house or her parents? Neil could not read her. Wherever it came from, the expression was chased away a moment later by shy happiness. Rosa took her mother by the elbow and spoke rapidly, gesturing toward Neil. Her mother nodded vigorously and smiled at Neil again. She took his hand in a longer handshake and said, “Gracias. Thank you. Rosa says you are helping her get better every day with her English. We know how important that is.”

Rosa’s little sisters were staring at him, wide eyed and unabashed. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other, painfully aware of the brightly wrapped package under his arm. The Alvarez’s were nice people; he could deal with them in a school setting where formality gave a pattern for their interaction. Here, he did not know what to do. more Monday

459. Steampunk Research, 2017

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I’m offering a look at the nuts and bolts of how I organize my writing, in four posts. 456 explains the system I used for years. 457 tells how I keep order while writing today. 458 gives the gory details on why this system works and 459 shows you how to keep track of your research. Take what you can use and ignore the rest.

The best thing about doing novel research on a computer is that you have access to the world, instantly and right on your desktop.

The second best thing about doing research on a computer is that you don’t have to copy things down longhand.

I am very careful to respect the rights of other writers, especially on copyright issues. However, those rules don’t necessarily apply to copying into your own research notes to be considered, modified, used for inspiration, and not quoted.

You can’t copy everything you find on the internet, no matter how useful. Sometimes you have to bookmark. I found an 1868 map of London which I returned to a hundred times. It lives on Safari, along with bookmarks for thirty other websites I have used. A few of those which would be of general interest to steampunk fans and authors are: Beyond Victoriana, All Things Victorian, Historical Emporium (even if you don’t buy the clothes they sell), and The Victorian Web. That doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Another map from Wikimedia Commons was available in jpg. It lives on my desktop, along with a number of maps, coats of arms, and photographs whose jpgs could be snagged.

Whenever I copy from the internet into a word processor program, I always also copy the URL.

Most of what exists in the folder for The Cost of Empire consists of things I have written myself. I would guess that my character, historical, and world building notes probably run about half as many words as the novel itself.

So how can we keep track of all this?

I explained about keeping track of the chapters two posts ago, and about the nitty gritty of ordering last post. Now let’s tie it all together.

Here is a low-fat version of what my folder looks like, with 11 files instead of 77. It starts with important research files, then has chapters, and ends with less important research files.

  changes (notes on changes planned)
 Delhi Durbar Ebook ( excerpts from an Ebook)
 Final Timeline
 Sleeves, color (on uniform sleeves, color denotes rank)
0.1 chapter outlines
1 “Tick tick”
20 “Death of an Airship”
American submarines (notes)
Naphtha engine (excerpts on the real thing along with how I modified them)
The German War (I made it up, but I had to write a history of it to keep track)
zTimeline

You may not see it, but there are two spaces before “  changes”, and one space before each of the next three file names. The three file names after that begin with numbers. The last four begin with letters.

Here’s why it is done that way. The computer puts numbers (in numerical order) on the top of the stack. Letters (in alphabetical order) come next. However, a space comes above anything else.

If you want your most important files to be above your chapters, put a space in front of their titles. If you want one of them to be at the very top, put two spaces in front of that title. Once a file is no longer a priority, don’t throw it away. Put a “z” as the first letter in the title and it will drop all the way to the bottom.

“zTimeline” is an early attempt; I didn’t want it at the top where I might use it by accident, but I also didn’t want to lose track of my original thoughts on the order of in which things happened.

It’s amazing how simple this is in practice, and how well it works.

Symphony 82

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Now Neil’s face was hard. “Mr. Burke,” he said, “I did not mention responsibility. I am not responsible for the way Jesse acts. I feel no guilt whatsoever. I just want to give him another chance. Not because I have done anything to feel bad about, and not because Jesse has done anything to deserve it. I just am not ready to give up on him yet.”

Alan Burke frowned and said, “Mr. Campbell, do you feel that way too?”

“Personally, yes. I always feel that way when a student is expelled. But professionally, it is my opinion that his expulsion is overdue. He is wasting his teachers’ time, my time, his own time, and he is destroying the atmosphere of his whole class. For the sake of his classmates, I still recommend expulsion.”

“Is there any teacher who wants to give him another chance?”

