I was a technical writer for Information Technology for twenty-three years. It is a world that has no secrets from me. At the same time, all those years, I saw myself as a fiction writer, though my own writing happened only at night and on weekends or on the train to and from work. I worked twelve-hour days in IT. And nothing I wrote mattered, ever, to any company, because technical manuals were a legal necessity, not a business choice.

I know some technical writers stayed with the same corporation, but I was perpetually looking for greener pastures, some imaginary place where not only was my work appreciated, but management as a whole wanted to explore creative efforts and ideas. I thought I could find this magical place. I really did. I tried to bring that vision into being by transitioning into a different company whenever the opportunity presented itself — a headhunter call, an eager recruiter, a former colleague asking me to join him or her in their new startup. …

Favorite words: journey, sojourn, encounters, stillness, the unknown

Beginnings

I imagined a pretty specific path for my life early on, a quiet, enclosed kind of life. Think “small town” and uneventful, reading books and playing outside with my friends. This was joy. School was a light, a beacon. I still recall at age twelve opening a book of Latin on the first day of school after Labor Day and the autumn sunlight coming through the classroom window, and seeing the words “Via Appia est” — “This is the Appian Way.” …

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

I doubt there is a writer anywhere who would not like to have written an opening like Jane Austen’s from Pride and Prejudice. Or write a description like Herman Melville near the end of Moby Dick when the white whale has taken Queequeg into the depths of the sea and Ahab and the ship follow and are lost:

“Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed; and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” …

Speaking English is nothing if not open to misinterpretation, depending on the words we choose to say. We can be a little lazy or not really care which words we use, but if we DO care, then the secret sauce is precision. I discovered this recently when I was hanging pictures after moving to a new home.

If you’ve ever had the fun of pounding nails into plaster walls, you know you have to hope you are doing it into a stud and not into empty space. You know you need masking tape in a big “X” where the center of the “X” is where to hammer that nail in. If the weight of the picture requires two nails, on a good day having a builder’s level handy helps you center things. …

“It is a dark and stormy night. You don’t believe me? Watch, and learn!”

I started to laugh at the cliché. But not at what happened next. In an instant the room was transformed as clouds raced over the heads of the audience and the walls became transparent, revealing trees swaying wildly in the wind and lightning striking in brilliant flashes into the mountains beyond. Thunder sounded and rain fell with a fury, almost drowning out the voice of the red-headed man on stage. Shrieks of surprise and shouts of protest did nothing to stop him until with one sudden flourish he spun around in a circle and stood still and held his hands before his eyes, shading them. …

What draws a reader into a mystery? That is easy to answer. The first line of the first paragraph, always. What is going on there? Why does it matter so much? Does the first line have to be the end-all and be-all irresistible hook?

The short answer is — YES. But this line can be disguised, camouflaged, appear seemingly innocuous, or the wording can be quite simple. You, the writer, must attend to it carefully. But how?

It’s all about setting…

The most important element in that first line, and thus the first paragraph that follows, is giving a sense of anticipation. Every wonderful mystery offers this. …

A very short fantasy of alternate dimensions…

Rain ran down the gutter of the curb. Nearby was a tree with roots pushing out of the sidewalk. The four-year-old girl hunched down in her raincoat and studied the dead cat that had been washed down the gutter. Its course had been stopped by a fallen tree branch.

In a different kind of household, she would have run in and told her mother what she had found, but she understood her mother wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t care. The sight of the cat, one eye missing and the other a clouded blue, the fur all plastered against its body, gave her a feeling of sadness and fear at the same time. No one else was around. She reached out to touch the creature but pulled her hand back. No. She already knew that wasn’t a good thing to do. If the cat stayed there a long time, her father would arrive home. …

A sci-fi story (with a cat)…

Raven was the first one they took home, along with the algae deposits we’d collected from the omnipresent caves. The rest of us were left behind to watch the planet’s one star rise and fall and rise again, waiting for the transport to return when it remembered we were still here.

With tachyon expeditions one never knew the timing of such things, so to speak.

“What now?” Andras stood next to me, his face shifting rapidly into all the colors of the rainbow that covered half the sky above us, an atmospheric effect, for we’d had no rain. Though he was a true chameleon, this time it was all just reflection. …