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The first thing I learned in writing class.

by Donna Andrews

Some of you may have heard me tell this story.  But I think it deserves telling again.

Although I’d been writing since I learned how to hold a pencil, I took my first formal writing class in my sophomore year of college. I studied the catalogue and became determined to take a class with a professor who would be visiting that fall.  Paul Theroux wasn’t as famous then as he later became—this was in the fall of 1974, and The Great Railway Bazaar, his breakout book, wouldn’t come out till 1975. But he’d already taken the soon-to-be-famous railway trip and either had written or was writing the book, and he’d published four or five novels and a book of short stories. He was a Real Author. I eagerly preregistered for his class.

I didn’t get it.  I didn’t get any classes I preregistered for that semester, putting me in the stressful position of trotting around to professors’ offices before classes started, begging to be let into their classes.

I showed up at Theroux’s office to find him surrounded by boxes of books.  I made my request to be added to his class. He countered with a question—who were my favorite authors.  One of those I named was Saki—H.H. Munro, the noted British short story writer. This charmed him, apparently, as Saki was also one of his favorites. During his trip he’d taken a detour on a railway line in Burma solely because of its connection with Saki.  He showed it to me on the globe.  He asked if I’d ever read John Collier, for whose collected short stories he’d recently written a foreword.  I dutifully jotted down Collier.  I’m not sure I ever told him that I’d later discovered that I had read at least one story by him—“Evening Primrose,” still one of my all-time favorites. We talked about writers and books for what seemed like hours.  Maybe it was.

Suddenly he realized that he was late for one of the many appointments required of a newly arrived visiting professor.

“You dropped by for a reason, didn’t you?” he asked. “What was it?”

“To get into your class.” I had the presence of mind to hold out the registration form and a pen.

“Fine; you’re in,” he said before dashing off to his appointment.

(I mention all this not because it’s important, except that by the time I showed up in his class, he had probably already figured out that I was not particularly shy or taciturn.)

I was walking on air.  And one of the first things I did, before my feet touched the ground, was go down to the college bookstore to buy one of his books and see what I was in for.  The book I bought was his recently released short story collection, Sinning with Annie. I read it cover to cover that night.

The first day of class came, and he asked if anyone had brought anything that they would be willing to read. 

No one volunteered.  He said he’d anticipated this, and had brought along a couple of stories from previous classes he’d taught, which he was going to distribute—with permission from the authors.  He informed us that we were going to practice critiquing on these stories.  He passed out mimeographed sheafs of papers and instructed us to read and prepare to discuss.

It wasn’t the first story he passed out.  Either the second or the third. But suddenly as I realized that the story that I was reading was one I’d read before.

It was his story.

Specifically, it was the story “A Political Romance,” from Sinning with Annie, the book I’d read.  And here it was, not neatly set in type and bound between the covers of a book, but badly typed on a manual typewriter and mimeographed, which was how professors passed out handouts in those days.

I watched aghast as my classmates went to town on it.  They’d been relatively polite and hesitant at first, but now it was feeding time in the shark tank, and this story was another bit of chum thrown into the water.  The story was nonsense.  It was crap. It was sophomoric. The author should be embarrassed to have submitted it. It wasn’t worth wasting paper on.

I sat back and listened, surreptitiously watching Theroux’s face.  And trying to remember if I’d carried on like this on the previous story, and wondering, if so, if it had also been one of his. And wondering if I was the only one who’d had the foresight to read our professor’s latest book, piled up in such glossy stacks in the bookstore.

After a while, when the rest of the class was subsiding into silence, having vented their spleen on the story, Theroux spoke up.

“Miss Andrews,” he said. “You’ve been uncharacteristically silent.”

Think fast, I told myself.

“Didn’t you have anything to say about the story?” he persisted.

“Well,” I said aloud. “As it happens, I know the author of the story, and I’ve read it before. I didn’t think it fair to give my considered opinions along with everybody else’s first impressions.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” he said. Was there a twinkle in his eye? “And what did you think of the story when you first read it?”

I can’t remember what I said.  It was positive, because I’d liked the story.  Had liked his whole book, in fact.  He and I exchanged a few comments, being careful to preserve the fiction that this was a former student’s story.

Nevertheless, some of the brighter bulbs in the class began to catch on.  You could tell when it happened, because they would turn pale or hunch their shoulders, and break into the conversation as soon as they could with remarks like “When I said it was total crap and no one should have wasted paper printing it, what I really meant was . . . “

When he saw a few of them had caught on, Theroux outed himself to the whole class as the story’s author and explained that he wanted to give us a very important lesson for what we’d be doing for the rest of the semester.  That we should always remember that there was a living, breathing person behind each story we’d be reading.

