Caren Gussoff writer. geek. bon vivant. dot com

I’ve had the same, basic conversation multiple times lately, all prompted by longing glances at friend’s and co-worker’s new iPhone.
Here’s an approximation of how they went:
“Are you going to get one?” they asked, looking up at me briefly, before hunching back over the glossy, sexy little thing and poking their fingers to launch some new app.
I decidedly shook my head no. “I’m waiting for a good competitor,” I said, politely.
They smiled at that. “You should get one.”
“Nah,” I replied.
“They’re so great,” they said.
This exchange went on in almost every instance until I would realize I had to reveal my dirty secret, else we’d be stuck in this loop forever. I never wanted to say this out loud, for lots of reasons–that it makes me an anomaly among my arty-minded pals and colleagues and that I can’t ever just leave it at the reveal, but am instead compelled to launch into a five minute rant that always leaves ‘em glassy-eyed.
“I don’t really like Macs,” I’d say. Then, like a car backing over a neighborhood puppy, I bowled over their look of shock, and started in.
It wasn’t usually this erudite or organized, but if it had been, this is how it would have sounded:

I don’t really like Macs. I do, however, love my Mac-using friends.
Airbooks are beautiful. I have a Shuffle my pop bought me as a gift. I drool over the iPhones. But I won’t buy one.
I won’t buy a Mac product again. I was suckered in early on by the first generation iPods, and that experience alone soured me entirely on the brand–and then all their subsequent advertising and marketing moments have done nothing but cement the fact that I don’t want one.

1. It’s a waste. IMHO, there is little-to-nothing green about creating hardware that relatively savvy consumers are trapped by. The best way to void your Mac warranty is to crack it open to change the battery, much less install new memory or increase its speed. Even a geek lite should be insulted.
2. Six months after you buy a Mac, your chances that your model is no longer being supported is at least 50%.
3. It’s often, at the point in which your Mac device starts acting wonky, cheaper for you to just buy a whole new device rather than repair or upgrade your current hardware, which is still wicked expensive. With non-Mac products, I could, hypothetically, upgrade my memory, processor, battery, and whatnot for peanuts.
4. You have to make a freaking appointment with a Mac “genius” at a local shop in order to get straight answers about a product, which usually include the words, “You could just buy the new generation of ___ Mac.” Thank you, genius.
5. Macs look nice. So? Two weeks of being lugged around in my bag, getting used, would make *any* pretty baby look rode hard and put away wet.
6. The marketing ploy that you only have two choices: a PC or a Mac, and PCs are for tight-assed corporate types, while Macs are for smart, cool, young, lefty, hipsters. I’m neither of those things, and don’t really care, anyway, what advertising tells me I should own based on my level of awesomeness. My favorite machine is a web book that runs Ubuntu Linux, Open Office, GIMPs, and all open source software.
7. Irritation over the myth that Macs are better for producing art/they have better graphics programs/etc. OK, maybe 15 years ago. But really now, all those programs have versions supported by most OS’s, including Linux (to which I am partial. In fact, there are plenty of really decent open source/shareware graphics programs out there these days)
8. Lord AT&T and his reign of terror over iPhoneland. Enough said.
9. Too bad, of all the apps iPhone users can download, they can’t get one that makes the phone part work correctly, well, or consistently.
10. iTunes. That horrible DRM-containing, proprietary file format the songs come in. The fact that you almost have to sacrifice your firstborn, even now, to transfer your library from one iPod to another.
11. Yeah, OK, PCs are vulnerable to viral attacks. Get antiviral software. There’s even good, freeware/shareware ones out there. Plus, it’s just overblown–I’ve used Windows based PCs at work, in huge corporate networks, for years, and I have not once had a virus attack. Then again, I don’t open questionable files, surf blindly, or click pop-ups.

So, there. I’m out now, publically. And until the day that a clone appears, suitably priced and with carrier choices, I will tap out my sad texts on my so 3 years ago Razr keypad, have to use an actual laser level to hang shelves, and jot down where we parked on my hand.
And, of course, look with longing at your iPhone.

