Author: Pavowski

I am a teacher, runner, father, and husband. I am an author-in-progress. I'm bad at jiu-jitsu. I know just enough about a lot of things to get me into a lot of trouble.

Just Junk

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In keeping with my realization and resolution yesterday (not a New Year’s Resolution, just a regular old un-arbitrarily-linked-to-meaningless-space-time-data resolution), I attacked the edit hard today. Lots of parsing, lots of tidying, lots of trimming and sweeping, but no reconstructive surgery. And I was flying. I got through twenty pages, wrote several new paragraphs that needed inserting and deleted a handful that were just cluttering up the joint. Twenty pages in a day!

And as I always do when I’m reading over my own writing, I realized another thing. My prose is lousy with junk language.

It’s a first draft, so I’m not mad at myself, but it was still shocking to see how much I lean on empty modifiers and redundant qualifiers. Prime example? Just.

Not just as in right, but just as in only just. This is a word that’s practically invisible to me in speech — I knew that already — but in my writing, it flows out just as invisibly (see? Just there. AND AGAIN.) To be honest, I didn’t even spot it until I was thirty minutes into my work, and then only because just appeared twice in the same sentence. I’d carelessly used it twice by mistake, but the sudden jolt of reading it twice gave me pause. Then I pondered.

An invaluable tool during the edit has been the “find” feature. I can search for swear words (which need editing out), chapter titles (to track down errant plotlines and quickly navigate the document), and goofy little symbols I’ve thrown in to mark trouble spots. It’s a great tool for making quick work of pervasive problems and finding my way around, but today it found a new task: Seek and destroy.

“Just” went into the finder. Actually, “just ” with a space went into the finder, to weed out any fancy words like justice or justified or Justin (all Justins should be removed from all books, just on principle, but that’s a topic for another post). The result? I had written “just” into the book 358 times. The number as a number doesn’t do itself justice. That’s three hundred, fifty eight times I used the word “just” as a modifier in the course of a book that’s 175 pages in Word. Two per page.

An epidemic.

Out came the scissors and the “just”s began falling to the ground like my hair, back when I used to have enough hair to necessitate going in for haircuts. Fifty of them got cut with no other modification to the lines they appeared in, another fifty got removed with minor modification, and the other two hundred fifty are slated for summary destruction tomorrow. Now, don’t get me wrong. Adverbs have their place. But for me, this junk language is as obvious a crutch as you could hope to see.

I usually like to dig below the surface and make extra meaning out of my issues, but there’s nothing extra in this one. There’s something to be said for conversational tone here on the blarg and in, y’know, conversation. But that junk language creeping into “proper” writing is bad news, and I have a feeling that much like roaches in your kitchen, there are a hundred hiding in the walls for every one that you see in the open.

Too Much Think

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There comes a point all things significant in my life wherein I find myself thinking way too much. I thought too much about marrying my wife, about buying our first house, about having kids… and I am definitely thinking too much about the edit of my novel.

I started out, if anything, not thinking enough. Not really wanting to tackle the tough choices, not really wanting to rejigger the narrative, not really willing to tear out the skeleton of the thing to make the changes that are necessary. But it grew on me, and I started to realize that not only are there tough choices to make, but that I often needed to take the harder of the two paths for fixing the problems in the story. And I started hunting down the problems in the narrative like  Indiana Jones seeking golden idols in the depths of Mayan temples. Each new problem solved gave rise to another, bigger conflict I could fix. Each prospective fix, not necessarily right for this situation, took on new significance, grew wings and started looking for problems to apply itself to. And then, a little stymied after a hectic work week, I threw myself at the edit again yesterday and spotted a white whale just lazing about below the surface of the waves on the horizon. A prize so massive, catching her and bringing her in could alter the trajectory of the narrative like a moonshot. It was a job too big for a single day, so I put it on the EPOS and marinated on it overnight.

