A Writer's Paradise

Expect wonkiness, we're upgrading

More like side-grading, I guess. To WordPress.

The time has come for the change. But will I change the blog or will the blog change me?

...
..

Right. Anyway, if things get really wonky 'round these parts, you'll know why. Bear with me.

Back to that dead horse problem...

Last Tuesday, I talked about restarting a stalled novel. Several of you offered opinions.

Ryan Freebern suggested:

I might try to write a short story or two set in the same world and maybe featuring some of the same characters, just as a way to make myself think about things from a different perspective.

I have, in fact, done this with another novel. It resulted in that recent sale to Asimov's... but did not result in further working on the novel, however (but part of that is because I haven't yet said, "It's time to work on the novel.") I think this could really work, actually; ideas burble when I contemplate it. Of course, those stories could easily lead into subplots and secondary characters, and it would probably be stuff to include in the novel at this point, so really, the whole "short story" thing would be a fib I'd tell myself to restart the engine.

But there's nothing wrong with lying to yourself to get the job done, right? Okay, not in my world, anyway.

Honestly, perhaps that is a better approach to novel-writing than the one I've been taking. I get so overwhelmed by the idea of holding all the threads at once, that it hasn't really occurred to me that a novel is, essentially, a series of interwoven short stories, one of which has predominating themes and plot points, with related characters and an over-arching plotline.

DUH.

I mean, as opposed to writing a novel without a mental working model of what one is, which is how I've been doing things for a while now.

So, thanks, Ryan. Very helpful!

And Steve Buchheit posed a really interesting scenario:

Or, is it you know what comes next and you just don't want to type/write it? I've been stopped by that. I tried to dictate to my characters and told them that what they wanted to do was "naughty." Well, they took their little read ball and went away until I relented. I still feel icky about what they did (and I question the characters' moral judgement), but I got the story going again. If this is the case you need to accept that the characters have to be themselves.

I can't say for sure if that's ever happened to me or not. If it has, I never figured it out.

This does touch on an issue of reluctance I have for The Tarot Book, however; mostly, my main character is making things so hard for herself--she's inflicted herself with magically-induced psychosomatic amnesia--and it's damn hard to get a handle on what she knows and what she doesn't. She's so willfully ignorant that I am, indeed, having a hard time writing her. I can't figure out why my secondaries are hanging out with her (other than they've made their oaths to her dead parents to take care of her), but it's hard. They keep yelling at her, and well, she's trying to learn but she's balky, and you know? Maybe I'm finding her tedious. I wonder if that's not a huge chunk of this. The worst part is, she's the only viewpoint character I have because the book is currently first person, and... gosh. I wonder if this isn't an enormous part of the problem. The main character drives me batshit. She's realistic in her stubbornness, but it's not pleasant.

And if I'm having this reaction, I bet readers would, too.

So, yeah, uh... I think I've maybe uncovered a pretty big piece of the problem here, thanks to Steve.

Ultimately, I think that there's more preparation I need to be doing here. I can get by with the aid of my wacky subconscious (the greatest of sidekicks) on a lot of things, but novels... novels may not be one of those things. I may need full involvement from my conscious mind here.

(No, I haven't actually picked up The Tarot Book this week. I did dive into some short stories I'd been missing, however, with my usual alacrity and non-finishing grace (let's see what happens tonight after I write this entry. I may yet finish something this month).)

Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment of "how to start a stalled novel."

I never tell Saturday how much I love it...

Recent events and accomplishments, briefly noted:

Friday:

• I finally finished the rewrite of "WDTP" and posted it.
  
• Also finished the craziest week of dayjob evar. Until next week, of course.
  
• Found out Asimov's pays $.06 per word, not $.05 (for the length I wrote to). This is, as my husband pointed out, a 20% raise.

Saturday:

• Woke up early and wrote some more of "The Girl-Prince." Managed to squeeze in a whole bit about heteronormativity and fairy tales in what I hope is a clever way. I should really say something about fairy tale rewrites soon. I have a lot to say.
  
• Won $2 at poker tonight. Am rich.
  
• Am 3/4ths done with herb garden prep. Of course, the remaining quarter is the hard part.
  
