I was driving after a rainstorm, and directly in front of me the light had changed red. The road was really slippery, and my car slid right out into the intersection. Thank goodness the intersection was clear, and so I was able to back up to where I should’ve stopped.

No problem, right?

But no, from out of nowhere comes a cop who starts writing me a ticket for running a red light. I get angry and start arguing, and pull out my phone to video the whole thing, and that makes the cop mad. The cop says it’s illegal for me to video him.

Now I am really pissed off because I know that’s false. I tell him I am gathering evidence for court because I intend to fight the ticket. I also tell him that it is not against law, and that I have the law printed out and sitting in my glove compartment. Because, in real life, I actually do! You can photograph anyone at any time in a public place. Anyone – including an officer – who tells you otherwise does not actually know what the law is.

So the confrontation has really escalated, and now the cop has his hand on his gun.

Now here’s the funny part. At this point I’ve already realized that I’m dreaming. I know, on a whim, I could have the guy struck by lightning, or sucked into a black hole, or simply delete him from my dream. I have the power!

But no, I continue arguing with the dream cop. Why? Because it’s the principle!

Finally I do wake up, and now I can’t go back to sleep, and I’m laying here in bed dictating this into my iPad.

Take a computer program. It’s a set of code. Duplicate it, copy it, and run it on multiple machines. All of those copies are still the same computer program.

Take an artificial intelligence program, an A.I., and duplicate it the same way. Run it on multiple computers. Are they all the same program?

Take a person. You, for example. Send yourself back in time three days, so you can go have dinner with yourself. You’re both sitting at a table in a restaurant together. Are both of them actually you?

Step back into the time machine and go back to when you were ten years old. Are you and your ten-year-old self still the same person? Are you both you? Even though just about every cell in your body has been swapped out with new ones? You both think you’re you.

Step into an instant matter transporter (and, yes, I know this has been done in Star Trek) and something goes wrong. You’ve been duplicated down to the atomic level, and now you and the other you are standing right next to each other. You’re so identical that a molecular scanner can’t tell you apart. Are you both you? You both think you’re “you.”

Step into an instant matter transporter. It zaps you 1000 lightyears away, and also 1000 years into the past. But the way it works is that it instantly disassembles you at an atomic level, and then reassembles you — but not the same atoms, they’re quantum entangled atoms 1000 lightyears away, 1000 years in the past. The result is an exact duplicate of you in another space and time. You think you’re “you.” But are you … you?

You step back into the instant matter transporter, and get zapped back home, 1000 lightyears across space, 1000 years into the future — back to the time when you first left — and are reassembled again. An exact copy, the only one in existence, but now twice removed from the original. Are you still you?

For my friends who aren’t familiar with “the Singularity,” it’s a predicted event that some people take very seriously (and some others not so much so) where humanity and our creations get so intertwined that we can’t tell where the line is between man and machine. But it’s also a theoretical point in the future where we lose control of — and can no longer even understand the inner workings of — the devices we’ve created, because they’ve gained control of themselves and their own destiny, and begin to design and build their own machines. Thinking machines creating new machines on their own.

The Terminator movies are a good example of this, but it’s an example of the process going horribly wrong. In my story, it goes in the other direction — we lose control of the artificial intelligences, but instead of them hating humanity and wanting to destroy us, they take over and become our over-protective guardians.

So the questions I’m relentlessly exploring in this book are these:

1. If we lose control over an omnipotent technology, and it assumes control of everything and strives to keep us from killing ourselves and our environment … is that necessarily a bad thing? Even if it’s extremely annoying?
2. Is an exact duplicate of you, actually you?

All You See is Light weighed in a 121,343 words, and is connected to, but not a direct prequel or sequel to, Eleven Days on Earth. It’s about a Texan teenager in 1977 who loses his parents to a plane crash, and has to go live with his swinger aunt and uncle in a small coastal town in California. He falls into the midst of a supernatural drama where he’s destined to help a mysterious, angelic woman remember who she is … and when the truth comes out, it puts the fate of the entire world in peril.

I’ve got a lot of rewriting to do, as this is the kind of story where I didn’t really know where it was going … I just let it lead me to where it wanted to go. So the earlier parts of the book will have to be revised quite a bit to support the later parts of the book.

In the meantime it’s sitting and cooling, and I’m plotting out my next one. It’s time to take a break from fantasy and do a fun science fiction comedy.

• Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 (it’s nice but I still prefer Scrivener)
  
• Early Bird, Worm, Coffee … what? (Scrivener lovingly mentioned)
• Scrivener 2 (a glowing review from 2010)

So you can tell I’m a big fan of this software. It’s about as simple as a complex piece of software can be — the beauty of it being that you don’t have to know how to use every single feature in order to use it. You can just open it and start typing, and slowly learn the features as you go.

That’s how I did it.

Despite there being great manuals, numerous “how-to” videos, and a great wiki, there was still room for a very quick, simple, guide to jump start you into the most useful features you might otherwise have missed. Like I have. Many times.

Here’s that guide, and it’s free: YOUR GUIDE TO SCRIVENER: THE ULTIMATE TOOL FOR WRITERS. Nicole Dioniso does a great job stepping you through the features that you didn’t know you need until you discover they exist. And these aren’t just wonky features you might use once every 7 years, either.

Have I mentioned Scrivener is awesome?

Scrivener is awesome. And so is this guide.

There’s a work/life balance that I struggle to maintain. I’m obsessive compulsive to a degree, as when I get into something I really get into it. But then some other shiny object attracts my attention, and then I’m off obsessing about something else.

It happens with my day job too, and I really had to go to extremes to counteract that — my continued employment depended on it. But then I find I get so wrapped up in a work-related project that I bring it home and work on it here, too, and that demolishes my “writing time.” And then there’s my health. If I’m sitting all day at work, it’s not good that I come home and sit all night as well working on a novel. Or a blog. Or redesigning a website. Or editing a podcast. Etc.

One of the many rationalizations I’d made about buying a really nice camera is that it would prompt me to go OUTSIDE and WALK AROUND, taking pictures. But that’s sporadic. I go through phases where I’m only interested in photography (hence my writercam.com website). The problem is that I don’t want to go walking around with an expensive camera dangling around my neck all the time. This, of course, led to my rationalization about getting a phone with a good camera. Now I have a camera all the time, because that never leaves my side. Ever. If I don’t have it I break into a cold sweat and worry about it.

What it all boils down to is that I’m apparently obsessed with creating because I do it at home, at work, in my free time, practically during every waking moment. All too rare are the moments where I just relax, breathe, look at something pretty (without photographing or writing about it) and simply exist.

Is anyone else out there that way?

They say a fiction writer should have an extremely diverse background, and I can look at this list below and say, yes, I seem to have achieved that. So below, somewhat in order, is my list of professions for which I’ve actually been paid:

• Cleaning Boxcars for the Southern Pacific Railroad
• Wedding Photographer
• Pet Portrait Photographer
• Industrial Cinematographer (as in, I shot and edited movie footage on film for marketing of heavy industry)
• Parts Courier (shuffling large machine parts back and forth between Stockton and San Diego, California)
• Department Store Employee (in a combined photo, electronics, and music section)
• McDonalds Employee (very valuable experience – not joking)
• Vacuum Truck Operator, working with PG&E and Edison Electric
• Vacuum Truck Driver, cleaning airport runways
• Professional Glass Breaker at a glass factory (it was, seriously, my job to break glass!)
• Construction Worker at the University of California, Berkeley
• Computer Technician (on and off with several different companies)
• Lotus 123 Programmer
• Stock Manager for a parts warehouse (FIFO!)
• Purchasing Agent (in combination with the above Stock Manager)
• Industrial Videographer (same as Industrial Cinematographer but on video instead of film)
• Technical Journalist (wrote software reviews for a now long-defunct computer magazine)
• Configuration Technician (very similar, but still different than, Computer Technician)
• ISO9000 Quality Control Manager
• Technical Project Manager
• Science Fiction Novelist (ongoing)
• Technical Writer
• Webmaster (ongoing)
• Event Photographer (ongoing)
• Podcaster (ongoing)
• Digital Marketeer (which is a combination of several of the above: Webmaster, Writer, Photographer, Videographer, and to some extent, Programmer, Computer Technician, Project Manager, and now Podcast Producer)

Life would have been much simpler if I could have found, and stuck with, my perfect career — Digital Marketeering — but my perfect career didn’t exist back when I first started. Who would have thought that I could fall into a job that uses a large majority of my experience and interests? I’m still amazed such a thing exists. It’s definitely my favorite.

My least favorite: Wedding Photographer. Ugh.

Which brings me to my question to you: What jobs have you held? Which one was your favorite, and which your least favorite? And what do you feel is your perfect career?