Tom Wright said nothing. Glen Ulrich said, “He is too much disruption in my class.” Fiona shook her head.

Then Neil found support from an unexpected quarter. Donna Clementi said softly, “I don’t want him back in my classroom unless he learns to behave himself, but if Neil is willing to take him on, I say let him. Who knows what will happen if someone believes in Jesse that much.”

The teachers left before the vote was taken. The bell for the beginning of school sounded before the school board emerged, so Neil did not hear until morning recess that they had agreed to let Jesse return after Christmas. He would come to school in the afternoon, attend Neil’s class only, and then go home.

But if he got into trouble one more time, he was out.

By noon, everyone in the school knew of the decision. As Carmen sat next to Neil and opened her lunch bag, she said, “You really know how to take on the world, don’t you?”

“You don’t approve?”

“I approve very much, but I have real doubts of whether it will work. I wouldn’t have taken him on.”

Neil shrugged. After a few bites, he said, “I don’t know if it will work, either, but I felt I had to try.”

# # #

There was a letter in Neil’s mailbox when he got home that night. It was from Dr. James Watkins at his old school. It was on plain paper and the typographic errors made it obvious that Dr. Watkins had typed it himself, probably at home.

Dear Neil,

I know that Tom Lewis intends to visit you. If he has, then you know already that Alice Hamilton is going to have a baby. Her father has resigned from the school board and I have spoken with David Hawkens, his replacement as chairman. Hawkens was reluctant to consider your return after your leave of absence ends, but I showed him that he had no legal recourse. He would like to speak to you personally and hear your assurances that your behavior was without blemish. I told him that his request was insulting, but he was adamant. If you are willing to comply, and I suggest that you do, he will be available during the Christmas holidays. You will be spending the holidays with your mother and grandfather, won’t you?

Whatever you decide, come and see me. We miss you here.

Sincerely,

James Watkins

Neil lay back on his couch and read the letter twice more, trying to untangle its mixed messages. “Come home, Son, all is forgiven,” would be a welcome message if he had done anything to be for which to be forgiven. Six months ago he would have jumped at a chance to meet Hawkens, but time and experience — and pain — had stiffened his backbone. more tomorrow

Symphony 81

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“That carries us up to yesterday,” Bill said. “That was the day he got in trouble with every one of his teachers.”

“We’ll hear from them in a moment. First, I want to know why we weren’t called sooner. This kind of continual disruption simply cannot be tolerated.”

Neil had pity for Bill as he tried to answer. It was easy to see that the boy had to go — unless you knew him. Unless you stopped to think that expulsion would solve Bill’s problems and the teacher’s problems, but it would do nothing for Jesse.

The teachers told their stories next. They spoke without passion, but the extent of Jesse’s rampage came through all the more clearly for that. The board members were appalled.

Alan Burke looked at the other board members. Elaine Sanders mouthed, “Expell him,” and Dr. Hardy nodded. Their silent agreement was clear to everyone in the room.

Burke said, “OK, let’s take a formal vote.”

“No!” Mrs. Herrera shouted suddenly. “You can’t expel my Jesus. He’s just a boy.”

Burke was unmoved. “Mrs. Herrera, we have explained the seriousness of Jesus’ actions to you every time we have met. You promised to get professional help for Jesus and for yourself. You promised to go to family counseling to learn how to control his behavior. You have not done so. You leave us little choice, and Jesus leaves us no choice at all.”

“Please, I have gone to counseling.”

“You told Mr. Campbell that you hadn’t.”

“We have. We just started, but we have gone. I’m trying to help him, but if I have to drive him to some other school and still drive myself to work, I’ll have even less time for him.”

“That is precisely what we have been trying to tell you for two years,” Burke replied coldly. “You are a little late understanding it. When did you start going to counseling?”

“We went Saturday.”

Elaine Sanders cut in, “You waited until after you knew Jesus was going to be expelled to start counseling? Didn’t you think that was a little late?”

Tears were flowing down Mrs. Herrera’s face. She whispered, “It’s hard for me. I want to be a good mother. It’s hard to go to a stranger to have him tell me that I’m not.”

Neil’s heart knotted up at her pain, but Jesse’s face was stone.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Herrera,” Sanders continued, “but for me, that is just too little and too late.”

Neil said, “Wait.”

