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Depression and the Software Developer: The Last Straw (Conclusion)

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:00:15 -0700

Here’s the last part of this series of posts, “Depression and the Software Developer.” This last story I started on Monday, part 4 of “Depression and the Software Developer”.

[Note: You can read the story from the beginning in order to catch up.]

No client or employer will ever admit to you that he doesn’t want to deal with reality. What he really wants is for you to just deliver what he needs, with zero effort on his part, in zero time, for zero dollars. If he gives you any more than that, it is only in grudging acceptance of the fact that you are not the omnipotent God. But a surprising number of project managers still act as though developers are superhuman, even if they accept that we are not divine. And a surprising number of developers are willing to accept that they are superhuman, even if they can’t deliver the actual goods.

And that was the case with this project. So I had no idea what made up the NOKWID feature that I was supposed to be developing (called NOKWID, because No One Knew What It Did), and Pointy-Hair 1 (the developer-turned-manager) and Pointy-Hair A (the manager-turned-developer) both seemed to be going out of their way to keep me in the dark.

If I were a voice talent, it would be like giving me a stack of ill-digested notes scribbled on sticky pads and saying, “Okay. Here’s the voice-over script. We need this by Thursday. When can you have it recorded?”

Needless to say, it stressed me out.

But I made the best of the situation I knew how. I took ownership of the spec and tried implementing NOKWID the best I could. But Pointy-Hair 1 still wanted to know when it would be “done,” and every time I took a step on the road to “done,” Pointy-Hair A pulled back the curtain to reveal a whole new maze of twisty passages, all alike, that I would need to navigate. I started to feel that they were working together to make my life miserable. At the very least, they both seemed to know what the actual requirements were, even though no one was telling me.

In a last-ditch effort, I rewrote the entire spec, soup-to-nuts. I spelled out exactly what needed to be delivered for NOKWID to be “done,” and also gave options–features that could be rescheduled until later or re-prioritized as needed. I knew from experience that the truth this would reveal would look very bad indeed, but at least it would define a realistic goal that we could work toward.

That may have been Idiotic Decision #3… I don’t know. I do know it caused me to invest myself personally in the project, the end result of which was a months-long depression, from which I still have not fully recovered.

I was not the only consulting developer experiencing these same problems with the project. If I were, I might have suspected that there was something wrong with me or with what I was doing. Since that time, I’ve reviewed the ensuing events dozens of times, asking myself if I could have done anything differently to avoid the imminent meltdown that–even then I knew–was headed my way. Even with the 20/20 of hindsight, I cannot see how I could have made the experience a successful one, because what was missing was communication. Simple, basic communication. As a developer, you absolutely need clear guidance on your client’s requirements. All I could have done was to fail faster, to require clear guidance up-front, which no doubt would have ended my relationship with them sooner rather than later. So then I would not have gotten paid for all the hours I ended up wasting for them, but the experience also would have probably left me with fewer psychological issues.

Pointy-Hair 1 by this time was very fond of mentioning to all of us how far behind schedule we were–as though that could make up for us not knowing what the hell we were supposed to be doing. Eventually, he told me that he needed an estimate for how long it would take for NOKWID to be “done,” and he said that if I could not provide him with an estimate, then one would “be provided” for me. I knew this was bullshit, because he would have gotten a more accurate estimate by rolling a pair of dice three times and averaging the results. But I also knew I was also on the verge of actually having enough information to actually estimate how much work there actually was left to do. So instead of telling him to be realistic, I told Pointy-Hair 1 I’d get him an estimate within the next day. That was Idiotic Decision #4.

The truth was indeed not happy. To finish NOKWID, as I understood what was required, would take much more work than either Pointy-Hair 1 or Pointy-Hair A had ever thought. But I was confident in my estimate, having successfully estimated numerous projects before. I provided options that could get NOKWID delivered sooner, if they wanted to pick individual features to be excluded or put off until later. Instead, Pointy-Hair 1 and Pointy-Hair A got on a conference call with me and told me the two of them together would simply “bang it out over the weekend.”

I grinned.

