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By Tgreen, February 25, 2019 9:54 am

Big old wall of words coming at you to talk about writing, and planning, and doing both poorly, and also an update on the sad but inevitable fate of Happy Friday. Take a look, if you dare…

Arizona

Longtime readers — and you know who they are because they’re the ones who run in the other direction at the first sign of the phrase “longtime readers”; I mean, Carolyn’s read so many of these things I think she gets on a plane to another country any time I start a paragraph with the letter L just to be safe — may recall back in 2015 when I tracked my daily writing with a countdown from January 1 to December 31. When that ended, I still tried to keep up the daily schedule but missed a day sometime in January, then missed another day, and eventually lapsed back into my usual writing schedule of doing something when I felt like it or when I had a deadline.

Which is why when 2017 rolled around, I did the same thing. I wrote every day and did a little social media countdown to keep myself honest. And again, on December 31 I stopped, figuring I’d made my point. And maybe I did, because this time I didn’t stop the daily writing. Sure, some days it was revising old stuff instead of all new writing. And some days it was a few sentences or paragraphs. But other days it was a couple thousand words. The point is, I didn’t stop when the countdown stopped. I still haven’t stopped. I’ve done something writing-related every day since January 1, 2017. This had been good and bad.

It’s been good because, hey, it’s always good to get the words down on paper, or on the screen. But it’s been bad because it’s hard to stay focused every day. It’s hard to stay goal-oriented when some days you’re just too tired to put the words in any kind of order. It’s too easy to focus on whatever you’re working on at that moment without seeing how, or even if, it fits into some bigger plan. It gets easy to abandon any sense of a bigger plan because you can always say you’re working every day and therefore of course you’re being productive.

But over the last 2+ years, I realized that the daily work is worth a lot more if it’s directed at a specific goal. It doesn’t mean I’m any better at doing it that way, but at least I know when I’m doing something constructive and when I might just be spinning my wheels, and that’s a start.

My pattern for the last couple of years has been pretty consistent. I shoot for a story for The First Line every quarter, depending on what line they’re offering, though usually I take a shot no matter what the line is. Sometimes I just don’t end up with a complete story, and whatever I wrote sits unfinished in the archives unless and until I find some way to repurpose it. I also try to shoot for The Last Line and Tales from whatever industry they’re highlighting that year. This keeps me working on at least 6 short stories a year, and I usually find another couple of places to submit to, which helps to give me things to focus on.

I also do NaNoWriMo every year, which forces me to bang out 50K words in a month. I’ve written several awful books this way, and I’ve also written a couple of books that might be worth something if I put in the work. And that’s been the dilemma I’ve faced the last few years. Do I bail on the short stories and put in the time on one of these novels, or do I stick to the somewhat instant gratification of the short stories and hope that somehow I’ll squeeze in time for one of the novels someday? The last few years I’ve mostly been doing that second one, and it hasn’t really worked.

So when it came time to figure out the plan for 2019, I thought I’d put the short stories aside for a bit and focus on a novel. Last year I’d picked this space opera thing that was mostly a love letter to the Star Wars and Star Trek of my youth and that wasn’t completely awful. To fix it I’d need to do a lot of world building and to be honest I got lazy about it. Instead I moved to another book that was kind of a suburban noir. It also needed work, like it needed at least one new character added in there so that the ending made more sense, but that level of work seemed a little easier. So I picked that as my 2019 work.

Punch it, Chewy!

Then, while flying the red eye from Arizona in early January, I had an idea for a project. Four parts, spread out over the year. Four stories. All stand-alone and all taking place in Arizona. I sketched out a few ideas and went to work, because the first story had a February 1 deadline. I started a story, ran out of steam, started a second story, ran out of steam, figured out how the first story was supposed to go and went back to that, all while trying to live a life and do my day job.

It didn’t work. I was still standing up and punching as late as 11PM on January 31, but I just couldn’t make the deadline. So now I have to decide if I walk away and go back to my original plans for 2019, or if I take a crack at the next story anyway and see if I can make it work with a decent amount of time to dedicate to it. The cool thing about the idea, for me, was that the stories would be stand-alone, but when they were all finished, I’d add some common thread to the ones that didn’t sell and maybe try to self-publish a little novella. And that’s the thing that keeps me considering this idea at all after last month’s failure.

I’ve still given up on any other short story work for the year unless some amazing idea comes to me, because it’s past time to get serious with editing and revising one of these novels to try and sell. I’ve done some work on that suburban noir already, and that space opera thing never completely leaves my brain, so I’m gonna devote some time to that one as well. The goal is to have at least one of them more closely resembling an actual book by the end of 2019. There’s still a ton more that would have to be done after that, but it’s a huge first step I’ve never quite achieved before. Now I get to see if I can do it.

Of course, if the opportunity to write a reboot of happens to come up, all these plans get thrown out the window, so if you’ve got any casting ideas for 2019’s Sheriff Lobo, feel free to send them my way.

Hey there, where you goin’…

The problem, though, is my brain is like a magnet for questionable story ideas, and just last week something I wrote to someone in an email got me thinking, and now I have several pages of notes I’m writing to try and convince myself to write the damn thing, or to not write the damn thing. It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes. All of which is kind of a long way to say that planning is hard and almost never works. There’s a little free hard-earned wisdom from your Uncle T.

And since people have asked, I suppose I should give an update about the only writing of mine some of you folks care about. Happy Friday. People want to know if Happy Friday is ever coming back. And the answer is that I used to think it was, but since it’s been dead and gone since Trump’s 100th day, it seems obvious that Happy Friday is official done for. It had a good run but everything has to end sometime, and that last Top 100 List was as good a way as any to wrap things up. So yeah, Happy Friday is finished. More than wenty years, on and off, is nothing to sneeze at, but that’s enough. If I was ever gonna write a funny joke, I’m sure it would’ve happened already. So Rest In Peace, Happy Friday.

Which, of course, means it’ll be back at some point to cover the 2020 election season. I’m feeling pretty confident this election is the one that’s gonna finally break this country, and I would hate to miss out on that. So I just have to get some momentum on the fiction writing and then we’ll all get to see if I’ve got anything left in the tank to document the absolute fucking circus I expect 2020 to be.

2020 is coming…

T “this was way too many words to have to read on a Monday morning so I don’t blame all of you for never making it all the way down to here” green

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By Tgreen, April 27, 2016 11:11 pm

