RoboNovelist

You would think the biggest advantage of self-employment is job security, wouldn’t you? It’s not like I’m going to lay myself off, or replace myself with a machine. 

Actually, I'm seriously considering doing just that.

A company called Narrative Science has developed software to write news articles. It’s only a matter of time now before technology overtakes novelists. And not much time at that. Thirty years ago, my programming buddy Roger and I took a run at writing a computer system to generate romance novels. The code was a breeze to write, but the database technology available at the time wasn’t up to the task.

Silicon-based novelists have many advantages over the old-fashioned meat models.

1)   With that wasp waist and those perky little breasts, it looks better than most of the novelists you see on back covers.

2)   Its grammar is flawless, eliminating the need to hire a copy-editor.

3)   For self-publishers, the internet connection makes e-publishing a breeze and the printer accessory reduces the cost of producing hardcopies.

4)   Downloading a few reasonably-priced apps to interface with Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and Blogspot will turn it a marketing diva.

5)   It can be stored in a closet when not in use, eliminating the mess on my desk.

Now I know what you’re thinking. How can a computer-generated novel compete with a painstakingly handcrafted work of literary art? And I’m sure there are some Pulitzer prize hopefuls out there who feel like a cordon bleu chef watching a McDonalds going up next door to their five star restaurant. But I’m not one of them.

As soon as RoboNovelist hits the market, I’m buying it and laying myself off. Bye-bye writer’s block. Bye-bye revisions. Bye-bye embarrassing book-signing events and blogging about nonsense like this. Of course my life won’t be absolutely perfect, at least not until RoboNovelist 2.0 is released. That’s the version that comes with housecleaning and bartending attachments.

Unarmed Opponents

Last night, I wrapped on my beloved Tassah silk sari and poddled over to the library to assist the New Canadian Centre—a local NGO that helps immigrants navigate the labyrinth of forms and procedures necessitated by choosing to live in a socialist bureaucracy—raise funds by selling international cake recipe calendars. My function was to entertain the audience by giving a reading from my first book while they scarfed down samples of the cake.

 Of all the new duties I’ve acquired since becoming an author, the one I enjoy least is giving readings. (It used to be book-signings, but they were so painfully awkward, both for me and for the poor customers in the store trying to avoid me, that I no longer torture us that way.)  Which is a pity, because readings are about the only thing an author has to offer as live entertainment. (Unless, of course, you’d like to hear me ring the C, B, Bflat, A and G bells in Hall of the Mountain King. But I must warn you, without the rest of the bell choir, you won’t recognize the tune.)

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with readings. I quite enjoy them when I’m in the audience, especially when the venue is stocked with large amounts of good quality Merlot. However, when I’m the one standing at the podium, it becomes an extremely stressful experience, made worse by my inability to drink, because I can’t read when my vision is blurred.  

Readings come in four sections:

Section 1: An introduction to tell the audience who I am and why I’m qualified to entertain them. So far, this function has always been performed by someone else, and it’s the only part of a reading I truly enjoy, since they always make me sound much more exciting and important than I actually am.

Section 2: A few minutes of warm-up patter. In the beginning, I took the advice of internet experts and asked the audience a question related to the topic I intended to read about. This, like so much internet wisdom, turned out to be baloney. Most audiences were too shy to respond, and twice I ran across people who felt the only way to properly answer the question was by sharing their life story. So now, I just say something about where I got the idea for the book, usually cribbed from the Author’s Note, which serves the double purpose of forestalling the inevitable question later.

Section 3: The reading. This is the easiest section for me. I’ve been reading since I was five-years-old.

Section 4: The dreaded question period. This is where it all goes pear-shaped. People are unpredictable. They could ask me anything. Which would be okay, if I had some sort of content filtering system between my brain and my mouth. But I don’t. I have no idea what my answer is until hear myself say it. As a result, I spend most of question period fighting back the urge to fake a coronary event.

Last night’s question period started innocently enough with questions like: “Why did you go to India?” and “What do you miss most about India.” I have really good answers for these questions, since I’ve asked myself the same thing thousands of times before. Then came questions like: “How do you get a book published?” I have strong opinions on this topic as well, but have trained myself not to say them aloud, because I never squelch another’s dreams if I can avoid it.

Eventually, I looked around the room and saw no hands raised. Relieved to have once again successfully navigated the perilous waters of question period, I was about to launch into my closing spiel when a woman wearing a hijab stood up and in very soft, strongly accented, extremely stilted English, said something I didn’t quite catch about Prime Ministers.

I was fairly sure she’d phrased her remarks as a statement, not a question, but since English was obviously her second language, I made allowances for vocabulary and pronunciation. I asked her to repeat her question.