Wow, the weekend’s over already.
I’ve mostly avoided the internet. Barely checked email, did not twitter (twat?), no Facebook.  I did almost no writing, either.
Instead, I celebrated Frank’s birthday, ate salted caramel ice cream, hung out with Jamie, watched movies, hung out with my husnamd, read, ate pizza, hung out with my dad, knitted, read, walked around, started a volunteer job with the Puget Sound Blood Bank, and did some vital and painful deep cleaning.
By upbringing, I’m a bargain shopper and a hoarder. By nature, I am a purger. This causes an interesting internal, semi-annual struggle.
I am very talented at shopping. It is something I am very, very, very good at.
But for a long time, I’ve dreamt a pretty simple dream: only own things I like, use, and that fit me.
I mean, I’m not an ascetic. I so want to own more than a sarong and a rice bowl.
It should be pretty simple, right? Don’t buy or accumulate anything that I don’t like, will use, or that doesn’t fit.
But, this is not how my life has worked at all.
I buy or accumulate things I am unsure of, think I might need, or for some mysterious reason, find too great a deal to walk away from. Then these things never get used, and twice a year, those same things get bagged, tagged, and sent back out into the world. It’s stupid and wasteful. It stresses me right the fuck out.
But I did a mini search and destroy in the bedroom and chest of drawers. So far, I’ve tossed out/placed into thrift store pile/recycled:
• a makeup bag full of makeup, some dating back to when I retired from burlesque dancing…in 2004. Ugh
• a lawn sized garbage bag full of stretched out/faded/worn through/incorrect size, shape, color clothing, beyond even being downgraded to pajama status
• a drawer full of expired medicine–an entire drawer. Seriously
• a stack of books I will never read again (I buy a lot of used books and take out from the library. My home bookshelves are really misleadingly empty. I try and only keep books I love, refer to, are signed, special to me, or know I will read again)
• 3 good sized trash cans of paper–drafts, junk mail, who knows
• and at least 2 candles made more of dust and cat hair than paraffin. I think they were candles. Maybe they were soap. Ick

Now, I also indulged in today’s thrift store 50% off madness, but I did only buy a few things I actually needed: jeans, a tee shirt, a pair of very sensible ballet flats, some books…except for a very strange, very heavy, 70s copper pendant that has a creepy mermaid on one side and a creepier Viking ship on the other. But it’s really small. I swear.

*sigh*

And here comes Tuesday.

Of all the writing reference books I’ve ever owned, by and far the most awesomely useful one is one that I almost never see mentioned by other writers: The Random House Word Menu. Old versions are out of print, but available at used book stores, or you can do as I did and find one on eBay for a dollar. BEST dollar I’ve ever spent. You can find it on Amazon or from the publisher.

 Now, I am pro all reference books. I love them. I have been known known to read reference books for a good time. But the Word Menu has consistently been my go-to books since the day it landed in my hot little hands.

What rules about the Word Menu is that it is exactly what it says: a menu of words, organized by topic and subtopic. Writing about a building and can’t remember what the narrow word strip that covers the seam between boards? Look up building and machine parts under structural components in the technology category, then scan the list (it’s “batten,” BTW). Or writing something about photography and need a list of several different kinds of photography? Look under applied arts, photography, then types of photography—and viola, find a list of different kinds of photography (aerial, animation, black and white, cinematography, daguerreotype, etc). Listd of types of cooking oils, wind instruments, verbs of sight, shapes, types of disasters, hair styles, diseases,  railroad argot, architectural facades, tailoring details…have I tempted you, yet?

What’s the reference book you can’t imagine life without?

Thanks to National Haiku Day, “snow madness,” and the existence of Thaumatrope, I’ve finally broken down and am now officially a twit. You can follow me, if you’d like.

I promise completely mundane and/or cryptic 140 character updates that will overlap with neither my blog nor my facebook page.

1. We’ve had a hummingbird feeder up on our deck for months. Chris finally had me convinced that we’d never actually get any hummingbirds considering where we live, and so far, we hadn’t. I’ve been meaning to take it down for the past month or so, but am too lazy/busy/keep forgetting. Today, I was smoking a cigarette on the porch, freezing my ass off (it’s about 20 degrees out) and what comes buzzing over and sets itself down on the feeder? A hummingbird. Amazing! But it broke my heart because I’m pretty sure that the hummingbird nectar inside is frozen solid. It buzzed away pretty quickly. I yelled after it for it to come back, that’d I’m warm up the nectar for it, but I don’t think it heard me.*
2. Dear “Heroes,”
Now that the plot point about the formula is more or less done with as far as you are concerned, I have only one thing to say: really? No one ever thought to, you know, make a Xerox copy of the formula? Or memorize it? Yeah, it looked “complicated,” but aside from the fact that I’m sure someone could have a photographic memory superpower, there are regular folks who do. In fact, there are folks without photographic memories that memorize pi out to like a thousand decimal places just for the hell of it. So, really? Really?
And thanks to comments I’ve gotten on recent posts, I know I’m not alone. Shape up, plz.
Annoyingly yours,
Caren
3. My good pal Carlton Mellick III has one of his stories** in Vice magazine this issue. Vice has not only made the story available for preview, you can also hear it read by none other than Madelyn Burgess, who is apparently the nice lady whose voice you hear over the PA at Whole Foods. Freaking perfect.
4. My last post about why and how Angel gnaws at me (while I am simultaneously now addicted) had spurned a wide discussion among my friends, made me some new friends, and stirred up debate here at the homestead. The end result is interesting. One, I think I have finally figured out what my subgenre is within SFF. I’m not fantasy. I’m not soft SF. I’m not slipstream. I am science fantasy***, for which I swipe a quote from Rod Serling: “Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.”  Sounds about accurate.
The other result is that I am apparently writing a vampire story myself, trying to use possible science to explain vampires and all those mythos (without resorting to the Erythropoietic porphyria hypothesis, which remains, still pretty interesting). But no, I’m going a different way–leaning heavily on the pivotal word possible in possible science—it’s going to be hella speculative. But there shall be rules and logic, one freaking way or another.
5. It’s very interesting, now having 2 days jobs in which I work for myself and do not seem to get paid (heh). I’m working harder than ever, 16, 18 hour days fueled only by faith and a sense of complete and utter desperation.
Status on job one: every finished story I have is out making the round somewhere or another and I have not heard news.
Status on job two: 4Emphasis has its first client, and we are 75% complete on her project (yay!). I have become some sort of half crazed marketing cougar, cruising the internet looking for places to advertise or trade links or find work. So far, that’s like 12 hours work for less than a 1% return. But I am learning a LOT about marketing and SEO and crosslinking and how much freaking noisy garbage there is all over the web. To change that, I’ve decided that our front page will always contain some useful content for folks, even if they don’t hire us. If they make the trip over to our site, I will at least offer us some value.