There came a day when a small web-based company of no particular note in a small city of no particular interest found itself on the brink of losing two of its biggest clients. The spark was gone, the work was bland, and the clients were cheap. It was a dangerous combination and the small company could not afford to lose both clients. It couldn’t afford to owe either one, really, but there was a secret contingency plan to lay off half the company and do some anonymous side work for one of the more reputable porn sites until better clients could be landed. The three execs who knew of this plan didn’t ever want to have to implement it, but each one of them had large mortgages and unhappy marriages to support and they were willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary in order to keep that money coming in.
One of the middle managers at the company, a harried man of 40 named Gil, took it upon himself to get an outside perspective. Since he didn’t know about the secret contingency plan he didn’t know that he was one of the lucky ones who would not be laid off. He also didn’t know that this would prove to be a mixed blessing because he was actually a paying customer of the reputable porn site in question and it would have taken no more than three days for this information to work its way through the now much smaller company. But without knowing any of this, he came to the office one day with a plan to fix things and a new consultant to potentially fix more problems in the future.
It soon became obvious that while his coworkers were happy to have the idea that solved the immediate client problem, none of them appreciated that Gil was now bringing in an outsider on a regular basis. Some of them didn’t want the competition and some of them were afraid the consultant would be able to take one look at them and see just his little they did anymore. And others just didn’t want to be bothered learning another name and sharing the office snacks and having another person whose weekend they now had to ask about. And so the first meeting with Lou the consultant went poorly. No ideas were shared and no weekends were laughed about and no plans were made to put together a Happy Hour to welcome the new guy.
Gil felt responsible for this problem, because he was, and so he set out to fix it. Since he’s fixed the original client problem, he thought maybe he was on a roll and it was probably best if he struck now while he was on a hot streak. He set out to gather his brain trust around him to come up with a plan on how to deal with Lou, realized he didn’t have a brain trust, and so he forced the people who reported to him to gather in a room late one afternoon to discuss the situation. Within minutes he learned that while the group had several different reasons for not liking Lou, the one thing they all agreed on was that Lou knew nothing about their business, and possibly knew nothing about any kind of business. Kevin, who’d taken on the role of ringleader at this meeting, kept calling him an idiot savant without the savant, and it only went downhill from there.
“Where did you even find this guy?” Kevin asked.
“I met him at a party,” Gil said. “We got to talking about work and I mentioned some of the problems we were having and he had some good ideas. So good that I asked if he’d be interested in a consulting gig. And he was.”
“You seriously offered him a job after meeting him at a party?” Kevin said.
“Yes.”
“That was a terrible idea.”
“Why?”
“No good has ever come from anyone you meet at a party.”
“I don’t agree,” Gil said.
“I met my wife at a party,” Martin said from his seat at the end of the table.
“There, see?” Gil said with an air of triumph.
“See what? He’s agreeing with me,” Kevin said.
They all looked down the table at Martin. “Who were you agreeing with?” Gil asked. “Me or him?”
“Him.”
“There, see?” Kevin said. “It’s unanimous. Get rid of him.”
“The two of you agreeing doesn’t count as unanimous,” Gil said.
“Then let’s take a vote.”
“No vote.”
“Oppressor.”
“I’m not oppressing anything. It doesn’t matter who wants to get rid of him. The contract is ironclad. If we fire him we still have to pay him everything.”
This was true. What Lou lacked in business acumen he made up for with his uncanny ability to negotiate a good contract. Besides guaranteeing his fee, plus a fat early termination penalty, his contract stipulated he was only required to come to the office once a week, he didn’t have to answer every email he received, and while he was expected to offer advice and solutions, he didn’t have to offer good advice or solutions, or say anything that was remotely helpful. It could be argued that by signing this contract the company was proving it deserved every hit it had taken recently, but Gil refused to consider that possibility.
“All I want you to do is talk to the guy when he’s here,” Gil said. “He offered me good advice at the party, so he’s not a moron. Maybe he’s just unmotivated. Maybe he just needs to loosen up and feel more comfortable with us.”
“Yes,” said Phil from his seat at the other end of the table.”
“See, Phil knows.”
“No, it’s not that;” Phil said as he held his phone up for all to see. “I knew that advice he gave you sounded familiar.”
“Let me guess, he got it off of one of those motivational poster sites,” Kevin said.
“No, not even close,” Phil said.
“See, give me some credit here,” Gil said.
“He got it off an episode of The Office,” Phil said. “I’ve got it queued up right here if you want to watch it.”
“We’re taking our business advice from episodes of The Office now?” Kevin said. “Is that ironic or pathetic or some new level of bad we’ve never seen before?”
“Was it at least a good episode?” Carol asked. She rarely spoke up at these meetings because she had a hard time masking her contempt for Gil’s management style. In truth, she was usually so quiet Gil would forget she was even present, and today he spun his head around in surprise at the sound of her voice.
“Trick question,” Phil said. “There are no good episodes of The Office.”
“That’s not true,” Carol said. “It was really good for a couple of years.”
“British version was way better,” Kevin said.
The debate continued for the better part of an hour, and only ended when Kevin noticed that it was time to go home. They were unable to agree on the quality of The Office or which version was better. They also realized that the debate about The Office had distracted them completely from the matter at hand, and left them with no strategy on how to handle Lou’s upcoming visit.
“How can I even talk to the guy now that I know his advice came from a TV show?” Gil asked. “You guys are gonna have to talk to him.”
“How can you not talk to him?” Kevin asked. “Will you just hide all day?”
“Maybe I should call out sick.
“If you call out sick I’m calling out sick too,” Phil said.
“How can you do that? You won’t even know if I did it until you come in to the office yourself,” Gil said. “You can’t call out sick once you’re already here.”
“I’ll just say I’ve got whatever you have.”
“Like an epidemic,” Kevin said.
“Don’t say epidemic,” Gil said. “Not after last time.
The last time the office thought there was an epidemic came the day after Karen from Accounting threw a Game of Thrones season finale party that ended in one case of alcohol poisoning, a half dozen sick calls, and a rumored pregnancy scare. Pictures from the first half of the party were featured on the company’s social media page. Pictures from the second half were almost universally deleted upon viewing. Since no one was willing to admit how far things had gotten out of hand, though, everyone claimed to have a virus and the HR department came within an hour of implementing the company’s pandemic plan. This plan involved a contact with a company in Mumbai that promised to seamlessly continue the company’s work with an expansive group of outsourced employees. Ironically, it was later acknowledged that had the pandemic plan actually been implemented, the company would have turned the largest quarterly profit in history. Thus there as an unspoken rule that no more than three employees could call out sick at the same time.
“I’m reserving the right to call out tomorrow,” Gil said. “So you bastards better show up. You too, Carol.”
“You can’t include her in the blanket bastard statement?” Kevin asked.
“I’m just playing it safe. I’m not sure where HR came down on that one,” Gil said. “I failed their last two quizzes so I feel like I’m on very thin ice with them. Best to behave myself.”
“But calling out sick to avoid your contractor is fine?”
“It’s a strategy.” Gil gathered his tablet and his notepad and stood. “I trust you guys to talk to Lou and get something out of him. Then, when I’ve recovered from my 24-hour flu, we can discuss it at length and figure out our next step.” Before anyone could say anything else, he hurried from the room. People could say what they wanted to about Gil, but he could leave a room faster than anyone else in the company when he was motivated.
The rest of them looked at each other, wondering who was going to call out sick tomorrow and help start the next epidemic scare.
“You think this guy watches The Walking Dead too?” Carol asked.
“Why?” Kevin asked.
“Maybe he could offer some advice from that show.”
“Okay, now we’ve got a plan,” Kevin said. “Good meeting, everybody.”

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By Tgreen, November 27, 2012 12:42 am

If you understand nothing else, understand how much I hate to quit. How much I hate to quit just about anything, really (though I’ll admit to enjoying it when I’ve quit a couple of jobs during my career, including probably one more than most of you realize…). It’s just not in my nature to quit easily, and I’ve fought some damn stupid fights for some really lost causes in my day. I don’t even regret most of them, because fighting’s better than quitting.
That said, there are some realities that even I won’t fight, and so it’s time to face the fact that this year, NaNoWriMo kicked my ass. Kicked it worse than the Patriots handing a beatdown to the Jets.
For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is simple — write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November, win nothing but the feeling of accomplishment at actually writing a book in 30 days. I’ve tried it several times and I’ve won more often than not. But not this year, no sir. This year I suffered a good old-fashioned ass whupping.
I knew it was coming too. Could see it real clear real early, but I had to try anyway. The storm threw me off pace at the start. Not because my house was damaged or anything — I was real lucky there — but because I took in some displaced house guests and, most importantly, I was stuck working from home for that first week. So much of my NaNoWriMo writing gets done during my daily commute and I didn’t have one of those for nearly a week. And when I finally did, those buses were too crowded to get much done.
I think by the end of Day 1, I was about 1,000 words off pace. Turns out that was the closest to being on schedule I was ever gonna get this month. I was still making a decent effort, though, until my trip to Disney. That’s what blew the whole plan out of the water, and if I had any sense in my head I would’ve figured it out by my second day in Florida. I didn’t figure it out, and instead still was making an effort when I got back. Even after barely writing 1,000 words that whole week, somehow I thought I could still pull this off.
So today, I quit. No NaNoWriMo book for me this year. The idea I was working on was halfway decent. It had some potential. I could’ve done something with it under better circumstances. Don’t believe me? Here’s the first paragraph that I came up with late on November 1:

I spoke to the doctor after the storm and he gave me the worst news I could’ve imagined. He told me I was fine. Perfectly healthy for a man of my age and station. Which meant I was gonna have to find another way out. You see, I couldn’t just leave. Couldn’t just quit. If I wanted out there was only one way to do it — feet first in a box. And the doctor’s report wasn’t cooperating.

