Seeing red

A big ream of paper -- around 300 pages -- sits on my desk, awaiting my attention. It's the manuscript of my new mystery novel, recently bounced back to me by my wife and my best friend, the two people who always read my novels before I ship them off to New York.

The manuscript is covered with red and black ink -- squiggles and exclamations, deletions and suggestions, complaints and exhortations. It's about the most daunting thing I can imagine. Famed sportswriter Red Smith once said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." This manuscript looks like someone bled all over it.

For a writer, the first read-through by others is the equivalent of an employee's annual review. All the work you've put into the book for the past six months or more is judged at once, every failing boldly noted in red. And, as with those dreaded annual reviews, I can't see the compliments or the unmarked text. I can only see the slights and the "suggestions for improved performance."

I once got an employee review from a boss at a news organization where I worked, and the only thing he marked down was the way I dressed. I still can recall the words: "As he matures, Steve will dress more like a businessman." That chiding followed me around for years. Heck no, I wouldn't dress more like a businessman. That's one of the reasons I went to work in news -- so I wouldn't have to wear a suit. That boss should see me now, working at home in my bathrobe.

So here I sit, in my bathrobe, with 300 pages of performance review staring me in the face. My next task is to go through the manuscript, making changes, adding whole chapters, cutting passages that seemed precious when they were drafted. If I'm diligent and disciplined, I can have the next round of rewrites done in a month, working in the hours around dawn while my sons are still asleep.

And today's the day to begin. So I used the age-old formula followed by at-home workers everywhere when faced with a daunting task. I got up early, poured myself some coffee, sat down at the computer and played Solitaire for an hour.

OK, maybe that wasn't what you expected. I'm usually one of those work-at-home people who stress discipline and determination and time management. At writers' conferences, I often tell aspiring authors that you write with your butt -- keep it in the chair until the words come. But faced with a month of revision, a month of responding to the flaws in my own work, I'm too cowed to start. Even after I erased the game board from my computer screen in disgust, I couldn't begin. I started writing this column instead. Anything -- even writing something fresh -- seemed preferable to delving into all that red ink. So I stall. I carp. I tell you readers about it. And you, without knowing it, become my enablers, allowing me to put off the rewriting when I should be plunging into it.

One of the blessings of working at home is that there's no one watching over your shoulder while you labor. But it's also one of the drawbacks to working at home. Without someone there to monitor my work, to prod and cajole me, it's easy to procrastinate. At times, I find myself wishing that I had a boss, someone who'd crack the whip when I needed it. Instead, I'm stuck searching for motivation, some way to break out of this deep freeze of hesitation and reluctance. It's almost enough to make me want to dress like a businessman.

And now the boys are awake. I hear them scurrying around the other end of the house, giggling and whispering, ready for another fun-filled summer day. They're my most important job, right? They give me a good excuse to put off the rewriting until tomorrow.

Tomorrow's another day. Tomorrow I'll be fresh and well-rested and ready to tackle the big job. And if I'm still not ready? Then I'll play Solitaire some more, berating myself until the kids come to my rescue..

(Editor's note: This column's from 1999, but not much has changed. My latest novel, which will be my 17th, is being read by my best friend right now. It'll come home soon, covered in red ink.)

Toad away

A Sunday morning. Around dawn. I'm the first one awake. I pad into the kitchen to make coffee, my eyes barely open, the light dim. And a huge brown toad hip-hops across the tile floor.

The following thoughts flit through my mind in seconds: Holy Minerva, a RAT! No, a toad. A fat toad loose in the house. Quick Sunday School flashback to a plague of toads. But there's only one here. And it looks familiar. Oh, yes, it's the toad my sons have been carrying around in a jar. They named him Billy. He's escaped. Somewhere, a jar lies open, its grass and dirt spilled on the carpet. There he goes. I should catch him. Drat, he went behind the washing machine. Quick, put the dog outside before he eats the toad and spends the rest of the day yarking on the carpet. Where's the jar? Where are the boys? Where's the toad now?

I caught him, of course, though it took on the proportions of a safari before he was finally back in his jar, hopping and banging his head on the lid. Guess that's how he escaped and he was going with what worked for him before. Not a lot of other options if you're a toad and you have a brain the size of a lentil. It's not like he was going to start tying sheets together to shimmy out a window.

Later, I persuaded the boys to free Billy. They found a nice home for him in the side yard, where the local insects congregate. I'm sure Billy will be very happy there.