And I realized something. Drafts of a story are like prototypes before a product launch. None of them is perfect, but each one gets polished to a point where it at least looks and functions more or less as intended. There may still be bugs on the inside, but to an outside observer, it looks like a complete thing. And my edit of this story resembles not so much a prototype as a cluttered workshop after a hurricane and a flash flood. The narrative is in pieces. Loose ends like frayed wires are protruding out of the armholes, eye sockets, fingertips. Entire limbs of the story are disjointedly stuck on with duct tape while other vestigial bits are still cluttering the margins like piles of unswept sawdust.

I’ve been so focused on fixing every little problem along the way that I never bothered to stop, clean up, and see if the thing as a whole is still working as intended. There’s been so much thought about making this little thing fit into its niche that I’m not paying attention to the fact that I’ve stitched an alligator arm onto a panda bear torso. I fear that there’s been so little big picture focus that I’ve created a Frankenstein’s Monster doomed to self-destruct in a boiling froth of unresolved plots and half-baked new characters. In short: I fear that I’ve somehow managed to make this second draft worse than the first.

But you know what? Maybe it is, and maybe that’s okay. If nothing else, it’s time to stop making huge conceptual changes, clean up the dust and debris, and see if this thing can even stand on its own two feet. The first draft did. It was shaky, but it stood up. This second draft? I honestly have no idea. I think it will, but I haven’t tested it properly with a read-through to see.

So it’s time to stop thinking so much. Time to stop trying to fix everything and start making sure that the fixes I’ve made already actually work. Which means no more breaking the story into pieces. No more new characters. No DELETING existing characters. No more rearranging story elements. I need less chainsaw, more chisel. Less dynamite, more sander. Time to sweep up the workshop, put the tools away, and just sit and have another good look at this thing I’ve built. Get a second opinion. Take a bird’s-eye view of the whole scenario.

And then, you know, with fresh perspective, maybe it’ll be time to lop its arms off.

A Little Trim

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I can’t be trusted with my own story.

In making a last push to work on the edit, I found myself thinking some truly troubling thoughts. In the past month, I’ve struggled through editing an entirely new character into the innards of the story, and doing so required some deft slices of the scalpel and some not-so-deft whacks of the axe to make room for. And now, like a maniac who’s tasted blood and now needs to slice open jugulars nightly just to feel some semblance of normal, I find myself eyeing that axe again and thinking… I could cut more.

Just a little more. Shave a little off the top. Clip the ends off, neaten this bit out. Trim the dead weight. Sure, the novel as a whole could probably use more trimming, but that’s not what I’m talking about. No, what’s caught my eye is a prize hog. One of the supporting characters looks positively ripe for harvesting.

I had this thought in the first stages of the edit, regarding another one of the supporting cast, but I didn’t pull the trigger. Couldn’t bring myself to wipe her out. Maybe because I was too cowardly to axe a major part of the work, maybe because I didn’t have the confidence to pull it off. For some reason, now, though, I find myself weighing the decision and seriously thinking it over… not because I feel the character needs to go — she’s been a part of the story since the first iterations, back when it was a stage play. No, I’m sizing her up like she’s some challenge, like that ancient fish lurking in the depths of the pond, the twisted ends of dozens of anglers’ hooks adorning its lip. I could cut her out like she never existed, I think… which, as Criminal Minds plays in the background here while I sit on the couch with my wife, sounds like an extraordinarily psychotic thing to say.

No, I think this is more editing loopiness setting in. Cabin fever is snaking its slimy tendrils up my spine after all the time I’ve spent with this story and it’s making me hallucinate. Making me think I see blood pooling behind her eyes, a dead albatross around her neck. She’s probably not so much cursed as I am looking for ways to drastically improve this story amidst my fears that it’s utter crap.

She’ll live, for now.

But I need to keep making progress, finish this edit, and get this thing off to some impartial readers. That axe is looking awfully sharp and awfully inviting.

Page-Turner

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Chuck’s challenge this week: Must Contain 3 Things. My three things: Library, Survival, War.

Ever gotten totally lost in a really good book? So did Elloree. Her story is below.

