Interesting thing I've finally learned about writing: you really can't force it. And it really doesn't pay to try.

If you're writing fiction, no matter if it's plot driven or character driven, you just cannot force your characters to do your bidding. You can try, but they will occasionally rebel or stage sit down strikes if they don't like the direction you're making them take.

Non writers will not understand this. You are to be forgiven.

The worst is when you get blocked. If you've been guiding them through a story, micromanaging, calling all the shots and forcing them to go places they don't want to go... then when (not if) you suddenly hit a dead end and don't know what direction they need to take to move the story forward... don't just stop writing.

People who get micromanaged and are not trusted to make their own decisions will freeze when left to their own devices. If you've been pulling your character's strings for too long, then your story stalls and you don't know their next move, they will probably just hang in their strings like abandoned marionettes. How can they make decisions if you've never let them try before?

If you keep writing-- a word here, a sentence there, maybe throw a paragraph to them like a bone... they might just wake up. Hope for that. Put a roadblock in front of them, throw a snowball at their heads, stir things up, and-- believe it or not-- they might come to life and surprise you.

I've spent roughly three years working-- in fits and starts-- on Deathe and Taxes, the third in my Yoopernatural Mysteries/Tales of Life in Deathe series. I saw in my mind the beginning and the hook, and I created some amusing diversions, envisioned a resolution, and then spent many random, stolen (from "real" life) hours working toward it. But when I came to the end...

Well, I knew how it ended, but I had programmed my characters to just stand around and wait for me to hand them the next page of the script. And when I didn't feel it, when I couldn't deliver... they did nothing. They couldn't act without a script. I'd spent a couple years getting them to this point, then many months puzzling over the mechanics of the climax. Weeks-- months-- passed with me cringing when people asked me when #3 in my series was coming out. I didn't know. What I didn't say was that my characters weren't telling me anything, but that was only because I wasn't asking them any questions. I was waiting for them to act while they were waiting for me to tell them what to do. There is no progress to be found in this scenario.

Then, in only one day (specifically, Wednesday, November 25, 2011), I set them free. One took off running. Two leaped up and attacked, another defended, shots rang out, fireworks ensued, and (almost) everyone lived happily ever after to move forward into Tales of Life in Deathe #4.

Of course this is all subject to the approval of my editors. The primary one did not like the situations I forced my characters into in an earlier draft, any more than the characters did. We will see. Even if this ending is wrong (I don't think it is), I hope this lesson sticks with me, and Deathe Warmed Over will not linger three years in production like #3 did. To paraphrase a famous demand: Set my characters free!

shocked

I am shocked-- SHOCKED I tell you!!! that this blog is still active. Maybe I can safely post all my personal rants here without danger of them being found and disparaged.

Yoopernatural alert!

Shameless plug: visit my Yoopernatural page at www.yoopernatural.com and treat yourself to a cheap download of "Bedderhoff Dead" via Smashwords or Amazon Kindle. That will have to do till I plumb the depths of Print on Demand. (Coming eventually. I hope.)

Election Year Again

I'm at an age where I can look back on election campaigns of the past and remember, seeing ads on TV, thinking: "I like that guy! I want to vote for him!"

(Of course about 90% of the time the guys I see on TV were not in my voting district, hence not on my ballot, so I couldn't vote for them, and the names that were on my ballot were totally unfamiliar to me. But that's another story.)

But for the past few years I have not been able to say, or think, or even consider thinking, "I like that guy! I'm going to vote for him!"

I don't like any of them! I loathe them all, every single one of them. They are vicious, muckraking, lying, cheating, stealing, mother-selling, monomaniacal sociopaths to the last one. We all think we know that negative campaigning doesn't work. But obviously it does. Or if it doesn't, who can tell? It just gets worse every year, and in the end one of the lying, boorish sociopaths eventually wins, and they they can all look back and say "well, our campaign worked!!!" No, it just won by default. Would that there were a way to make them all lose!!! Go home empty-handed, whipped, beaten, chastened, crying for their mothers, and hanging their heads in shame. But unfortunately, someone's always going to "win," and the egomania will feed on itself, and they'll go out and do it again. (Too bad they can't just chalk up victory to wearing the same lucky socks every year.)

It ain't a Republican thing. It ain't a Democratic thing. It's embarrassing. It's a disgrace. And if any one of them had any conscience at all, any sense of propriety or decency, they would just stop. Now. Is there no shame?

Back to Deathe

I think it's time to get back to Deathe, the little village in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where strange things happen. Maybe something new will happen. In the meantime, maybe it's time to report on things that have already happened. The U.P. calls.

A Moment of Silence, please

Today marks the two week commemoration of the passing of my best friend in the world, Boomer. A long and rambling obituary and eulogy will be forthcoming, linked to my website www.markwolfgang.com. We still come home expecting to be met at the door. Saturday morning I dreamed that I opened up the door into the garage, and Boomer dashed in and past Kim and down the hallway, and I said "Boom Boom!" and Kim said, "No..." And I said "Yes, he just went past you down the hall..." and vanished. And Kim said "No...." And I remembered and knew that if I hadn't watched him die I still wouldn't believe it. And this morning Kim woke up at 7:30, thinking how surprised she was that The Cat let her sleep so late.

