I use Linux and as a writer, this is a problem. I like using Linux because it’s stable. It never crashes, I never have to worry about viruses or spyware, and I can control what ads I see. In my normal Internet browsing, I see maybe two ads every hour or so, compared to a constant barrage of ads on Windows. Using Linux is much more peaceful.

But there are problems with Linux, and one of them is the word processor issue. Most editors use Macs or Windows, so documents need to be in .doc or .rtf format for them to access my work. Most people who use Linux recommend OpenOffice, which I tried out when I first switched over from Windows. I hated it. It is the most annoying program ever. It has all these strange defaults, like finishing words for you when you start to type them, that forces you to rifle through the options and turn off the annoying stuff. It also has trouble reading .docs and wants everything to be in its proprietary .odt format. Even if you change it over to .doc, you can’t be sure it stays that way. I have sent editors documents in .doc and found out that it switched over to .odt somewhere along the way, and the editor couldn’t read it. This is embarrassing and annoying.

For awhile I used AbiWord, which is a simple word processor. I like AbiWord as a program, but it doesn’t have some basic things you need as a writer. It also uses the proprietary .abw format, which I found have all the problems of OpenOffice plus the added issue that no one uses AbiWord, so it can be downright impossible to access your .abw file under certain circumstances. I had a terrible time accessing a .abw file from a Windows machine, since Windows doesn’t have anything remotely able to open it. Worse, Windows couldn’t even read the name of the AbiWord files, so they came up as gobbledygook.

Finally, I settled on CrossOver Office by CodeWeavers. It lets you use Word on Linux. I really like Word. I think it is a good program with minimal problems and I am happy someone figured out how I could use it on Linux. But CrossOver Office has problems too. For example, you can’t open two Word docs at once without it getting buggy and crashing. I have lost work this way. There have also been problems with it deciding to paste something many many times. I would copy something from a website, hit CTRL-V to paste, and then everything freezes while it copies the text 300 times into my document.

So there are lots of bugs that I have learned to anticipate. Over time, I have developed a hybrid system of Word and OpenOffice so that my work is more stable. If I have to have two documents open, I open one in OpenOffice, which keeps Word from crashing. If I see signs that Word is getting unstable by freezing or using a lot of CPU, I reboot the computer. Overall, it’s not too bad of a problem, but losing part of an article while on deadline is not fun.

This morning I read that Susan Orlean is abandoning Word to write her next book on Google Docs. I don’t use Google Docs and definitely would not write a book on it. The problem is that their Terms of Service claims rights over your work. To quote from the Terms of Service itself:

You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Service. By submitting, posting or displaying the Content you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service.

So it looks like Google is saying it can reproduce or publish any portion of your work that you put on Google Docs! I’m no lawyer, but that’s enough of a red flag to keep me from ever using it. Plus, that’s just a creepy policy, Google. What the heck?

On top of that, according to my computer-expert husband, putting your book on Google Docs poses a security threat, especially if you are a big-time writer like Susan Orlean. Here is part of our IM conversation about it:

(09:14:56 AM) Kyle: what it really comes down to is whether google would ever actually try to do that [publish your work]
(09:15:05 AM) Joy: yeah
(09:15:10 AM) Kyle: and if they did, it may not matter what their terms of use say, you could still sue them
(09:15:35 AM) Kyle: but what it also means is that if they have some security problem (like, say, Facebook has been having) someone could grab a pre-release book from an author and publish it
(09:16:41 AM) Joy: oooh!!!
(09:17:08 AM) Kyle: even if their security is somewhat sound, it doesn’t mean an author’s google password is
(09:17:31 AM) Kyle: and if someone knows your password for google calendar or gmail account (or can hack into it), then they can get into google docs
[Short amount of time passes]
(09:21:54 AM) Kyle: heh this is fitting, gmail had a 4 hour blackour earlier today
(09:22:07 AM) Kyle: imagine if you were on deadline and google docs had an outage
(09:23:45 AM) Joy: wow yeah. that would be horrible.

So there you go. OpenOffice? Out. AbiWord? Out. CrossOver Office: Usable, but buggy. Google Docs: Super-duper out! What’s a Linux lover to do?