Burke looked surprised. “Yes, Mr. McCrae?”

Neil had no logical arguments to make; he simply had not been able to remain silent. Fumbling for the right words, he said, “I feel sure I know what your vote is going to be, and I can see, from your viewpoint, why you are willing to make that decision. But I would like to give Jesse a second chance.”

“This school gave Jesus Herrera a second chance in second grade and a third chance in third grade. You would be giving him a seventh or eighth chance.”

Neil stiffened his jaw against the words that threatened to tumble out. Still, some of the fire he felt inside showed in his tone of voice as he went on, “Nevertheless, I have not given him those chances. I, personally, would like to give him a second chance.”

“Mr. McCrae,” Burke continued patiently, “I realize that you may feel some responsibility for the boy because you are the one he yelled obscenities at. But believe me, after reviewing the case, I would vote for expulsion even if yesterday had never happened.” more tomorrow

458. Alpha-not-betical

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I’m offering a look at the nuts and bolts of how I organize my writing, in four posts. 456 explains the system I used for years. 457 tells how I keep order while writing today. 458 gives the gory details on why this system works and 459 shows you how to keep track of your research. Take what you can use and ignore the rest.

I wrote my first six novels on a typewriter, keeping notes in a card file. If I had to go back to that, I wouldn’t write. Thank you Steve Jobs.

The way I work today depends on having multiple files in one folder, each with it’s own function, while making full use of copy-and-paste between the files. This requires placing all the files in a manner that makes sense visually, and for that you have to have a deep understanding of how a computer orders files. Buckle your seat belt, it’s going to be a nerdy ride.

For my most recent project, a steampunk novel titled The Cost of Empire, I have 77 files in one folder. From the beginning I had imposed an organizational structure on it, so I never lost anything. I explained the chapter organization last post and I will explain the research organization next post. For now I’m gong to concentrate on the structure behind the structure.

The following is based on Mac. I can’t guarantee that it transfers totally to another platform, but it should be at least close, and you can find any differences by experimentation.

The files in your folders are an order that is not quite alphabetical. The words go in alphabetical order, the numbers go in numerical order, and special characters like tilde and backslash have an order of their own. Mixed units go where their left-most letter or digit directs. That is, 13b would be placed among the numbers and ordered numerically, but B13 would be placed among the words and ordered alphabetically.

Bear with me. This is a powerful organizational tool you can learn in about twenty minutes. I have tried to write this out, but this is one case where words don’t work. So let’s look at examples instead. The following numbers occur in numerical order.

1, 2, 7, 11, 23, 2514

Now let’s put those same numbers into alphabetical order. We get:

1, 11, 2, 23, 2514, 7

If this doesn’t make sense, let’s replace each numeral with the corresponding letter of the alphabet.

A, AA, B, BC, BEAD, G

There you have it, pure and proper alphabetical order.

Decades ago, I had a night job teaching spreadsheet to my fellow teachers. I would read a group of numerals such as the first example given here in random order, to be placed one per cell in vertical array. Then I would tell my teacher/students to let the spreadsheet put them in order. They would get what is given in the second example.

Once their minds were properly blown, I would show them where the program gave a choice of sorting numerically or alphabetically.

Alphabetical order takes all the words with A as the first letter, then all the words with B as the first letter, and so forth. Then it looks at the second letter in each word, then the third, and so forth. It also follows the rule that nothing comes before something, so that A comes before AA.

Numerical order takes all the numbers with one numeral to the left of the decimal place first, then the numbers with two numerals to the left of the decimal place, and so forth. It assumes that whole numbers always have an invisible decimal at the right. Then it puts things into 0, 1, 2 … 9 order, and it doesn’t care how many places lie to the right of the decimal point. That is, it assumes that all numeral groups to the right of the decimal point end in an infinite string of zeroes.

Am I wasting your time? Do they teach this in ninth grade now? I had to learn it by experimentation after I got my first computer in 1986.

All this is the key to the orderly arrangement of a complicated folder, and that is the key to my method of keeping track of both chapters and notes in one folder.

I number my chapters and use word titles for my research notes, then use the mixed system my computer provides to make it all easily retrievable. We’ll put this all together in the last post on Thursday.

=======

By the way, if you know ASCII, forget it. This isn’t ASCII. It isn’t a pure system at all, but a mixed system designed to produce a result that is intuitive to humans, not to computers.