Classics!

I think it's great that our local Celebration Cinemas is showing classic movies on the big screen, like "Road to Morocco" with Hope and Crosby on March 17. Followed by "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House;" "The African Queen"(!!!); "San Francisco;" and the one I'm anticipating seeing on the big screen: "Frankenstein" on April 14!

So the administration of the college has a new suggestion incentive program: offer up suggestions for cost savings or revenue generation or education quality enhancements and win a designated parking space for a week. So I suggested maybe we could train the educators to turn off the floyding lights in the gym when they're done using it, thereby saving the cost of burning 32,000 watts(!) of lights when the gym sits empty and unused.

This was the first week of the contest, and maybe I was their only entry, because I won! Note the following emails, in chronological order, from the Administrative Assistant to the President(!) to me(!), followed by the Parking Services Director's reply (names X'd out to protect the clueless and the good parts highlighted to make them funnier):

From: Lori xxxxxxx [mailto:xxxxxxx@lcc.edu]
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 4:20 PM
To: Eric xxxxxx; Kimberly xxxxx; Mark Wolfgang
Subject: 1-week designated parking space

Hello All,

Mark was this week’s lucky winner of a one-week parking space via the Vision Initiative IdeaLab. Can Mark contact you to make arrangements?

Thank you.

Lori

Lori xxxxxxx
Administrative Assistant to the President
Lansing Community College
Administration Building, room 300

From Eric xxxxx
Sent Fri 3/6/2009 4:48 PM
To Lori xxxxx ; Kimberly xxxxxx ; Mark Wolfgang
Subject RE: 1-week designated parking space

Hi Lori,

Kim and I were not aware that a parking space was going to be given away, as no one consulted us. So we are not currently prepared to reserve a parking space for this Monday. We can have a temporary sign made by Ernie, while we are having a permanent sign made.

Kim, can you have Eric A. take care of the signs as well as the base and pole.

Mark, you can contact Kim to make arrangements. Parking & ID Services will need vehicle info, so this can be passed on to Police & Public Safety in case any enforcement action needs to be taken on other vehicles that may park in the reserved space.

Thanks,

Eric

Go ahead, make me work for it.... On the whole, I'd rather pass up the parking space and just make fun of everyone involved.

They Call Me MISTER Boomer

My cat Mr. Boomer has been with us for nearly 16 years now. He came to us in November of 1992 as a stray: starved, insecure, needy, stinking, and full of worms. We took him to our vet, Dr. P--, of the P-- Veterinary Clinic, and got him checked out and patched up. He'd already been declawed and fixed. I named him and he moved in and took over us and the house, even though my wife would have gladly had him put to sleep. He was loud, annoying, always hungry, constantly under foot, and every couple of days he'd have a poop like a St. Bernard that would fill the litter box and peel the paint off the walls.

Even so, he was my Mr. Boomer, my Big Guy, my Mr. Cat, my Mr. Boom Boom Guy, a real guy’s cat, a cat who met me at the door when I came home and coaxed me to the living room floor every day to roughhouse and play-fight with me. As Calvin said of Hobbes, “It's hard to stay mad at someone who misses you when you're asleep.”

For these 16 year after he settled in and calmed down I couldn’t figure out why anyone would throw out such a perfectly good cat. Well, the toxic poops were probably clues. We imagine that he might have started life in the spring with a family in a small mobile home, and the first time they closed up the windows for winter and he hit the litter box, he was outta there. But I could live with it. And he was loud, talking at us constantly, and in recent years especially he's been a perpetual tripping hazard, always underfoot. At least he was healthy in every respect, and over the years he’s proven remarkably durable, to the point of near indestructability. He’s never been sick, he’s fallen from great heights without injury, and once he was nearly pinched in half by the garage door-- at the top, not the bottom-- with no noticeable damage. I always said he could probably shrug off a direct nuclear hit.

For the past few months he’s been fighting a pesky urinary infection. He lost a lot of weight this spring, causing some concern. After all, he’s 16, and despite evidence to the contrary, he probably won’t live forever. We put him on antibiotics, twice, and now he’s gained some of his weight back by gorging himself on expensive canned cat food, but I still say when I pick him up he feels like he's stuffed with dry straw.

Then one day we found he was spotting blood all over the house, so we took him back to the vet. Same vet clinic we'd taken him to nearly 16 years ago when he came to us. The prognosis: some stronger antibiotics and a diet of special (certainly more expensive) cat food should bring him around in a week or so. And... HE is a SHE!!! After nearly 16 years, we find out MR. Boomer is a GIRL! The head vet, Dr. P-- (whose name is on the sign), had taken a quick look back in 1992 and guessed (guessed!) that Boomer was a he. Said vet was apparently wrong.

This changes everything..... 16 long years.....