This narrator was caught up in a bad real estate deal. Oddly enough, a couple of days in I decided it was the same real estate deal that was a major plot point of another NaNoWriMo book I wrote several years ago. That year I hit the word count but never got to the ending. Maybe this real estate plot point is cursed and I should stop trying to use it. Maybe some day I’ll crack the code and end up with two semi-connected novels to sell. You just can never tell, which is why I do any of this to begin with. And since after a few pages I dragged in a character from last year’s winning NaNoWroMo novel, I could end up with 3 books. Or not.
As lousy as it feels to quit, it’s a little easier this time because I’ve already got a December deadline for something I think I can sell, and selling’s better than fighting’s better than quitting. Plus, I’ve got 2 other plans in the pipeline that might get me 2 more sales in the first half of 2013. I wouldn’t say no to either one.
I’m not used to quitting, so I’m not quite sure how to end this. Maybe with the last couple of paragraphs before I pulled the plug. In the end I kind of want to know what happens to my main character, so maybe I won’t leave him here. I hope not, anyway. I hate walking away from something like this, a mere 12,752 words into a 50,000 word story:

Jim crossed the room with careful steps. His head swiveled as he tried to see everything at once as he approached the stairway. He peered up into the blackness and frowned. Then he rapped the flashlight against the wooden bannister. The hollow metal-on-wood sound rang out.
“Anybody here?” he called. “Anybody need help?” He banged the flashlight twice more. “Anybody here who doesn’t belong?”
“You think that will work?”
“Might trick one of the dumber ones,” Jim said with a shrug. “Wait here. I’ll check upstairs.”
“No, this is my thing. I’ll go with you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Jim aimed the flashlight beam up the stairs. We could see nothing but dirty carpet and a blank wall at the top. I remembered a large framed painting up there, but it was gone now. Jim started up with slow, careful steps and I followed. The steps were slippery so I grabbed the bannister for support.

And that’s all there is. There ain’t no more. To be honest, I’ve got no idea who’s up those stairs. I’d like to find out, but that’s not gonna happen this month. November kicked my ass. Let’s see if I’ve got a comeback in me for December. Like the song says…

There ain’t no shame
In just giving up and walking away
Walking away
In just giving up
In just giving up
And walking away

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By Tgreen, October 19, 2012 8:55 am

Writing experiment time! No, I haven’t hired a pack of monkeys to read my writing, mostly because I’ve seen every Planet of the Apes movie and so the last thing I’d ever want to do is piss off a pack of monkeys. No, this experiment is in response to that storyish excerpt I posted earlier this week. On that one I got busted by coworkers both current and former for writing something that sure as hell seemed like it was, at the very least, strongly influenced by a certain employer of ours.

For now if I decide to write any more office-based stuff, I’ll do it the way I always have — I’ll run it through a filter of nearly a quarter century of office life. That way if you see something familiar, you can think you know what it’s based on or you can wonder if that same insanely stupid shit you lived through really also happened somewhere else. Trust me, most times it’s that second one. So if all this rambling hasn’t scared you off, I’ll have my assistant dim the lights and we’ll see just how much of a Frankenstein’s monster we’re dealing with here…

Ben scrolled through the endless list of emails in his inbox, wondering if he was ever going to figure out how to prioritize this stuff. Most of it was too new to him, so it all looked the same. Every one of these emails could’ve been equally worthless or equally important and so far he had no way of knowing the difference. The only thing Yank had told him about it was to ignore any email marked Urgent.
“Everyone uses that in every email, so the word has no meaning anymore,” Yank had said. “Ignore it enough times and maybe people will learn their lesson.”
Yank had a long list of lessons be wanted people to learn, and Ben was so far unable to figure out that list either.
Ben turned away from his emails to give his eyes a break and he noticed Yank walking toward his desk at a fast pace while looking over at the far end of the office where the conference rooms were located. He didn’t actually look in Ben’s direction until he dropped into the nearest empty chair.
“Hey, Ohio, you know all that good advice I’ve been giving you?” he asked.
“No,” Ben said.
“Well, I’m about to give you some of the most important advice I could ever pass along.”
“And what’s that?”
“Run like hell right now,” Yank said. “Run and don’t look back. See you tomorrow.”
“What? Why?”
“There’s no time. Just get the hell out of here before it’s too late.” Yank jumped from the chair, turned his head to survey the whole office, and then started backing away. He got about three steps when the familiar voice of their tech manager called out from behind them.
“Yank, got a second?”
Yank stopped backing away and said something Ben couldn’t hear that was probably profanity of some sort.
“I’ve got about one second, Kevin. What’s up?”
Kevin nodded at Ben and slouched against a nearby pillar. “You work on that theme park job?”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t ask me which theme park job.”
“Because I haven’t worked on any theme park jobs, so by definition I haven’t worked on whatever job you’re talking about.”
“This was one of Eric’s projects,” Kevin said.
“Eric who quit Eric?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can’t help you, Kevin. He didn’t let me work on his stuff.”
“You refused every request to help him out.”
“What can I say, we had a perfect working relationship,” Yank said. “I miss that guy already. You shouldn’t have let him go.”
“You were at a meeting for this one,” Kevin said. “I know you were.”
Yank cocked his head and appeared to be staring past Kevin as he considered this. Then he frowned.
“Oh, that meeting. I was only at that meeting because there were free sandwiches. I didn’t actually pay attention to anything.”
“Still puts you ahead of anyone else left here tonight,” Kevin said.
“Once again my love of a good sandwich comes back and screws me. Ohio, write that down.”
“Just duck your head in the conference room. See if you can help,” Kevin said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Site’s broken.”
“Which page?”
“All of them.”
“Of course all of them. Why do I even ask? What about Ohio here?”
“What about him? Ben, did you work on this site?”
“He spearheaded it,” Yank said before Ben could say anything.
“We started this site six months before we hired him,” Kevin said. “But an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt. Ben, do you mind sticking around?”
“No problem.” Ben left his chair and followed Yank across the office
“You just totally sold me out,” he said.
“Maybe that’ll teach you a lesson,” Yank said. “Run when I say run. At least you got asked.”
“Yeah, but it felt like one of those requests you can only say yes to.”
“Look at that, Ohio, you’re learning a new lesson every day.”
There were only two men seated in the conference room. Nate, their lead programmer, and Barney, the guy who owned the place. Ben barely knew either of them, but Barney scared the hell out of him. Not because he was some kind of imposing presence — Ben towered at least half a foot taller than him — but because Ben was not capable of relaxing around anyone who could, in theory, fire him on a whim. He appeared to be a perfectly pleasant man, but Ben steered clear just the same.
Yank pushed the glass doors open and looked at the website displayed on the big screen on the wall.
“All I wanna know is, who broke it?” he asked as he took a seat at the end of the table. Ben circled around and sat to his right.
Yank squinted up at the screen. “This thing looks fine. What’s the problem?”
“You know the name of the park, right?” Nate asked.
“Yep.”
“What’s the website say?”
After a moment’s pause, Yank’s eyes snapped open. “Well now, isn’t that interesting?”
“So interesting I’m screaming right now,” Barney said. “You can’t hear because I’m screaming in my head, but trust me. Screaming at the top of imaginary lungs.”
“Have we ever put up a website with the wrong company name on it, or is this virgin territory for us?” Yank asked.
“I think this is new,” Nate said.
“Then this is a proud moment,” Yank said. “Ohio, when you consider all of the many ways this company has fucked up over the years, I hope you can appreciate what an honor it is to be here when we’ve discovered a brand new way to fuck up. Anyone wanna pose for a picture to capture the moment?”
“Yank, that’s enough,” Barney said. “There’s problems on every page. Wrong artwork, updates that are missing. Who knows what else. We need to go through the whole thing and fix it all.”
“What about Eric’s replacement?” Yank asked. “She seemed like a nice woman. Just the kind of person you’d expect to jump at the chance to help out even if it wasn’t, oh, I don’t know, her fucking job. Where the hell is she right now?”
Nate averted his eyes and Barney shook his head. “She actually quit this morning,” he said.
“How did that happen?”
“She said she couldn’t deal with the late hours, so she walked.”
“Jesus,” Yank said. “She wasn’t here two weeks and she quit? We really need to do something about people like that. If they’re smart enough to quit after two weeks, we should immediately promote them to management, because they’re obviously smarter than the rest of us and probably know things.”
Ben didn’t like the way the vein on Barney’s left temple was pulsing. He wondered if Yank’s strategy was to get the boss to stroke out right here at the table. Then he remembered that Yank and strategy were two words not very well acquainted.
“Yank, seriously, shut up,” Barney said. “I want the next words out of your mouth to be something productive. If they’re not, you can go home and you can stay there until I tell you to come back in. Clear?”
Yank stared at Barney for a long moment, and Ben felt his stomach roll over. He didn’t want Yank to say anything because he was sure these next words would blow everything up. Then Yank turned to look up at the big screen, and he took this in for an uncomfortable minute. He looked back at Barney with a frown.
“I don’t know a goddamn thing about how this site is supposed to look,” he said. “I’m not learning in the next five minutes either. So what we’ll need is printouts of what we’ve got and printouts of everything we were told to do. I’ll compare ’em and I’ll tell Nate here what he has to fix. He’ll make the fixes and in the morning you’ll have something to test.”
“I can get you those screen shots,” Barney said as he rose from his chair. “You need anything else?”
“Ohio here is gonna need a snack in a little while,” Yank said. “He’s gonna be up past his bedtime and he gets cranky if he hasn’t had something to eat.”
Barney shook his head as he left the room.
“He’s not gonna be here the whole night, is he?” Yank asked.
Nate shrugged. “He told me he’d do whatever we need him to do.”
“We fucking need him to go home is what we need him to do. Does he honestly think he’s the lynchpin in this plan?”
“I told him we can handle this,” Nate said. “I don’t know if he’ll listen.”
“You told him too early,” Yank said. “There wasn’t a plan yet.”
“Now that the plan came from you, you think he’s just going to walk out of here?”
“You can’t tell him you can handle something before you can tell him how you’re gonna do it,” Yank said. “You know he gets paranoid. You’ve gotta back your bullshit up or you never get rid of him. Rookie mistake, Nate.”
Nate shrugged.
“Speaking of which, any idea how this got so fucked up?”
“Nope. Usual reasons, probably. It’s like nobody was in charge of the site since Eric left,” Nate said. “This is what happens when nobody’s in charge.”
“Dirty little secret of this place, Ohio, is this is also what happens when somebody’s in charge. Don’t be the somebody that fucks up this bad.”
Ben reached across the table to snag one of the sets of stapled printouts. It was a list of the errors on the site. It was nearly ten pages long. Yank didn’t look at one but he gestured toward the pile.
“I’ve said it before, this is what happens when we hire people who can’t write and people who can’t read and let them work together,” he said. “No one wants to hear that.”
“Charlie was the programmer on this,” Nate said.
“I don’t care. Didn’t Charlie spell his name wrong in his email signature and not notice for three weeks? He’s your example?”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Nate said. “I just wanna fix this and maybe get home while it’s still today.”
“That’s another problem,” Yank said. “No one ever wants to argue about this. Ohio, one of these days we’ll learn our lesson here. Maybe one of us will even be around to see it.”

