Author Archives: DMZ

The roller coaster of book quality perception

A couple of years ago, when my initial, pretty aggressive deadline for turning in a manuscript came due, I talked to my editor and had a conversation that more or less went like this:
Me: Sooooo… how’s the weather up there in the northeast? Good? What’s going on? How are you?
Editor: Where’s my book?
Me: Ah. Good question. Really good question. Here’s the thing: I’ve got about 25% of a really great book done.
(pause)
Editor: Uh huh.
Me: And I could turn a manuscript with meeting the contractually obligated word count right now.
Editor: Okay.
Me: Or we could take more time and do a book that’s 100% great.
Editor: Yeah, let’s go ahead and take that option.

Doing the research for the book I discovered that almost every source I tracked down provided a hint of something else: Gaylord Perry led to Tommy John’s scuffing, tracing hecklers led to O’Toole and Adelis led to booster clubs. Every week I kept working at any chapter, all the other chapters improved.

But my list of research to-dos only grew.

Eventually, I had another conversation with my editor, which went:
Editor: Give me the book.
Me: I’m looking into this fascinating sideline about stadiums that burned down…
Editor: Give me the book.
Me: … and there’s this amazing thing that happened in the 1920s with bat manufacturing…
Editor: In a second, hired goons are going to come to your door. You need to provide them with the current version of the manuscript.
(ding-dong)
Me: Okay.

That defined the book’s scope. It had to happen eventually, but I still felt disappointed.

An abbreviated summary of my feelings towards the book since then:
Turned it in: excited, uncertain
Everyone loves the first draft but they want huge changes: relieved, happy, terrified
Drafts 2-4: increasingly weary
After copyediting, when I’d read the book for the 79th time: I despise this book. It’s boring, it’s flat, I should replace all the anecdotes and examples.
After a break: I don’t know. I’m too close to make judgments
After hearing from advanced readers: They seem really happy, but maybe my editor sent the goons around.
Library Journal review: Woo-hoo! It really is good! This is great!

Then yesterday, I got the Entertainment Weekly review, which liked it but gave it a ‘B’ (stand-up double) and I was, initially, really mad: how dare they only give it a B! I worked on it for years!

And then I thought “hey, they liked it enough to review it and say nice things, even if they didn’t think it was a masterpiece… that’s pretty cool.”

It’s like getting a bad review in the New York Times Book Review: as the editors will tell you, the fact that they’re reviewing you at all says something about the quality and noteworthiness of the book.

It’s strange, though — the book’s out. The quality of the book is set. It’s not going to get better, or worse. All that remains is for people to read it, and yet here I am, pulling for the next review to be positive, the same way I try and body-english a line drive down the line fair when I’m at a game.

The importance of HR

So it looks like I’ll be doing two interviews this week, one with Ye Olde Expedia, and one somewhere else. The interesting thing to me is that I ranted a while back about my frustration with the on-again, off-again recruiting of a company I really wanted to work for, and how I stopped trying.

Anyway, I got a note from a recruiter for a company, and I remembered that I’d talked to her as a job reference for a friend maybe six months ago, and it was a pleasant conversation and they were good about the whole thing – they called when they said they’d call, they were efficient but not forced about getting through it, and seemed as concerned about whether my friend would be happy as anything.

And I don’t think I’d have an interview scheduled if I hadn’t had a previous, positive contract with them.

I’m going to throw this on my list of to-do items for if I ever run my own business:
– interview and hiring processes run smoothly, fast
– hire great HR people when you’re too big to handle the process yourself

I’ll put those next to “don’t ever, ever outsource customer support” on my business plan.

But yeah, two interviews this week.

Mystery mystery project reaches v1

One of the reasons I’ve been slower on getting decent scifi stories out (there’s two in the queue) is that I’ve been spending a lot of time on book proposals and a novel-length fiction project, a mystery written with the lovely and talented Mrs. Zumsteg.

Anyway, the first draft’s done, and now it’s time to get into the re-writes.