• Checked on my Baen's Universe sub. It says, "Mike and Eric are currently reading stories from March 2007. (There are about 30 stories from earlier months that they've read, but haven't yet made a decision on.)" And since there is no update beyond "Recommended - 2007-02-07," that would mean mine is in that batch of 30 stories. That's not a bad update.

Rethinking Order

I knocked a thousand words out of "WDTP"* this week (15,500 down to 14,500, making it a tiny bit more marketable), and I am using the rest of my lunch hour to work on it. In theory. Actually, I realized that what with watching Tombstone with my buds and then my discovering that my computer and its connection were redefining "internet slapfight" last night, I didn't write an entry yesterday.

Tombstone is still an awesome movie. I had a whole nostalgic flashback to my sophomore year of college, specifically the weekend in which I mainlined Wyatt Earp movies in order to write a paper about the depiction of Kate and Doc Holliday (bad relationship) versus Doc and Wyatt (good relationship). If only I'd known about slash back then... I had no clue about sussing out homoerotic tension when I was 19. Or even about feminist tropes. (Could we read Holliday's consumptive, bloody cough as a metaphor for menstrual blood? Haha, OKAY, I'LL STOP.)

So, anyway. "WDTP" was originally a tale written in straight chronological order. Mr. Dave Klecha** thought that the beginning seemed almost fairy-taleish, and Julie-my-Julie (my alpha, beta and gamma reader) didn't think the whole thing picked up steam until after the equestrian competition.

So, in the most recent rewrite, I started out after the equestrian competition, and flashed back from there. This is a VERY daring thing for me to do. I am never less than chronologically arrow-straight. Flashbacks? No. I might *allude* to a past, but no, generally no flashbacks. Much, I'm sure, to the detriment of some of my stories.

This was a pretty big deal, all things considered.

I hope it works.

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In other news, I hear that Mike Resnick is now going to be reading my slush survivor at Baen's Universe, and Eric Flint is going, going, gone. I could not actually tell you if this change will materially affect my chances, so I'm just going to maintain my hand-cramping four-month finger-cross.

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*"The Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443" Full disclosure: it's a screwball comedy of far-future manners. I wrote it to entertain myself. It has a patina of girliness--there is much discussion of marriage, children, clothing, weddings... There are horses. There is even a romance. I tend to think of it as science fiction social anthropology, however, and don't find it romantic at all.

**Yes, Dave read this girlie story--because he's just that tough.

Becoming that hot sweaty natural-born writer I know I can be....

Thanks for the comments on the dead horse entry; I'll respond in depth this weekend, 'cause I think there are some things to say about all that, but I must mull first.

Instead, I'm going to point out this awesome link to Humans are hot, sweaty, natural-born runners, an article that discusses persistence hunting and various other anthropological goodies (I was an anthro major for those just joining us). This article also gives humanity a nice pep-talk, working against "the long and firmly held belief that humans are the animal world’s biggest wimps"--and it also has a lot to say about humanity's legacy of endurance.

It made me think about persistence as being akin to endurance. We all know that persistence is pretty damn important in the writing game. It takes endurance and persistence on both sides of the equation--the writing and the seeking of publication. I've managed to maintain pretty good persistence for the seeking of publication since the beginning of this endeavor. Since April 2003, I don't think a day has gone by when I haven't had SOME story sitting in some slushpile somewhere. I've slacked off a bit since the beginning, unfortunately; I let the rewrite bugs bite me too often, and that means that I don't always turn stories back around the day they're rejected. But I try. I don't let them often sit more than a week, and rarely more than a month.

(OF COURSE this current month is a terrible example of my persistence, since I have three stories out of circulation--one rewrite, two waiting for Interzone's brief email window (yes, two; I know Jetse will turn around an answer on the first one fast enough to make it worth holding two).)

But where my endurance is less impressive is in the writing. I write a lot, and often, but I don't finish much. Year to date, I've finished one short story--and I didn't finish much last year (four short stories). I lack focus. And, you know? Focus is part of persistence. You can't chase eight different zebras, hoping to tire them out; you gotta hunt one zebra at a time--to extend the anthropology metaphor a bit.

And yes, I've known all of this for a while. But it really struck home today. When I realized I'd sold 1/4 of the inventory I finished writing last year. With one sale.

So, yeah. My new thing is going to be focus. In a big way.