I think we got it.  I know I did. I can’t swear I’ve always remembered this, but I try to.  Most of the time I succeed.  And when I don’t, I pick myself up and try harder next time.

The kind of courtesy Theroux taught our class is harder these days. We’re less apt to be in the same room with the people we’re critiquing, reviewing, or just reading.  Something about the Internet makes us want to think it’s okay to behave in a way that would get you kicked out of a well-run critique group. And something about the Internet is starting to affect our manners in the real world, too.

It’s possible to critique honestly without being cruel.  To temper criticism with encouragement. To tell another writer what they need to know about their work without making them want to slit their wrists.

It starts with remembering the living, breathing human being behind the work.

And that is the first thing—and quite possibly the most important thing—I ever learned in writing class.

I Know This Sounds Crazy . . .

 By Elaine Viets

 

 So I’m feeding the cats their favorite dinner: Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Chicken Feast in Grilled Chicken Flavor Gravy.

The cats are howling like they haven’t eaten in a week, but one look and you know they’ve never missed a meal.

Fancy Feast is billed as gourmet cat food. These aren’t garbagy globs of bone bits and fowl gunk. The tiny chicken tidbits look and smell delicious. Better than my own dinner of low-fat pasta.

I’m tempted to dump a can of Fancy Feast over some bow-tie pasta. But at the last moment I chicken out.

So here are my questions:

Have you ever eaten pet food? Nibbled a Milk Bone?  Took a nip of Fancy Feast?

Scratch up your courage and satisfy our curiosity.

 

NOTE: "Fixing to Die," my ninth Josie Marcus mystery shopper mystery,will be published eight days. Check out the first chapter, enter the contest to win a Josie mystery, and see where I’m touring. Go to www.elaineviets.com

Thinking Again--Revision!

 

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

I’m trying something new on Twitter and Facebook--keeping track of my revision process for my newest book TRUTH BE TOLD. I love revisions. It’s a real joy to get to the end of the first draft of novel—sometimes it feels as if it will never happen!—and then get to go back and unearth the book I mean to write.  I usually cut about 10,000 words. I look for logic, and poetry, and the stakes, and continuity, and motivation. I have a yellow stickie on my computer—it says: “Hook, stakes, beautiful writing.”

 

So day by day, via twitter and Facebook, I’m posting where I am and what I am learning.  If you miss episodes of TV shows, you can go to On Demand to catch up. Here’s my version of On Demand for Femmes readers—what I’ve posted for the past week or so. The Facebook versions are longer, of course, but it’s fun to try to capture a moment in 140 characters—it’s revisions after all! And it’s all about keeping it tight.

 

.    #WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD abt new ‪#thriller in progress, TRUTH BE TOLD. Let's share the journey via this hashtag!! 

    

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD When I meander, it means I haven't decided on scene's goal. So--delete all that doesn't get me there.



     

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Revisions! Sometimes I move the cursor, see where it lands, and see if I like it. Try it.  Fun & useful.     

   

#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Revisions! Narrowed his eyes, narrowed her eyes--HOW many times can THAT happen? ALL have to go.

    #WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Oh, oh, I had a moment of THIS STINKS! But I keep a little writing journal, I know this happens each time.

     

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD I am working on logic. Why did Lizzie do that? If she's inconsistent, I am still unclear on her goals.


     

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Ah HA. Making progress. Fixed a whole flabby scene by amping the verbs--and focusing on intent.



     

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Fixing typos and taking out "had" &"was" = small potatoes. Maybe it'll help get to the big potatoes.



      

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Yesterday I had a good idea. I bet I will have one today. One good idea a day--just one--will be fine.



      

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD One good idea is like putting a drop of iodine in a glass of  water. It instantly colors everything.

 

#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD Taking a main character-and making her consistent. Is she a real person? Can I make you understand her?



‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD I'll go through her POV only..and see if her story holds together. Logical? Compelling? Believable?

 



 

‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD   Ellipses and dashes, away with 'em!. How could there be so many? Almost never neccessary...sigh. 





‪#WRITINGTRUTHBETOLD At start of each scene, I'll clarify the setting and the POV. If I don't, reader is lost!



 Come join me every day for the updates! On Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage and on twitter at hank_phillippi 

Do you dread revisions? Or to you enjoy them, as I do? And what are your revision secrets?