I stuck around just long enough to see whether they would succeed. They didn’t. (And who could have seen that coming?) But within a week or two, they had released something. I glanced at it. It had bugs that I would have avoided, because I already knew where those bugs had been lurking. And their solution only implemented a fraction of the features that I had been told were needed. This reinforced my suspicion that they knew of a shorter feature list, but were unable or unwilling to let me in on the secret. Nonetheless, they seemed satisfied with what they produced, and I was truthfully happy that they had found a way to get this important software delivered, buggy or not. But I also saw that unless they–as overworked as they already were–could develop all the software themselves, they would never be able to make the project a success (unless they redefined “success”).

Since then, I’ve fallen out of touch with the people on that project. I did recently check the public-facing project website, but that wouldn’t be able to tell me when or how much of NOKWID was ever developed. The website is still up—so the company is presumably still in business—and it looks like they’ve implemented some of the features we were talking about, related to NOKWID. From what I see, compared to the state of the site a year ago, they probably found a way to get more time and funding for the project, and scaled back the requirements significantly. That’s not necessarily a bad way to go, because it allows you to make mistakes and to grow your business organically.

As for me, since then, I’ve only worked on one more significant software-development project. To my friends and family, I blame the economy. “There’s just no work.” The truth is more complex, though. The whole thought of going back into a traditional software-development project positively depresses me, because judging from my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues, most of them are run poorly and arrogantly. I would only work on an engaging project in a collaborative team staffed with capable people. Such teams do exist, but they are rare, and I have not seen one since.

-TimK

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Gilmore Girls Made Me Understand My Old Girlfriend

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0700

In the Gilmore Girls episode, “That Damn Donna Reed,” at one point, Lorelai calls Luke and asks him to search for her lost baby chick that has escaped. Luke naturally thinks the lost baby chick is just a ruse to get him to come over. But come over he does, and he’s actually surprised when he discovers that, yes, there really is a chick loose in the house.

When I was young and naive, I had a hot date with a hot redhead, Tracy. (Not her real name, by the way.) A romantic evening. We dressed up, went out to a nice Italian restaurant, soft music, mouthwatering aromas, subtle lighting, cloth napkins. After we said goodnight, I went home and started getting ready to turn in.

Some minutes later, Tracy called in a panic, saying that a large, dark figure was snooping outside her apartment. I didn’t get that, because neither of us lived in a crazy or dangerous neighborhood. I told her that if she was really worried, she should call 911. But she begged me to come over as fast as I could.

When I got there, I found—surprise!—absolutely nothing.

She begged me to stay awhile, until she felt better. We cuddled together a while, and then one thing led to another.

(The rest of the story isn’t relevant here, but you can read it in chapter 10 of the Love-Idiot Book.)

Many years later, after I was married with kids, I was watching Gilmore Girls. And in the “Donna Reed” episode, when Sookie explains to Lorelai what was going through Luke’s mind with coming over and the chick on the loose…

Suddenly, that memory of Tracy struck me, and I finally understood.

-TimK

P.S. A couple episodes ago, in the episode “Double Date,” I still don’t get Rune. So Lorelai is tall. So what? Tall and leggy and and really sexy in that simple outfit. Back in my day, I would have been honored to have gone out with her, whatever the circumstances. Of course, I’m biased, as I had an enjoyable and touching casual date of my own, with a beautiful woman who stood about as high as Lorelai does. Except mine had blonde hair and was a local celebrity. She was and still is a special friend. That’s also in chapter 10 of the Love-Idiot Book, which you can preview at LoveIdiotBook.com.

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Teaser Tuesdays: In the Eye of the Beholder

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:00:55 -0700

Last week, I started reading I See You by Holly Lisle. I still am reading that book, and loving it. The entire story so far has been written at least competently, and in some instances, Holly has excelled. I totally get her characters, even when they don’t make normal sense, because she shows me who they are.

That’s my paper book. But I’ve also picked up an ebook by Sharon Cathcart (who will be visiting with us on this very blog on Thursday), her short novel (about 50K words) In the Eye of the Beholder. My first impressions: If 90% of everything is crap, then this definitely falls within the remaining 10%. I’m about ¼ through, and I’m very much enjoying it. Unfortunately, time flies when you’re having fun, and so do books; I’ll probably have finished both of these books in a blink of an eye, and then I’ll be looking for something else that I love reading.