That Old Stalled Novel Problem; Or, Beating a(n) (Un)Dead Horse

Tonight, I'm brainstorming ways to restart this stalled novel (The Tarot Book). Suggestions will be listened to most eagerly, if you have any to make...

What I've come up with so far:

1) do a few exercises with a workbook
2) make a collage
3) give money to a charity for each week I don't make wordcount (just like Toby Buckell, and no, I don't have a link)
4) tear hair out & run screaming around....
5) just suck it up and do it, fer god's sake

See, the problem I have is that I don't actually know what happens next. I have my great idea, I have the ending... and I've written the beginning... and I know some of the stepping stones along the way, but not all of them by far. Writing my way through it is an option, but I think it will lead to a muddle. And since I don't know what is happening now or next, I have pretty much just... stopped.

I need a subplot.

I probably also need a second viewpoint character.

I've tried freewriting/brainstorming/drawing little maps of character relationships. I'm still not sure what happens next. Perhaps I could try writing nonsequentially... except that I'm pretty sure you should have at least a vague idea of what happens in between. After all, the reason I don't write nonsequentially isn't because it doesn't sound like a good idea--it's because I'm not always sure what happens next.

My god. The things I don't know about the structure and pacing of a novel could fill a book all by itself. It just wouldn't be a very good book, and it certainly wouldn't be a novel.

Hm.

Maybe number 6 on the above list should be: "Shut self in dark room until self has talked it out." Because honestly, that's all I can really see working at this point.

In the meantime, I've started another short story. Because even though I swore off short stories a few months ago, having completed one and sold another since then, I'm all, "Oh, short stories, I was just joshin'! I still loves you!"

*sigh*

Oh, and FYI, Interzone is open to email submissions for the month of May, which is a boon to those of us in the US who don't really even understand IRCs.

Webscabbery for the Masses

The last time I wondered where all my short short stories went... well, I should've checked the trunk. Every single one of these came in below 3,000 words. Which is very brief for me.

Here are my Pixel-stained offerings:

• Pages 37-38 in A Post-Plague Women's Studies Reader
  flashish experimental-format fiction; quite brief


• The Subletter of my Subletter
  uhm... plenty short


• Sir Michael and the Quest for the Rubric
  YA, about 2,500 words


• Unanswered Letters (Found Beneath a Floorboard in Portland, Oregon, in 2010)
  one-sided epistolary fiction


• Mother of Forests
  a fable for my mother

I decided it would not fit with the spirit of the day to explain why these were trunked; I'd love to share something with the world that I think I could sell, but they're nearly all visiting editors at the moment. I very nearly gave you all "Sticks and Bones" today, too, but I realized I'd just absolutely kick myself for not trying it at Interzone.

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

Monday is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. (Here is Jo Walton's initial post.)

No, really.

It's so easy!

Tonight, in the name of webscab solidarity, I'm going to put some stories online.

Tomorrow, I'll tell everyone where to look.

Now, you!

Sales Spreadsheet

So, when I updated my sales spreadsheet... I couldn't help but notice that I've sold over 30,000 words of fiction now. At an average price of $.03 a word.

The best money-per-word sale I've made was the 186-word story to Flashquake for $15. That worked out to something like over $.08 a word.

Ah, spreadsheets. Those darn Mac/PC commercials make it sound like spreadsheets aren't fun or something!

What I Wish I'd Known

I have written an essay every year on (or near) my writing anniversary. I started the rigorous (as opposed to the lackadaisical) submitting of short stories in April 2003. I am preparing to write essay four.

I've refrained from editing these essays too much; my first essay, The Freshman Writer, has everything in it that I wish I'd known when I was fifteen and made that first, impetuous, egged-on, SASEless submission to Woman's World's Fifteen-Minute Mystery. (The story was called "The Library Murders"--the library theme was already present--and a friend of my aunt's from back in her newspaper days, who had achieved some level of local poetical publication success, strongly urged me to submit that story to that venue, but without the extremely important SASE advice.) I was pig-ignorant prior to that April; Julie and Lisa already knew a lot of that stuff, having undertaken their own educations with a bit more rigor than my reading of the essays in The Writer's Market.