She responded with more statements to the effect that India and Pakistan were not hard on women because the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan were women and it was their duty to take care of other women. Still no question and I couldn’t figure out what I’d said that she was responding to.

Now this was where I had to make an embarrassing admission: I’m politicophobic (No, I did not just make that up. It’s a real word used to describe someone with a morbid fear of politics.) The only head of state I can name is Obama, and that’s simply because my American Facebook friends like to post news items about him, which I make a point of clicking past as quickly as possible to maintain my chronically low blood pressure. I have no idea who the Prime Minister of Canada is, let alone India or Pakistan.

The woman remained standing, waiting for an answer to her non-question.

What I should have done was thank her for the information and launch into my closing spiel. Instead, I listened to myself, with burgeoning horror, making a snippy remark along the lines of - If improving conditions for women featured in the electoral mandate for those Prime Ministers, as far as I could tell from my time in India, they hadn’t gotten around to implementing that part of the plan yet - a stupid thing to say on so many levels, not the least of which was the futility of sarcasm couched in language the woman in the hijab could not possibly have understood. I knew nothing about what those Prime Ministers had promised or done. I knew nothing about the status of women in Pakistan or even any part of India other than Chennai.  

I was mortified by my performance. The woman sat down abruptly, which made me feel ten times worse. Fortunately, another member of the audience (may she be forever blessed) piped up with one last innocuous question about my next book, which I managed to answer before rushing through an abbreviated closing spiel and collapsing into the nearest chair.

This morning, I made a belated attempt to educate myself, in the event I ever have to face the same statement/question again. I figured it would take me a long time to sift through thousands of news reports and magazine articles. In fact, it took very little time at all, because last night’s disaster was—to misquote Pogo—a battle of wits between two unarmed opponents. The Prime Ministers of both countries are male.

Thank You, Mr. Urquhart

Every year in February, in conjunction with dog sled races held in a nearby town, local schools hold a story writing competion. This year, along with three other members of my writers' group, I am one of the judges. I take my judicial responsibilities very seriously, because these young authors are the same age I was when a similar competition sparked my initial interest in creative writing.

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When I was in grade five, we had a special teacher for composition. His name was Mr. Urquhart, and I liked him very much, primarily because he wasn’t our regular teacher, Mr. McLennan. Mr. McLennan had a scary, boomy voice, and he frequently wanted me to answer questions even when I hadn’t held up my hand, which confused me, because I thought by keeping my hand down, I had made it abundantly clear I didn’t know the answer. Mr. Urquhart, on the other hand, had a soft voice and an exotic accent I found fascinating. He always wore a three piece suit, his hair puffed out around his head exactly like a dandelion ready to be blown, and all he ever did was read stories, then asked the class what we thought about them. Even as a child, I was highly opinionated, so could always hold up my hand during his lessons.

One day, Mr. Urquhart told us the school was holding a story writing competition, and if any of us wanted to enter, we should hand in our compositions the following week. I had no intention of entering. At the time, I was still under the naïve impression my destiny lay in archeology. But then Mr. McLennan announced that those students who entered the story writing contest were excused from the weekend homework assignment, which was a one page essay on the British North America Act. (For my non-Canadian friends, the BNA is the Canadian equivalent of the American Declaration of Independence.) The decision became a no-brainer. I’m pretty sure the entire class entered the competition. To this day, I’ve no idea how Canada became Canada.

Since I was entering the contest anyway, I decided I might as well win it. I needed a story so amazing it would knock the judges’ socks right off. The most exciting story I’d ever read was C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so I set my story on a sailing ship. The characters were a pirate (based on Zorro), a princess (based on me), and a dog (based on our neighbor’s inappropriately named Irish setter, Juanita).  There were swordfights and storms, wormy biscuits, lots of rum, and a sea monster (based on a crabby old neighbor from down the street). For my blowout climax, I toppled the princess overboard and had her rescued by the dog, which subsequently drowned before anyone could rescue it. The last scene, a soppy paean to the nobility of man’s best friend, was so emotionally charged I cried myself to sleep when I finished writing it on Sunday night.

On Monday morning, I proudly submitted my cliché-riddled masterpiece to Mr. Urquhart, convinced I would win the contest. I didn’t. But I did get honorable mention for most imaginative entry, and enjoyed a brief period in the limelight when Mr. Urquhart read my composition to the class; his soft, strange voice making my words seem even more dramatic and exciting than when I wrote them. I can still remember looking around the spellbound class and feeling pride that I’d written such an amazing story. That was the exact moment I decided I had a talent for writing.

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So now, as I read through these stories themed around dog sled racing, I’m determined to say something positive about each submission. A creative heart beats in every child’s breast. My job today is to celebrate that heart, the way Mr. Urquhart celebrated mine.