work – Page 5 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Slogging through a funk

Just a quick update, since it’s 3 am and I’m kind of in a daze after playing Halo: Reach on Xbox live with my roommate. Whoa, decompressing…

This whole week, I’ve been in a weird funk. It sucks to be unemployed, especially since I can’t commit to anything long term because I’m waiting to hear back from the wilderness job. Man, I really hope I get it–but even if I do, I’ll need to raise some cash to keep me going through January until the paychecks start coming in. And if I don’t get the job, I have no idea what I’ll do.

But mostly, it has to do with my writing. I’ve been running through the rough draft of Worlds Away from Home, and…holy crap, it REALLY sucks. It sucks to the point where I’m not sure exactly how to fix it.

Part of it probably has to do with my initial ambitions for it, which I probably set too high. I originally wanted to write a science fiction romance that turned the “romance” element on its head by having the sex be the thing pushing the characters apart rather than bringing them together. I got a little too didactic in the rough draft, though, and failed to tell a story that, at it’s root, is meant to entertain.

That’s probably the most important thing–to tell a story that’s fundamentally entertaining. So I’ve been looking at that, and I’m finding that there are significantly fewer plot threads here than there were in Mercenary Savior. That, and there’s considerably less suspense. The character arcs are still sufficiently complex, I think, but there aren’t nearly as many hooks and cliffhangers as my other work.

This whole week, I’ve been vacillating between “alright, I can do this” to “this novel sucks and I should just throw it out and never work on it again.” In fact, I drew up a chart today of all the novels I’ve started, finished a first draft, and finished a polished draft–and the results are a little stark.

I only just produced a fully polished draft for Genesis Earth, so at 2010 I’ve finally gotten one novel to the point where I think it’s as good as I can make it without an editor/agent to help. One freaking novel–and that’s after two years of work. Mercenary Savior, I’m finding, isn’t quite where it needs to be, though it’s close–probably I’ll nail it down in early 2011. But other than those two? I’ve got nothing.

I started Worlds Away from Home back in 2008, and I’m wondering whether I was even good enough back then to craft a story that could carry through a complete novel. Ashes of the Starry Sea was probably a bit too ambitious, and Genesis Earth, while it ended up working out, was so small in scope that it wasn’t that hard to pull off.

Is something fundamentally flawed with Worlds Away from Home? Did I bite off more than I could chew? Is the story premise so screwed up that I should just abandon it and reuse it occasionally for scraps?

I have no idea. Maybe I’m just being too angsty–after all, I started Genesis Earth BEFORE I started Worlds Away from Home, and that one turned out great. It took two years, of course, but it worked out in the end.

So will this one work out? Probably, I suppose–but only if I can solidly get behind it. I’m trying to put together a detailed plot outline to figure out what the story needs, but if I can’t find something else–something on par with the cryo scene and the first line of Genesis Earth, which for the longest time were the only two things keeping me from trashing that project–if I can’t find something redeemable like that, I might just drop this monstrosity and let it die.

Blarg. I hate this. I might just take a break from things and write a couple short stories. This whole week, I’ve been writing nothing but outlines and revision notes–I need to do something a little more creative.

Anyhow, that’s what I’m currently slogging through. Before the end of next week, I’m hoping to find out whether I’ve got that wilderness job or not. Let’s hope…

Change in direction

Just a quick update on things before I go to bed.

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to put Into the Nebulous Deep on hold for the time being. The main reason for this is that it’s a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior, and if the first one doesn’t sell…yeah, not the best business decision.

I figure the best way to do it is to have a series of indirectly linked standalone novels set in the same world. That way, a publisher could pick up any one of them after rejecting all the others, but if you want to bundle them into a series and sell them together, you can do that too.

That’s my strategy–I like the universe I built for Mercenary Savior, and I’m going to keep it for the foreseeable future, but for now, the trilogies and duologies will have to wait. In any case, I’ve written down my major ideas for ITND, so I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up where I left off if/when MS sells.

