What Are You Working On?

Consider, for a moment, the importance of precision: How an exact measurement defines our progress. How it sets the new standard.

Even something as elemental as a footrace may come down to a photo finish—a thousandth of a second separating the fastest runner from the also-rans.

The naked eye isn’t enough. Not in sports, and certainly not in science.

In science, technology, and the businesses built around them, the difference between success and failure is measured in microns, milliseconds and parts per trillion.

Measurement has the power to change our understanding of the world. It tells us what’s possible now and inspires us to reach even farther.

I say all that because I happen to work for the world's premiere measurement company. We have a lot of brilliant scientists here doing things that, frankly, I can barely comprehend. I just know they're helping make the world a better place.

Recently I had the pleasure of writing about one of our research fellows, Curt Flory.

Curt is not only brilliant, he's funny and self-effacing.

"I compulsively have to know how things work," he told me. "In fact, my wife often needles me and says, 'You can’t be happy just using something. You have to know where all the electrons are going.'"

Among his achievements: Curt helped develop the cesium beam atomic frequency standard—the basis of the most precise commercial timekeeping device in the world and probably one of the most accurate pieces of instrumentation of any kind

How accurate? In a million years, such a clock would lose maybe one second, if it could run that long without exhausting its supply of cesium. So who needs that kind of precision? Try everyone who depends on the satellite-based Global Positioning System, or GPS, to figure out where they are or where they’re going.

"The thing GPS is measuring is the flight time of light, or electromagnetic radiation, and that travels really fast. So let’s imagine you’re off by a microsecond—one millionth of a second. In that time, light has traveled 300 meters. You want to be more accurate than that," he said. "So that’s a pervasive example of why timing, time synchronization, time intervals, frequency stability—all of those things—are so important."

Of course, that was some time ago. What's he working on now? I can't tell you that, but I can tell what typically happens when his wife asks the same question.

"If my wife is having trouble sleeping," Curt told me, "she’ll roll over and say, 'So what are you working on now?' Every time, I fall for it. I always think, 'She’s finally really interested.' So I start talking about it, getting all excited, and within two minutes, I hear: 'Zzzzz.' Now I’m wide awake and I have to get up and start jotting things down."

Story Behind the Story: "Men Are Such Boys"

This one is a story about an older woman dating a younger man. "Men Are Such Boys" was written before the term cougar became popular, and I don't think of the woman, Deirdre, as a cougar, which has taken on a derogatory connotation.

This is simply a story about a woman who thinks of all men as boys. Boys in bigger bodies.

In the first few drafts, I cut back and forth between Deirdre's point of view and that of the young man, Randy.

I was quite fond of the story then, but it wasn't getting the response I wanted from readers. Nobody really liked it, and I didn't know why.

I needed to do something, but what?

Then, I don't know why, I decided to present almost the entire story from Deirdre's point of view, then again from Randy's, finally bringing the two viewpoints together for the ending.

That did the trick.

Readers started saying it was my best story yet.

As I told the astute interviewer from Book Club Queen (who got me thinking about this story), I believe it's because you get more uninterrupted time with each character, enough time to bond. And you naturally buy into the first point of view before finding out there's more to the story. That change in perception makes it more interesting, I think.

The End Is Here

I grew up in a Baptist church and was born again at an early age.

When I was in high school there was a lot of talk of "the end time," and there would be again in coming years. (Then, it was spurred by a book called The Late Great Planet Earth; I don't know what spurred it later on.)

I grew up hearing about Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Their scandals were an embarrassment. So were the pronouncements of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

These people did not speak for me.

That was the end time for me.

It was a time when ministers asked their congregations to write letters to Congress — letters decrying legislation that, as it turns out, had never been written or proposed.

My minister. My congregation.

Some said the peace sign was actually satanic, as if peace were a bad thing. (I kid you not; I heard that in church.) There was even a period when kids like me were encouraged to use a different sign — to point an index finger to heaven indicating "One way."

It never really caught on.

I remember arguing with classmates that organized religion could be still be salvaged. There were still good people doing good things, after all. And there still are.

I studied religion in college and had professors who were good and wise examples. They helped me hold on to my faith awhile longer.

But I no longer believe there is one way (and haven't for a long time). One way is a mistake with disasterous consequences.

One way is wedded to intolerance and gives birth to tyranny.

I'm so done with that.

Composed

Rosanne Cash is a brilliant singer/songwriter. I say that even though I'm not really a fan of country music.

Her album The Wheel is one of my all-time favorites, in any genre, so I picked up her memoir, Composed, to learn more.