Everybody who is not us seems to find this a lot funnier than we do. The junior vets and assistants (women) at the clinic thought it was hysterical. When they asked how we came to think she was a he, I pointed out that he was a stray and Dr. P-- himself ventured the diagnosis. They all nodded sagely and said "ahhhh.... that explains it."

The bright side is that if he was a he, with that much blood in his urine, he'd need surgery. As a she... well, he… she... IT...? Boomer is OK now, after a few days and nights of quarantine in the bathroom with adult mattress pads all over the floor. Geez.

This does explain another mystery. In more than 15 years, my mother, even when she would come and take care of our cats for days on end a few times a year when we were on vacation, could NEVER keep straight which cat was which: which was Boomer (big, bold, gray and white, meets everyone at the door), which was Sprout (small, black, timid), which was the boy (Boomer… we thought), which was the girl (Sprout). It always seemed easy enough to us, but, well......... nearly 16 YEARS! And Mom never got it. Now maybe I finally see the reason for her confusion....

staying connected

So my wife has asked me in the past why I bother to maintain my TracFone account when I have a cell phone so conveniently provided by my employer. Why do I keep paying for a year's service every year, at a shade over $100? I responded that I keep it against the day that my benevolent employer takes away the cell phone and leaves me incommunicado.

A few years ago they gave us Nextel phones. "Use them!" they said. "Use them for all your personal calls, long distance calls, anything and everything. We have virtually unlimited connect time! You'll never use it up!" A year or so later our dept. got a bill from IT (our cell phone supplier) for $3000. Why? "You went over your time allotment." When challenged, they admitted they had changed the college's cell phone contract. The old one was too expensive. They'd apparently neglected to mention it to us, our dept.-- for three months. We now owed IT $1000/month for going over our minutes.

Then we ditched Nextel and changed to Alltel.

So after a couple more years of no complaints, we're now being told our cell phone usage is out of control, we need to cut back. No more personal use. No more calling cell to desk, no more accepting desk to cell. Cell to cell (within our service contract) is OK. Otherwise, hang up and call them back on a desk phone.

Now do we see why I kept my TracFone all these years?

--M

A VEBA big misc.take

You're reading it here first, or if you're not, someone I don't know and haven't read has scooped me. My words are my own.

Big news in Michigan and the auto industry is VEBA, the Voluntary Employee Benefits Association, which promises to transfer about $52 billion (yes, that's BILLION with a very large B) from the "Big 3" Detroit auto manufacturers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler LLC) to the United Auto Workers union, in exchange for relieving themselves of about $88 billion in estimated future health costs. "UAW president Ron Gettelfinger describes VEBA as a solid plan to provide benefits and has said that the VEBA will last for 80 years." (Detroit Free Press, January 6, 2008)

I've been skeptical of this from the start. Although I've been a member of one union for more than 30 years, another for more than 10, and I was a member of the UAW for 2 years.... I fear the worst. Unions can make money disappear faster than politicians, which just about as much effect.

I predict the funds won't last 10 years before the UAW VEBA plan is bankrupt, and UAW members are uninsured and being dunned for more and more and more money to save the fund. Mismanagement will kill it. The $52 billion will basically be dumped into a big sieve, where $millions and $billions will slip through fingers and floorboards and vanish into nothingness-- invisible bank accounts, PAC funds and political favors (all to Democrats, of course), grandiose monuments to union activities and union leaders, none of which the membership will never see or know about.

In a few years it'll all be gone, gone, gone.

Now U.S. District Court Judge Robert H. Cleland has issued a gag order on the VEBA deal, sealing in secrecy "documents containing information that would cause named plaintiffs, prospective class members, the UAW or GM 'annoyance, embarrassment or oppression.'" (Detroit Free Press, January 6, 2008)

Yes, I suppose it would be embarrassing and annoying to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar. And you might suffer oppression from those who would disapprove of your stealing from them, robbing them of the protections you promised them.

But that's not a problem now, thanks to Judge Cleland and the lawyers.

Let the countdown begin.

Today's "Snapshot:" I'm moving a thermostat out of a woman's office, moving it to the office next door because she has a heater in her office that's on 24/7, screwing up the system and freezing everyone out of the adjoining offices. So I remove the stat, install on the wall next door, and am in the process of replacing the ceiling tile in her office when she starts having a fit about the "hole" in her wall (the electrical box where the stat had been mounted). "What about that hole?!?" I offered that I was just going to leave it open for her to admire. Fact is, I was going to cover it with a blank plate in, like, you know, 30 freaking seconds! If she could wait that long.

First Post

I’m going to start this blog with an entry I call “The LCC Physical Plant Snapshot of the Day.” Here’s the Snapshot for Monday, December 17, 2007:

A woman calls Physical Plant to complain that she's cold, she wants the heat turned up in her office. Because she has pneumonia. OK. I get it. She’s cold. She has pneumonia. She’s at work. Did I mention she has pneumonia? Hmm. Should we turn up the heat, or call an ambulance?