Page-Turner

In the flickering light of her dying candle, Elloree resembled nothing so much as a praying mantis in smudged plaid and oversized glasses. Her spindly fingers tracked like machines across the typeface, barreling toward the bottom of the page, then flicked it over with robotic efficiency. Her radiant eyes bounced from side to side as they drank in the words like so much water down the throat of a man dying of thirst. Her papery lips alternately pursed with puzzlement or curled up with satisfaction or opened just slightly to gasp with surprise. In a matter of moments, she had finished the book and tossed it on the pile of its brethren; another stripped-down carcass added to a growing pile of bones.

She rose, dusted her knees, and ghosted her way through the aisles. They towered over her diminutive frame like guardians, shielding her from the crimson light streaming through the windows, the streaked and scorched sunlight invading her fortress as it did for only a few times every day. She floated through fiction, bandied around the biographies, and reveled past the reference section, landing at last in her favorite section: Romance. She picked out a thick volume with a strapping bare-chested man on its cover and hummed dreamily to herself as she carried it back to her nest.

******

Rast’s shrill whistle pierced the evening, and Nell lifted her gaze from her bedraggled footsteps.

“Up ahead,” Rast whispered, as if afraid of breaking the dusty silence. “See it?”

She did. And as it always did when they approached another town, her throat tightened. Most likely it was just full of more of the same: smoldering corpses, shattered buildings, the haunting echoes of an entire community’s tortured final moments lingering in the air like poison. Occasionally, despite all the festering death, there would be some supplies. It had to be risked.

Nell straightened her pack on her shoulders, brushed an errant strand of soot-smeared hair from her face. “Let’s go.”

******

The sun was almost down, but Elloree hardly noticed. She never did, as the sunset looked the same as sunrise and much of the rest of the day. With the never-breaking columns of acrid black clouds streaming overhead, only an occasional ray of burning light would streak through, and then only briefly. The rest was darkness and smoke, and her candle was guttering. She lit another and continued her story.

******

The extermination here had been methodical and absolute. The roads were pulverized and difficult to walk on; Rast and Nell found their footing much more easily several feet off the road in the mud and weeds. The buildings were hollowed and skeletal, their shells weird misshapen silhouettes against the fading red light. No food. No survivors. Nothing left.

“Sun’s down soon,” Nell said. “Time to go.” She hated making camp in towns; you never knew when a sentry would pass over. They were better off when they could find a copse of trees or a rampant untended cornfield. But Rast wasn’t listening. He was squinting against the fading light, his three-fingered hand needlessly visoring out the sun. “There’s a light.”

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to get caught out here.”

“Nell. That building. Over there. It’s intact.” he pointed with his five-fingered hand. “And there’s a light in its window.”

Nell sighed and humored Rast with a look. He was daft as a post, but loyal, and he tried to help, bless him. He was also absolutely right.

The Septids razed every building they declared “tactically useful,” which included food storage, weapons repositories, residences, schools, churches, and offices. Occasionally you’d find a squat untouched, a shed or a low-slung warehouse. This building was small — probably too small to hold anything useful — but it was also definitely illuminated from within. Not by much. A light too faint to be mistaken for anything other than the reflected glow from the scorched sun burned at one window at the nearest corner. But that one window glowed while the others were dark. Rast’s sharp eyes had picked out something useful after all.

She turned to him and nodded, drawing her pistol. “Quietly.”

******

The cracked and smoke-stained door opened soundlessly as Rast leaned into it, and on practiced, stealthy footsteps, they stole into the wide open space.

A library.

For a moment, Nell simply gaped. She couldn’t believe the building was so intact, but it didn’t take long to figure out why. Books had long ago gone obsolete. They’d been digitized and collected into virtual storage, which was easier to police and took up less space. Most libraries had been decommissioned, but in some outlying towns it hadn’t been finished before the overthrow. And here they were, in a library.

With somebody else. At the end of the room, a shuffling of feet, a clatter of books. They edged around the shelves and aimed their guns at the tiny girl hunched over a novel in front of a ludicrous pile of books. Her eyes peered at them curiously through the thick lenses of her glasses.

She blinked at them, and they at her, for a few tense moments.

“How are you alive?” Nell finally asked.

Elloree shrugged.

“How long have you been here?”