Instead, I’m going to start working through the second draft of Worlds Away from Home. It needs a ton of work, but having finished the rough draft, I know that the story has potential. At this point, I’m actually very enthusiastic about it, so hopefully that will help drive momentum.

Right now, I’m in the outlining stage. I’m taking a page from Dan Wells and using his seven point story structure to draw out all the plot lines and character arcs. When I did this for MS 4.0, I had to outline about fifteen arcs before I felt it was sufficiently tight; it will probably be the same for WAFW 2.0 as well.

Currently, I’m in the middle of outlining chapter six. If all goes well, I’ll finish outlining and start writing by the end of the week.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of submitting. Sent out another short story to Leading Edge–oh, and by the way, they accepted a poem of mine, so expect to see that in a forthcoming issue. I also submitted the latest draft (5.0) of Genesis Earth to a few agents, so hopefully that will lead to something positive.

In other news, I’m looking for a job again. Oh joy. I’m hoping things will work out with the wilderness job, but if not, I still need something to tide me over for the Christmas season. It’s stressful, but at least I’m not broke yet, which is good. If I can’t find work and have to buy gear for the wilderness training, however, I just might be.

I’m confident things will work out, however. I’ve found that they always do, even if not in the way I wanted or expected. Just keep swimming.

In the meantime, check out this AWESOME 8-bit remix of one of the tracks leaked from Daft Punk’s upcoming album for the movie Tron. Dude…this makes me so incredibly happy. And the 8-bit art! I nabbed it and turned it into my avatar for the Quark forums. In case you want to use it, here’s a copy.

8-bit Daft Punk FTW! The only thing more epic would be if Daft Punk and E.S. Posthumus joined forces–but if that happened, hosts of heavenly angels would descend upon our planet and usher in an era of global peace and universal prosperity. But dude, I would give my firstborn son to acquire that music.

You laugh, but I’m only half joking…

Pulling along

Just a quick post, because it’s 3:30 am and I’ve got a TON of stuff to do tomorrow, such as:

1) cleaning checks
2) replace the air filter in my car
3) go running with my bro in law
4) finish Genesis Earth 5.0
5) band practice
6) watch Inception with a bunch of friends at the dollar theater

Yeah, tons of stuff. So anyways…

I’m amazed at how quickly I’m pulling through Genesis Earth. Yesterday I revised through 11.7k words, and today I did about 14.1k.

At this point, most of the work is sentence and paragraph level, and has more to do with voice and rhythm than actual story. There were a few science issues, mostly having to do with distances and velocities, but thanks to Logan I think I’ve caught most of those. Thanks so much!

I’m also finding out that this story is much better than I used to think it was. With all the form rejections I’ve been getting for it, I wondered for a while whether I should put it back in the trunk and let it quietly die. Now, however, I can see that it has a lot more promise than I’d previously thought. Even if it isn’t published as my first novel, I really do believe that this story deserves a home.

At the same time, though, I’ve noticed some major differences between my writing in this piece and my writing in the stuff I’ve written more recently. I’m not sure exactly how to put it, but I think it has something to do with voice. I don’t want to say that Genesis Earth is more choppy, but it does seem a lot more…matter of fact, if that makes sense. There are also a lot more rhetorical questions, but I think that’s an artifact of the 1st person perspective.

But even if the voice in this piece is different from my voice now, it’s different in a good way. It feels more…YA? I’m not exactly sure, but it seems to work. The sequels, if/when I write them, will probably be in 3rd person (ala Spin and Axis by Robert Charles Wilson), and that’s going to create a much different feel than this book.

It worked for Axis, though, so I think I can pull it off–that is, if/when Genesis Earth gets picked up by a publisher. I don’t want to write the other two books in this trilogy until I know the first one is sold.

In unrelated news, I had a job interview today. It was with a wilderness therapy company, the same that wait listed me for the January training. I really hope I get in–more than anything at this point in my life, I feel that I need to gain some major life experience. Probably the biggest stumper question was “what three words would you use to describe yourself in your last job, and what three words would your supervisor use to describe you?” A difficult question, particularly when all your recent jobs have been temp jobs. I think I did alright, though–now, we just need to wait and see.

