Writing on the Screen

 I got into computers shortly before the turn of the century.

Wow, it feels a little odd to say "turn of the century" and mean the 21st Century, and not the 20th Century.  At least it feels odd for someone born in the middle of the century.

1996

That is when I got a job that required using a PC.  Before I went in for the job interview, I had sat in front of a Mac for about half an hour.  That I was able to get the job despite having no PC experience, says something about the other applicants.  There was a PC portion to the interview.

Be that as it may, it was later in 1996 when a friend built me my first PC out of his spare parts.  And yet, with very limited PC experience, I was able to get a job at Dell, doing Tech Support, in mid-1997.  I think it showed a lot more about how desperate Dell was than how good I was.  But I learned fast.

Now, 23 years later, I still work Tech Support at a State Agency.

More than 2 years ago, I wrote a review of the HP Elite X2.  That was a work PC, and before that I owned an HP iPAQ 214 PDA.  And actually, back during my Dell days I had a Dell Axim PDA.  I am not trying to give you a history of my computing devices, just the ones where I could write on the screen.

With all of these, as well as my Samsung Tab A 10.5, the experience of writing on a glass screen is not great.  I got used to it on my PDA, but I have never liked it at all on any tablet...until now.

I recently bought an Acer Switch 3.

I actually enjoy writing with this stylus on this screen.  I think that the difference is the tip on the stylus, but I cannot tell for sure.

The problem with most 3rd party styluses (styli?) is that they fall in to two categories, passive styli with soft rubber tips, and powered styli, with hard plastic tips.

The soft rubber tip is floppy, and that is its biggest problem.  There is generally some resistance, which is good, but the floppiness of the tip ruins the experience.  The powered stylus, is one that you charge via USB or you use 4A batteries.  The problem is usually that the hard plastic tip on the glass screen gives no resistance at all, so there is no feel.  It is hard to know how much or how little you are moving it through the stylus body.  It works, but not well.

The Acer Switch 3 is different.  There is resistance when you move the stylus across the screen, just like with a pen on paper.  It isn't perfect.  It isn't as nice as a good quality fountain pen when writing on good paper, but it is better than most.

The Acer Switch 3 has a dedicated stylus that came with the unit.  I did not have to pay extra for it.  Something I forgot to mention earlier was my Dell Venue 8 Pro.  It didn't come with a stylus, but I bought the Dell stylus intended for it, and it does not compare to the Acer.

Now, if I could only get a similar experience with my Samsung Tablet.

Blog Wednesday

On my calendar, I have a weekly appointment, every Wednesday from 6:00 to 7:00 PM.  It says Blog.  Its been there for years…in fact, it has been more than a decade, and it might be two decades.  I started this blog, and I wanted to come once a week and write something profound…or funny, or at least entertaining.  Based on the number of readers of the blog, I would have to say that I have failed in that last.

But, I am not really here to write about my blog.  I am here to write about that appointment.  When I check my calendar, I see it, and occasionally I think that I ought to try to keep that appointment, as I am actually doing today.  Well, I have to admit that I am rather late this Wednesday, it is almost 9pm as I write this.

Then again, at least I am here writing.  That appointment has largely been ignored since I placed on my calendar, and I definitely need to put it back a bit.  I now work till 5:30, and I pick up my wife at 6pm and were lucky if we are home by 6:30.

I have just been distracted by my wife, and a pussy cat.

So, good intentions and tradition be damned.  I think that I will move the appointment to 8pm and see if I can sit down and write a little more often.

Plus, I don't really need to write every Wednesday to post to this blog.  I have 9 blog posts sitting in the wings.  The problem is that they aren't finished…well, maybe one or two of them are, but some need a lot of work.

But today I wanted to write, and then move on.

I Have Lost my Voice

I have not done a great job with this blog, and I think I finally figured out why.

I have lost my voice.

Obviously…well, not obviously to my readers, but still obviously, I do not mean that literally.  My speaking voice is just fine.

25 years ago, I graduated from college, rather later than usual for getting a Bachelor’s degree, as I went to three different universities and in between #2 and #3, I spent about a decade working.  During my third set of school days I used to carry around paper notebooks and during breaks I would write in them on all sorts of topics.  I would call those topics philosophical in nature, but it was often about defining certain things, like intelligence.