Given that you have to sell a kidney to afford
just about any of Adobe’s professional creative software suites, they did a wonderful thing when they came out with this: Adobe Creative Cloud.

It’s a subscription plan, ranging from $30 to $50 a month (student to professional) for access to EVERYTHING, updated constantly, and I’m a happy user. It’s easier to justify $50 a month, especially when it’s software you use in your trade, than plunking down an arm and a leg (or lung & kidney) and buying it outright, only to have it be outdated 11 months later, and have to buy it again just to keep up with the newest innovations.

Keeping that in mind, I was excited to hear they announced a team version of this, which made me think, automatically, for a few dollars more you can add extra people to the license, which would be awesome.

I was excited, that is, until I learned that it’s $70 PER SEAT, a full $20 a month more than if we bought them individually.

I’m sorry, but that makes no sense at all!

And so now here’s my rant, addressed to Adobe:

THIS is what would make sense: $70 a month which includes AT LEAST 2 SEATS, even better 3, with each additional seat costing another $20. I would buy that for my entire team. But the way they have it now, it makes more sense to simply buy individual memberships for each team member and collaborate with our existing tools, AS WE ALREADY DO. Adobe’s “team” value add is minimal to nothing being that 80 percent of their customers who work in teams already have collaboration systems in place. The only value to a team membership is if it saved Adobe’s customers MONEY.

I’m sorry but this is a step backwards. Creative Cloud opened Adobe software up to a new arena of customers, but this “team” plan is no deal at all.

And with that, I end my rant.

You’ve written something, and you’ve typed the last line, and you’re done! Woohoo, time to celebrate. Tomorrow, ignoring your hangover, you’re going to rush it out to the publisher and…

Stop! Hold on, not so fast. You’re not done yet. As perfect and wonderful as you think your story is, you are far too close to it to be at all objective. Your best bet is to put it away for a while. A month at least, longer if possible, then go back over it with a fresh perspective.

“Put it away for a month?” you exclaim. “Are you nuts?” No, not nuts. Understand this: you are still hot off your project and your internal writing machine is still primed and running — time to jump right into your next project while the one you’ve just finished cools down and rests.

When going over it with a fresh perspective, what you will most likely find is that the parts you really liked are not so good (and may even be embarrassing), and the parts that you didn’t think were so good now seem so brilliant that you can’t believe it came out of your very own brain. So you start going through and rewriting, making adjustments here and there, cutting out parts that don’t contribute to the story, and smoothing the rough patches so that the text flows easily in through the eyes.

Good job. The rewrite is the important part, the part where the story really comes together. When you’re finished with that, guess what?

It’s time to put it away again for a while. You want to give it at least one more read-through with as fresh a perspective as you can. In fact, I recommend you read it out loud to yourself, all of it, because that way an entirely different part of your brain will process it and you’ll discover — or, actually, hear — things you didn’t notice before. Turns of phrases you thought were clever are suddenly awkward. Words are arranged wrong, and you’ve typed things like “was was” instead of “he was.” How could you not see that before?

Because, dear writer, these words have come from inside you and were processed with your fingers and eyes … and when you go back and read it, you don’t really see it. Your brain recognizes it and remembers what you thought you typed, not what you actually typed. It skips over the input coming from your eyes and replaces what it knows from memory. But, when you read it out loud, whole other sections of your brain get involved, parts that have no previous experience with the manuscript.

Even after you’ve done this, you’re still not ready to publish. The story all makes perfect sense to you, but you are completely intimate with it. A reader is not, and there may be gaping holes where they need to know something only you know in order to understand why your character whacked the mailman over the head with a wrench, or decided to take up juggling, or has an aversion to pet rocks.

You need an editor. Even if you’re planning on sending it to a traditional publisher, who has editors, you still need an editor to make it to the threshold of perfection to sufficiently impress the pants off the publisher’s editor.

Yes, you read that right. You need an editor before you show it to an editor. It need not be a professional editor, but it does need to be a reader who will be honest with feedback without letting his or her ego get into the mix. What I highly recommend is you find and join a good writers group, either in your town or online.

Your editors in this case will be test readers, and fellow critique partners. One thing to understand up front is that critiquing a story, or especially a novel, is hard work and requires time and effort. You can’t expect to get this without also giving something in return — and trust me, the pleasure of reading your unedited writing is, honestly, not usually something you can consider payment for their effort.