Duck the Halls

by Donna Andrews

Duck the Halls--a new Christmas book in my Meg Langslow series--comes out this Tuesday, October 22 from Minotaur. And it wouldn't have been existed without my agent, Ellen Geiger, of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

And I don't just mean that in the usual sense that she negotiated the deal.

My editor, Pete Wolverton was asking for another Christmas book, since the first one, Six Geese A-Slaying (Minotaur 2008), seemed to strike a happy note with readers.  So I was trying to come up with an idea for a Christmas book.  And I happened to read this story in the paper about a small Southern town where one of the churches had a major fire not long before Christmas and was pretty much totaled. 

A horrible thing to happen at any time, but at Christmas!  When everyone wants peace and goodwill to reign, and when (on a practical note) most churches have two or three times as many things going on.  This small Southern church would have been out of luck if not for the other churches in town, who all pitched in and helped. They worked out a schedule so that all the churches in town could have all their services, Sunday school classes, pageants, concerts, rehearsals, children's parties, potluck suppers--everything.  No one was left out in the cold that Christmas.

"I want to do that!" I told Ellen. "Only we won't just have one fire--we'll have several! And we'll put Meg in charge of organizing the schedule.  And every time another church burns down, her job gets harder! And--"

It was at this point that my agent gently pointed out that however heartwarming it was to have the churches pitching in to help each other and however funny it would be to make Meg the one who has to keep reorganizing the schedule, there was nothing heartwarming or funny about having a firebug loose at Christmastime in my fictional small town of Caerphilly.

"But how can I have all the heartwarming neighborly and ecumenical stuff without that?" I asked.

"Can't you put the churches temporarily out of commission in some less lethal way?" she said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know--turn skunks loose in them or something."

And a plot was born.

There are skunks.  And ducks.  And an Emerald Tree Boa.  The nationally known New Life Baptist Choir takes center stage. Meg's husband Michael once more performs his popular one-man reading of A Christmas Carol. Following in their father's footsteps. Meg's twin toddlers make their stage debut in the manger scene.

Yes, it's Christmas in Caerphilly.

And in honor of the book's publication date, I'm giving away a signed copy of Duck the Halls to one of the people who comments--here or on Facebook. I'll pick the funniest or most heartwarming comment or if I just can't choose I'll do a random draw.

Donna

 

A Stranger in My Own Land

by Leigh Perry / Toni L.P. Kelner 

Today I went out into my own backyard--well, I thought it was my yard. I faithfully pay the montly mortgage, but today I felt like an interloper. As I stepped onto the porch, four birds flew away and I swear the fifth one glared at me for intruding before taking to the air. Two squirrels scurried away as if I was about to use a bow to go Hunger Games on them, and a chipmunk panicked and ran out into the street as I walked toward my car. I had no idea no idea my yard was so thoroughly inhabited, and I almost felt as if I should apologize for invading their world.

Of course, as a writer I invade other people's worlds all the time, and I expect to feel like an interloper if I'm researching and writing about a world that's one that's unfamiliar to me: historical eras, police stations, pirate ships, detective agencies. But high schools? I did attend one, after all, though I admit it has been a few years. But I drive to my daughters' school every day, and attend meetings and open houses and plays there. Yet there are some things I just never knew.

Right now I'm working on some scenes set in a high school for The Skeleton Takes a Bow, the second Family Skeleton book. I want my character Georgia to attend a faculty meeting at her daughter's high school. Easy, right? But I didn't know where teachers typically meet--in a classroom, the auditorium, the cafeteria? What do they discuss? How long does the meeting last? Are they fun or tedious?

I'm also having to learn about standardized test proctoring. My SATs were long long ago, and taking them weren't such happy moments that I've memorized every detail. Besides which, I don't know who those proctors were. Did they like the job, did they get paid and if so how much? I have no idea.

In later scenes in the book, I'm going to writing sections set backstage at a school play, and I'm starting to realize that while I've waiting outside rehearsals for uncounted hours and attended umpteen performances, I've never really snuck behind those curtains. 

It's becoming clear to me that before the book is done, I'm going to have to invade a lot of worlds, possibly places where I'm about as welcome as I was in my yard this afternoon. On the good side, I can use that set of feelings. In that scene when Georgia walks into a faculty meeting, she's going to feel like just I did in my yard today--only it'll be math teachers glaring at her instead of an irritated chipmunk. 