By April 2004, I'd sold "Heretic's Day Out" for copies, made $10 off "Charmed Lives," placed four poems without compensation, and felt victorious about all of it. By April 2004, I'd taken each of my thirty-odd rejections terribly to heart, and further, managed to get through all extant seasons of Angel on DVD, because rejection inevitably led to a 1-disc binge. By April 2004, I was convinced that if I ever got a rejection from Gordon Van Gelder instead of John Joseph Adams, I would be satisfied with my writing lot.

 

The distance between all the milestones feels infinite until you actually arrive.

The writer I was in April 2004 is so not the writer I am today, and only the writer I was in April 2004 was really fit to talk backward to the writer I was in April 2003. Each year that goes by, each success that I enjoy, each saleless month (or six) that I suffer through, each milestone that I pass, makes me less empathetic for that mid-twenties newbie. "There's so much you should have known!" I think. I could stumble over myself trying to explain stuff to a new writer now. It would be a terrible mistake to even try. I want to think that I'm just as capable of understanding what it's like to be with zeroes in the acceptance and the rejection columns as I was three years ago, but I'm probably not.

Because, well. The one thing no new writer wants or needs to hear is how a burgeoning neo-pro still feels like they haven't gotten anywhere. I probably would have taken an ice-pick to my eye if April-2007-me went back to visit April-2003-me and said something awesome like, "Yeah, well, you'll have sold to some pro-mags, but, you know. You haven't gotten very far."

There are no guarantees for when you'll pass the milestones, nor for which order the milestones come in, let alone which milestones you'll hit.

 

What I know now isn't actually relevant to who I was then.

So no. 2007-me doesn't get to go back and rewrite what 2004-me had to say to 2003-me.

She just doesn't. I look back at it all now and say, "Really? This was your big revelation?" Yeah. It was big to me. Rejection took so long for me to figure out. I still don't always get it--the "close, but not close enough, but we had to sit on it for six months to decide that" rejections are killer, as just one example.

2007-me also has the advantage of knowing how bad of a writer that 2003-me was. I mean, competent? Sure. Occasionally good, even. Consistently good, though? Naaaaht really. We've gone through some upgrades since. It took experiencing the mediocrities of slush to recognize I was mediocre.

 

Really, it's just like four years of college.

But 2003-me totally didn't need to know how mediocre she was, because she wasn't a good enough writer to fix any of it, yet. Just a few months of practice and she was markedly better, of course, and in the four years since 2003, she/I damn well better be better! I've written as much as--or possibly far more than--I would have if I'd taken an undergraduate degree in writing. My guidance has been spotty and limited frequently to peer review, but the grading scale has been harsh and professionally-administered.

 

Still working on that essay

And all of this is just to say that I'll be writing my 2007 essay to my 2006 self, and that I won't be looking back four years to yap at the freshman I once was.

Longwinded, I am.

Writing Link Round Up

Revving the Creative Engines

Top Ten Writing Tips to Help You Write More (Angela Booth)
These range from invigoration tactics ("pay attention to images") to small daily tactics ("make writing the first thing you do every day") to the big strategies ("set wildly improbable goals").

Fifteen Craft Exercises for Writers
I think, no question, I'm going to do some of these. And make up some exercises of my own, too. Would anyone else be interested in writing to random challenges, maybe on a monthly basis?

Mulling this over

Transracial writing for the sincere (Nisi Shawl)

A few random theories before breakfast

The Girl Cooties Theory of Literature

Ursula K. LeGuin, for example, doesn't have girl cooties, even when she writes a novella as classically romantic in its deep structure as Forgiveness Day. Connie Willis, on the other hand, has to bring in the Blitz and the Black Death just to keep the girl cooties from crawling out of the gutter margins of her novels and taking over the whole enterprise.

I would suggest, that with all the romance writing, I'm a girl cootie writer. Just a guess.

Very Afraid

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

The Snowflake Method for Designing a Novel

If you think fanfic writers don't know some serious shit, you can just leave through the back door

Useful information for writers (destina)
This is mainly just another link roundup.

Writing to deadline (musesfool)
Riffing off the notion that writing for a ficathon is like writing to a contract.

Connecting the dots to find your writing flaws (synecdochic)
Really good meta.

Three-Point Characterization (Rachael Sabotini)
Very interesting theory about characterization, and speaks to points in books where I scratch my head and ask the author aloud, "Really?" I think the reader draws the three points pretty early on with a character and has a version of the character in their head by page, oh... 30? 50? 10? I don't know. I really need to think about this one some more.