Symphony 80

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Normally, Neil loved the morning, and this one was brisk, bright, and lovely. Thinking back to the cold gray December skies of Oregon, Neil realized for the first time how sunny and beautiful the Central Valley of California was. Yet for all that, Neil’s life had the flat, stale taste of defeat. He kept thinking of Alice, now quite lost, and of Jesse whom he was losing.

# # #

Even though it was only two days before Christmas, three of the five members of the board of education were able to come in an hour before school started on Friday morning to consider Jesse Herrera’s case. They met in Donna Clementi’s room because there was not enough room in Bill Campbell’s office.

The board members, Alan Burke, Dr. James Hardy, and Elaine Sanders, sat behind a table with Bill Campbell off at one side. Mrs. Herrera and Jesse sat at the other end of the table and all five of the teachers who dealt with sixth graders were there. Mrs. Herrera looked strained but composed and Jesse’s face held no expression at all.

Alan Burke opened the meeting. “We are here to act on a request from Mr. Campbell that Jesus Herrera be expelled from our school. Mrs. Herrera, were you told what this meeting was about?”

“Yes.” Her voice was small and pained. You could see that she had been crying.

“Expulsion is serious business, especially for a child as young as Jesus. It means that he can’t attend this school any more. You can petition to have him readmitted next year, but we are not obligated to readmit him. If he is expelled today, you will have to show proof that his behavior has changed before we will consider readmitting him. Do you understand all this?”

“Yes.”

“If he is expelled, that does not mean he doesn’t have to go to school. You are obligated to see that your son is in school. State law requires it, so you will have to find another school for him to attend. No other school has to take him in; only the district where you live has that obligation. If he is expelled today, you will have to convince another district to admit him for the rest of this year. Do you understand?”

A tear escaped as she said, “Yes,” very softly.

Parent and child, Neil thought. Just like Alice and her father. You can’t separate them. Mrs. Herrera is on trial as much as Jesse. And it’s no fun to face a school board. I ought to know.

Next, Burke turned his attention to Jesse. “Jesus, do you know why you are here?”

Jesse nodded.

“No one wants to punish you, Jesus, but you have to conform to the school’s code of discipline. You can’t disrupt classes because when you do, your teachers can’t teach and your classmates can’t learn. Do you understand that?”

Jesse shrugged and gave them all a black look.

Doesn’t this mean anything to him? Neil asked himself.

Burke looked disgusted with Jesse. He said, “Jesus, this isn’t the first time we have seen you. We won’t be patient forever.”

Still the boy made no response.

“Mr. Campbell, give us a summary of how Jesus’ year has gone so far.”

Bill had a pile of detentions slips in front of him. He read them off quickly: talking in class, punching another student, disrupting, accusing a teacher of hating him when that teacher stopped him from bothering his classmates, stealing another students pencil and keeping the class from working while the teacher figured out who had stolen what from whom, disrupting, fighting on the playground, disrupting class, disrupting class, destroying another student’s lunch. It made a sadly impressive total. more tomorrow

457. I Don’t Write Novels Any More

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I’m offering a look at the nuts and bolts of how I organize my writing, in four posts. 456 explains the system I used for years. 457 tells how I keep order while writing today. 458 gives the gory details on why this system works and 459 shows you how to keep track of your research. Take what you can use and ignore the rest.

The actual writing of novels before computers was a royal pain in a dozen ways, but there were a few advantages. The rough drafts — 300 to 500 sheets of actual paper — could be carried around, rummaged through, and sorted as needed. Several times I brought a long 1 x 12 from the wood shop as a temporary table to hold a row of single chapter stacks.

In the mid-eighties I quit writing full time and went to work as a teacher. I could finally afford a computer, and I never looked back. Symphony in a Minor Key and Raven’s Run, the first two novels I wrote on a computer, each ended up with a single file 80,000 to 100,000 words long. Finding something in that mass worked well enough if I remembered which page it was on, or if what I wanted contained a distinctive word cluster that allowed me to use the find function. You’d be surprised how often neither worked and I was left scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

Cyan was written half on typewriter, decades ago, and half on computer. I used word recognition software to convert the first half to digital. All in all, Cyan called out the best and worst in both systems.