In other unrelated news, I threw an awesome movie night tonight. We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and maybe fifteen people showed up–most of them from Quark, but a couple of friends from some other places too. Man, that Scott Pilgrim movie is epic. So hilarious, so entertaining, and at the same time, so true. And then, we went to Dairy Queen and hung out until midnight hanging out. It was great.

In still other unrelated news, I recently ordered the anime series Planetes on DVD. It was at a good price, and I knew I’d buy it eventually, so I allowed myself to splurge. I am so happy I did, because the science fiction elements are done surprisingly well. All the little details, from the zero gravity handholds in the walls to the way the stations spin, are surprisingly true to real life, and the show’s vision of 2075 is not beyond the realm of our own possible future. In other words, Planetes is quite possibly the best rocketpunk anime show out there, and a great source for inspiration.

Well, that’s enough for now. Tomorrow, I will finish this novel and send it out to the agent who requested it. In the meantime, though, it’s 4:00 am and I must sleep.

I’m still here!

Man, it’s been forever since I’ve posted something. I’d blog more often, but I think you guys would get bored pretty quick if all I did was tell you how the writing went each day. Don’t be fooled; the writing process isn’t NEARLY as interesting as the stuff we write (unless you’re writing amateur fanfic…just kidding!).

So anyways, life is extremely busy these days. Between my temp job at a warehouse, Leading Edge, Institute, church, Quark, and finishing the revision of Mercenary Savior, I feel incredibly crunched for time. I’ve been pulling about 1k to 3k words per day, but last week was horrendously unproductive and I’ve got to really push hard to finish this beast in time for World Fantasy.

But it’s going to happen–that’s for sure. I’ll finish my job at the end of this week, and with the extra free time I’m sure I’ll be able to finish it in time. I passed the 100k word mark last night, and it looks like this draft is going to be around 120k to 125k. Still a little long for a science fiction novel, but not too long (I hope).

As I get closer to the end, I’ve noticed that I tend to use a shotgun approach in resolving the conflicts in my rough drafts. Instead of following each arc through in a focused, logical manner, the last few chapters of my drafts tend to go all over the place, trying halfheartedly to resolve everything at once.

The bad thing about this is that the last half of the book requires a lot more work to revise. The good part, however, is that I can cut off a ton of fat at the tail end, significantly shortening the final wordcount. It’s good to be able to manipulate that number late in the game.

As far as my plans for November, if I do participate in nanowrimo, it’s going to be with a serious project that I was already planning on doing, not something wild and spontaneous. I don’t think taking the time off to write something I know will never be published is going to help me as a writer.

At the same time, however, it only takes about 1.5k to 2k per day for 30 days to complete nanowrimo, and that’s about the rate that I’m writing right now (a little less, actually). With World Fantasy smack at the end of October, I probably won’t start anything new until November 1st. So even though I’m not taking time off from my serious stuff to do it, I probably will participate in nanowrimo this year.

As far as other stuff going on in November, I am very much looking forward to seeing my sister in Houston over Thanksgiving weekend. Since I don’t know if I can find a job that will give me that week off, and since I’m already in a pretty good financial place with the money from this last job, I think I’ll take most of the month off to focus on my writing, rather than look for full-time work.

However, I have been thinking a lot about becoming a freelance translator. One thing I’ve learned from working in a warehouse (and I’ll blog more about this at the end of the week) is that I hate not using the stuff I learned in college. My original plan when I chose to major in Mideast studies was to use Arabic to find a regular job until the writing took off, and so far I haven’t done that.

Besides, I REALLY want to go back to the Middle East someday. If I can improve my Arabic to the point where I feel I can get along better than the average American student, I might just move over there for a year or two (or five or ten…).

Anyhow, I’ve got a ton of stuff to do (including writing–I want to hit at least 3k today), so that’s all for now. See ya!