 

 

Great Potential

 

By Elaine Viets

"Fixing to Die," my new Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mystery, will be there for you in November. Josie, newly married to veterinarian Ted Scottsmeyer, hunts for their first house – and learned that real estate agents speak their own language.

Eventually, Josie and Ted buy the perfect house. Then Ted finds a body under the gazebo and his clinic partner is charged with the murder. Josie’s tween daughter, Amelia, is fighting mean girls at school. Josie has to look for a killer who hit way too close to home.

Here’s a scene from "Fixing to Die" where Josie looks at a house that’s all gray.

Not a soft, sophisticated gray. Damp basement gray. Concrete gray.

Sally Redding Rutherford, the real estate agent, called the grim gray entrance hall "cozy." Josie had looked at enough homes to translate real estate lingo. "Cozy" meant coffin sized. There was barely room for her and Sally in the entrance. Josie felt like she was stuck in an upright burial vault.

"Gray is chic again," Sally said. "The right paint and a nice mirror will transform this entrance into a real showcase."

Sally was small, blond, and muscular with a perpetually perky smile. Josie thought she must have been a cheerleader for a hopeless high school team, the way she relentlessly cheered one loser after another. Sally had shown her so many dogs Josie felt like like she was at the Humane Society.

The living room was gray, too, from the floor to the fog colored ceiling.

"Uh, the floor’s gray concrete," Josie said.

"That’s right," Sally said proudly. "Concrete flooring is stylish, smart, and tough. And look at that fireplace!"

It was gray slate with steel fireplace tools.

"You won’t find a feature like that in a—"

If Sally says "starter house" one more time, I’m going to brain her with that poker, Josie thought. She’s said it six times since we parked in the driveway.

"—starter house," Sally finished.

Josie’s fingers twitched. The poker was in reach. A jury of house hunters would never convict her.

Instead, she got a grip on herself. What’s wrong with you? she asked herself. Sally is a hardworking divorcee. You were single long enough to know it’s a tough world.

"The dining room is taupe," Sally said.

More gray, Josie thought. But she saw bright spots of red in the chandelier, the only color so far in the house, except for Sally’s pink pantsuit.

"The owner wants to take the chandelier," Sally said. "It’s Southwest style and he had it custom made."

Josie fought back a giggle. The spiky wrought iron chandelier was trimmed with polished cow horns and long red plastic peppers.

"It’s amazing," Josie said, truthfully. "But I don’t think this is the house for us."

"But the seller is motivated," Sally said.

That means "desperate," Josie thought.

"Josie, honey, you’ve given me so many restrictions," Sally said. "You don’t want to buy a foreclosure."

"This is our first house," Josie said. "I don’t want someone else’s misery."

"You insist that the house be in either in Maplewood or nearby Rock Road Village," Sally said.

"Ted spends long hours at his veterinary clinic in Rock Road Village," Josie said. "I don’t want to add a commute to his already long day."

"What about that cute fixer upper?" Sally said. "It’s convenient to transportation, like you wanted."

"It needed a gut rehab," Josie said, "and was located between a highway ramp and the railroad tracks."

"Trains sound so romantic," Sally said.

"Not coming through the living room," Josie said.

"What about that sweet split level with the country kitchen?" she asked.

"Ten minutes in that kitchen and I had nightmares that I was pursued by ducks with yellow ribbons around their necks," Josie said.

"It’s just wallpaper. You can make those ducks go away," Sally said, flapping her fingers.

"Not from my mind," Josie said.

"You said the executive home near Brentwood Boulevard was gorgeous," Sally said.

"It was," Josie said. "It was also too big and too expensive."

"What was wrong with the charming rambler with the green shutters?" Sally asked. "It had a big sunny lot."

"Sunny! So’s the Sahara," Josie said. "Nothing grew in that yard, not even grass."

"You’re overlooking the—" Sally said.

Potential, Josie thought, bracing herself. Sally’s going to say "potential." I hate that term even more than "starter house."

"—– potential," Sally finished, predictably. "But don’t you worry. I’ll find you the perfect house."

Josie saw the agent’s blond hair and trimly tailored suit swallowed by the red door and waved good bye. She didn’t realize this was the last time she’d ever see Sally Rutherford.

                                            ***

Watch the trailer here: http://tinyurl.com/kwqfouh 

Pre-order "Fixing to Die" from: 

bn.com: http://tinyurl.com/ojs97kp 

Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/kj9p79b 

Mystery Lovers Bookshop: http://tinyurl.com/k528k58 

 NOTE Photos from DREAMSTIME.com

Biblioholics Anonymous

Hi, my name is Dean, and I'm a biblioholic.

