Your Tax Dollars, Taking A Nap

When we got to work this morning, things were a little on the dark side.

The classrooms in our main building were ablaze with light, we could see as the bus pulled up. But the parking lot lights and the foyer to the building, well, dark. You could see the glow of cell phones on faces, but that was about it.

Power out, obviously. The classrooms had emergency power. Everything else but the fire exit lights and such were out.

I found a dark little spot to lean against the wall, a bit out of the way so nobody would trip over me. IT was crowded in the foyer – a couple hundred employees all crammed in there, yet it was still pretty chilly. I sat for a while but my butt went to sleep. So I wandered over to the bathrooms. Good thing I had my cell phone, because otherwise I would have had to do my business in the pitch dark. Mental note: Bring one of my solar lanterns from home, to have in case of emergency. Also for use in the records closet when I lock myself in there to take naps.*

After the potty break, I found a chair to sit in. I alternated between leaning forward and dozing and leaning backward and dozing, waking occasionally when the conversation in the room got a bit loud or it sounded like someone was making an announcement.

Round about 8:30 AM – an hour and a half after arrival – the lights turned on and we all filed dutifully through the turnstyles.

I wanted more nap time. But luckily I brought a Dr. Pepper from home, so I had a little pick-me-up. But I have to throw my work cup away, as it has a crack in it, and my Dr. Pepper was slowly leaking out. I feel  kinda sad about that.

But not sad all y’all paid me $39 to take a nap this morning.

Oh. Why was the power out? I never heard officially. We did have wind gusts of up to 74 miles per hour blowing through the plant last night accompanied by heavy rain. So it’s likely there were lines down or maybe a transformer blew up or something. All I know is they got it fixed.

And I’m being flip here, of course. Keeping us at work, even idled while the power was out, saved you money. About half of us ride government buses to work. To have the buses roll to take us home would have cost a lot. And they would have still rolled home at the regular time, because only the power at our plant was out, not everywhere at the Site.

*This, I have not done. Though I have fantasized about it regularly.

Rectangle America Megaphone Monday Butthole Kind of Writing

I am kind of a numbers freak.

And by numbers, I mean the number of words I write on a given project and the number of pages I read in a given year.

Beyond that, numbers are boring to me. Tell me a number – a phone number, an address, anything you want – and it’s highly likely I won’t remember it. Unless the number has real meaning, I’m not going to remember it.

Besides, most numbers are arbitrary anyway – even the few I track.

 Did I read at least 12,000 pages a year, 1,000 pages a month? I hope so. That’s my target. Why? I don’t know. 1,000 pages a year is a nice round number.

Same for the 75,000 words I aimed for in the current draft to DOLEFUL CREATURES. I hit that number. Does it mean the book is done yet? No. Will it be done at 100,000 words? I don’t know. That depends on how many words I add and how many words I end up cutting out of Revision No. 5.

And how many times do I need to revise the novel before I can say it’s done? I don’t know. Ask me when it’s done.

So to read Jamie Todd Rubin’s Daily Beast piece about the painful amount of data he’s collecting on himself just leaves me wondering: Why?

He points to a Stephen Wolfram blog post in which Wolfram babbles at length on the number of emails he’s sent or received and the number of meetings he’s attended and the number of phone calls he’s fielded or made as justification for tracking all the little numbers in his life.

And Wolfram’s post leaves me wondering: Why?

It’s fine if you want to collect and analyze that kind of data.

But is doing so going to make you a better writer, or is it just busywork?

Rubin does say this:

For me, the results have been remarkable. I’ve sold stories more quickly and with fewer rejections along the way—a sign that the practice has helped to improve my writing. The volume of writing has allowed me to branch out into nonfiction articles as well.

So, okay, that’s great.

But there are no numbers to back it up. How much more quickly? And by how much have you reduced your rejections? And how many articles and short stories and books have you sold? And given that you wrote over 400,000 words in the year you tracked your data – more than in the 20 years prior to 2013 – could it be the quantity of writing is what put you over the edge, not the tracking of the data?

Additionally, if he’s tracking the type of writing that’s giving him the most return on investment, I’m not seeing the numbers here. You’d think a guy who wants to become a full-time writer would be analyzing the hell out of the type of writing that gets him the most cash. Maybe he is – and again, if he is, that’s great. But wouldn’t you think touting those numbers would be central to an article in which he advocates tracking numbers and says it helps him improve as a writer?

And his writing tips (and his writing) are pretty pedestrian, given the number of numbers he’s collected:

• Content, not word count (I’d like to see him write a script that tells him how good his writing is versus how much he’s pounded the keyboard).
•  Flexibility in when and where you write.
• Making work accessible from anywhere.
• Tuning out surroundings.
• Plan writing even on busy days.
• Have multiple projects.

None of that is earth-shattering. You just have to do it. And I guess if tracking an insane amount of numbers is what motivates you, that’s fine. But until I see the numbers for the Amigo Money, all the numbers you toss out just aren’t convincing enough.