Crunch time

Sixty six percent! I’ve officially passed the two thirds mark in the fourth revision for Mercenary Savior–and not a moment too soon. With only a week and a half until World Fantasy 2010, it’s crunch time. I’ll probably quit my temp job a week early in order to devote the last few days of the month to finishing it.

As I’ve been working on Mercenary Savior, though, a fascinating idea for a sequel has been stewing in my head. It was sparked by an online conversation with one of my first readers:

Reader: I was never fully convinced that James felt he had closure
Me: I see
Reader: but I was satisfied with the thought that he would get it sometime after the story ends
he’s still young, so he’s still maturing
even at the close of the novel
Me: yeah
hmm
interesting

It’s true; James does have a lot of room to grow and mature after the events of Mercenary Savior. In that book, his character growth arc (without giving away spoilers) is about him learning to accept change and stop running from adulthood.

Nothing in that arc has much to do with the kind of person James grows up to be, however, or the significant other with whom he comes to share his life. In other words, there’s a whole lot of untapped potential for building James’s character and giving him a romantic interest.

The question that immediately rose to my mind was: what’s the story?

Now when it comes to sequels, I think the best ones take a long, hard look at the first installment and answer the question: therefore, what? Thus, in Star Wars IV, V, and VI (which I believe to be one of the best examples of a trilogy in any medium), the Rebels defeat the first Death Star in episode IV, but find themselves on the run in episode V because the Empire knows the location of their base. Luke uses the force to pull off a last-minute victory in episode IV, but finds in episode V that becoming a true Jedi takes a lot more discipline and self-mastery than he thought.

So I applied that principle to my own work and came up with the following overarching conflict: the Hameji occupation of Karduna is devastating the people of the Colony to the point where they collectively decide to depart en masse and establish a new community somewhere else. It’s a logical conclusion taken from the ending of Mercenary Savior; the people are well enough off to survive, but too poor and oppressed to do much of anything else.

You may not know this, but the first story I wanted to set in this fictional universe was about a group of starfaring pioneers traveling into the heart of a nebula to escape religious persecution and establish a thriving community on the fringes of settled space. That’s right–I basically wanted to set the Mormon pioneer exodus in space.

For various unrelated reasons, that never worked out, but the desire has always been there in the back of my mind. What can I say–I think that pioneers are cool, and stories about colonizing unsettled new lands just fascinate me. I’ll probably write a massive Utah pioneer epic someday.

But anyways, I started playing around with this old idea to see whether I could recycle it. Right now, I think that I can. The idea is that James becomes the leader for one of these emigrant groups, and has to see them safely through to a young planet in the heart of this nebula. They decide to fly into the nebula in order to isolate themselves from the Hameji, since the FTL tech in my universe doesn’t work within a Nebula.

And then something really crazy happened. This scene popped into my head, stronger than any other idea I’d had so far. I imagined that a group of pirates had captured the expedition and refused to let them go unless they gave the pirates three young women to keep as slaves.

Pretty standard conflict, right? But then, I thought: what if three young women of their own free will stepped forward and offered to sacrifice themselves to save the others? What would James do then?

Well, it wasn’t hard to figure that out at all. James would never let them go. He’d fight the pirates, even if it meant risking all the lives of those he’s trying to protect.

This raises some interesting questions of morality. Is it right to risk the lives of everyone in the community when three individuals have already offered to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole? Is it right to deny someone the opportunity to give their own life to save others? Or is James just being stubborn and reckless?

At a first glance, that’s the way it looks. But then I imagined what James would say to justify himself. After what he learns from the events of Mercenary Savior, James would argue that the community needs to stick together–that in order for the whole to survive, everyone has to know with absolute certainty that no-one will be left behind. Once the leader shows that he’s willing to sign his followers over, how can any of them trust him with their lives? Under such conditions, trust breaks down and the community falls apart.