That probably isn't much of a surprise to most people. After all, I'm a librarian and a writer. Librarians and writers love books, don't they? Sometimes to the edge of reason (and storage capacity) and beyond.

When I say "books," I mean the printed kind -- the ones you can hold in your hand, run your fingers over the binding, admire the covers, the typeface, the construction of the object itself. Yes, I do have ebooks that I read either on my iPad or my Kobo device. Mostly ephemeral things, one-time reads.

If it's a book I love, or one that I want to be sure is in my library for that day when I finally have a chance to sit and read, then it has to be the print version. I also have a great fondness for mysteries of an earlier age (i.e., published before 1960), and many of them are not now -- and perhaps not likely ever to be -- available as ebooks. Ergo, the physical book.

I haven't tried to count all my books -- for one thing, it would take far too long, and I have other things to do -- like read a book or write one. I'd estimate, however, that my collection runs to between seven and eight thousand books. My house (not quite 1600 sq. ft.) is stuffed with them. Every wall has a bookcase (or several) against it. Art? Pictures? I don't have many places I can hang them. I'd have to get rid of a bookcase.

If I had 16,000 sq. ft. I could spread all the books out and display them properly. But most, if not all, of the shelves have double rows, or books stacked in front of books, and on top of the shelves -- as you can see in the pictures. The pictures, by the way, are of shelves in my office (aka the spare bedroom).

As a librarian, I understand that collections have to be weeded periodically -- and I have actually done that from time to time. The problem is, I keep seeing books that look interesting, or an author whose work I enjoy publishes a new book. More books tend to come in than go out.

If I stopped buying books, either print or electronic, I would probably not run out of books to read until I lived to be 175 -- because I have far more books that I have yet to read than books I have read.

At least this addiction doesn't rot my brain or my teeth...

 

Blood Of The Lamb by Sam Cabot

 

from Mary

 

The Christmas decorations are out at the malls and the Cracker Barrel, so you know what that means - only a few more weeks until Halloween!

 

 

 

Yes, it won't be long until all the little ghouls and goblinettes swarm the neighborhood and officially usher in Fall.

 

 

Perfect weather for a nice hot cuppa and a vampire book or two. I'm getting a head start on that with a new book that's getting a lot of good press.

THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB: A Novel of Secrets by Sam Cabot is not your ordinary vampire story. Thomas Kelly, a gifted scholar and priest, is called to Rome when his great teacher, Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa, gets the #1 most fabulous job on earth, Head of the Vatican Library. There, Thomas begins a search for a mysterious old document at his mentor's request.

Meanwhile, across town, art historian Livia Pietro is in trouble with the elder leaders of the Noantri community. For the second time, her ex has crossed them. Now he threatens to reveal the Noantri to the world. Since he is Livia's responsibility, she must deal with the problem and then eliminate him. 

 

A good number of reviews I've read say Blood Of The Lamb is like The DaVinci Code. Well, they both have Rome and Vatican scenes, and they both have mysteries involving ancient church secrets. For me, everything else is totally different.

Mainly, the writing quality of Blood Of The Lamb is far superior to that of DVC because, you know, it has some. Descriptions of Rome that make you feel like you're there, two fully-developed main characters who are interesting and real.

That's the good stuff. The amazing stuff is in the deeper waters, the examinations of how we humans see religion and reality, outcasts and chosen ones. Not an easy thing to do. I really love Thomas and Livia and hope they'll be coming back in more books, so we can see how they deal with everything.

Sam Cabot, in case you haven't heard, is the pen name for writing duo SJ Rozan and Carlos Dews. 

 

Cooling Off

by Charlaine Harris

I recently finished writing a book, the first in a new series.

And then I finished it again. And again. Each time, I thought it was done. But it wasn’t. I hope this is the final time I close the door on “Midnight Crossroad.”

After years of writing in the first person, I made the insane decision that my next book would be an ensemble novel, told from several different points of view. It was a decision that was easy to make, because I was longing to do something different. I gloated over the flexibility this would give me in telling the story of a group of people in a small Texas town. What I hadn’t counted on was the sheer difficulty in making sure each chapter was in one voice.