I have also kept a journal for the last 43 years.  I have several bound volumes and the last decade or so is on computer.

I have done a lot of writing over the years, and yet I cannot seem to keep up with this blog.  I think that the problem is that I have too many distractions.  This ties in with the fact that I do not read as much as I used to.  I used to read between 50 and 75 books a year.  Some years ago, I set myself the goal of reading 100 books in a year and for three successive years I met that goal.  Lately, I have been lucky to top 25 books in a year.

I have games on my phone, games on my tablet, and games on my PC.  I have videos on my hard drive, Netflix, Amazon Prime, not to mention the length and breadth of the internet.  So, I have a vast array of things designed to help me avoid boredom, but it was that boredom that gave me time to think deeply, and then write.

One of the problems is that distraction does not really relieve boredom.  It just masks the boredom.  It delays the boredom.  Then the video ends, or you finish the game and the boredom rushes back in and fills the void.

The real question is what, if anything, I am going to do about it? 

I am not sure that I can eliminate the boredom with writing, but I think it might help, at least a little.

Wow, Almost a Month

I suppose that I could wait until next month and actually make it a month, but that isn't the point.  I have been neglectful of this blog.  Now, I could claim that I have been sick, and that is true, but again....well, it is sort of beside the point.  I haven't been so sick that I could not have taken a few minutes to post something.  I just haven't.  In fact, I have a number of things already written that would require little more than a quick rewrite before posting, but I just didn't.

Soon, I will have some thoughts on Android.  Recently, I had the opportunity to play with an Android phone for an extended period.  It is a little like about 18 months ago, when I got my first chance to play with Windows Phone 7.  I have an Android Phone, but at the moment, it isn't a phone, at least it isn't activated for service on a carrier.  In fact, it is my wife's old Android phone.  It was giving her problems, so she went out and got a more reliable one, and I have the old one to play with.  I will save my comments for another time.

I really have been sick, and I am getting really tired of it.  I spent most of a week coughing, and now my voice is gone, which makes it really hard to do your job when your job is answering phones.  Fortunately, I have some great people at my job and they covered for me for a couple of days.  And also fortunately, those couple of days led directly into a long weekend, when I hope my voice will recover.  And again fortunately, that will lead into the week when I am going out of town, and talking on the phone will not be required.  So maybe I'll survive.

I am also committed to getting back to my writing and getting both of my blogs updated on a more regular basis.