From that, a whole host of other ideas started gradually coming to mind. How does this event tie into James’s romantic interest? Does it tie in at all? What would the people’s reaction be to this decision? Coming from the background of the Colony, would they want to put the issue to a vote instead? Is it ever right to suspend democracy when facing a crisis, and if so, under what conditions?

So anyway, I won’t tell you what I have in mind, but I have a lot of really interesting ideas. It’s gotten to the point, in fact, that I may just write the sequel after I get back from World Fantasy.

In closing, let me leave with this excellent track from one of ocremix’s latest albums, a rearrangement of Donkey Kong Country 2. Believe it or not, this song could be the main theme of this novel. Listen to it and I think you’ll see why.

Good night!

Dog dead workdays and killing your characters

This post is going to be super quick because I’m dead tired.

Due to power surges and computer glitches, I had to work overtime today and yesterday at the warehouse, so I really haven’t had time for anything except writing and a little socializing at Leading Edge. However, things are going well. I’ll get the extra hours off on Friday, which means a big chunk of free time to do whatever I want.

I broke 3k words today in Mercenary Savior. It was awesome. I love revision–taking something good and making it really shine. Just hit some major climaxes and killed off a side character, which is always exhilarating if you do it right.

As a footnote to that, I’m reading George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, and I just reached the part where he kills off the first major character. What’s more, he was my favorite character in the book so far!!! AAUGGH! Why, Mr. Martin? Why??? Yet I must confess, killing him was necessary to take the story to the next level of awesomeness <grumble>.

I’ve been thinking a lot about killing characters recently, and I figure the best way to do it is to recognize that everyone has to go sometime (in real life if not always in fantasy), and to write accordingly. We tend to ignore our own mortality, when really, there can be so much meaning to it. After all, to die for something is to make the ultimate sacrifice. If you make sure your characters die for a reason–either heroic or tragic (or both)–then I think that’s the key to make it work.

The Book Academy Conference at UVU was great; I’ll do a writeup on that soon, probably over the weekend. I probably won’t post the audio files, but if you want them, just email me and I’ll send you the link.

I’ve been waking up early each day this week, and it’s been great. I’m so much more productive in the morning, writing wise. It’s like a computer: when you first boot up, your desktop is so clean. With only the startup programs running in the background, everything feels uncluttered.

At the end of the day, though, it’s the exact opposite. You’ve got maybe a dozen applications running, and it’s all too easy to get distracted by switching from one to the other. What’s more, you just don’t have the energy to get things done.

The downside (if you can call it that) is that it’s only midnight and already I’m about to collapse. Oh well–guess I’ll just have to go to bed earlier.

In closing, let me leave you with this really weird, slightly disturbing anime clip I found on youtube of a vegetable committing seppuko. I guess it has something to do with the rest of the post, seeing as I went on a tangent about killing characters. Anyhow, this is the friendship among vegetables…

Confessions of a delinquent blogger

Man, so much has been happening, but now that I’m working an eight to five job, I never have the time to blog about it. It’s 2am and I’m running on only four hours of sleep from the previous night. Oh well, it’s a weekend. Here goes.

I passed the 50k mark for the rewrite of Mercenary Savior. I’m surprised how much I’m changing the draft. I’m especially finding a lot of slow chapter beginnings and thinly veiled expository lumps–not of scene descriptions so much as worldbuilding. Gotta remember the iceberg concept (to only include about ten percent or less of your worldbuilding in your story’s narrative).

I interviewed a few more people for the article on the “class that wouldn’t die.” Good stuff, all around. I met with Cara O’Sullivan today, and she had a very interesting comment about why there are so many LDS writers of science fiction and fantasy.

In her opinion, Mormon literary culture tends to push the more talented writers into sf&f because of the extreme lack of freedom in other genres of LDS writing. In mainstream and literary LDS fiction, there are so many expectations for the writers: for example, that the story will have a clear message, or that it will contain a certain brand of Mormon sentimentalism, etc. In science fiction and fantasy, OTOH, there’s much more freedom; therefore, LDS writers tend to gravitate that way.