I finished the first draft a little late, but I had had the first two thirds of the manuscript read by Toni L. P. Kelner (aka Leigh Perry) and Dana Cameron, who are my trusted readers. They reported a few voice problems, and a few logical issues, so I rewrote accordingly. I felt I’d solved my problems as I plowed through the rest of the book. I sent those rewritten 200 pages to my editor at Ace, because she needed to begin working on the cover material and a description for the catalogue.

When I finished the manuscript completely, I sent it to my agent (Joshua Bilmes) and his assistant, Sam Morgan. Joshua expressed overall happiness, but he had some major quibbles, to my shock and dismay (I always hope it will be perfect!). He let Sam get specific.

I was not sticking to a point of view. I should find some way of designated who was running with the narrative during the various parts of the story, and that POV had to prevail until the baton was passed.

That meant a reorganization of the book. EEEEEEEKKK!

But after some bitter reflections on pride going before a fall, I saw it had to be done, and quickly, because the book was QUITE overdue. I thought very hard, and began my revision. Three points of view. They didn’t have to alternate, but they did have to be consistent. That meant the bits of narrative written in other voices had to be redistributed and rewritten. My mental file cabinet began to overflow.

In this time, my granddaughter was born. That assumed high priority for a few days, but then the book got its claws back into me. Since my usual editor had a medical issue, I emailed Susan Allison at Ace to tell her that I would have the revised book on her desk (which now means “in her computer”) by Sunday afternoon at the latest.

And I sent it off Sunday afternoon. I never hit the SEND button with such gusto. I learned a lot in the writing of this book, after thirty-four years of writing books. The first thing was: Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself, but don’t be surprised if that challenge turns out to be hard and sometimes unpleasant. The second was: After you finish the book, let it sit for three weeks before you revisit it. Even longer would be better. In the lag time between version number two and version number three, the book was out of my scope while I did other projects. And it was wonderful how much more clearly I could see what needed to be done when I opened the “Midnight Crossroad” file again.

But gosh, I hope I don’t have to rewrite that book again.

Charlaine

To Apple: I hate you/I love you/but mostly right now I hate you

by Donna Andrews

My checkered history with Apple goes way back.  I no longer remember precisely when I decided to get a computer, but I think it was around 1983 or 1984, because that’s when the Apple IIe came out, and that was my first computer.  I had coveted a computer for some time.  I wanted to write on it and I wanted to play computer games on it, especially Wizardry.

So one day I went down to the nearest store that sold Apple computers.  I was a little nervous—I’d used early word processing equipment at the office, but I had no experience with computers. And the salesman sensed that.  He told me, in a bright and ever-so-slightly condescending tone, that of course they had a service that would come out to my house and set the computer up for me for a modest fee.  I can’t remember what the modest fee was, but it didn’t seem that modest, and then there was that tone.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I can manage.”

I didn’t even own a car back then, so I had to call a cab to haul home the several large boxes in which my computer and printer came.  And when I got home, I took all the pieces out and put them on the floor and looked at them for a moment.  Stapled to the receipt was the salesman’s card.  I could always call him and arrange for that tech support thing.

“The hell I will,” I muttered.  I started at page one of the instruction manual and worked my way methodically through assembling the components and setting up my Apple.  It wasn’t all that hard, actually.

And I loved it.  I had computer power.

I'd been waiting for it a long time. Back in my college days, I had developed a method of writing on a typewriter that prefigured using a computer.  I’d start out with a fresh sheet of recycled paper—and by recycled paper, I mean paper I had collected from bulletin boards and trash cans all over campus.  Every week, the bulletin boards in all the campus buildings grew thick with flyers.  Announcements of film showings, special lectures, musical performances, keg parties, all photocopied or mimeographed, sometimes piling up three and four deep.  All that paper going to waste, I thought. So every time I passed an overstuffed bulletin board I pruned it of the outdated flyers, and took them home for my writing stock.

I’d stick a sheet of recycled paper in the typewriter and started writing. If it was going well, I’d keep going.  If I didn’t like the way it was going, I went back to the last place where it was going well and started that line again.  The rough draft would look something like this

When in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to cut
necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to take up the
them with another, and assume the
them with another, and assume among the
powers of the earth, the station
powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which God
station to which the Laws of Nature
and of Nature’s God entitled them,
they should declare the causes that impel
them to the separation.
a decent respect for the opinions
a decent respect to the opinions
requires that they should declare
the causes that impel them to the
separation.

Then I’d take scissors and clear tape and paste it together.  The final draft, each page composed of several pieces—perhaps even dozens of horizontal strips fluttering gently if you waved the paper—would, of course, look like this

When in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected
them with another, and assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature
and of Nature’s God entitled them,
a decent respect to the opinions
requires that they should declare
the causes that impel them to the
separation.