 
*UPDATE: OMG he came back! He drank the new nectar. WTF are hummingbirds doing, though, flying around Seattle in December?
**I am especially please to say that not only do I freaking love the story they chose, but that it was one of Carlton’s Clarion West stories that I’ve seen from draft to completeness. It created a cultural mini-revolution in the CW dorm—read it and see if you can stop saying “lay-daaaaays” now.
***What’s fallen arbitrarily, as all these subgenre genre categories are as arbitrary as things can get, into science fantasy includes some big old shoes to fill. We’ll see how that goes. If nothing else, at least I have some answer for when I am at a con or CW party and someone asks, “So, what kind of SFF do you write?”

I didn’t know you, but you were quite a lady.

So, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been working my way through Angel on DVD. I never watched the series when it was on (shame on me–I also never watched Firefly when it was on the air and now it’s one of my favorites–sorry, Joss). I always knew I should, since everyone I know loved the series and it’s pretty well up my alley–vampires, yeah, but demon, hell yeah.

And I am totally enjoying the hell (heh) out of watching it*, but it brings to the forefront a very funny quirk of mine–the fact that I need everything to be logical all the time or it really bugs me.

This quirk is funny, considering what a fan girl I am and the fact that I write SFF. To be a fan and a maker of SFF, there’s a certain amount of suspension of disbelief that is immediately required above and beyond the usual suspension of disbelief required by other forms of entertainment. And my ability to suspend disbelief pivots precariously on a precipice of logic…
…which Angel consistently picks at with its inconsistency.

What I mean is, I don’t care of the rules of a world are real. Or possible. Or even probable. But goddamit, you’ve got to lay out the rules and obey them.

Like this: OK, he’s a vampire with a soul. Cool. But he’s still a vampire, right, so he’s dead, or rather undead, yes? He has no heartbeat, which means blood just isn’t pumping through his fine, brooding body. So, why does he bleed when he’s cut? And how in any reality does he get an erection? Or ejaculate live sperm which can impregnate a human and give him a son?

Magic? OK. But see, sometimes he bleeds, sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes the rules are followed, and sometimes they just aren’t.
There’s a lot I can actually just dismiss as being illogical without it bugging me overmuch (like the animal blood he keeps in the fridge? It’s have to be just plasma or it would coagulate into a scabby, gloopy mess…and nowhere in his gothy little apartment do I see a centrifuge or other such equipment, but hey, OK, cool).

But this is the same issue I keep having over and over with Heroes. I know the reality keeps changing, what with Hiro taking everyone back and forth in time (but WTF on why he doesn’t just go back in time and deal with the “formula” once and for all? It’s like a supervillian telling his whole evil scheme to the hero before killing him, giving the hero time to thwart said plan), and Peter Petrelli dinking around, and Gabriel’s turn-on-a-dime change of heart, etc, etc, etc. I still watch it, get involved, love it.  But I can’t fully accept it.

This is probably why I struggle so much with some of my fledgling story kernals. I have many infant ideas that I begin to work on, but as I move forward, I see gaping holes in the logic that I can’t bridge. Rather than leave them be, I tend to scrap the story entirely (worst case) or put in back in the hopper and hope I figure out how to make it make sense later. But I’m wondering if it’s just me, as a reader and a person, that puts so much emphasis on that aspect or whether I should just go for it, a la Angel and Heroes, and hope that my readers are seduced enough by the coolness of the ideas, the drama, and the characters to just not pick at scabs like I incessantly do?