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By Tgreen, October 15, 2012 7:04 pm

NaNoWriMo’s coming up in a couple of weeks. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing a novel in a month, besides the fact that it’s a terrible idea to write a novel in a month, it’s that to survive National Novel Writing Month, you need to be a little bit crazy. But just a little bit. Start November too sane and you quit in four days. Start it too crazy and by December 1 you’re proudly mailing your 50,000-word manifesto to the authorities and before you know it you’re on the no-fly list. And so once mid-October rolls around I start getting my mind ready to be just a little bit crazy.

So here’s a little bit of nothing that I’m hoping is helping to fine-tune some crazy into my brain. Again, it was written on the bus and in a meeting, so have mercy. Maybe you’ll like it, and maybe you won’t…

“Okay, Ohio, it might be time for Plan B,” Yank said. He paged through the short stack of papers on the table and then dropped them with a dull thump in front of him. “Yeah, definitely Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?” Ben asked.
“The thing you do when Plan A doesn’t work out, obviously,” Yank said.
“I don’t think I have one,” Ben said.
“How can you not have a Plan B?”
“I didn’t think it would be necessary.”
“Plan B is always necessary,” Yank said. “Nothing stays good forever. In fact, the average shelf life of something good is about six days. Six days, Ohio. How can you walk through life without a Plan B when at any given moment you’re less than a week away from everything going to hell?”
“If that’s the case, then I’m even more screwed than I thought,” Ben said.
“How do you figure?”
“I don’t think I have a Plan A either.”
“Funny thing about life, Ohio. If you don’t choose a Plan A, one will be chosen for you,” Yank said. “Plan A never lasts, anyway. Plan B is what gets you where you’re going.”
“So you actually have a Plan B?”
“Of course I do.”
“Even though I haven’t seen any evidence that you’re capable of making any other kind of plan, you have a Plan B?”
“Exactly. Why waste my time on any other kind of plan when Plan B is the only one that counts?”
“Then what is it?” Ben asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Yank said. “But rest assured it involves at least one border crossing, a bag of unmarked bills, a case of good tequila and a tight red dress.”
“You’re not wearing the red dress in this plan, right?”
“God, I hope not,” Yank said.
Another small group walked past the conference room, deep in an animated discussion. Ben didn’t recognize any of them, and he was pretty sure Yank didn’t either. When Yank recognized someone he usually shared a nasty comment, so his silence spoke volumes. Ben looked down to the other end of the table where Scott sat engrossed in his smartphone. Ben had no idea if he’d even noticed how long they’d been left waiting.
“Does it always work like this?” Ben asked. “Do you always have to sit around just waiting for him to show up?”
“Not all the time, but mostly,” Yank said. “Sometimes he’s got better stuff to do in the afternoon so he makes sure he’s on time for us so he can get us out of the way.”
“Kind of insulting, isn’t it?”
“What’ve you heard about this guy, Ohio?”
“That he’s an idiot,” Ben said.
“Hurtful.”
“You’re the one who told me he’s an idiot.”
“Still hurtful,” Yank said. “But it’s true, this client is an idiot. I’m sure he means well, but he can’t help it, he’s an idiot. Drove everyone who ever had to work with him crazy. I’m like the fourth or fifth person in charge of this job. He ran all the others off.”
“They have problems with this guy and they put you in charge of him?” Ben asked.
“Hard to believe, huh? But that’s what they did. I think they did it because they wanted me to blow up the relationship so he’d drop us. They got sick of him but they can’t drop him, so they put me here to force the issue.”
“There’s no way that happened,” Scott said without looking up from his phone.
“You can’t prove I’m wrong,” Yank said.
“You can’t prove you’re right. Your theory would require everyone we work for to have no business sense whatsoever.”
“I thought you said I can’t prove I’m right,” Yank said. “You just did it for me.”
“I’ll admit, I can’t think of a single reason why they’d put you in front of a client,” Scott said. “But there’s no way they did it so you could drive him off.”
“Yeah, that makes no sense,” Ben said. He probably wouldn’t have said anything if it were just him and Yank here, but Scott’s presence and comment gave Ben some cover.
“Oh, please, it’s passive/aggressive leadership at its best, which is something we specialize in,” Yank said. “If I piss off the client, he drops us and we’ve broken free of a delusional gasbag without getting our hands dirty. We love not getting our hands dirty. And as a bonus, since it’s now officially my fault we lost this guy, I’ve got a huge target on my back if someone decides they need to cut some salary from somewhere.
“But for some reason me and this idiot get along, so not only do I not kill the relationship, I get him to throw three more projects our way. Which means I’ve now done the exact opposite of what my bosses wanted me to do, but they can’t touch me because of all the money I brought in.”
“Wow, I knew you lived in a fantasy world, Yank, but I never realized just how far from reality it is,” Scott said, his thumbs now typing something on his phone. “You could practically ride a unicorn to work at this rate.”
“At least look in my direction if you’re gonna insult me like that,” Yank said. “What’s so damn interesting on that phone?”
“Just Facebook.”
“Come on, I know for a fact you don’t have enough friends to spend that much time on Facebook.”
“You’d be surprised,” Scott said.
“I’d be surprised if this idiot showed before noon.”
“If he’s this much of an idiot, why didn’t you just kill the relationship?” Ben asked.
“Ohio, this guy is an idiot, but he’s an idiot with money, which makes him the best kind of idiot you can find,” Yank said. “I want to keep him around in case one of my plans ever makes it to the financing phase.”
“What plans?” Ben asked.
“Much as I love working for the mouth-breathers we work for, I’m not staying here forever. I’m always on the lookout for something better. So when I’m ready to spin off my own company or franchise or religion, I might need to grab for a piece of this idiot’s checkbook.”
“Religion? You can’t start your own religion,” Scott said.
“Sure you can. You need the right business plan and infrastructure and enough backers with deep pockets, but it can be done.”
“And maybe some theology for your members to believe in,” Scott said.
“Sure, I guess. After the money, of course.”
“Of course.”
“This isn’t your Plan B, is it?” Ben asked.
“Of course not,” Yank replied. “It’s way down there on the list. Like Plan N or O or one of those other letters you run together when you say the alphabet fast. I’ve got lots of details to figure out before I can seriously consider it.”