In the Eye of the Beholder stars Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, and is set some time following the events of the famous story by Gaston Leroux. (According to this storyline, prior reports of Erik’s death have clearly been exaggerated.) But the real story of In the Eye of the Beholder revolves around the heroine, Claire, an educated but simple woman, who had lost her fiancé, the only man she loved, in a disaster just before they were to be married. Even though she is intelligent and capable, because of the way the law is written, her cousin has been given complete control over her estate, unless and until she marries, leaving her with no possessions and little spending money. She gently tends and performs with the horses at the opera house, a job that embodies her passion… until someone tries to murder her and make it look like an accident.

Here’s today’s teaser, from p. 48 of the Smashwords PDF edition:

I looked out the window but could only see a man, in profile, holding a lantern.

“Mademoiselle Claire,” the man called, “are you inside?”

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.

-TimK

P.S. I’m gearing up to launch a new eBook Reviews blog. There are no posts up yet, but you can subscribe to the ebook reviews, in order to receive posts when they begin. The idea is that when I read a novel or memoir—in ebook form, or a book that has an electronic edition available—I’ll post a short review over there. To start with, I’m going through my backlog of book reviews, of books I’ve already read, and finding those that have electronic editions, as well as ebooks I’ve recently read. By the way, I’m particularly fond of low-priced ebooks, and I’ve found some that are definitely worthy of recommending.

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Depression and the Software Developer: The Last Straw

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:08 -0700

Here’s a story I’ve been keeping on the back burner for almost a year now. I haven’t published it until now, because it still hit too close to home. But this week, I’ve scheduled an interview with Sharon Cathcart, author of In the Eye of the Beholder, which I am currently reading, and a memoir Les Pensées Dangereuses. And parts of her story reminded me of certain elements of my story.

This is the story of the software-development project that plunged me into a deep depression (a continuation from part 3 of “Depression and the Software Developer”).

[Note: You can read the story from the beginning in order to catch up.]

It was only a couple months long, but it was the straw that broke this developer’s back. It was the project that made me realize how much I enjoyed making a difference, as I did in my first job after college. It made me realize how important it was to make a difference, rather than just being a cog in a useless, corporate, perpetual-motion machine. Most development managers simply don’t know how to let their developers make a difference, possibly because they’ve never known themselves what it feels like. And to this day, the memory of this painful project keeps me from taking the software-development industry seriously.

The project itself wasn’t that bad. I joined it as a consulting developer, along with a couple other consulting developers. The client had been desperate for short-term help, and I took on the project as a favor for a friend, who was already hip-deep in it. They were also on a limited budget, and so I offered a reduced rate, again as a favor to my friend. That was Idiotic Decision #1.

They gave me a “specification” for a feature they needed me to work on. For the purposes of this story, let’s call it the NOKWID feature (because No One Knows What It Does). NOKWID was a key part of the project, and they needed to show progress on it–and quickly–in order to justify the project’s funding. Unfortunately, the spec turned out to be nothing more than a rough collection of thoughts that one of the developers had thrown together, probably from notes he had made at meetings. I pointed out the numerous nebulous features called for in the spec, and I replied that I couldn’t possibly deliver NOKWID until these had been fleshed out.

Now, the project was being led by a software-developer-turned-manager type, who seemed way too busy to manage a software project. Let’s call him “Pointy-Hair 1.” And I was to be working with one of the staff developers, also with a pointy-haired background, a manager-turned-software-developer type, who we’ll call “Pointy-Hair A.” (You thought I was going to call him Pointy-Hair 2, right? No way! I don’t want Pointy-Hair A to think he’s any less pointy-haired than Pointy-Hair 1.)

I’d love to tell you all the crazy things I experienced in the span of a few months at the hands of this pair. But I fear I might become psychotic if I tried. So I’ll limit myself just to a single anecdote.

NOKWID depended on Feature X, which like everything else, was undeveloped and no one knew how it was supposed to work. Because of this, there was absolutely no way I could deliver code that worked with Feature X, and I told them as much.

In response to this, Pointy-Hair A told me that Feature X was something for “down the road.” We didn’t actually need to support it at this time. Whew! I breathed a sigh of relief and removed Feature X from the spec.

The next day, Pointy-Hair A added a paragraph to the spec talking about how NOKWID was to interact with Feature X.

This was repeated in different variations and with different specifics. It seemed that the longer I sought to understand and to document what NOKWID really was, the further I got from the truth. I had only a vague idea what I was supposed to be delivering, and Pointy-Hair 1 kept asking me when it would be “done.”