I also had a phone interview for the wilderness job last Thursday. I think it went well, but we’ll find out at the end of the month, I suppose. Questions that caught me off guard include: “how do you define success?” and “how would you respond to something you heard secondhand about an employee from another shift?”

Finally, I recently got hooked on an old abandonware DOS game called Princess Maker 2. It is so freaking awesome. Basically, you are the father of this ten year old girl, and you have to raise her from childhood to adulthood.

There are so many possible ways to do this: build her fighting skills and send her on adventures, build her artistic skills and have her win dancing/painting contests, build her refinement and send her to court to build her social reputation, etc etc. There are over 70 different possible endings, including some really weird and crazy ones!

And yes, I know, it seems strange that I’d go for a game this girly–but dude, you have no idea until you try it out. It’s like being a father, but with magic and knights and dragons and stuff! So totally awesome!

The flipside is that I spent almost the entire day playing this game. Yeah…still got in 2.5k words, but I was hoping to put in somewhere around 6k or 7k. Man, I haven’t been this addicted since Alpha Centauri. Will it last? I don’t think it will, but then again, I don’t know. The bigger question is whether this is a game I can play in moderation (like Star Control II). I certainly hope it is, but I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’ve got five weeks to write 70k words. Lets go!

Job – reliable internet = spotty posting

Sorry for the general lack of posts these past few days. I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth (yet), I’m just working full time and living in a place that doesn’t have reliable internet. Someone in the complex tried to set up a wireless router, and now the internet is down. For some reason, the broadweave guys haven’t fixed it yet.

Student housing in Provo sux.

Anyways, here’s what’s going on in my life. I found a temporary full-time job working in a warehouse. They let me listen to my headphones while I work, so I’ve been catching up on a lot of podcasts and old recordings from cons and English 318. It’s actually kind of awesome. Definitely better than the call center.

I’m in the midst of finishing the research for the “class that wouldn’t die” article. Basically, I have about half a dozen more interviews to do, then write up the rough draft. I’m having lots of fun meeting all these awesome people and putting this article together.

But between work and the article, I’m finding it much harder to keep up with my writing. I’m still producing about 2k consistently, but that’s not quite enough to have Mercenary Savior finished by World Fantasy. Looks like I’ll have to sprint on the weekends.

I’m not too worried about it at this point, though. The revision is going great–in fact, I might post a few excerpts. I know the story’s solid, and the characters are a joy–especially Tamu, the slutty, self-centered concubine that becomes something of a mentor for Stella (to her horror, of course).

The Hameji are also quite interesting; one of my goals in this revision is to portray the rationale for their behavior as clearly as I possibly can. Towards that end, I have a list of points about their culture that I want to get across in the narrative, and I’m keeping track of which scenes convey which points. The goal is to have at least three scenes for each point, which will involve some substantial revision. But if it works, the Hameji will go from horrific, brutal antagonists in the beginning to sympathetic if still brutal by the end–kind of like George R. R. Martin’s stuff.

Speaking of George R. R. Martin, I’m reading A GAME OF THRONES right now and I’m absolutely loving it! I wish I had the time to sit down and read this book for hours. Alas, the only way I can do that is to give up writing, and I can’t do that. Weekends, though–better wait for the weekend.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on. I’d better go to bed now, before I jinx myself tomorrow morning. Or maybe I already have? Blarg. Night.

Yay for work!

So I found a job today, which should keep me in the black until November and help me save up enough money for World Fantasy 2010.

The job is at a warehouse for a locally based costuming company. It only runs through October, but that’s perfect because the training for the wilderness job starts the week after. If all goes well, I should be gainfully employed for the rest of the year.

In a blessed stroke of good fortune, I landed a normal 8 to 5 shift. Graveyard is a good shift for writers, but only if you’re sitting at a desk spending 95% of your time doing nothing. I doubt that’s what this job will be like.

I don’t know what this new job will do to my writing, but I tend to think it will be positive. At the very least, it’ll give my life some much-needed structure, and at the worst, it’ll make me write as if my life (or livelihood) depended on it.