“Of course any novelist has difficulties. I don’t have ‘blocks,’ I mean I don’t get into a state where absolutely nothing can be done for weeks; I can always do something, though the something that I do may have to be revised later on… I think the thing to do is to make one’s unconscious mind work for one. When there’s a problem, and suddenly you get a sort of knot in the procedure, where you want to do two things that are incompatible, for instance, or when you can’t really see what a character is like — there’s a sort of blank slate where the character ought to be — then you must meditate upon the problem, set it, as it were, as a problem to your unconscious mind, and hope that suddenly some creative flash will arrive. And that is a time that requires very great patience.” — Iris Murdoch, The Threepenny Review, 1984

I have forthcoming articles in The Writer, Entrepreneur, Pacific Sun, and others. I keep forgetting to mention them on here.

Writing-wise I am in great spirits. I’m on draft 23 of my novel. That number is misleading, however, because Word keeps fighting with my Linux operating system, forcing me to continually save new drafts of my novel to keep it from disappearing. In reality I’m probably on draft 10 or so.

I am reading four books right now. I don’t know how that happened. I’m reading The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson, A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, and Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence. I’ll probably finish The Suicide Club first because it is the shortest, then A Poetry Handbook because it is the most interesting, then David Copperfield because it is making me feel guilty. (I did get a long way into that one–I’m on chapter 35. It would be a shame not to soldier on through.)

Other than that, I’m polishing some short fiction to send out and pitching new article ideas. I spend a tremendous amount of time on this computer, as those who follow my Facebook account can attest. I really should figure out some viable form of exercise …

There’s this blog about the Daily Routines of writers and artists. Most of it is pretty boring. I will simplify what most writers–including me–do for you: They get up early in the morning, have coffee, and write until between noon and 3 p.m. Then they stop. (I don’t actually stop then because I need to earn a living, but I do switch from fiction to nonfiction around 1 p.m.)

Anyway, some writers are more interesting than that. My favorite was Gertrude Stein, who had the greatest. daily. routine. ever:

Miss Stein gets up every morning about ten and drinks some coffee, against her will. She’s always been nervous about becoming nervous and she thought coffee would make her nervous, but her doctor prescribed it. Miss Toklas, her companion, gets up at six and starts dusting and fussing around. Once she broke a fine piece of Venetian glass and cried. Miss Stein laughed and said “Hell, oh hell, hell, objects are made to be consumed like cakes, books, people.” Every morning Miss Toklas bathes and combs their French poodle, Basket, and brushes its teeth. It has its own toothbrush.

Miss Stein has an outsize bathtub that was especially made for her. A staircase had to be taken out to install it. After her bath she puts on a huge wool bathrobe and writes for a while, but she prefers to write outdoors, after she gets dressed. Especially in the Ain country, because there are rocks and cows there. Miss Stein likes to look at rocks and cows in the intervals of her writing. The two ladies drive around in their Ford till they come to a good spot. Then Miss Stein gets out and sits on a campstool with pencil and pad, and Miss Toklas fearlessly switches a cow into her line of vision. If the cow doesn’t seem to fit in with Miss Stein’s mood, the ladies get into the car and drive on to another cow. When the great lady has an inspiration, she writes quickly, for about fifteen minutes

A few weeks ago, Marcia and I ditched work and drove out to Bodega and took a random country road. At the top of the road, all these Welsh-looking calves came and blocked our path. There were about six or seven of them. They were very friendly and came up to the car to say hello. Marcia took a cellphone picture:

Perhaps I should go back there and try to write?

This is SO AWESOME! It is a two part interview with Sylvia Plath. I have wanted to hear this for years and some wonderful person finally put it up on YouTube. No matter how grumpy I get about new technology ruining books and reading, when something like this comes along, I forgive it for its faults.

Listening to this, I have to say, I really like Sylvia Plath. I like how she’s bubbly and nervous and obviously very intelligent with lots of interesting opinions. This was about two months before she died. I also find it interesting that she had a golden opportunity to bring up The Bell Jar–which had been published already–and chose not to. She wasn’t very proud of that novel, calling it a pot boiler, but still, you think it would be something to mention. I guess she wanted to be seen as a literary writer and she didn’t see The Bell Jar as literary.

Now I think I’m going to re-read her journals for the thousandth time.

For some reason, Literary Rejections on Display got me thinking about the worst rejection I’ve ever received. Most editors have been polite to me and I’ve never had my work overtly insulted. But one day, I received back a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope that I sent as part of a submission to an agent. Inside there was nothing but a ripped up piece of paper. Pulling it out, I realized it was part of the cover letter I had sent with my submission. The agent had torn a scrap off the bottom of my cover letter and written in blunt pencil: I understand, Joy. But no thanks.