I complained that I couldn’t possibly deliver finished code–or even estimate how much time it would take–until I knew what the requirements were for NOKWID. And I told them that they needed to document the decisions and assumptions they were working off of, and to let me in on that part of the conversation. Each time I said so, they gave me the soothe-’em-down treatment, as though I were a hemorrhoid and not a key member of the project team.

“Don’t worry about that.” (Which I should have.)

“That will be ready long before you need it.” (Which it wasn’t.)

“Just ask for what you need, and we’ll get it to you.” (Which they didn’t, and I didn’t know what I needed, anyhow, because I didn’t know what I was supposed to be delivering!)

“Don’t let that hold you up.” (Which it ought to have, or at least ought to have made me take a beat.)

At about this point, I was thinking I was obviously not charging them enough, because they clearly weren’t listening to me. After all, I had successfully completed projects using this project model before; they had not. I was also one of the most senior people working on the project, in terms of years of experience, and had twice as much experience as even the most senior staff developer. But as is well known among consultants: knowledge, experience, and wisdom do not earn you respect; money does. If they had been paying me hundreds of dollars an hour for my advice, then they would have found some rationale for why my advice was actually worth that much. However, I had given them a discount, for the sake of my friend, who was now neck-deep.

Even under these demeaning and impossible circumstances, I decided to push on as best I could. That was Idiotic Decision #2.

(To be continued, one last time. The conclusion will run on Wednesday.)

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Friday Fun: When Bread Comes Out of the Oven

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:16:03 -0800

I’ve had migraines on and off all week this week— That’s not the fun part. On Wednesday, my Beloved put in a loaf of bread to bake in the bread machine, and it reminded me of the following bit in From the Ashes of Courage:

“G’d m’rning,” she mumbled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who sleeps in?” She had always awoken at the break of dawn, while he had always overslept. And here she was, the morning half gone already. It had been a long time since she had slept in, and the experience refreshed and relaxed her. She assumed that everyone one else was out, maybe walking along the beach, maybe boating, or maybe even at church.

The strong, succulent aroma of clams blended with a different, fluffier, yeastier smell, like that of a bakery. She turned to see a loaf of piping hot bread cooling on a rack on the counter.

“Fresh bread!” she shouted, jarring Eddie nearly out of his sandals.

“Careful,” he warned playfully. “Man with hot skillet here.”

She sidled up to him and said, “Where did you get fresh baked bread from?”

“I made that.”

“Since when?” she said. George had never been much the cook. There were a few dishes he had learned to make, like the clams, but he would never have braved something like bread, that required measuring and mixing and kneading and rising and baking.

“Hey, I know how to do stuff.”

“Like bake bread?”

“Like use a bread machine,” he said.

“Smells delicious.” She was quickly realizing how empty her stomach was. She had not had a proper dinner the prior evening, and now she’d almost missed breakfast.

Eddie recognized the cooing in her voice, recognized it as delight. “Good. I’m glad you like it.”

It works similarly in the real world…

First, the machine goes Bee-bee-da-BEEP! in my ear.

Is the loaf supposed to be that big? Not a mushroom loaf, but still a little scary.

I shake the bread out of the pan, onto a cooling rack. It comes out quite easily…

The kneading blade frequently becomes stuck inside the loaf. I begin by loosening it around the edges with a chopstick.

After it’s loose, I can pry the kneading blade out of the loaf… carefully.

Don’t touch the kneading blade! It’s still hot!

Ready to let the bread cool. Except…

I got this tip off a Twitter friend: if you want HOT, sliced, fresh bread, before the loaf cools, heat the knife first.

A hot knife keeps the hot bread from squishing while it’s being sliced.

A simple but satisfying lunch: hot bread and cold butter—forgot to take the butter out of fridge to let it soften—tea, and noodle soup, with water to drink.

Till next time…
-TimK

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Reaching across Generations, an Interview with Sandra

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:00:05 -0800

I’m sitting here in my virtual living room with Sandra, of one of my favorite blogs Add Humor and Faith…mix well. I absolutely love her stories, especially the ones about her and her Hubby. And I actually wanted to have her over (virtually) for Valentine’s Day, to talk about love and marriage. But because of things happening on my end, I couldn’t pull it together. But I’m happy she’s able to spend some time with us today.