It worked for me.  It let me shut off the internal editor and work freely without giving up the freedom to edit as I went.  My early short stories and first novel were all drafted on the backs of keg party flyers and course handouts. It was a method I continued even after I left college—and working in an office gave me a vastly larger supply of paper used on only one side.

And it made my transition to working on a computer seamless. As soon as I started writing on my Apple IIe, where I could simply backspace or block and move instead of physically cutting and pasting, everything went faster. Writing on computer became the most natural thing in the world.

I was a happy Apple IIe user for quite a few years.  And then the Mac came along.  It did a lot more things than the Apple IIe.  Better games, for example. I began to feel the familiar cyber greed feelings.  I wanted one.

I got one.

I hated it.

I had, in the meantime, begun working with a DOS computer at my office. Working on the DOS machine wasn’t that different from my Apple IIe. Different set of commands, but both were efficient and reliable at doing what I wanted to do: writing, using WordPerfect or the word processing program found in AppleWorks, and playing the relatively primitive but still addicting games available at the time.

The Mac had a mouse.  It was an interesting tool, and I could see some use in it. For games, for example.  But Clarisworks, the Mac equivalent of Appleworks, used the mouse way too much and, in those early days, offered no keyboard shortcuts for certain functions. 

And if anyone’s inclined to say, “Of course there were keyboard shortcuts--she just didn’t bother to learn them,”—no, I don’t think so. I spent hours combing the manuals for help. But this was, remember, a very early and comparatively primitive Mac.  I got so fed up one time with having to pick my mouse up every time I need to do some function or other that I called the ClarisWorks help desk. I can no longer recall what function it was—remember, this was probably twenty years ago—but  I spent two hours on the phone with them, getting sent up the line to more and more senior tech support people. They were very apologetic.  They’d definitely tell their developers that at least one user was crying out for a keyboard shortcut. But no, not even their most expert tech support people could figure out a way to do whatever it was without picking up the mouse.

This made it obvious to me that there was a basic incompatibility between me and the Mac, and perhaps between me and Apple generally. The Mac was designed by people who weren’t writers.  People who did not understand why it was disruptive, to a writer, to have to take her right hand off its normal place on the keyboard to pick up the mouse to perform a function.  It took ten times as much time as a keyboard shortcut.  It led to typos galore, if I didn’t look down to make sure my hand was in the right spot, and that took more time. I wouldn’t expect people who don’t write to understand this.  But I would expect a company like Apple to do its homework.  To do some user testing not just with techies and with people involved in the visual arts, but also with wordsmiths.

Later Macs did not have this problem, I’m told.  Later Macs had a lot of built-in keyboard shortcuts and let you program your own. That’s nice.  But by the time Apple had fixed what was—for me—completely broken about that early Mac, I’d already sold it and bought a PC and never looked back.

There was also the fact that I worked in a corporate environment, where PCs were the norm.  I could have toggled back and forth between the Apple and Microsoft worlds, the way I did when my home computer was an Apple IIe.  But it was easier not to.

Every so often, my Apple-based friends would tell me about some cool thing their Macs would do.  Or taunt me with their relatively virus free lives. I retained the general feeling that Apple products were cool.  But not the feeling that they were particularly useful for me.

Then the iPod came out. 

I coveted it.  I could see a definite niche in my life that it could fill.  I was always compiling travel mixes, so I could take all the music I wanted with me when I drove.  For years I carried around a battered little brown vinyl case with room for twenty or so cassettes, and later a CD wallet or two with my mix CDs.  The notion of carrying all my favorite songs in one tiny little device was enthralling.

I’d never seen an iPod, much less touched one.  No one I knew had one.  My total exposure to them consisted of Apple’s oh-so-cool commercials in which silhouettes of people danced around carrying iPods and wearing headphones.  But I knew where to find iPods.  I went down to the Apple Store.

This particular Apple Store was filled with very young, skinny people wearing black and draping themselves languidly over the counters on which the various bits of hardware for sale were displayed in the sort of solitary glory usually reserved for valuable museum pieces.  I ambled in with my bluejeans and probably brightly colored a t-shirt from some mystery convention and had the distinct feeling that I didn’t quite fit the décor.  Never mind that. Show me the iPods.  They waved me over to a counter and left me to discover the wonders of the iPod by myself.