I guess it was a kind of recycling?

Every now and again, a creative wave I was riding bottoms out and I end up stranded on a shore somewhere waiting for a new wave to come along. It seems to be how creativity works for me—I am filled up 80% of the time and 20% of the time I’m empty. The problem is, I need to be producing work 100% of the time because, uh, I need to pay my bills.

This is where the To Do List comes in handy. I make a list, do everything on it (even things like voting and finding a pencil to vote) and then I’m done for the day. This takes the stress out of being creatively empty. I’m not flailing around going, “What should I do next? I can’t think of anything interesting. Oh no, I will never write again!” I am busily doing the things my list tells me to while I’m waiting for something to inspire me. This is comforting.

I am currently in Kentucky. I’ve had a great week and am coming home tomorrow. I saw Joyce Carol Oates speak at a conference yesterday, and was delighted by how brilliant, articulate, and adorable she is (she was wearing a shiny pink blouse that her mother had sewed).

Perhaps because I just saw a great writer speak that I’m extra shocked and saddened to hear that David Foster Wallace killed himself this weekend. (More here.) Although Wallace’s particular style was not my taste, there’s no doubt that he was an excellent writer and at age 46, he probably had a lot of work left in him–not to mention life. Very sad.

UPDATE: The last days of David Foster Wallace.

I’m judging a book contest again. In general, the books are much better than last year, but I have a few thoughts on character names.

Character names are deceptively important. The name you give your main character is a word your reader is going to read over and over again throughout the book, so it’s important to pick a good one. Here are some things I have learned not to do from my reading the last few weeks:

Don’t pick obviously symbolic names. Don’t name the wife in the book Jewel or the honorable politician Noble. Just don’t do it. Odds are, you are not being as clever as you think, and your reader will roll her eyes and have prejudices against you that you don’t want her to have.

Don’t give important characters names beginning with the same letter. If you repeat the first letter of a name, the reader will mix the characters up. Last night I read a book about two brothers, Greg and Gary. I am still not sure who is who. I kept confusing them and confusing their points of view. If the writer had simply named them Greg and, say, Bobby, this would have been avoided.

Avoid long/difficult last names. According to a random website I went to, the longest last name in the world is: MacGhilleseatheanaich. You know what would be a bad choice for a last name of a character? MacGhilleseatheanaich. Unless the whole point of the story is that the character has the longest last name in the world, stick to something simple and pronounceable.

Avoid melodramatic names. This is especially for all your fantasy writers out there: every character cannot be named Zapphora, Emerald, Lady Gondara, and Willow. Sometimes people are just named Susan.

To be clear, I’m not saying that every character has to be named Tom and Jane. I just think you’re better off with simple names than trying to be clever or dramatic. If your character is well-developed, he or she will fill the name up and give it life, not the other way around.

Sandra Beasley, the poet who writes this blog, is at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and blogging about it over at this blog. It’s a interesting rundown of what it is like to go to one of these conferences. Sounds hectic:

A typical day’s schedule is: 8-9 AM breakfast, 9 and 10 AM readings and panels, an 11 AM craft talk, lunch at 12:30, 1:45 PM workshops (each meets every other day, so there is theoretically “open” time embedded here), 4:15 faculty reading, 5:30 reception (sometimes a lavish spread, sometimes BYOB), dinner at 6:45, another big faculty reading at 8:15, receptions or open mics or socializing at the French House afterwards. This schedule rolls right through the weekend. Sometimes there are hikes at 7 AM. Whew, right?

She also has some thoughts about the formalist bend (the use of metrical and rhymed verse) the conference is taking:

But it has taken some getting used to. I can’t remember my last workshop with so much discussion of spondees and quatrain choice and headless lines. But Aaron Baker, another fellow and another former UVA student, made a really good point: the terms for formal discussion can be quickly agreed upon in this limited time of a conference workshop, whereas the groundwork for a really meaningful dialogue on free verse has to be built over a long familiarity with each other’s work. “Otherwise,” he said, “it’s just one big group therapy session.”

Leslie Pietrzyk, who runs this Work-in-Progress blog, admits to being “intensely envious (in a good way)” of Beasley’s experience. I concur.

Actually, I am going to a writer’s conference in September, myself. It’s not as fancy as Sewanee, but I am excited. The keynote speaker is Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite writers.