I’m not saying you need to hire a professional editor or proofreader, though they do exist and are a wonderful resource if you can go in that direction — what I am saying is that you must reward these people somehow, even if it’s with a bottle of their favorite expensive scotch, or a beautiful gold pen, or by babysitting their kids for free for a week.

Also, and more likely, they’ll have manuscripts of their own to critique — and that’s a fair trade. There is an art to giving a good critique, too, and I’ll cover that in a future article. Suffice to say, when you do a proofread and critique of someone else’s work, you give it the same careful consideration as you’d expect them to give yours.

A good writers group (yes, there are not-so-good ones out there) will give you this resource in droves, but you will work for it. Even a not-so-good one can be useful if you are careful in your dealings within it. It’s best to get involved and test the group out with short stories, and ascertain the following qualities:

• Are there any big, overshadowing egos involved, who need to lord how wonderful they are over everyone?
• How much drama is involved?
• Do any of these people have any real experience?
• Most importantly: What’s the ratio of calm, reasonable people vs. outright jackasses?

A good writers group contains a balance of people who all get along; who don’t get their egos easily bruised; who deliver criticism kindly and constructively; who don’t raise their voice unless it’s in boisterous joy; and who don’t contain pompous, self-important assholes.

Even if you find yourself in a group with one or more negative traits, you may find and partner with others in the group who are more reasonable — these people will become your friends, maybe even lifelong friends, and if you work your ass off helping them polish their manuscripts to perfection they will hopefully reciprocate and do the same for you.

So we’re down to the wire here. You’ve given your manuscript, your darling, your baby, over to other people to judge and correct. You’re holding your breath, hoping they like it. That is absolutely natural. When criticism starts coming in, you get defensive.

Stop.

This is very important. Stop.

Do not defend your manuscript.

DO NOT DEFEND IT.

You asked for criticism. They’re giving you what you asked for. Do not, under any circumstances, argue or try to explain how they don’t understand, or why they’re wrong.

DO NOT DO THAT.

You asked for an opinion and you’re getting it. THANK THEM FOR IT.

You do not have to agree. You do not have to do what they tell you to do. But you do have to thank them for it, without any further comment. Keep your hysterical denial inside. This denial is natural and perfectly okay, but you want — and NEED — their input, and no one is going to want to give it to you if you are unpleasant about receiving it.

This is hard, but necessary. You must do your absolute best to divorce yourself from your creation, and let them do their worst to it, because — and I can’t stress this enough — no matter how harsh it seems, it will be infinitely worse when you release it into the world at large. Someone, somewhere, will always hate your writing. Someone somewhere will always dump all over you, publicly, in front of everyone, it searing bold letters up on Amazon or B&N, or in their blog, or in the New York Times.

The flip side of this is there will also always be people who absolutely love what you write, who will take it to heart, and who will incorporate your thoughts into their life through what you’ve written. The sad part is, unlike the negative prick who dumped all over you, these people who love you will do it silently, privately, and you’ll rarely, if ever, know about it.

But they are there. They will always be there. You’ll only detect them through the money you end up getting when you see people are spending their hard earned wages on everything you put out there. Every penny you receive will be a sign of love.

So back to the critique of your work: like I said, you can ignore what they say if it doesn’t make sense to you. If you give your manuscript out and get five critiques, and only one brings up the perceived problem, you can ignore it if you want. If two people bring it up, then you can’t ignore it. If three, four, or all five bring it up, there is a definite thing you have to address. A glaring problem.

It’s okay to have a glaring problem. Nothing ever comes out perfect the first time. No matter what it is, you can fix it. It may be a little work, or it may be a lot of work, but you do have to fix it.

It all comes down to your readers — what kind of experience do you want them to have? They pay money for your words, and they invest time out of their lives to read it. What are you giving them in return for this? If you shit on them, they will be angry, not come back, and badmouth you to everyone who will listen.

You don’t want to do that to your readers if you want to keep writing and keep selling, especially if it’s the first thing of yours they’ve ever read.

You want them to be glad they read what you’ve written.

The manuscript can have some flaws, and it can have some plot holes — it’s not a good thing to have, but they can be there — if the reader still comes away with a pleasant feeling for having read it. This is how you build a readership. This is how you cultivate a group of people who you hopefully love, even though you’ve never met them, who will be excited to see whatever you produce next.

While you’re editing, based on critiques, or based on professional feedback, this is the ultimate goal to shoot for: a really good experience for the reader, leaving them wanting more.

That’s why everyone needs an editor, because it’s extremely rare that you can pull that off without one.