She shrugged again.

The girl seemed so carefree, so unimpressed by them. Nell felt foolish. “How did you survive the war?” She demanded, her voice growing shrill.

“The war?”

Rast giggled foolishly. Nell scowled. “The war,” she explained, “that wiped out most of humanity. The war,” she continued, “that destroyed this town. The war,” she finished, “that somehow left you untouched. You didn’t know?!”

Elloree shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “It’s just… well… I’ve been reading.”

Rast began cackling. “Bookworm read right through the end of the world!”

“It’s just,” Elloree said, “that they were really good books.”

Terrible Reviews: Activity Tracker Edition

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At some point in the past several years, trackers have gone from the stuff of spy movies and government conspiracies to the latest tech-slash-fashion-slash-fitness-slash-self-absorption craze. Being somewhat concerned with fitness, consistently fascinated by tech, not at all interested in fashion, and supremely selfish, I decided over the holidays that I might want one of these.

And I didn’t get one.

But that’s why God invented gift cards, innit? So a few days after Christmas, I had done some research with my wife looking over my shoulder, and we went and bought a Jawbone Up Move for each of us.

I’m pretty sure I hate the name. “Jawbone,” meh, whatever, that’s the name of the company, and I think they made headsets or something originally, so that gets a pass. “Up” is the name for their line of trackers (they make enough models to consider it a line now). I can’t say I endorse using an adverb as your product identity. Adjectives, sure. Speedy! Flamboyant! Hoopy! But an adverb? As an English teacher, I can’t say an adverb stands well on its own. Then there’s “Move”, which I don’t really have a problem with, as that’s what the gizmo is designed to get you to do. Plus, it’s in that authoritative imperative mood, so it sounds like an angry gym coach shouting at you to GET UP THAT ROPE COSTANZA. But you put it all together — Jawbone Up Move — and it sounds a little ridiculous. But you have to put it all together; you can’t just say “Up” or “Move” on their own because Google doesn’t know what you’re talking about, and other humans look at you funny or punch you. I’m just going to refer to it as the “JUM” herein, because that sounds a little like gum, and who doesn’t like gum?

In a world of Fitbits and Garmins and wrist straps and belt clips and skull implants and constant satellite monitoring, (you didn’t get the skull implant and satellite monitoring with your soy half caff? [I have no idea what a soy half caff is]) why the JUM? I’m not gonna lie, it was one of the cheapest options available, but it still boasts access to the Up app, which was highly favored by a slew of online reviewers, and which, after three weeks, I’m pretty fond of. What the JUM lacks in visual appeal and features it makes up for in simplicity and battery life — unlike most of these gadgets, it runs off a watch battery and doesn’t have to be plugged in every few days. Considering the veritable snakepit of little dongly things choking the drawers in our kitchen, this was no small selling point.

Look, it’s not my goal to actually review the thing, as I’m not an expert. All I really want to do is talk about my experience with it, which is equal parts insightful, amusing, and hilarious, and I imagine this experience would be more or less the same for any of these trackers.

Let’s start with insightful. The JUM perches quietly on your wrist or in your pocket or at your waistband or clipped to your earlobe or embedded in your spine (technology pending) and it counts your steps.

No, really, that’s about all it does. Like a sweatshop gnome hunched over an archaic adding machine with the tape spilling out onto the floor and his knobby knuckles hammering at the “+1” over and over again, it logs your steps throughout the day. More correctly, it counts step-like-movements, which can be gamed a little bit by swinging your arms around while you talk on the phone, for example. It also purports to track your sleep by the same metric (tracking movements while you lay in bed under the premise that you hold exceptionally still while asleep). That sounds cool, but I have my doubts about how accurate or reliable that information can be.

In short, all of this is built around the premise that 10,000 steps a day can help you lose weight and get healthier, which is probably true, because as it turns out, 10,000 steps is actually rather a lot.