How to Write a Sex Scene
Advice from a slasher.

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For the rest of my writing links, there is, as always my del.icio.us.

Thanks! Also the Ego Shelf

Thanks, everyone, for the congratulations on the sale to Asimov's. In addition to the fine comments here that shocked me (because I realized more than two people read this), there was a bounty of congratulating over on LJ.

Dave, the pimpin' almost makes it worth somehow being lumped into what Scalzi has termed The Klecha Clutch (distinctive from the Clan because that would be Dave and his blood kin, while the Clutch is comprised also of those of us sucked in by the gravitational force of the Klechaness). Steve, we are so going to be pals. And I promise to learn how to spell your last name if you promise to learn how to spell my first name. :) Or, just call me Mer, like everyone else. To Todd Wheeler and Camille--welcome! Don't be strangers! Vaughan, I can never say enough great things about you--not only are you a good writer, I think you paid me the best writing compliment I've ever gotten from a colleague. And Peg, you are, and always will be the man. In the positive, non-gendered connotation of the word.

Now, on to the spectacle des sons et lumières (only sans sons; this is a fine French phrase that should be in wider parlance, meaning "spectacle of sound and light" and covers so much in the way of cheesy sideshow-type entertainment... but don't tell the French I said that).

Ahem.

The ego shelf.

What, you can't see it?

Better? Okay, no. How 'bout this?

Ah, yes. The contents of my three item ego-shelf. A "shelf" which is nothing more than a cubby in my desk. The items have to share space with the odd-sized dictionaries and a stuffed snail.

Of course, in very short order, the thing can be made to grow. I still hadn't brought Aoife's Kiss (in which there is a reprint of Huntswoman) upstairs as of last night when I took this picture. And it was only this morning that I decided that the two things in which my name appears deserve occupance on said shelf, either (namely, the March 2005 Locus and the most recent Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction). But then I decided, it's about ego, and I have such small shreds to feed said ego as it is... so they will soon join these paltry three things. One shelf up, I should think, where library books currently live.

All I can really say is: from such humble ego shelves, great bookcases may grow.

I got no story, I got no game.

There are a few days yet to the deadline for Sword and Sorceress 22, and that means nothing right now. I sent them two of my best stories. I got two of their best rejections. The coal-fired ambition to write something AwEsOmE!eleventyone!!! before the deadline is a terrible ambition, because I'm not the kind of person who can go from draft zero to saleable story in five days. Especially since I don't even have a draft zero yet.

On the other hand, I'm proud that I know myself that well these days.

On the third hand, it really frees up my week to not have to write, finish and submit a story that I barely comprehend. Frees it up a lot.

Onward to more enticing projects with a likelier pay off...

Sold: One Short Story

"An Almanac for the Alien Invaders" has been purchased by Asimov's.

I don't think I need to say how thrilled I am, but just in case you do need me to say it, I am SOEXCITED!OMG!!!.

My mom, when told, said, "Oh, I've heard of that! I mean, I've heard of him. He's a nice guy, right?" (Meaning Asimov, obviously.)

This story is based off the long-ago attempted short story "By Right of Conquest," which was read and critiqued by Julie, Lisa and Eric, all of who told me that I had a novel on my hands. Ever since, in attempting to write the novel, I have failed again and again, until I realized that really, I needed to know what happened in great detail before the novel begins. This is that story.

Website Hygiene

I have an infestation of spam comments, which I've mentioned a couple times lately. This is the worst it has ever been--usually, I get an extra hundred comments, notice it, run out and burn all the moth tents delete them and close the affected entries to comments and call it a day.

This week, I got about 800 extra comments.

There's absolutely no question--the move to Wordpress has gone from "someday" to "someday soon" to "actually, a smidge urgent."

Obviously, my old method isn't working, and the intervening method I came up with (close down two old entries to comments for every one I write) isn't going to stop that flood, either. I'm using an ancient version of MovableType, too, I might add; I didn't like the single author feature of the upgrade, in spite of the fact that I've not had guest authors in ages.

We must have better hygiene around here, and soon. The time is not optimal, but it never will be*. I just don't quite know how I'll find the patience to do this.