Kings of Colorado - a review

Kings of Colorado David E. Hilton 2011 Simon and Schuster First, I should admit that I am well acquainted with the author. We work at the same place, what one might call his ”day job” while waiting for his book to hit the bestseller list. Second, ignore the cover, this isn’t a western. Now, as someone whose general choice of reading material generally falls into a fairly well-defined genre, science fiction and fantasy, this is an important piece of information for me to pass along. Kings of Colorado is not a western, nor is it science fiction or fantasy. In fact, it is not something that I would normally have been attracted to, especially based on the book cover. But, “never judge a book by its cover” has rarely been more true than it is for Kings of Colorado. The story starts slowly with William Sheppard being laid off. This event isn’t really important to the story, but serves as the catalyst for William to record the events of his childhood. Back in the early 60s at the age of 13 Will Sheppard stabbed his father and was sentenced to two years at a Reformatory Ranch in Colorado. The author does an excellent job of creating a family situation where most of us might have reacted as the protagonist did. The father is abusive, not just of the son, but more importantly of the mother and it is the abuse of his beloved mother that pushes Will over the edge. Some might complain that the abusive father is an over-used plot element and they’d be right, but it works here, in part because it is not dwelled on overly long. We are quickly moved along through this dysfunctional family picture to the first crisis point and then Will begins his journey. A long bus ride from Chicago to the high mountains of Colorado ends at Swope Ranch, his home for the next two years. Swope Ranch uses the boys to break horses. Wild horses are captured and brought to the ranch where they are broken and then sold. There are several guards, one mean, one nice and the rest sort of in between. If this all sounds a bit formulaic, well…I could say it is, but it seems more formulaic as I write this review than it did while I was reading it. I suppose that I am saying that it works, and when the formula works then it isn’t a problem. The Ranch is no easy place. It may be called a Reformatory Ranch but there are few attempts at reform, though there is plenty of punishment. Fights are encouraged between the boys and some of the guards bet on them. Will develops a circle of friends and the story revolves these friends almost as much as Will himself. Will also finds a friend in the Ranch nurse who treats him after his first fight, and the series of injuries that mark his time at the Ranch. The climax of the story comes during a trip out from the ranch in search of some lost horses. Now, you have an idea about the story, but I will leave all the details for when you read it. This novel is violent. I would say this is the biggest reason why, despite a 13 year old protagonist, this is not a young adult novel. The violence is important to our understanding, both of how Will ends up at Swope, as well as how Swope affects him. Unfortunately, because of that violence, Kings is depressing at times. A few times I considered whether I really wanted to continue reading. Fortunately, the author has made Will a likeable enough character that I wanted to find out what happened to him. This points out one of the strengths of the novel, the characters. The author has created a believable and in a few cases likeable cast of characters. Yes, a few of them, especially a couple of the antagonists, are sort of stereotypically bad, but this works well, because the story is told exclusively by Will. We see everyone through his eyes. Those who torment him most are one dimensional to him, because he never gets to know them. Just as most of us never really get to know the people we don’t like. I found the story engaging and at times even compelling. The author has done a good job of keeping himself out of the story and letting Will come through as the storyteller. The story feels right. The characters aren’t forced in ways that feel unnatural. Without going into fanciful flights of prose, the author gives as details about the high mountains and horses that help the reader feel like they have actually seen, heard and even smelled Swope Ranch. After Will leaves Swope the novel moves along quickly giving us a brief glance at his life after Swope, until the day, decades later, when he finally feels compelled to write an account of his days at Swope Ranch. Will’s life after Swope is quite average. It was only after finishing the novel that it occurred to me that Will’s victory is more than just surviving Swope, it is managing to build and live a good, if average, life. Will has another moment of crisis after writing about Swope, but the depression that brings on that crisis seems more about being old and alone, his wife of many years having died a few years before, than it is about the tragic events at Swope. At that moment I felt greater sympathy for Will Sheppard than at any other time in book. After this crisis, the book ties up with a happy ending that would seem more out of place if it were happier. Now, that sounds odd to me as I write it, but it seems to hit the mark in its own way. I’d hate to give away the ending, so I won’t say too much about it, but Will returns to Colorado, and we get the sort of cathartic ending that the novel seems to need. Kings of Colorado is an impressive first novel. It is engaging and rewarding, but it isn’t a fun read. So, if you are in the market for something that is not a fluff read, check it out.

Writing

This week, I am taking the somewhat unusual step of actually writing my latest essay. Now, you will have to understand that I mean actually taking pen to paper.

As we hurtle forward thru the computer age, we do most of our “writing” at a keyboard. We don’t write, we type. Writing has come to mean composing, but there is an experience that we are missing and I can foresee penmanship as a lost art in the very near future. Even now, few can write legibly, even when they print.

My own history with writing goes back more than 45 years. In the fourth grade, I learned cursive along with the rest of my class. I won’t claim that I loved it, or was even particularly good at it, but I mastered it.

In High School I took Architectural Drawing and learned to print neatly and carefully between the lines on my house plans. I think it was here that I developed the skill of writing legibly. It has stuck with me.

In 1975 at the age of 18 I started keeping a journal. I won’t claim that every word was neatly written, but I did get lots of practice. I have filled many volumes with my scratching.

In 1984, I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and I even tried my hand at calligraphy. That is writing that takes a long time.

I have always preferred liquid ink. Long before they were popular, I rode my bicycle the four miles from Corte Madera to San Anselmo (in California) to buy the original Pentel Rollerball Pens, the Pentel Rolling Writer. Later I discovered fountain pens and that is what I am using to write this.

I have spent a lot of money on pens over the years, but found that one of my favorites is one of the cheapest, the Pilot Varsity Disposable Fountain Pen. I have several Parker Fountain Pens, following on from my first, which was a Parker.