We have two boys under the age of 10 at our house, which means we also have a revolving menagerie of animals living in jars and buckets and boxes. Boys are irresistibly drawn to wildlife. Billy's only the latest victim, er, specimen.

The experiences haven't always been pleasant, even if they are educational. A few years ago, the boys nursed along a whole bucketful of tadpoles, watching them sprout legs and slowly grow into tiny toads. Then a horrific thunderstorm pounded most of the little amphibians into the mud. The funerals lasted all day. Only one toad survived the storm -- the boys named him Billy -- and he escaped a few days later, causing tears and worry and grief.

Then my eldest wanted a box turtle. I bought one at a store and built a makeshift pen in a corner of the yard for him. They named him Speedy. Within days, he'd escaped, never to be seen again, though we spent endless hours probing the shrubbery for him. I told the kids they should've named him Houdini. They didn't think that was funny.

A week or so before the new, improved Billy arrived at our house, the boys briefly enjoyed the company of a full-grown horned toad they found near their grandparents' home. They named him Squint. He was a big hit at show-and-tell at school. Then my sons set his bucket outside so Squint could catch some rays. They put a brick in the bucket so he'd have a warm place to recline. Squint used the brick as a ramp and did an Evel Knievel out of the bucket and was gone. Tears, fears, worries that the dog would eat Squint. I found Squint two days later, while mowing the lawn. Fortunately, I got him before the mower did. I returned Squint to the boys with the condition that they free him soon so he could live happily ever after. They gladly complied. It's OK, apparently, to free a beast so he can return to the wild. But if he escapes on his own, it's an insult.

I've resigned myself to the idea there will be animals in the house, thumping and scritching and begging to be set free. Since I'm the parent who works at home, it'll sometimes fall to me to feed them or free them or find them running loose. I've only insisted on one rule: No snakes. I'm terrified of snakes, a product of growing up in Arkansas, where there's a poisonous viper every six feet or so.

They bring a snake into the house, and that's the day I'll head for the hills, hopping and banging against the door until I escape.

Caution: Parent on board

For most people, commuting is a daily pain, a harrowing gantlet of freeway snarls and orange barrels and moron motorists. One of the joys of telecommuting, you'd think, would be eliminating the drive from your everyday life.

But we who work at home sneer at such assumptions. Not only do we drive as much as ever, but we're never alone in the car.

When you commute by yourself, you get to pick the radio station, you get lost in your thoughts, you get to curse the other drivers with impunity. But us? We've got children in the back seat, making demands, twitching and squirming, shouting and squealing and, God forbid, touching each other.

As we chauffeur the children around, we're at their mercy. They're free to do whatever they want in the back seat because we have to keep our eyes on the road. I remember when I was growing up, my angry father would warn, "Don't make me pull this car over." And my brother and I would giggle and snort because we knew he'd never stop to discipline us, not unless we started a fire. He was too intent on getting the drive finished. Now, I'm the same way.

I've heard all the advice from parenting experts about keeping kids distracted while they're in the car. We play the Slug Bug game wherever we go. For the uninitiated, the game goes like this: You keep your eyes peeled for a Volkswagen Beetle. When you spot one, you shout out "Slug Bug!" and whack your seatmate on the shoulder. I quickly banned the punching part of the game, but my two sons adapted their own version that includes shouting out the color of the Bug. We also count Slug Vans and Slug Trucks (which includes anything with rounded fenders).
Often, when things get too rowdy, I'll just shout out "Slug Bug" and they'll get so busy trying to outnumber my finds that they'll calm down.

Music also soothes the savage brats, and they're particularly fond of oldies, which includes any song recorded before, oh, yesterday. When they're getting loud, I keep turning up the radio, hoping some tune by James Brown or The Temptations will grab their attention. Unfortunately, they're more likely to seize upon some song I can't stand. I'll punch the radio button with muttered disgust only to hear, "No, Dad! Go back! I like that song!" Do I oblige? You betcha. Better to listen to Neil Sedaka than more bickering.

Their tastes aren't all repellent, though they are diverse. Ask my 10-year-old his favorite band and he'll answer the Beatles. The 7-year-old likes the Beach Boys and the Spin Doctors. They both know all the words to "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night and "Walking on the Sun" by Smashmouth. Go figure.

Having kids in the car restricts the driver in other ways as well. From the back seat, the children can eye the speedometer and compare it to speed limit signs whizzing past. A lecture soon follows.