Hi, Sandy.

Hi, Tim!

As I understand it, you and Hubby will be married 45 years this coming June—the day, in fact, just before I turn “only 42.” A city girl and a country boy. And you’ve been in love with him since you were 15. How did you and Hubby first meet?

On New Year’s Eve when I was 15, I was staying overnight with my friend, Robyn. Her boyfriend, Wayne, called from a party he was at to tell her that he would like to stop over for a little while at midnight to see in the new year with her. But, she explained that I was there. No problem. He said he had a friend that he had wanted me to meet anyway, and that friend just happened to be right there at the party too! Okay, Robyn told him they could both stop over for just a little while.

When Wayne hung up the phone, he definitely had a problem. He didn’t really have a friend in mind to introduce me to, so he needed to find somebody quick! He looked around the room and his eyes landed on his friend Jim (probably one of the taller guys in the room, so he stood out). So he went over and gave Jim a “sales pitch” about Robyn’s friend—no surprise that Wayne then spent his entire adult life as a car salesman!—and convinced Jim to come with him to meet Robyn’s friend. The rest is history. Jim and I went together, off and on, for the rest of high school and married a year after I graduated. So, I’ve always given Wayne credit for picking my husband for me!

You once wrote that you got married at 19 years old “for all the normal teenage reasons.” Young people now think that’s too young to get married, and that their marriage will be more likely to fail unless they wait. Do you think your marriage was ever in danger because you got married so young?

That is such a good question. But when I think about it, I guess I would say that if anything getting married young helped rather than endangered our marriage.

First of all, because we were so young, we didn’t bring a lot of baggage from other relationships to the marriage. I think it specifically strengthened our bond that we had neither had premarital sex with each other or anyone else. But on the other hand, I also think it was a plus that we had both dated some other people at different times when we were not dating each other. I think the experience we gained from dating others helped us know more about how to make our own relationship better.

Also, we decided going into the marriage that we would wait awhile to have children. So for the two years we were married before we became parents we did a lot of growing up and also a lot of bonding just as a couple, before children were thrown into the mix. I feel like those two years of “just us” allowed us time to “learn” how to be married and to be grown ups.

Who taught you how to make a marriage work?

We both had happily married parents. Our parents had taught us all our lives, by their actions and words, what made a successful marriage work.

What one best piece of advice can you give young married couples, just starting out?

Always speak respectfully and kindly of your spouse. Put his best foot forward for him!

When a group of women are together, invariably there will be one or two who make little remarks about their husbands’ shortcomings. Most of the time, these are women I know well enough to know that they love their husbands. I don’t think they even realize that they are making their husbands look bad to their friends.

My theory is: If I only share my husband’s best qualities when I am talking to others, doesn’t that makes me look “brilliant” for having chosen him? On the other hand, if I talk badly about my spouse and make him look bad to others, aren’t I really saying, “How dumb was I to marry that idiot!”?

Also, I do believe that people in general tend to live up to what is said about them. I know myself, that if I hear my husband tell someone how well I do something, you can bet that that is something that I’m going to do my best to be good at!

Throughout our marriage I have many times told people, “I have been president of Jimmy’s fan club since I was 15 years old.”

There’s also a little self-talk involved in this. If you are constantly looking for his good points, it just makes it that much easier to love him!

Wow. Even I am thinking that’s profound. Thanks so much for sharing with us, Sandra.

Be sure to check out Sandra’s blog Add Humor and Faith…mix well and read some of the stories of her experiences.

Till next time…

-TimK

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Staying Out All Night

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:47:00 -0800

Remember this in the Gilmore Girls episode “Rory’s Dance”? Lorelai had hurt her back, and there was only one position on the couch in which she could get any relief, lying upside-down, with her head hanging over the edge and her feet propped up on the back of the couch.

That’s how it’s been for me this week, except that instead of back pain, I’ve had migraines. I hope that explains why I haven’t posted regularly. It always starts with a poor night’s sleep and always ends with me sprawled in a strange position on the couch, pressing my head up against the armrest, because that the only way I can get the pounding in my head to stop hurting.

“Rory’s Dance” is also the Rory : Dean :: girlfriend : boyfriend episode.

Ah. I remember my first real girlfriend. (That’s a different story.)