It’s weird, I haven’t written a novel since college (which 2, maybe 3 people read), and my re-entry into scifi’s been almost entirely short stories (except, as my friend calls it, “that book about the genetically engineered Kiwi criminal mastermind teenager”), and yet here I am, with a fully-formed mystery. Let the re-writes begin.

Perception bias

One of the things that’s made a big difference in my long path from general jerk to occasional jerk has been my conscious effort towards empathy, and to recognize that, as I’ve been told, reality is what you make of it. This means, in baseball writing terms, I have to push myself towards certainty. I think it’s made me a much better actual analyst — I’m not afraid to say “we don’t know how this turns out” and I say “It’s unlikely that we’ll see this” or “there’s no evidence to suggest that…” or to circle a big area like clubhouse politics and say “I don’t know.” This was a great strength as a program manager, too, where being able to gauge perception against evidence and the known against the probable helped make things happen.

It’s really weird because today, I feel like I botched it, in a way — I took a piece of ambiguous information and managed to bungle decisions until I totally blew it. The results were that it generated all kinds of bad events, chaining on down, until there was a point this afternoon where I despaired of ever repairing it.

But it was based at least in part on a faulty assumption. What’s strange, though, is that I bit it, other people bit it without my prompting, and from there, things cascaded. I didn’t think to look at the tenets and ask second questions, and neither did anyone else.

When it all snapped for me, I felt strange for a long minute or two, because I realized I’d spent all day viewing things incorrectly, that when I first encountered piece of information #1, I’d been tired and in a bad mood and then once I formed that opinion. I slipped into the very habit I’ve been trying to avoid for so long, and once I slipped, it took something huge to get me corrected.

Time to redouble my efforts.

Nirvana sells out

From last May

I realized today that it’s probably only a matter of time before a Nirvana song is used to sell cars, or something. Courtney Love, when she’s not trying to claim credit for Kurt’s music (see: the “Old Age” controversy), funds her downward spiral on her share of the Nirvana royalties, and would probably sell “Lithium” to sell Lincoln Navigators tomorrow. The issue’s whether Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic can hold out forever.

As far as I know, yes.

But for the rest of their lives, as long as they hold out and go about their lives (their cell phones purring with the calls from Love’s lawyers asking about potential deals) there’ll be this temptation that follows them, offering millions of dollars if they’ll consent to use of “Love Buzz” in an energy drink commercial.

The advertisers will dog them forever, because for people like me, it’s a cue to pay attention, already emotionally vested. This is why Led Zepplin was such a perfect way for Cadillac to attack aging Boomers with disposable incomes, why today bands are co-opted almost immediately (M.I.A. with all their radical politics selling Hondas, Postal Service tunes hawking whatever): you form your emotional connections to music, and then they’re available for easy switching to a commodity of choice.

Hold out, Krist. Please.

Nirvana’s “Breed” is the music track in the EA Sports Baseball ads. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it: I thought I must be confusing it with something similar, or a cover, or — nope.

This sucks. Thanks, guys. My faith, unrewarded again.

Active Failure snippet

I wrote this as a character sketch for something larger, but I think it’s kind of amusing on its own, so I’m sharing.

I locked my amazingly expensive brand-new car with all the trimmings and the alarm went off instantly, the first tone in the eight-tone series advertised as a scientifically selected, clinically tested arrangement of noises designed to jar, annoy, attract attention, implore for help, and repel intruders, not in that order. I hit the disarm button and left it to walk across the park to find the teenage girl sitting on a picnic table, pounding out text messages or blog entries or something while watching me amble.