It wasn’t an immediate success.  I had never used an iPod, remember? I had never touched a  click wheel.  I couldn’t figure out how to use it. I know it’s supposed to be intuitive, but it wasn’t for me.  I kept trying to click up, down, left and right. Things weren’t working they way they should.

I sought help from one of the languid, black-clad staff.  He tore himself away from his conversation with the rest of the tribe and said, in a voice curiously reminiscent of that long-ago Apple IIe salesman,

“Oh, don’t worry.  Even my three-year-old has learned to operate my iPod.”

I think he realized right away from my expression that he had not made a positive impression on me.  He began back pedaling. Too late. After about a five-second lesson in using the click wheel, I dismissed him.

The click wheel was intuitive to him because he’d been using it for months.  And I bet his three-year-old had watched him do it a few dozen times before she got her hands on the iPod. But there wasn’t a single sign in that store that told the newbie how the click wheel worked. I started watching those commercials with a keener eye, and not one of them showed people manipulating the click wheel.  Maybe I was an aberration for not figuring it out immediately.  Or an aberration for not already knowing someone who had one. But I didn't think I was an idiot for not getting it immediately, and I didn't really like being treated like one.

I bought an iPod that day, but not from the Apple Store.  I probably didn’t even thank the supercilious staffer for his brief and condescending help.  I left and went straight to Best Buy, which also sold iPods.  It took a while to find a harried staffer who could help me, but once I found him, he didn’t treat me like an idiot for asking a few basic questions about how the iPod worked. I bought my first iPod there and when I moved into my new house eleven years ago, I never got around to assembling the large and complicated stereo set. I had my iPod.

I also fell in love with the iPhone when it first came out.  But since I was getting along just fine with a dumb phone that I used only for emergencies, I didn’t see the need for an iPhone.  I merely coveted it for a long time.  Then came the difficult period when my Comcast Internet connection began to fail.  A series of increasingly inept Comcast cable technicians reduced me from intermittent outages to, eventually, a total blackout.  I was reduced to visiting friends to get a hit of Internet, or waiting in line to use the computers at the Reston library for half an hour at a time.

After a month of this, I said the hell with Comcast.  I arranged for Verizon FIOS to replace Comcast and got an iPhone, because I knew I could get my email and surf the net with it, and I could save my sanity until Verizon showed up ten days later for the installation.  The iPhone didn’t just get me through the  wait until Verizon.  It became an addiction. I web-surfed on it. I read books on it. I played games on it. I took photos with it.  I took notes at conferences with it.About the only thing I didn’t love about it was how my constant use of it—together with my nephews’ fondness for playing games on it--drained the battery so quickly. I spent considerable time and money finding the optimal external batteries for it.  But I loved it. To me, it was Seriously Cool.

And then iOS7 came along and reminded me that Apple basically didn’t give a damn what anyone else likes.  That Apple was going to do what it thought was cool and to hell with me and anyone else who’s unhappy.  Apple doesn't care that a large portion of its users had or are still having a seriously rocky transition, losing applications, data, and hours and hours of time. Apple doesn't care if iTunes has gone from a stable and reliable music database to a crap shoot that may or may not deign to let you play the music you bought and paid for. Apple doesn’t care that the animation technology it uses causes headaches, dizziness, and motion sickness to a significant number of people. Apple doesn’t care if anyone over 30 can’t easily read the spindly typeface it has chosen.  Apple doesn’t care if some of us can’t easily figure out its latest so-called intuitive interfaces.  Apple doesn’t care if some of us loathe its new graphics.  Apple doesn’t even want to throw us the small crumb of allowing us to change the bland blue, mustard yellow, and puke green to something we can stand.

I'm not ditching the iPhone just yet.  For one thing, I'm hoping that either Apple or third party developers will step in with fixes to some of the things I hate about iOS7.  For another, I have a pretty substantial investment of time and money in getting my iPhone set up to do everything I do on it. It's not completely broken.At least I hope not. And even if I eventually decide it's too broken to deal wih, I don't have the time right now to do the research to figure out what platform I might like better.

So I'm resisting the temptation to walk into the Apple Store and hurl my iPhone at the big Apple logo.

But I no longer love it quite so irrationally. It's a phone.Just a phone.

Apple used to have a slogan: “Think different.”  Apparently that’ s only allowed if your thinking is  different from, say, Microsoft or Google. If you disagree with Apple, that’s your problem.

Then again, after it gave up “Think different” Apple went to a new slogan: “Switch.”

An option I never before thought I'd consider.