“At least you’re putting the right amount of thought into it,” Scott said. “I hope work isn’t getting in the way.”
“I will say, however, that Plan B and my religion may end up having tequila in common,” Yank said, ignoring Scott.
“Now you’re talking,” Scott said, ignoring the fact that he was being ignored.
Ben looked past Yank and saw that the hallway was empty. Almost creepy empty, like the kind of empty that exists right before the zombies show up. He realized it was time to start shuffling his calendar around. They weren’t leaving this room any time soon.
“I’ll tell you, the biggest problem I have with the whole religion plan is that I don’t actually believe in religion. Any religion,” Yank said. “So I’m thinking that the instant I start this religion, I’ll stop believing it.”
“Tell you what, Yank, I’m way out ahead of you on that,” Scott said.
“Heretic.” Yank turned to face Ben. “I’ll be in the market for a few good disciples, Ohio. Keep that in mind.”
“Do disciples get health benefits?”
“Do not encourage him, Ben,” Scott said. “He’ll never stop if you do.”
“Ye of little faith,” Yank said. “If you stopped to consider the sheer amount of money out there waiting to be dumped into a new religion, you wouldn’t be talking like this. You’d be begging to get in on the ground floor.”
“The Book of Yank, chapter 3, verse 14,” Scott said.
“I’ll clean it up for the bible,” Yank said. “Ohio, write that down. And maybe start transcribing my other bits of wisdom. You never know how much stuff you’ll need to fill the holy books.”
“As soon as I hear some wisdom, I promise I’ll write it down,” Ben said.
“Et tu, Ohio? Keep it up and I’ll make you run this meeting.”
“That’s cruel and unusual punishment,” Scott said. “Maybe you are ready to start a religion.”
“I learned from nuns,” Yank said. “I know how to go hard core.”

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By Tgreen, March 12, 2011 2:13 am

Yes, I know I should’ve posted this 2 weeks ago, but I was busy. So busy that I couldn’t take 5 minutes to slap together a blog post? Perhaps. So let’s not waste another moment. Here’s the deal. I’ve got a story, Cog in the Spring 2011 issue of The First Line. Until March 13, you can get a free PDF download of the issue. So click here and look for the Free Issue link. You’ll get a free PDF that has my story and several other fine pieces of fiction. And if you get there after March 13, you can buy the PDF, or a hard copy of the issue, and not only will you be entertained, but you’ll be giving some nice folks a couple of bucks. You can’t lose.

And to give you an idea of what you’re getting into, here are the first 2 paragraphs of my story:

Sam was a loyal employee. This wasn’t saying too much in an age when a loyal employee was mostly one who didn’t steal office supplies or badmouth the company on Twitter every other day. Still, such employees were getting harder to find in an age when a loyal employer was one who didn’t lay off half the staff every other month. Sam realized that for many it was all a game now, with some of his coworkers trying to screw the company before the company screwed them, but Sam didn’t play that game.

For one thing, he didn’t have time. His role as lowly cog in the great Transglobal Endeavours machine kept him busy for nearly 50 hours a week. He constantly referred to himself as a lowly cog, but in truth he’d worked at Transglobal Endeavours just shy of 5 years now and had officially figured out a long time ago that his entire division, and possibly the entire company, was made up of nothing but lowly cogs. He often wondered if it was appropriate to refer to anyone as lowly if everyone was lowly. He didn’t know what he was, really, and so he said cog because it was somehow comforting.

Wanna see the rest? Head on over to The First Line and get yourself some short stories. Thanks for stopping by.

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By Tgreen, February 13, 2011 12:39 am

Earlier this week I got this scene stuck in my head. I don’t know where it came from or why it hung around so long, but it kept playing over and over in my head until it became way more distracting than it’s worth. That happens every now that then. Lots of times a scene will show up from out of nowhere, with no warning, and after a little while if I ignore it, it goes away. But then there are the rare cases when the scene won’t go away no matter how hard I ignore it. Those scenes dig in and force me to pay attention to them. The only thing to do when that happens is to type the scene out and move on.

This particular scene really has nothing to do with anything I’m trying to work on now. Doesn’t really have anything to do with anything I was thinking of working on in the future. It just showed up and didn’t want to leave. So I typed it up. And since Molly asked so nicely, I’m gonna post it here. Maybe it’ll make some sense to somebody. It’s first draft writing, banged out in one late night and one evening. Not the kind of thing I’d normally share with the world. But I don’t know that I’ll ever use it for anything, so I might as well share…

George climbed the stairs on the side of the building and found the room in the back, overlooking the parking lot. The door was open. He couldn’t see anything inside from out here on the narrow concrete walkway, but he could hear Glen Campbell wailing about the pitfalls of being a Rhinestone Cowboy from a tinny radio speaker somewhere inside. He looked this way and that, peeked down at the parking lot one last time to make sure he was alone, and entered the dark room.

There were two beds. The one closer to the door was still made and the top blanket looked relatively clean and pressed for a motel of this caliber. The farther bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets, with an open suitcase balanced at the foot and a lanky man in boxers and a t-shirt sprawled across the rest of it. His name was Kyle and he looked up at George and lifted a hand in a lazy greeting. His other hand clutched a can of beer that was a close relative to the short lineup of empties on the dresser.

“Aloha,” he said before taking a drink.

“Why’s the door open?”

“Air’s busted. Gets too hot with the door closed.”

“Why don’t you call downstairs to get it fixed?”

“Why don’t you stop assuming I didn’t think of that already? They’re sending someone up.”

George shrugged off the backpack he’d been wearing and dropped it in the center of the made bed. “There any more of those?” he asked, gesturing toward the beer can in hand.

“In the bag,” came the reply, along with a nod at the small round table pressed hard up to the dresser. It held a paper bag with the top folded over, plus a Styrofoam container, a pile of napkins, and a couple of squat cardboard cups with lids on them.

“There’s ribs in that box,” Kyle said. “You can have ‘em if you want. They’re too spicy for me.”

“Where they from?”

“That place down the road. The one that’s open all night?”