---

* (I need, like, six years off work to just catch up on everything I've been meaning to do and also maintain the house at the same time; why don't they let office workers have some of those golden retirement years up front? I could probably work until age 80 at the job I'm doing now, and I'm burning the sap of my youth on it.)

Just a little encouragement goes a long way.

Just a little encouragement goes a long way. I suspect most women know this already from their experiences in the dating pool--I certainly do not reflect fondly on those few guys who thought that a polite conversation was practically an agreement to suck the toejam off their feet at some later date (and I wasn't even a particularly pretty girl and I ran into those guys)... but that was college, and things are different there.

Anyway. A little encouragement does go a long way. I spent some days (okay, weeks in some cases) dragging my feet on resubmitting some short stories, but I get one encouraging near-buy (that may yet turn into a purchase) from a magazine and I am Wonder Submitter! The most energetic short story schlepper around! Well, sort of. I did get off my ass, though, and that's the important thing.

And, as it happens, I passes my 60th submission using Duotrope, and my 171st total submission. I'll refrain from giving you any other significant statistics in light of that near-sale that may still happen.

Noted: I still have some problems.

I don't know where to send "Sticks and Bones." Just--don't know. It's a quiet piece. I love much of it. It's so geekly. I have chiseled off and resanded that beginning and then done it all over again, but I still don't know if it's fast enough out of the gate. I think--I probably shouldn't write time travel again, at least, not in short stories. I have done three or possibly more time travel pieces and they've all been hard to place. (Two have sold, and this is the third; I think there's at least one more in the trunk.)

I need to rewrite "The Library Seed." I mean, I know how to do it, I'm ready to excise even more useless filler. Unfortunately, that will be the BILLIONTH and FIRST rewrite on this story, and I wonder if I haven't killed it already. And it's been to hardly any markets--partially because there've been some slow markets, partially because I keep rewriting it.

I am in doubt about "Sun's East." I used to think it was a weird and wonderful story. Now I don't know. I may have made it too schmoopie at the ending. I sent it to a weird and wonderful market. I hope it works.

And I have huge doubts about "Lawncare." Can you really write an atmospheric piece about... mowing the lawn? It probably needs to be shorter. It probably needs an "atmospheric piece" editing pass, whatever the heck that would entail. I really wanted to send it out this week (or at least this month), but I'm not sure I have anything here but a trunk story right now. This may require meditation.

Nonetheless--here I am, encouraged beyond all imagining.

I fear for you, world.

Things not to talk about

Not going to talk about:

-the story I'm writing. Talking about the story I'm writing might suck away its life-force.

-the story I'm rewriting. Talking about why I'm rewriting it could somehow jinx it.

-the comment spam I'm drowning in. Because I don't want to think about moving to Wordpress and the hassle that will be entailed.

-how late I am with my Senior Thesis--that which follows up my essays about my first three years of writing. Because I'm very late.

-how aimless this blog has become. I don't really have a blogging platform, you know? Perhaps I should get one.

This is the way my post-its read

Things I Need to Do Every Day

15 minutes research
15 minutes file/clean
15 minutes (plus resets) on Tarot Book
15 minutes other writing
15 minutes jotting, plotting, daydreaming, freewriting

Things I Need to Do Every Week

Finish something.

Things I Need to Finish

rewrite "Lawncare"
rewrite "Sun"
draft "Thaw"
draft "Girl"
draft "Less"
draft "Due"

and the most recent fortune cookie:

"With a little more hard work, your creativity takes you to great heights."

I'll take that. After all, it's just a little hard work.

Travel and Upgrades (Unrelated Subjects)

Just got back from New York (state), where I was visiting my niece and nephew and their parents. I sooooo dig being Aunt Mer. Other than that, I could rant about the state of airline travel today, the coolness of the landscape of New York state, or the vastly inappropriate amount of eavesdropping I did on the plane, because everyone seated around me was some variety of crazy or intense. But I won't. Because it's bedtime.

Meanwhile, the inevitable upgrade (or rather, sideways grade?) to WordPress for this blog is imminent. She cannae take the comment spam any longer, Cap'n!

Also, Farthing aka FARting Magazine, says: "We are delighted to announce that issue five of Farting will be the last issue produced using medieval technology. We are, after all, a science fiction magazine and it is absurd in the twenty-first century to be using technology more suited to the fifteenth."

Right-oh, and happy April Fool's Day.