*It adds onto my list of Things-in-SFF-I-Wish-Were-Real: a karaoke bar run by a fabulously gay demon who makes you sing for your fortune/life path. I would so be there, right now.

I’m not very good at waiting. For anything. Never have been. It brings out some sort of OCD tendency I know I directly inherited from my mother that causes me to do things like click refresh on my email repeatedly and check my bank balance every half hour on the hour. I also have a tendency to want to talk about the same topics over and over even beyond their threshold of interesting for anyone.

I have so many things that are out there, somewhere. Stories I’m waiting for responses to, things I am waiting to bounce into my lap, opportunities I know will soon present themselves but have not yet shown their faces.

Oh, I have a lot to do in the meantime—I am pretty much doing something from the time I wake up until the time I eventually try and lie down to sleep (which usually involves popping up a few times to check on things like my email and my bank balance before the Klonopin/Ambien cocktail kicks in (I TOLD you it’d be a difficult six months, right?).  But I have a very big issue with the whole “being in the here and now” moment. My mind has been six months in the future. In six months, things will look very different than they do right now. That’s what’s keeping me so busy from wake to pass-out. All this tapping refresh and obsessing is like some kind of demented way to mark this time passing.

But what all this has me thinking about is a quote from Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters, which is weirdly keeping me fine with the tapping and the refreshing and the circling around things and the waiting:
“The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don’t be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.”
Crap, that man has taught me a lot, both in person and in his books.

I am not fighting this. I am Caren’s perverse urge to roll with not being able to roll with things.

is for you to milk Amazon for every dollar they have. :)

Clarion West has received a Challenge Grant from Amazon, so whatever money they raise before October 31, 2009, Amazon will match–up to $25,000. So every dollar you give Clarion counts double.

Voting
I voted. I’m a good citizen. My ballot is stamped and ready to go. Now I’ll just be edgy and crabby until the results.

Titles
I started working on a story that is cutting really fast and close to a bunch of personal stuff going on with me. The interesting part, though, is not the subject matter (well, it is) but what I want to discuss here is that I just started the draft and I came up with a really good title.
This does not always happen. In fact, I feel like I used to be better at titling my stories, then somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to consistently come up with good titles. This frustrates me, because I see what a lost opportunity a mediocre title is. A less-than-spectacular title makes me feel like I am ending my story out into the world, half-dressed. Or worse, wearing flip flops with an evening gown.
Once in a great while, a fantastic title occurs to me as I am drafting a piece, falling fully formed from my head like warrior Athena from Zeus. Like today. But most of the time, I struggle with the title long after I’ve called truce on editing.
The last draft I finished, in fact, is sitting, waiting for revision—which I can consciously avoiding because I can’t come up with a halfway decent title for it…and it’s driving me bananas.
I really don’t know how to trap the elusive title if it doesn’t happen naturally during drafting. I’ve tried various approaches: combing through the piece and circling phrases that seem to stand alone or suggest things; brainstorming words that were synonymous with the theme I hoped to underscore; letting it percolate quietly a while and hoping the universe will align and reveal a title to me; forcing a title by retrofitting something into the story post-draft; and having a couple dozen drinks and re-reading the draft. These have all worked to some degree—usually a lesser one.
Some days, I envy the visual artists who can just call something “Untitled #75” or some such and let the work stand, as it is.
Endings I think I have nailed. Beginnings I can fake in draft #2. But titles? Shit. Titles are hard.

Meme!
And now…a meme. Some intrepid readers have told me that I am “mysterious” and “vague” about personal stuff. So, here you go. I’m throwing anyone curious a bone.

Ten things you probably didn’t know about me. All totally true.

1.     I am slightly nyctophilic, and not in a goth-chic way. I really do not care for bright sunlight very much. I never have.
2.     I savagely bite my cuticles when I am stressed out. Like, until they bleed.
3.     I really like to knit, but only hats. Nothing else.
4.     I consider myself a Unitarian Universalist.
5.     I’m obsessed with purses, bags, and containers.
6.     Writing with a pencil sets my teeth on edge. I am picky about pens, but I’ll take the worst pen choice over a pencil. Pencils make me really uncomfortable.
7.     I had scarlet fever when I was seven. No one knows where I caught it. It is the cause of several chronic medical conditions.
8.     I can’t walk in heels of any height for more than ten minutes. Even kitten heels.
9.     I do not like the color yellow. At all. Any shade.
10.   I wince when I eat crunchy foods. I don’t know why. It’s like I am preparing to have my teeth crack.