George flipped open the top of the Styrofoam container and snatched up a rib, thick and meaty and glistening with a thick red sauce. He took a bite and the heat of a thousand peppers seared his tongue and nearly tore his head off his body. The heat flared, then subsided into a low, nagging pain. Whoever had created this sauce was a genius.

“Good stuff,” George said as he used his free hand to pull a beer from the paper bag.

“I like food that’s a little spicy,” Kyle said. “But usually I order something hot and you can barely taste anything. So I ordered the super hot or whatever the hell they call it. And I think that shit melted my fillings.”

“Look at you, outthought by a pit boss in some two-bit fast food joint.” George gnawed the rest of the meat from the bone and then deposited the bone in the small trashcan by the door. He snagged another rib before he took a seat on the edge of the empty bed.

“Where’s the rest of them?” he asked.

“Room on the other side of the place,” Kyle said. “They’re too loud.”

George nodded as he popped the top of his beer can. He gulped the contents of the can. It was still cold, but well on its way to lukewarm. George wouldn’t be able to drink another if he waited too much longer. He finished his first beer and second rib in a few moments, then mashed paper napkins between his sodden fingers to clean them. Once all remnants of the barbecue sauce were gone, he grabbed a second can and returned to his perch on the bed.

“You bring it?” he asked.

In response, Kyle sat up, reached into his open suitcase, and retrieved a small packet wrapped in a dirty towel. He tossed it across the gap between the two beds. It landed beside George with a thud. George drained half of his second can before he hefted the packet, testing its weight. It was heavy and solid, and the towel it was wrapped in smelled of old dust and mildew. He unfolded it, flipped it over and unfolded it again to reveal a dark hunk of metal. A revolver, .38 by the looks of it. The metal was dull and lifeless. George slipped a hand underneath it and lifted it from its nest in the towel.

“What the hell is this?”

“My uncle’s service revolver,” Kyle said, his tone somewhat defensive. “He was a cop once.”

“Once in the 1800s?”

“You asked for a gun. That’s the only one I could find.”

George turned his hand to view the weapon from every angle. It looked exactly like something that had been cared for once, long ago, then forgotten and neglected for more years than anyone cared to remember. It would have to do.

He flipped it to the side and snapped it open. The cylinder popped out and he eyed it to confirm his first impression that there were no bullets.

“You bring any ammo?”

“Couldn’t find any,” Kyle said. “We’re gonna have to buy some.”

“Gonna have to buy a kit to clean this fucking thing too,” George said. “Where’d you find it?”

“In the attic, in some old boxes. I didn’t even know it was there. Good thing I found it now, before my kid went poking around up in there.”

“You have a kid? Since when?”

“Since always. He just turned five last month.”

“Shit, I don’t think I knew that,” George said. He turned the gun around and looked up the barrel. “No worries about your kid hurting himself with this thing. Even if he could find a bullet for it, it’s so damn dirty it’s not gonna shoot anything. He’d be in more danger if he dropped it on his foot.”

He thought he saw something clogging the barrel, so he held the gun over the towel, pointed it downward, and tapped against the side. After three taps, some dark flakes fell out, along with the tiny, dried and shriveled body of a brown spider. George barked a laugh.

“Was your uncle Barney Fife or something? Did he ever use this thing?”

“My uncle’s dead twenty years,” Kyle said. “Gun’s probably been in that box at least twenty-five.”

“After I clean it we’re gonna have to shoot it. You know anyplace we can do that?”

“I thought we were bringing the gun for show,” Kyle said. “You never said we were gonna use it.”

“Probably we won’t. But if you’re bringing a gun, you’ve gotta be ready to use it.”

“And you’re ready to use it?”

“Right now I think I’m more ready than the gun is.”

“You ever shoot a gun before?” Kyle asked.

“Plenty of times. More rifles than handguns, to be honest. But I’ve shot guns like this before, over the years.”

“Ever shoot one at somebody?”

George leveled him a look that said there would be no forthcoming answer to that question.

“You know a place we can shoot this thing?” he asked again.

“Down by the river, probably,” Kyle said. “Go down there right after sundown and it’s not real crowded. Quiet too, but not so quiet a couple of shots would send anyone running.”

“Sounds good enough.” George rewrapped the gun, along with the spider’s corpse, and slipped the packet into the drawer of the nightstand between the beds. “I wanna meet the others. Introduce me.”

“They’re in room 211, around the front of the building,” Kyle said. “Introduce yourself. Don’t be shy.”

George was going to argue, but he was already tired of Kyle’s voice. He drained the second beer and added the empty can to the collection. Without another word he walked out of the room.

There were seven doors along this side of the building, then four more after George turned right, and then after three more doors following another right, he found the door to room 211. It was closed, like every other door except for Kyle’s. He could hear the TV from inside. He knocked.

A short, dark man with longish hair and a full beard cracked the door and peered out at George. He said nothing, and based on the small slice of his face visible through the space between door and frame, it looked unlikely that he was interested in speaking.

“¿Hablas Inglés?” George said.

A small shake of the head. “¿Habla usted español?”

George did, a little, but for now was going to play dumb. “No,” he said, with an emphatic headshake. A standoff, he thought. Mexican. How appropriate. He smiled.

The door was pulled open from inside and another man was revealed behind the first one. He was older, the hair at his temples white, his skin dark and wrinkled from years of exposure to the elements. His dark eyes narrowed and he looked George up and down.

“You’re el Blanco?” he said.

“I guess so,” George said. “Kyle’s friend.”

The man waved him into the room and shut the door behind him. The room looked much like the one he’d left Kyle in, but there were four other men lounging on the beds or on the floor or basically anywhere a body could sit. Any space not filled by a body was covered in grocery bags, some stuffed with groceries and some already doing duty as garbage bags. The room smelled of sweat and beer and junk food. And George thought he smelled the faint aroma of marijuana too. This was how he imagined a dorm room might smell.

The man who answered the door pushed his way back to a spot in the edge of the bed and joined his compatriots in watching the TV. Wresting was on, from Mexico, and the picture was so fuzzy and static-filled that George couldn’t imagine how they could follow the action. That was their problem. They were content to ignore him for now and he was content to be ignored. George turned his attention back to the older man, obviously the boss of this crew.

“You have guns?” George asked.

The old man shook his head. “Kyle said no guns.”

George nodded. At least they could follow orders. Or lie to him convincingly. For now he’d assume that first one.

The man fished around in a paper sack on the dresser and produced a can, which he held out to George.

“¿Cerveza?”

George took the can, which felt colder than what Kyle had been drinking, and thanked him. He looked at the can and all the words on it were Spanish. While George could understand it a bit if he listened, and could mangle it a bit if he spoke it, he couldn’t read a word of the language. He drank anyway, and it wasn’t the worst beer he ever had.

“You been to the place yet?” he asked.

The old man nodded. “Yesterday. It’s like Kyle said. Should be easy.”

“It’ll be the first easy thing, then,” George said. “But here’s hoping.”

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By Tgreen, November 18, 2010 2:54 am

I’d planned to write a couple of these updates before now. Perhaps as we ease into this one, the mysteries behind their absence will reveal themselves.

I hit NaNoWriMo Day 1 with the best of intentions. It was a Monday, so I spent part of the preceding weekend thinking in the most abstract terms about what I might want to write. I did this knowing full well that no matter what I thought about, until I started tapping the keys, it didn’t matter what was going on in my head. Nothing counted until the word count moved north of zero.

What I did not realize until my fingers hit the keyboard that night is just how burned out I actually was. I was running on fumes. Actually my fumes were running on fumes, which were running on fumes of their own, which were running on whatever caffeine- and sugar-high they could squeeze out of a vintage Reggie bar someone was selling on eBay. I had nothing. And this was a special kind of nothing that I recognized from my college days. I was burnt. Toasted. And my creativity had, as they say, left the building.