I have probably spent an equal amount on books to write in. Now, Bookstores have whole sections devoted to journals, but through the 80s, I had to look long and hard for something suitable. I am writing this in a Moleskine and I found some excellent notebooks from Miquelrius. Now I seem to have more nicely bound books than I can fill.

The quality of the paper and pen make a big difference in the experience. Good writing paper will be smooth, but not slick. It must be rough enough to present some resistance to the pen, but not catch the nib and porous enough to hold the ink without letting it bleed through.

Pens are a very personal element. I have many pens that I like. Some have metal barrels and others are covered in rubber. Some have slim barrels and others stout. My favorites are Parker Pens, which have nice round nibs.

But, beyond the pens, the inks and the paper, there is the actual writing, the scratch of nib across the paper. When you take the time to form the letters carefully, your writing slows, and so must your thoughts. Whole lines of thought can come and go while you form one sentence correctly. The experience is so very different from flashing your thoughts through your fingertips onto a glowing screen.

Of course, you also don’t run out of ink, as happened while I was writing this.

For now, the writing of this essay has fulfilled my desire to write…though, maybe someone needs a letter…

A Disappointing Pair

The end of a good book often leaves me a little depressed. When I enjoy a book, I don’t really want it to end.

Recently, I finished a book…well, actually a set of three books and it felt more like liberation.

Then, within a few days I finished a computer game and…it felt much the same way.

I was actually both relieved and pleased to be finished with both and that was such an unusual experience that I felt the need to write about it. Plus, it makes an excellent opportunity to write a review of a popular game and an obscure book by a well-known Author.

Fallout 3 was a huge hit for Bethesda Softworks. For those who don’t know, in the game, the year is approximately 2270. 200 years before there was a nuclear holocaust, a war that devastated the planet. Your ancestors, or so you believe, hid in vaults to protect themselves from the radiation. After 200 gears of isolation you leave the vault and head out into the wasteland. I won’t give away more of the story in case you decide to play it.

My problem with Fallout 3 is that it is depressing. The game is well-crafted and well-written, but none of that can hide a depressing story. It doesn’t help that the game uses a rather muted color palette. In an attempt to be pithy, I would describe Fallout 3 as being gray, and I mean more than just the color, which to be honest is closer to sepia. There’s no green, no red except for blood, no bright colors at all.

A couple of times during the game I was tempted to quit, and having finished it, I have no desire to play anymore and no desire to get any of the downloadable content. Fallout: New Vegas looks a little better, but what does it say about a game if the sequel’s most appealing feature is that it doesn’t look as bad as the original?

I just cannot recommend it.

So, on to the books.

Many years ago, not long after it was published, I read C.D. Cheryl’s novel Rusalka. I had read several of her novels previously, most notably Downbelow Station and parts of the Chanur Saga. Rusalka, and the two novels that follow, Chernevog and Yvgenie, are based on Russian folklore. One review said they were based on Slavic Mythology, but I think folklore d better word than mythology, when applied to these stories. I enjoyed Rusalka and went on to buy Chernevog not long after. I didn’t like Chernevog as well as Rusalka, and so, while I still wanted Yvgenie, I never went back and bought a copy. In fact, I remember seeing it in hardback, but never saw a paperback copy.

And then it went out of print.

I spent over a decade watching Half-Price Books for a copy that never appeared. Finally, a few months ago I found a used copy of Yvgenie on Amazon and bought it. When my reading schedule cleared, I started again from the beginning.

Now, I read pretty fast. I have read over a hundred books some years and it usually takes no more than a couple of weeks to finish any book, usually it is measured in days, not weeks.

I didn’t like it as well the second time around. Rusalka went pretty fast, but during Chernevog I started to get bogged down. I finished it quickly enough, but when I jumped into Eveshka it seemed like I was stuck in mud. It took me forever to finish the third book.

Now, I think it entirely possible that Fallout 3 and the Russian Trilogy may have fed off each other. The books are often depressing and much of the stories seem to happen in a brown muddy rainstorm. It also doesn’t help that the books can be confusing at times as the author jumps back and forth between different viewpoints, and it gets worse as the series moves on.

In Rusalka, we jump back and forth between Sasha and Pyetr. In Chernevog she adds one move voice, Eveshka. In Yvgenie, the author just goes for broke and tells the story while swapping back and forth between the inner thoughts of all six characters in the novel.