In unrelated news, my sister went into labor today. Go Kate! My mom texted everyone in the family–she’s way excited. This will be her second grandchild, and my first nephew. If all goes well, I’ll see him over Thanksgiving. Sarah and I are already planning the road trip down to Texas–it’s going to be awesome!

Life is very, very good.

Things I learned from working in a call center

Over the summer I worked part time at a local call center. At the time, it was just what I needed: a flexible job that helped me pay the bills while figuring out where I wanted to go next. That said, I learned very quickly that call center work is not the sort of thing I want to do for large portions of my life.

I’m glad to say I quit my job on good terms with the management, and was one of their more productive interviewers. I don’t harbor any hard feelings against the company I worked for or any of the particular employees.

However, I do want to reflect a bit on the nature of the work itself, which was less than awesome, as well as some of the things I learned about myself in the process. Since this has nothing to do with the company itself, I’m not going to mention it by name. Also keep in mind that the things I have to say are heavily influenced by my own opinions, so they may not apply to you.

That said, here are some of the things I learned from working in a call center:

1) In the long run, jerks only punish themselves.

I spoke with a lot of incredibly rude people in this job. I also spoke with a lot of people who were courteous and well-meaning. Without exception, the jerks seemed overstressed and miserable, while only the courteous people ever seemed genuinely happy and content with their lives.

I think the way we treat others says more about ourselves than anything else. People who are mean and nasty to each other are never truly happy.

2) A small amount of patience makes most things go faster and smoother.

I hated it when people told me “just put ten for everything.” As an interviewer, I couldn’t do that–I was required to ask every question verbatim. Those who were patient enough to let me do that got through the survey quickly and painlessly, while the impatient people who tried to rush things almost always got upset.

I think it’s safe to say that this has a general application as well. When we’re patient enough to let things happen the way they’re supposed to, things happen faster and more smoothly. When we try to rush things that shouldn’t be rushed, we screw up.

3) The ability to genuinely listen is a rare skill.

I can’t tell you how many times I asked a simple question on a survey, only to find the person on the other line answering something completely different. I didn’t expect anyone to drop everything and devote their full attention to me, but how much effort does it take to answer a simple question?

I’ve known for a long time that listening is a skill that requires work to cultivate, but apparently, it’s also one that few people have truly mastered. If you can’t understand a straightforward question well enough to give a yes or no answer, how can you understand something as complex as another person’s feelings?

4) Political campaigns are evil.

This is a little tongue in cheek, but I stand by it one hundred percent. Every survey we conducted for a political campaign asked questions that were clearly geared toward developing negative campaign ads and manipulating public perception. None of them asked how the government could best serve the people.

5) Having a flexible work schedule makes writing both easier and harder.

It makes it easier because you can plan your time around other things that are going on; it makes it harder because your days generally have less structure.

I think I hit a pretty good balance by working in the morning and writing in the afternoon, then going in to work again in the evenings if I needed the hours. Call centers are always looking for people to work in the evenings.

6) Reducing everything to numbers makes human interactions meaningless.

This was, by far, the thing I found most frustrating about my work. I talked with hundreds of people from all over the country and didn’t connect with hardly any of them on a personally significant level. It was all about checking off boxes, where each completed survey was just another number in the system.

This tended to be more true of the short surveys, less true of the longer ones. For that reason, I loved it when I got a survey that took twenty or thirty minutes to complete. It’s very hard to talk with someone for thirty minutes without making some kind of a connection with them, however fleeting.

7) If you have a love of learning, find a job that lets you use your mind.

To be perfectly honest, I never felt completely satisfied at my work. A robot with sufficiently advanced voice recognition software could probably have done my job as well as I could (at least for the ninety second surveys). Over time, I felt like my work was turning me into a robot.

That’s ultimately why I felt I had to get out. Maybe I have a problem with authority, but I can’t stand being just another cog in the corporate machine. There’s got to be a way to pay the bills and still live life meaningfully.

Image courtesy W. Lowe