When I recently sat down to write The Cost of Empire, it was clearly time to reinvent and streamline my process.

First of all, there was the issue of manuscript length, and how to keep it under control. I have no trouble with writing too much; I learned the trade when novels were fifty to sixty thousand words long. That wouldn’t even be publishable today. I tend to write tersely and reach the last page under modern length requirements. It struck me that it would be a lot easier to correct that as I went along, if I knew where I stood on a daily basis.

For The Cost of Empire, I set a goal of 100,000 words. I divided that into twenty chapters of 5000 words each. That seemed a good chapter length for a novel that progressed in a linear fashion with a single viewpoint character and almost no flashbacks. It set a stately pace.

Another novel, just begun, has multiple viewpoints, confused chronology, and a ton of explanatory matter dropped in a word here and a sentence there. It seems to be all transitions. For that novel I have chosen 1000 word chapters, and lots of them.

I use the chapter break-down to keep from having to scroll through long chunks of text. I don’t write novels any more; I write chapters, and copy them into a single file only when the writing is done. Each chapter gets its own file, named (number)(space)(title in quotes). Here are the first four chapters from The Cost of Empire:

1 “Tick, tick”
2 “Unit A”
3 – 6
3 “First Mission”
3.1 rewrite
4 “Field of Fire”

When I began to write, I had placed a few numbered, blank files to receive the first few chapters, and had a dozen files of notes which I will explain two posts from now, on January 31. Chapter one went fairly smoothly, with a rough draft finished in a couple of days. The first draft of chapter two followed, also fairly quickly.

After that point, things were less clear in my head. The next chunk of writing stretched out with no obvious breaking points, and went through several rough re-writes. That piece of writing finally spanned pieces of several chapters. Now the value of the multi-file system came in to play. I simply re-titled that chunk of writing 3 – 6 and left it in place. I moved on to 3 “First Mission” and started writing again, copying and pasting large and small chunks of 3 – 6 as needed.

Note: copying, not cutting. 3 -6 is still unchanged today; nothing in it was ever lost, even though everything in it eventually found its way to a “real” chapter in the final book.

At first, there were days of research, days of invention, and days of writing. Or more likely, two hours of research, fourteen minutes of inspired writing, forty minutes of planning, thirty-two minutes of organization, twenty minutes of writing something to fill in a hole left in a previous chapter, and so forth.

Later in the process, I sat down every day and wrote, starting where I had left off the day before, and proceeding in a reasonably linear fashion. That is, I did what non-writers think writers always do.

Initially, that was not possible. I was inventing my character, inventing the plot, and inventing the world everything took place in — all at once. That process never stopped, but the amount of invention went down and the amount of linear writing went up all through the production of the book.

Even when I was a beginning writer following Whitney’s procedure, I didn’t do planning followed by writing. They always went on as simultaneous, semi-independent tracks.

There were a number of plot complications in 3 “First Mission” which had to be worked out. It took several iterations. I knew what I needed to do, I did it, and I didn’t like the results. This happens; it’s just part of the process. Sometimes you have a plan, you execute it, and the result just lies there, smelling like something that dropped out of a cow.

That, by the way, is the difference between an experienced writer and a beginner. The experienced writer recognizes the smell — from past experience — and reaches for his scoop shovel.

I copied (not cut!) out a big chunk and placed it into 3.1 rewrite. I took a new tack on some tricky points and wrote an alternative version. Again, this is where the multi-file system shone. I brought 3 “First Mission” up to standards, but kept the alternatives filed as 3.1 rewrite, for future reference.

I wrote two versions of chapter 7 because it was a critical introduction of a character that would be an important adjunct to my main character, and it had to be just right. A sizable chunk of chapter 13 was heading the wrong way and got pulled. It was titled 13.1 Pulled, but it was retained so that its content could be mined, if need be.

When I got to chapter 20 all was done. I was only seven or eight percent short of my goal length because I had kept track of my chapter lengths. I needed an Epilog. To keep it immediately after the last chapter in the folder, I titled it 20.1 Epilog. I could have called it 21, but that would have implied it was a chapter, and it was quite short.

I also needed for some ancillary material to stay with the chapters, so they were titled 0.1 chapter outlines and 0.2 introduction. That put them in order just before chapter one.

The really nerdy stuff comes next post.