It is just too much.

And I found the ending less than satisfying.

But, my dual ordeal is over. I’ve already moved on to another book and in just a couple of days I am more than a hundred pages in, and entranced with the story. So, I am happy to be out from under these two depressing stories and on to other things.

The Craft of Writing

Writing is a skill, but the word writing is a verb, an action. To write. One can dream about being a writer, but one must perform the action of writing to be a writer. All of us write. Sometimes we actually write letters, though it seems that advent of email is going to kill letters eventually. We write book reports in grade school. We write essays about what we did on our summer vacation. As we move up to higher grades, we begin to write papers. We could possibly call them research papers though that may be a bit of aggrandizement. We write essay answers on tests all the way up through college and generally by the end of our college years we have written at least one paper that deserves the research paper title.

But, there is more to writing. We blog, and we visit forums and though we may not think of it, we are honing our writing skills, or at least we are if we care about our writing. Maybe we take another step, and write fiction. More likely is that we get a job and do more writing. We write reports. We write emails and memos. Once again, most people don't really consider the craft of writing. It is just something that they do.

For a time, I earned my daily bread with my writing. I was doing email technical support for Dell, and then later graduated to working on the Dell Forums. Technical writing is a skill on its own, but I learned a few things that have helped me across all of my writing. These are two things to consider when writing.

First, you must consider your audience. When I was working on the Dell Forums, I was writing to the general public. I had to assume that my audience knew nothing about computers, except how to buy one from Dell. The problem is that some of those Dell customers are extremely knowledgeable about computers. I had to avoid any hint of condescension in my tone. I had to walk a line between giving the novice all the information he needed, and making the expert feel like I was talking down to him. It was also extremely important to say exactly what you needed to say, and no more. I got very good at stating the facts in a way that did not allow for alternate interpretations.

The second is voice. Voice in writing can be a little hard to explain, but it is easy to show what is meant by examples, though I am not sure that I have any handy, as I am writing this. I will see what I can do. Now the viewpoint taken in fiction has something to do with voice. When an author writes in first person, he writes as the character in the story, and he must fit the writing to the character, he must give the character a voice. One can hardly imagine the same story being told by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, even if it were the same story that involved both of them. Now, that may seem a strange example, but I hope that you see my point.

But voice can even carry over into non-fiction writing. Imagine writing a how-to manual. If any of you have ever read a …for Dummies book, then you know that even a dry subject had be handled in a witty and humorous manner, but for every subject handled this way as part of the …for Dummies series you can find a hundred dry and mostly boring texts.

Some may confuse voice with tone. This is understandable, and they are related. Voice can certainly convey tone, but voice is both less and more than tone. The tone may be conveyed through other means, and the voice can present more than just the tone. I am trying to think how to explain that better, or provide examples, and I am drawing a blank. I will just have to ask you to accept this…or at least accept that this is my opinion.

Because this writing has drawn to a close.

The Creative Process

Something my wife said started me thinking about creativity. I was thinking about the process of creativity and about why people can be very creative in one area and yet not another. For example, I think that my writing and my armoring (Red Dragon Armoury) show that I have creativity but yet I cannot seem to express that creativity in visual arts, like drawing and painting.

Back in college, my second try at college (it took three tries to get a degree), I was a commercial art major. It started off as a sleeping stone to architecture, which is what I had decided on in High School. I was very excited by what I saw produced by illustrators and that is what I wanted to be able to do, book covers, movie posters and especially album covers. This is lack in the days when vinyl was still king and I especially loved the glorious album cowers of Roger Dean.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t very good at it. I couldn’t translate what I saw or what I imagined onto the canvas. And more than just being unable, I was extremely frustrated by my lack of ability and therefore by the whole process of creating my art. Eventually, I gave it up.

My point about creativity is that it is a process, and a love of the finished product is not enough. You must love the process that leads to that product or you will never truly be successful in that creative endeavor.

I never really enjoyed the process of producing a painting or drawing enough to power through my lack of skill. I enjoy the process that ends in a finished piece of armor. I never really enjoyed the process that produced a piece of flat art. I never tried sculpture when I was at school and what I do now is partially metal sculpture.