This didn’t stop me from writing, of course. Days 1 and 2 followed a pattern similar to last year. Wake up, go to work, work too hard, get home late, scarf down dinner, and write 2,000 words before going to bed at an obscene hour (there have been nights when I could’ve watched the closing credits of any permutation of a Conan O’Brien show before I wrapped for the night). It was Day 3 that jumped the track.

The math of NaNoWriMo has always been deceptively simple. A 50,000-word novel in a 30-day month equals about 1,667 words per day. I’ve always aimed for 2,000, a nice round number that would help me build a cushion against future delays. The problem this time around was that on Day 3, I only wrote about 1,500 words. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but on Day 4, I was going to a concert, so there would be no time to write that day. And as it turns out, drinking your face off then dragging yourself in to work a full day does not get many creative juices flowing. Simply put, by the end of week 1, I was so many days behind I’m pretty sure I was technically already a day or two behind for next year.

To make matters worse, I quickly learned that I don’t type nearly as fast on the iPad as I thought I did. Plus, the iPhone app I’ve previously used to write short stories nom longer worked due to an update gone wrong, so there would be no catching up on the bus or during a bathroom break at work. It was bad enough I was so burned out, but now my tools of the trade were abandoning me too. It was a given that I’d have to quit. The only question was how long it would take for me to admit this.

Then things took an unexpected turn. I found a chunk of Saturday where I got to write a lot of words in a row. And the app makers sent me a code to a new version of the app that didn’t crash every time I tried to type something. I suspect the original app was updated by longtime Happy Friday readers. Combine these two events and, well, I’m still so far off pace it’s no sure bet I’ll get to 50,000 words this month, but the chances are better than they were on Friday. This is good, since I hate to quit.

I’m hoping to find time for a couple more of these updates this month to talk about the huge difference between what I’m writing this year as opposed to last year, which also helps explain why there’s a much better chance of failure this time around. Until then, here’s a really bad excerpt, so you’ll understand that the literary world won’t be missing out when this novel never gets finished:

“Kyle, thanks for coming,” Tony said. “We didn’t call you away from anything important, did we?”

“No, don’t worry, I have the time.”

“Good, good,” Tony said. “I just want to let you know, you’ve been doing a heckuva job lately. Really great. Hitting it out of the park.”

“Yeah, Kyle, the company really appreciates what you’ve been doing. Excellent job, really. Kudos.”

“Thanks,” Kyle said, unsure if he should say anything else.

“You’ve been an integral part of what we’ve accomplished the last few months,” Tony said. “Couldn’t have done it without you. You should realize that.”

“I was just doing my best,” Kyle said. “It’s the only way I know how to work.”

“Oh, yes, I know that, Kyle. You’ve been like that since we hired you, and don’t think it’s gone unnoticed. You work hard and you get the job done. That’s the kind of thing we appreciate around here,” Tony said.

“No doubt,” Paul added.

They shared the same bland smile too, which Kyle wasn’t expecting. He looked down at the blank page of his notebook and then back at his boss, whose expression was unchanging.

“Thanks,” Kyle said.

“You should know this,” Tony said. “Too often, especially in today’s environment, we don’t let you guys know that we appreciate your efforts, and we really should.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s something we need to do more often.”

“Really? Wow. Thanks again. I have to say, when I got your email I was sure you were going to lay me off.”

“Oh, we are,” Paul said. “But we thought you should know how much you’re appreciated around here.”

“What? Appreciated? How is this showing me that?”

“Well, in a perfect world, we would have had this conversation a few weeks ago,” Paul said. “That’s what we need to get better at. The timing.”

“I can’t believe this. I thought we were done with this.”

“We are now,” Tony said.

“Not to sound like too much of a ghoulish ass, but I really thought that after Rudy died, we’d get a break from all this.”

“If only it were that simple,” Paul said.

“This has nothing to do with your work, Kyle,” Tony said. “This is just a math thing. We had to get the group under twelve, that’s all. It’s just math.”

Kyle had always hated math, and this wasn’t going to improve that relationship. It took him another couple of seconds to work through the list of his immediate coworkers to come up with a number already less than twelve.

“But without Rudy, we’re there right now,” he said.

“We’re keeping Rudy,” Tony said.

“How can that be? He’s dead.”

“Yes, that’s true. But Rudy’s a rock around here. He’s done amazing work for us. You know that. You learned from him. We all did. That’s not a resource we can just walk away from,” Tony said.

“Walk away from? He died. How are you walking away from anything?”

“We just want to respect the man,” Tony said. “He’s got an enviable work ethic. His attendance record is impeccable.”

“Not anymore,” Kyle said.

“Kyle, that’s hurtful, and frankly beneath you,” Tony said. “Rudy gave his all to this company. He had his surprise heart attack while working at his desk after hours. How do we just forget about all that just because Rudy’s dead? He’s left behind a legacy, Kyle. We have to honor the legacy.”

“But he’s dead. I have three projects due this week. How is Rudy’s legacy going to help finish those?”

“That’s something I’m going to have to figure out,” Tony said. “Of course I’d rather have you here to finish those off, but we can’t just walk away from a resource as important as Rudy.”

“If anyone walked away, Rudy did. Except he didn’t walk away. They wheeled him out. I was here. I saw it.”

“Kyle, please, don’t be rude. Have some respect,” Paul said.

“I just don’t understand. I’m a living, breathing man who can bang out those three projects in a couple of days. I don’t understand how I can lose out to a guy who died two weeks ago. Can you understand why I might have a problem with that?”

“Fair enough,” Paul said. “Just please believe me when I tell you that Rudy brings some intangibles to the table.”

“intangibles?”

“Yes, intangibles. This decision wasn’t made lightly. It was very close. We almost chose you.”

“Oh, good, I came in a close second to a corpse. Is there any chance I can get that written in a letter of recommendation? That’s bound to get me lots of interest out there.”

“Kyle, really. Have some respect,” Paul said.

“Respect, really? Why don’t you have some respect for me, Paul? You tell me you think I’m a good worker, so why not pick me over the dead guy? Maybe Rudy has intangibles, but at this point I’ve gotta beat him in tangibles, right?”

Tony chuckled. “That’s actually pretty funny,” he said to no one in particular.

Paul sighed and leaned forward until he was slumped on his forearms, which were crossed over each other on the table. He shook his head just enough to be noticed.
“You have to understand something, Kyle,” he said. “Your group has to have fewer than twelve people in it. There’s no way around it. That’s the new company policy. Non-negotiable. However, on the flip side, you can’t have fewer than ten. This is an old guideline and for now it’s equally non-negotiable. We’d love for you to be one of those less-than-twelve, more-than-ten, but there are a couple of reasons why Rudy is the better bet right now.”

“Seriously?”

“For one, Rudy no longer draws a salary,” Paul said. “That’s a huge savings right there. No salary, no retirement withholding, no taxes paid because of him. And even more important than that, Rudy doesn’t need any health benefits. That’s another huge savings right there.”

“It’s not a really good health plan,” Tony said. “I’m not sure if you ever had a reason to find that out, but it costs you and the company a ridiculous amount of money any time you have a health issue. So this is potentially huge.”

“Maybe if the health care plan was better, Rudy wouldn’t have died in the first place and you wouldn’t have to use his corpse as a way to save money on it,” Kyle said.

“We’re aware of the irony, yes,” Paul said. “But in the current economic climate, Rudy’s a better employee dead than you are alive.”

Kyle looked again at the blank page in his notebook and saw that it now mirrored his immediate future — big and empty. He wanted to take his pen and slash through this depressing page, but his arms were frozen from the shock he was still experiencing. His hands began to shake so he pulled them under the table to make sure no one could see.
“Is there any math that swings things back in my favor?”

“You’re single, right?”

“I live with my girlfriend.”

“Kids?”

“Not now.”

“You own your house?”

“Rent.”

“Any credit card debt? Other loans? Gambling habit?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Are you prone to sickness?”

“No more than average.”

“I see.” Paul looked off into space as if he were calculating something in his head. After a few quick seconds he snapped back to reality and shook his head.