Meeting Andrea, I wanted to say “I expected someone taller, or shorter, or thinner, or fatter”, but that’s the whole point of Andrea, proof that eventually if enough domesticated primates swap enough chromosomes you eventually get someone who looks like nothing, and you could name her, say, Andrea. If you averaged all the faces of all the teenage girls in the world with web pages – all the party pictures taken leaning into their friend, flashing the peace sign in front of a statue, holding up a kitten, you would look at the result and say “that’s the girl that stole my wallet”. And having made that positive identification from a computer construct, the cops could put the update on the network and begin the task of hassling every fourteen-to-sixteen year old girl they came across, and the wheels of justice would come grinding to a halt, which happened in Montreal twice and now fourteen-to-sixteen year old girls get away with murder, which is not really that much of a difference.
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I got into Best American Sportswriting 2007

I woke up this morning to an email from the series editor informing me that “Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever” had been selected to go into the 2007 book (covering 2006 writing) and would I please get them contact information, all that good stuff.

It stunned me for a while. For one, I’ve read the anthologies, and while I don’t write like most sportswriters, I’ve been doing baseball stuff for almost ten years, and I’ve written some pretty good stuff but never thought any of it would have a chance. I figured Bugs, though wildly popular for an internet moment (I got linked on woot.com! w00t!) wouldn’t be able to get noticed, much less be selected, in the vast pool of applicants.

I still think that. Print outlets, people who make money at this, ESPN and Slate writers, they often have editorial backing their submissions, and to my knowledge, no blogger has ever been included in an annual and, though I’m even less sure about this, I believe that it not only makes U.S.S. Mariner the first blog to get something in one of the BASWs, it makes us the only what I’d call “non-mainstream” outlet.

It seems like this should have much wider implications, though obviously I’m a little biased – it’s a first, but I feel like it recognizes something that people who read baseball blogs have known for a while – you can get just as good baseball analysis from David Pinto or the other top-shelf sites as you can from national outlet, or writing that’s as insightful, or funny, or well-researched, and as bonus you can get whatever you want that you’re not getting now.

I’m so happy that something I worked that hard on, and that people responded to, made it through the gauntlet, and I hope in some way this helps baseball blogging in general.

Why aren’t rebate programs illegal?

How can the way rebate systems are run be legal?

If a company offers a rebate and punts customer service, it’s in their interest to pay out as few as possible without being sued. It doesn’t matter why they deny your rebate, you have no recourse. There’s really no place to go to complain that they ripped you off.

For instance. When I bought my beloved Mac laptop months ago, I was eligible for a ton of rebates, and I applied for them all, what with being unemployed. So I sent in all the stuff, and I was super extra-careful because I was leaving for my vacation and wouldn’t be around to answer mail for a while. One of them was denied for failure to enclose some random piece of information – which I did. So I called Apple up.

Me: Hey, I just got this denial notice that said I didn’t include the receipt, but I did, and I sent all that stuff in.
Them: Well, we don’t have it, so you need to send in a new one.
Me: I don’t want to be a pain, but this really is someone’s fault on your end, and it’s a ways for me to my nearest Apple Store to get a duplicate receipt… is there any way you can just check my submission? You got the other two things I know were in there…
Them: Nope, the only thing you can do is get another receipt.
Me: Ooookay.

Annoying, but whatever. So then I got a shredder with some rinky-dink rebate at Staples that I totally, entirely qualified for, this time thinking “Okay, 50% chance I get denied on the rebate, it’s still a decent price”. Denied, for essentially no reason: I looked it up and it said “invalid rebate parameters” or something.

Then I got to fight with their people, where I had to point out
1) It was within the date range for the rebate
2) It was submitted within x days of the purchase
…
4) You need to give me my money

I understand why companies give out rebates: if x% of the purchasers don’t remember to redeem it, they make a huge profit. But my experience with these things is that they’re pushing the boundaries to the point where it’s
1) Offer rebate
2) x% of people eligible apply = profit
3) Deny rebate to applicants
4) y% of x% fight the blanket denial = much more profit

It’s fraud, really, on a massive scale, and I’ll spare everyone the rant about law enforcement priorities, but it boggles my mind that Staples and all these other companies you can google to find thousands of complaints about their rebate policies can keep at this. It’s depressing.