Finally, I come to another of my creative endeavors, an endeavor that has been causing me some frustration of late, my writing. I enjoy writing but for a long time I struggled with trying to become a professional writer. When I look back at those days, more than 30 years ago, I think that I wanted to be a writer more than I wanted to write. I wanted the product more than process.

The only writing that I have done with any consistency is the journal that I have kept for more 35 years. It has been a constant companion and yet it has sat unused for long periods.

I don’t know if I will ever sell anything, but I have finally learned to love the process of writing…as long as I don’t push too hard. When I try to force myself to write I generally find that things go badly.

I'm Back

I have been keeping a journal since 1975. I have about a dozen journals filled with my writing up until 1996. That is when I first got a computer and started keeping my journal there. Though, to be honest, I have several bound journals that I started since then.

I have written thousands of pages that no one will ever read. I doubt that even my son will ever care to read all those words and why would anyone else want to. The chances that I will ever do anything to make future generations remember my name are slim to none.

That last sentence caused an epiphany of sorts.

“The chances that I will ever do anything to make future generations remember my name are slim to none.”

Is this the answer to my depression? I often feel that my life lacks meaning as much as it lacks purpose. Is part of the problem that I feel like my life doesn’t make a difference? That no one will remember me when I am gone? I certainly have reached the age where people start to consider their legacy. Is my problem that I don’t feel like I have one?

The more I sit here thinking about it, the more I think it might be.

Now, I add this blog to that body of work, and still I wonder if anyone will want to read it. Of course, with this blog I add the worry about whether or not anyone will want to read it now.

But, if I have any loyal readers, do not despair. I am not giving up on this blog anymore than I am giving up on my journal. So, I am back, and once again, I hope to post here a bit more often. Let me know if you ever read this.

I'm Back!

I had not really expected to take such a long hiatus, but such things happen. I have been going through another extended period of depression, and while I cannot say that it is ended, I have decided to actually do something about it, rather than simply waiting for it to end.

And, what I have decided to do it write.

It is my intention to finally try to act like a writer and see if anything comes of that.

Around the age of 22 or 23 I decided that it would be fun to write science fiction stories. I was still in college (for the second time) then and I never did really devote the necessary time to my goal. Yes, I did write a couple of stories, and I did send them off to Asimov's SF Magazine. I am rather proud of my short stack of rejection notices. I consider it proof that I did more than dream about it.

After three years (well almost) at Utah State, I moved to Texas. It was supposed to be a temporary move, but after nearly 28 years, I am still here. I continued to write, a bit haphazardly at best, but I did write, and I collected more rejection notices.

For long periods I did not write very much, but I did keep a journal, and I began writing essays in notebooks. I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and this gave me another outlet for my writing. I wrote articles and book reviews for our local newsletter. Once again, my natural lack of drive hindered me. I had several articles planned that were never written.

I went to work for Dell, and after a year answering the phones, I got a job answering technical support by email. This played very much into my abilities, as I have always been very good with being able to express myself clearing in the written word. While working at Dell, I learned the importance of voice. I learned how to aim what I wrote at my projected audience. Many tech support documents at Dell were written for technicians, and I found I had a knack for turning those into documents written for the general public. I went on from email to working on the Dell Forum. Here I learned how to word bad news so that it did not cause an explosion on the forum.

The final stage of my development as a writer (so far at least) came when I began to play Neverwinter Nights (NWN) on a Persistent World (PW). I began writing stories about my characters, and then moved on to actually writing the lore, the background myths and legends of the world. I wrote prayers and stories for the first PW that I played on, and then after moving on to a second PW, I was given the position of lead writer. I wrote lore, and more stories, and I edited what others wrote. I finally moved on to a third PW, where I was given the job of lead writer almost from the start. I continued to write stories for the PW and lore, but by now I had almost given up writing anything that was not related to the PW.

I still have that job, and I intend to keep writing lore and possibly even a story or two, but now I want to move forward with my own writing again, and this is the start of that. I have not said anything to anyone. I have not made promises to myself, or declarations about things changing now. I have done that far too often in the past and I had to repeat my mistakes. I do not know if my determination will hold, but I intend to try.

I think that my history has made me a pretty good writer, and now I want to see if I can push it even further.

And it starts here.