“Sorry, but no, there’s no way. Rudy saves more money than you bring in. We have to go with him. We’ll provide a generous severance, though. It’s more than Rudy got.”

“That seems fair. Rudy left on his own. He didn’t deserve a severance,” Tony said.

“Good point,” Paul said. He looked back at Kyle. “See, Rudy isn’t getting the best deal either. These things happen.”

“This? This insanity never happened anywhere else, I can promise you that.”

“Kyle, I’m really sorry it didn’t work out. You’re a good worker. You have lots to offer plenty of other companies.”

“Not as much as Rudy,” Kyle said.

“Fair enough,” Paul said.

“I bet you do better on an interview, though,” Tony said.

“Oh good, there’s the second paragraph of my recommendation. This thing just writes itself.”

“I’m real sorry, Kyle,” Tony said. “If things get better out there, I’d hire you back in an instant.”

“Could I work for Rudy?”

“That would be up to him, I suppose.”

“Okay, we’re done here,” Kyle said as he pushed back from the table.

“We still have to work out things like your severance and your last day,” Paul said.

“This is my last day. And you can mail the severance to my house.”

“There’s also some paperwork to sign.”

“What do I have to sign? You guys just gave me the boot. Do I have to sign my approval of that boot?”

“It’s boilerplate.”

“Did Rudy have to sign it?”

“Kyle, this is not your finest hour,” Tony said.

“No kidding,” Kyle said. “Mail me whatever you need me to sign. If the check’s big enough, I’ll sign it.” He backed toward the door, leaving behind his notebook, since it was technically company property.

“Kyle, I was serious about hiring you back,” Tony said. “A couple of months, this all blows over and I’ll give you a call.”

“That sounds great, Tony. Should I send my resume to the morgue or the cemetery? Which one makes it more likely I’ll get rehired?”

Tony shook his head and sighed. “Good luck, Kyle.”

Who doesn’t love the smell of first draft in the morning? I’d better figure out how to get some vampires in there soon or I’m screwed. Thanks for reading. Be back soon.

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By Tgreen, October 13, 2010 4:41 pm

If you’ve ever read this blog before, you’ve probably seen some mention or other to National Novel Writing Month, the writing “competition” that asks you to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I put the word competition in quotes because this isn’t a contest with a fabulous cash prize and it’s not some kind of writing fight club (though if it was that last one, I probably wouldn’t be able to talk about it anyway, but it’s not). Sure, there are tens of thousands of other writers out there doing the same thing all month, but the only one you’re in competition with for NaNoWriMo is yourself.

On one hand, this is good, because you know yourself pretty well and you know how quickly you fold under pressure, so you should be easy to beat in any kind of competition. Especially one that doesn’t involve running or throwing. But on the other hand, it’s bad, because you know yourself pretty well and you know how quickly you fold under pressure, so you should be easy to beat in any kind of competition. Maybe looking at this as a you v. you battle royale isn’t the best way to go about it. You’ll have yourself psyched out before you even write a word, and if you can’t write your first word, you’re never gonna make it to word 50,000.

It might be best to just drop the word competition completely. It’s not a competition. It’s a task. A difficult one, because those 50,000 words won’t write themselves (believe me, I’ve tried to make that happen and it never does), but not an impossible one. Hell, I’ve done it 3 times already. Got 2 actual books out of it, and 1 that had more than enough words but never quite made it to the end of the story. None of this work was any good, and I’d probably have to shoot anyone who tried to read any of it, but at the end of each month I at least felt like I’d accomplished something with my writing, and that feeling doesn’t happen too often anymore.

All of that said, as November 2010 approached, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try again. Even if I didn’t remember how tough it was to do this last year while holding down a full-time job, I could read about it in the blog archives. Plus, I just tried something very similar with Script Frenzy this past April (another one where I wrote the pages but didn’t finish the story) so maybe another marathon of writing wasn’t what I needed. And if that wasn’t enough, I could recall the 2 times when I didn’t reach the goal. Didn’t come anywhere close, in fact. Those times I got my ass kicked by the month of November more thoroughly than the Cleveland Browns do every year, and it wasn’t a feeling I was in any hurry to recapture. I figured I’d just not think about it and see what would happen on November 1. I’d either write 2,000 words that day or I wouldn’t, and however that went down would dictate the next 30 days. A simple solution, I thought.

Then I realized that even if I hadn’t consciously decided what I was going to do, somewhere in the back of my brain I’d already made a decision. You see, about a month or so ago I stopped reading fiction. I didn’t stop reading. I still read magazines, and the biography I’ve got as an iBook on my iPad, and I still dragged books along on my daily commute, but they were all nonfiction. And the only time I eliminate fiction from the equation entirely is when I’m doing a big writing project. I used to think I did this because I didn’t want to accidentally swipe from whatever I was currently reading while writing. And maybe this was true on some level. But over the years I had to finally admit that the real reason I didn’t like to read fiction while writing it was because reading stories that were better than mine (which is basically all of them) just knocks the legs out from under me and makes it nearly impossible for me to finish what I’ve started.

(Sidebar: You may recall the post I made over the summer about Catch-22. I still haven’t started rereading that book for both reasons outlined above. I hold the book in so much regard that it would intimidate me enough to make me quit writing by November 5 or so. Plus, there aren’t too many parts of that book I don’t want to steal, so reading it while writing would probably be a horrible idea. It probably won’t be until early next year that I get to crack it open again.)

Long story short (as if), it appears that I’ll be trying to write a novel in November. Even though the little part of my brain that has made this decision may also be the one in charge of Jack Daniels consumption, road trip menus and career planning and therefore never has my best interests at heart, I’m gonna put it in charge and see what happens. And of course, this blog will document the whole ugly process in more detail than last time, because I don’t want to be the only one suffering. In other words, if you hated last November, after another 2 weeks it might be best if you don’t check back again until December 1. No idea which part of my brain will be posting to the blog on that day, but maybe it’ll be able to write a decent joke.

I mean, the law of averages says that’ll happen eventually, right? Why not December 1?

T “writing fool” green

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By Tgreen, June 18, 2010 1:52 am

So after spending a month lost in a writing frenzy, all I had to show for it was a pile of words that may or may not have all fit together and a little picture I added to a blog post to show that I “won”. And that was pretty much it, except for one other cool thing. I could also get a free copy of my book from CreateSpace. An actual, honest-to-God, you can hold it in your hands printed book. I got one one before, when I won NaNoWriMo 2005, and even though I won in 2006 too by writing more than 50,000 words, I never finished the story so I never got my book. This time around, since the free book offer was good until July 2, I figured I’d edit the book, make something presentable out of it, and then get a free copy of that. And so during the week after Christmas, when I was off from work, I went to Staples, got some paper and a binder, printed the whole mess out and set to editing.

Cut to June and I have a binder full of paper I haven’t even finished reading yet, much less started marking it up with red pen. Though honestly I think I’m gonna need a box of red pens to get through this one. But the point is, July 2 is roaring down the tracks, aimed straight at me, and I’ve got nothing but the same pile of words I had at the end of November. So this week I formatted them, slapped together a cover, and sent the whole thing to CreateSpace to turn it into a book. I finished that process tonight, so in a couple of weeks I’ll open my mailbox and find a 122-page pile of words that may or may not fit together, but at least they’ll look like something real. It should be cool, and I’m hoping that reading through this book will finally get me working on this story that at one point I’m sure I thought could turn into something decent. I’ll probably post a picture of the book when it shows up, and maybe I’ll post one of the 2005 book as well. For now, here’s a quick look at the artwork I submitted for the cover:

And you know what the scary part is? With one simple click of a button, I could have this thing on sale at Amazon.com tomorrow. I won’t, because it’s a steaming pile of bad words right now. But I could. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The thing is, now that I’ve spent all this time learning how to design and format a book, I feel like I should find something profitable to do with that knowledge. Hmmm, if only I had a backlog of material that could be slapped together into some kind of book. If I had something like that, like a bunch of emails and blog posts from the last 15 years, I could do something. If only.