But it’s more impressive than just counting, because it also syncs with your phone to track the time you took all those steps. So it can tell you, for example, that from seven-thirty AM until eight-fifteen AM, you took 300 steps as you milled around your apartment getting ready for work, from nine until five you took thirty steps as you parked your donk in your cubicle all day, and from five-after-five until five-twenty, you took seven thousand steps as you chased down and murdered your co-workers with an axe. The JUM then aggregates this data for you and pushes it at your face through these bright and cheerfully colored graphs.

So you’re left with collections of numbers and pages upon pages of graphs that describe what you were doing and when and for how long, which probably has useful implications in case you’re ever questioned about all the suddenly axe-murdered employees at your job. And that’s interesting and insightful because it allows you to pinpoint the times of day when you are active and the times of day when you could use a bit more chasing and stabbing and digging and burying to get your heart rate up.

It’s also where the JUM becomes amusing. Because, if I’m honest, I don’t need the step counter to tell me that between 5 and 9 pm I don’t move that much, or that I get a bunch of steps in every day at work without even really trying. But the amounts are amusing. Turns out I walk about 2-3 miles daily at work, most of it in a thirty foot square classroom. And while that 10,000 step goal seems lofty and hard to reach on some days, on other days (and especially on my weekend long run days) it gets shattered. I put in (checks a big orange graph with a smiley face) 16,000 steps last Saturday, which brought my daily step average up to a little over 12,000. So the app now thinks that I need a challenge and it wants me to do 13,000 steps a day. And maybe I could do it, but the app slides it my way like a high-roller palming a twenty off to the valet, like it’s no big deal.

Then there’s the sleep tracking. The JUM supposedly tells you not only how many hours you sleep, but how long it takes you to fall asleep and how many times you wake up in the night. This is well and good and cool as long as you take into account that the thing isn’t measuring your brainwaves or anything, so it doesn’t actually know you’re sleeping or not; all it knows is that you weren’t moving very much, and this it interprets as sleeping. But my wife and I have kids. Two of them, under three years old. They wake up in the night, sometimes often. (Don’t talk to me about how nonsensical the phrase “sometimes often” is. I stand by it.) As a result, when we view our sleep data, we wind up with these deep canyons of orange (wakeful activity) in between the scattered cliffs of blue (various “stages” of sleep). Like a river-carved monument to our ongoing sleep deprivation.  The amusing part is the concept that I might need the app to tell me I woke up in the night. As if the raccoon eyes and the fact that I can’t keep my head upright during the day would let me forget. (And the centripetal force from my wife’s eye-roll just literally knocked me from my chair.) (She wakes up with the kids WAY more than I do.)

Speaking of my wife, that’s where the JUM gets hilarious. We try to be health-conscious: it’s the whole reason I started running, and I think the JUM feeds that in a quantifiable and productive way. And if the aim of the product is to get people off their butts and moving their feet in an attempt to better their health, I think that’s admirable.

But now, things have taken a whole other turn. My wife and I have both hit 10,000 steps every day for almost three weeks now. That doesn’t, however, mean that we’ve each had full, active days every day. It means we’ve managed to place our feet on the floor in an alternating pattern 10,000 times every day. It’s not an uncommon sight to find my wife walking laps around the living room or the kitchen, listening to podcasts while the kids are napping or asleep. I’ve jogged in place in my pajamas next to the bed on a couple of occasions to get a final 1000 steps in. Even now, my as I type, my wife is stomping a moat into the carpet around our coffee table while my son chases her in advance of his bedtime. We’ve become walking robots. This little gizmo on our wrists has made us competitive to the point of absurdity, which I suppose means the product is working as intended, though I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel like an idiot a lot of the time.

All told, the JUM (and, by extension, probably just about every other tracker on the market) therefore falls into the category of wholly unnecessary but nonetheless delightful little devices that are now a part of my life, next to my keyless entry for the car, my smartphone, my bluetooth earpiece (say what you will, I know they’re douchey as all get-out, but I love that thing for the car and while doing chores around the house), my GPS watch, and any number of laptop peripherals. This is one of those things that if you think you’ll enjoy it, you probably will, and if you think you won’t, well, there are certainly better things to spend your money on.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I somehow have to find 3000 more steps before the bedtime my JUM has set for me at 9:57.