I particularly like this line Lorelai says: “I just don’t want you to miss out on any experience because you’re too afraid.”

Sometimes we avoid experiences that could enrich our lives, because we’re afraid of them. But sometimes, as for Rory, when you step out on that limb, things work out beautifully and romantically, and you end up with a wonderful memory.

And sometimes, as for Rory, they don’t.

You might leave your miserable job in order to take your career (or your life) in a new direction. And you might become rich and famous, or you might end up broke and homeless. Or maybe you start up a conversation with that cute guy in the elevator at work. You might find out he’s your soulmate. Or you might find out that he’s already married.

Rory’s story reminds me of this one time I stayed out all night and probably freaked my parents. They handled it better than Lorelai, but then again, they didn’t have any of Lorelai’s baggage. I was 17 or 18 at the time. We were all at a church convention together. (Yes, and with lots of gossipy church-ladies there no doubt.) And after the day’s events, I went out for coffee with a few friends. And after we had coffee, one of the girls and I—not a girlfriend, just a girl friend—we got to talking in one of the lobbies in the hotel. We sat in the comfy chairs there and chatted and chatted and chatted. Before we knew it, the moon had gone to bed and the sun was waking up.

My parents simply listened to my explanation, and then with looks of consternation, made some forgettable comment about the incident, and then never mentioned it again. I never stayed out all night again.

But I still look back on that night as enjoyable, an experience I’m glad to have had. Every experience can make us better people. The worst job I ever had was also the most educational, because it challenged me the most. I will never go back to work for a company like that again (if I can avoid it), but I’ll still always take with me the life-lessons I learned there.

I wonder if Rory will ever look back on her experiences with Dean and ponder what she ultimately will have learned from them.

-TimK

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Teaser Tuesdays: I See You

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:00:57 -0800

I just finished Taxed to Death, which actually did get better near the end. I’ll post a better review later. For now, I need to pick a next book to read. Now, I did download a number of ebooks from Smashwords, where numerous authors (including yours truly) are offering their titles at 25% off, 50% off, or even 100% off, for Read-an-eBook Week. (Which is probably why the site is often down this week, because it’s getting hammered by voracious eBook readers.)

However, I think that for now, I’d like to read one of the out-of-print Holly Lisle titles I picked up recently. I plotted and schemed for a long time to get my hands on those… OK, that’s not exactly true. But it is true that I’ve wanted to collect more of Holly’s books for a long time. And I See You would really hit the spot right about now. This is one of Holly’s romantic suspense titles, the story of paramedic Dia Courvant, who rescued the sole survivor of a terrible car accident, to find her own husband dead in the wreckage. Now, four years later, a series of deadly car crashes has brought handsome detective Brig Hafferty into Dia’s life. She’s drawn to Brig, but can she trust him enough to tell him of the terror that stalks her? Because Dia has received a message warning her of danger and death, a message that seems to have been sent to her from beyond the grave.

Holly had a career as an ER nurse before she became a fiction author, known for her vibrant worlds and deep characters. The Little One says that she “didn’t like to read as much,” before she read Holly’s Moon and Sun books: The Ruby Key and The Silver Door. (Maybe I can convince her to try Harry Potter.) Now, she’s reading Talyn, which I haven’t read yet and which is ambitious for a pre-teen. (After she finishes it, she can try Twilight as an alternative.)

I expect I See You to be right on when it comes to the gestalt of Dia’s work. Additionally, my brother is a paramedic, and my sister-in-law’s a nurse, and my Beloved is also in the medical field, and my other brother works in the medical industry. (So when I claim that such-and-such a government healthcare scheme will only increase the costs and demand for medical care, at least you know I’m not saying it out of selfish interest.) So I also expect I See You to hit close to home, and maybe I’ll even pass it around after I’m done with it… as long as I can be guaranteed to get it back again.

Finally, here’s today’s teaser, from p. 165:

He walked over to the nurses’ station and said, “I got a call in from the lab on the agent that was in Dia Courvant’s air. Her doctor around?”

[ … ]

“So she was getting only about eight percent oxygen, assuming the rest of the stuff in her tank was good air.”

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.

-TimK

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A Buddy or a Parent?