It's a good book and well-written, but it seems to skim along the surface much of the time. Unlike her songs. Her songs take you so deep you think you might drown.

The Precarious Writing Process

For the most part, the writing process remains a mystery to me, even though I've been doing this for a long time now. My first story was published when I was 10 years old. On a mimeograph machine. By my fourth-grade teacher. (Everyone in the class got a copy, and I signed each one.) I've written a lot of stories since then, including the fifteen in Precarious, but the process is never the same.

That first story was in response to an assignment: Write a story about anything you like. I wrote about a baseball game with an unlikely ending. (I had cast my two best friends as the captains of opposing teams and couldn't decide which should win, so I had an escaped elephant interrupt the proceedings.)

Much later, when I started to get serious about writing, stories came to me in different ways. I didn't have to write them, and yet I did. Looking back, it seems almost as if I had no choice. The ideas never came easily to me. Well, never and always. I couldn't turn out a story at will. I couldn't just decide to write one. But then a story, or the beginnings of a story, would suddenly take shape in my mind. It was easy if I wasn't trying. The story might be inspired by a photograph in a magazine, a song on the radio, a snippet of conversation overhead at lunch. Or it could come, seemingly out of nowhere, in the form of a first sentence.

I almost never know where I’m going with a story. In fact, most of the time, I’m not even conscious of why I’m writing it, unless it's simply to find out what will happen. Invariably I get stuck and don't know. Have no clue. Can't figure it out. The remedy is usually a long walk, a hot bath, or a good night's sleep. In extreme cases I've been forced to leave a story half finished for years, as was the case with both "Taken," which was inspired by a photograph, and "Dance Naked," which was inspired by a true story.

The phrase “inspired by a true story” should always be regarded with suspicion because you never know how much is true. Very little, in this case. But years ago, as a newspaper reporter, I had the chance to cover a murder trial and that’s where I got the idea for “Dance Naked” — two guys fighting over one woman and how ugly that can get. But it’s a much different story than the one I covered. I made up 99.9% of it. And it doesn’t end the way I thought it would.

In some ways, I think, my process is probably similar to what an actor goes through to get into character, drawing upon his own memories and emotions in order to empathize with the person he's portraying—only I get to play all the parts: The hero, the villain, the man, the woman, the faithful friend. On the page, I get to act out lives unlike my own. Not that I consciously think of it as acting. My process is largely unconscious, and a lot of my best stuff comes to me as I'm waking up in the morning, as if from a dream. It's just there and I don't know where it came from.

Originally posted on TSP.

Our Time in the Mediteranean

Here's what I liked best ...

• Spaghetti with clams at Ristorante da Donato, around the corner from our hotel in Rome.
• Seeing Trevi Fountain again, the Spanish Steps, and a bit of the Borghese Gardens.
• The rooftop bar of the Albergo del Senato, where we stayed, on the same square as the Pantheon.
• Being able to walk everywhere from there—the Coliseum, the Forum, St. Peter's.
• Ordering iced tea and being asked if I want peach tea, because, yes, in fact, I do.
• Dark chocolate gelato from Giolitti.
• Death by Chocolate at Tre Scalini on the Piazza Navona.
• Coming into Genoa by ship and seeing the city from the water.
• Lying flat on our backs on the ship's helipad late at night, seeing the true brightness of the stars, and understanding how the Milky Way got its name.
• Gnocchi with pesto at Ristorante il Pozzo in Monterosso on the Cinque Terre (part of the coastal region known as Liguria, where pesto was invented).
• Anchoring offshore in Villafranche and taking the little ferry into town.
• The turquoise water in nearby Nice.
• Listening to two Spaniards, probably brothers, play Pachelbel's Canon, with feeling, on violin and bass, in Barcelona.
• Wandering around Palma de Mallorca and buying stamps for post cards we wrote and failed to mail.
• Sa Tuerredda beach on Sardinia after the rain stopped and the sun came out.
• The fact that we could be in Rome one day and Sunnyvale the next.

Far Away

For a number of years now, I've been following the progress of Eye Talk as it has evolved from rock band to something harder to define.

In its current form the group has pared down to its two core members, brothers Alan and Bob Clark. Older brother Alan has always been the driving force behind Eye Talk, writing nearly all of the songs, singing and playing lead guitar, but lately he's been encouraging his bass-playing brother to write more.

As a result, their latest release, Far Away, features five songs from each brother — and represents their most accomplished and compelling work to date.

Here are a few short samples, with each singing lead on his own songs:

• Where do we go from here? (Alan Clark)

• One more chance (Bob Clark)

• Until now (Bob Clark)

• Whole lives before us (Alan Clark)

That last one always get to me.