2004 Story Set
| Date: July 12, 2004 I remember sitting in a product release meeting, full of engineers, chip designers, packaging and miscellaneous other people from other departments. I was the director of documentation at the time. The problem was a very complicated algorithm that needed to be designed to count the number and types of input macros that a designer wanted to put on a part and the need to compare that to the number and types of I/O cells available to put them on. Because you simply cannot put more I/O macros down on a chip than you have seats for them and this chip had different types of seats and the macros could sometimes sit on more than one type. Needless to say - it was a messy, messy math problem and we were not making any progress. It was a new chip series and a new release and we couldn't get anywhere and customers were waiting. So were the salesmen. I went home mulling over the problem - because no one had told me that I could not drive a release meeting AND be the problem solver. I solve problems. At 2AM I woke up and grabbed pen and pencil and wrote down about 4-5 pages of code, using PL/1, a programming language which was OK to use at that point in history. The programmers worked in C. I was used to PL/1 and other more arcane programming languages since I used to teach programming and comparative compiler languages. Lucky me. Problem solved. I brought it in. I evidently cowed the programmers (I shouldn't have done that I guess, poor guys), who were still deadlocked and they quietly translated my PL/1 into C without edit (PL/1 was used to document the algorithm in C) and we released on time. I was now hated and loved. Who knew? But the point is, these things fly through the air and into my brain without warning and I must, absolutely must write them down. Even at 2 in the morning. Exactly as they arrive. This happens with articles and stories and chapters of novels. The stuff just arrives, runs into my head and I must let it pour out of my fingers and onto the computer screen, unchanged and unedited. It used to pour out of my fingers to a sharp pencil. I will, of course, go fix typing errors. Usually. If I notice them. This flying into my head happens when I am driving in traffic. At those times, I become an aggressive driver, determined to reach my keyboard. I am in a compulsive state. I wrote the Calendar and Working Mother's Morning - both of which took 20 minutes - in this manner. And then I wrote the New Puppy. The last two were published in the company newspaper. Passage is another one these things. A different voice, a different style. Took 20 minutes. And wham! I had what? A chapter in a novel? (I get asked to please finish writing that novel, please.) And the Green Disk, which is so weird that my children shake their heads. It arrived. I typed. And then told people where to get the ecological newspaper later on when they took the same title and found their customers confused. Slightly. Someone has now read Passage. And criticized it. Oh woe is me. Let me lick my wounds. I will need to read all that over slowly and see what is upsetting the reader. It is a staccato piece, of short sentences and background story (you do not have a lot of time to get things set up in a story - a novel can wander around forever). And the staccato got to her. But she likes how I write sentences. She also read the Carpathian. I have a rhythm. Nope. My muse does. And I usually do not question it. |
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