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0800

Everyone who has children reaches a point where she must decide whether to try to be a parent to her kids or a buddy to them. As my own daughters grow through their teen years, I face the same choice. And in the Gilmore Girls episode “Kiss and Tell,” this is exactly the situation Lorelai encounters.

As a kid grows, she keeps more and more secrets. Eventually, she’s living her own life, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. I’m actually a little surprised that Rory waited as long as she did. She’s 16, for crying out loud! Are you telling me that she and Lorelai have never talked about boys before?

So if Lorelai can’t be a girlfriend to Rory where Dean is concerned, the flip-side is that Rory looks to her mother for advice and experience, and for a pattern to emulate.

Dean seems to know this, as he makes it clear to Lorelai that he needs her support. “But I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

I like Dean. He would ultimately have been so good for Rory, but she’s her mother’s daughter. Ironic, that.

-TimK

P.S. There are apples on the kitchen table during the movie scene! What are APPLES doing in Lorelai’s house?!

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Friday Fun: The 5 Rules of Book Reviews

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:00:40 -0800

Authors and publishers, in my opinion, spend way too much time sucking up to literary critics, which is why I decided to become a book reviewer.

Of course, no critic actually deserves the respect he gets (myself included), not for his opinion in any case. And I dare say, publishers wouldn’t give critics the time of day, were it not for the fact that bad reviews can severely hurt sales of a good book, and that good reviews can severely boost sales of a mediocre one. That’s why it’s more important to pander to the tastes and whims of the critics, than to publish books that would actually please ordinary readers.

Authors are not much better, because most authors believe, on some level, that literary critics actually know what they’re talking about. So when a critic doesn’t like the book she wrote, she believes that there’s something wrong with her, because the critic said so. Fortunately, there’s a simple antidote to this line of thinking: the 5 rules of book reviews, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Some years ago, a critic reviewed a piece of my work. He mocked and derided, not just the work, but me personally. In his opinion, I was a hack and a huckster, who couldn’t put two words together to save my life. And in his view, I should go back into the hole whence I came, only coming out after I had actually proven my value to the literary community. Moreover, he made all these pronouncements—and he plainly admitted this in his review—without reading a single word of the work in question, based solely on the back-cover blurb and other marketing materials.

It was then that I realized three things about reviewers—and this part is actually true: Firstly, they are writers in their own rights, with fans of their own. Secondly, their job is not to give an honest evaluation of your work, but to pander to their own readers’ desires and prejudices. Thirdly, if they can do so without actually reading your book, they will, and with impunity.

If I sound a little bitter at reviewers, that should tell you something about how I feel about myself (since I too write reviews, sometimes very opinionated reviews). Factor in the fact that I’m also an indie publisher who is genetically incapable of sucking up to literary critics, and you’ll finally understand why I should probably be in a mental institution.

The reason I’m not in a mental institution is because I have discovered and follow the 5 rules of book reviews, which all authors and readers alike should memorize, for the benefit of society as a whole:

If the reviewer gives the book one star, he’s an opinionated jackass who would have condemned Tom Sawyer for being too trite, Huckleberry Finn as too racist, and Mark Twain for having a stupid pseudonym.
If he gives the book two stars, he has no passion, can’t get worked up enough even to condemn the book. (Two stars is the worst rating a book can receive: at least the one-star reviewer hated it; that’s something.)
If he gives the book three stars, he’s saying he’d like to rate it lower, but he would feel bad about doing so; so he pads his review with tripe about the author being a good writer, even though he didn’t like this particular book and doesn’t plan to read any more books by that author if he can help it.
If he gives the book four stars, he’s trying to appear diplomatic, knowing that the publisher expects a 5-star rating, but also that his readers would suspect foul play if he didn’t find at least something wrong with it.
If he gives the book five stars, he’s probably pandering to the author’s ego, hoping that the author will in turn recommend him on her blog to her fans, or mention him in an interview, or—best yet—when he writes his book, give it five stars in return. (Some reviewers don’t even review books that they can’t rate favorably, knowing that what goes around comes around.)

So while I still read, and I still comment on and review the books that I read, I give little weight to reviews of my own work, knowing that they say more about the reviewer than they do about me. (And that is also actually true.)

-TimK

P.S. This piece was supposed to be funny, and I guess it is, in a sardonic, “funny ’cause it’s true!” sort-of way. If you find it angry or bitter, I apologize. I’ll try to post something better next week.

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