Worst of all, kids inhibit your freedom of speech. You can't comment out loud upon the obvious mental deficiencies of the other drivers. I've always been the type of driver who keeps up a running commentary on what the other idiots are up to, usually in terms that would make a sailor blush. Parents quickly learn to quell this compulsion. The worst word blurted in the heat of the near-miss moment will be the one surely repeated at the dinner table.

Once, a couple of years ago, I was at a red light, facing one other car. Both of us had our blinkers going to turn left. The light changed and I started making my turn. The other driver, who apparently had decided to go straight after all, stood on his brakes, honked and made obscene gestures at me.

Instantly furious, I yelled, "You had your blinker on, you mo--" And then I caught myself, remembering the 5-year-old in the back seat. As I chewed off my tongue, the 5-year-old said somberly, "Dad, it's not nice to call someone a moron."

I said, "That's right, son. Sorry."

And I longed once again for the solo commute.

Screamers and groaners

Whatever happened to the "paperless office?"

Remember those predictions, how the computer would eliminate paper from our lives? Everything would be handled electronically. No need for millions of trees to surrender their lives so we can pulp them into clean white sheets that we clutter up with ink.

Those forecasts went into the same trash heap as the predictions that we'd all be flying around in hovercars and spending our weekends on Mars. We use more paper now than ever. Paper gives us a permanent record, something to file away, safe from the hazards of hard-drive crashes and unwise decisions to "delete."

(I've always thought the "delete" button should be labeled "oops." Same with the "escape" key. Heck, the way I type some days, they all could be labeled "oops.")

For those of us who work at home, the paper piles up until it threatens to bury everything in the household. We don't have secretaries or file clerks to take it away and stash it somewhere, never to be seen again. We do our own filing, if any, and it can be as haphazard as the rest of our disorganized lives.

The answer, I'm sure, is to embrace the technology and stop generating so much paper. Store everything in the computer, back up every file, keep a log of file names and document folders. But that's all too methodical for a guy who can barely organize a sock drawer.

Even if I wanted to reduce the paper flow from my life, my work wouldn't allow it. Book publishers still do everything on paper. Manuscripts are passed around publishing houses from editor to editor like batons in a slow-motion relay race. Here's how high-tech they get in the book industry: Each editor uses a different color ink to mark corrections, leaving a trail of who-did-what. Take that, Bill Gates.

I do the same thing at home. I print a manuscript, mark it up with a lot of changes, then transfer the changes to the computer copy. Then I print out a new version and start the process all over again. By the time I'm finished, I could stack manuscripts to the ceiling.

Generating all those documents means using the "print" command. That key should be labeled "commit to paper now, only to discover typographical errors once it's printed and then do it all over again." But I guess that wouldn't fit on the keyboard.

Back when we used typewriters, everyone was accustomed to penciled-in changes and flaky little blurs of correcting fluid. But now that computers are ubiquitous, we all expect perfect copy. And that means printing and fixing and reprinting and fixing some more, ad infinitum.

For years, I was stuck using a slow dot matrix printer. Each line of type required a moving head to needle the words onto the paper. Apparently it was a painful process because the printer made a high-pitched wail with every line. I called it "The Screamer." Printing out a 300-page manuscript would leave my ears ringing for days.

I now use a faster, quieter laser printer. It's wonderful until something goes wrong with it. Then I'm reminded once again how we work-at-home types are trapped alone with our problems. In a regular office, you call the technical types and they wheel the balky printer away and bring it back when it's repaired. At home, you're on your own.

Recently, I was rushing through a print job -- a 400-page manuscript that needed to be in New York yesterday -- when a gray stripe started appearing down the middle of each page. I discovered this problem, naturally, after 50 or so striped pages were already on their way to the wastebasket. I opened the printer and cleaned it out. I thumbed through the user's manual. I finally hurried to an office supplies store and bought a new toner cartridge, to the tune of $65.

All was well again. Except all my monkeying with the innards of the thing meant the paper no longer fed smoothly. A page would go halfway into the machine, then the printer would emit a groaning noise and everything would lock up. Then I would emit a groaning noise and start all over again.

So "The Screamer" has been replaced by "The Groaner." Typewriters, anyone?

Towering achievements need right tools

You can't tell it from my mug shot, but I'm a big guy.

I stand 6-foot-5 in my sock feet and my weight hovers around 250, depending on what time of day I brave the scales and how many tacos I consumed the night before.

Before you ask, the weather up here is just the same as it is down where you are. And no, I didn't play much basketball. Too many injuries, too little talent, a vertical leap of four inches.

Most people think it's cool to be tall. In this country, we like our heroes to be big strapping fellows. We think of our movie idols as being tall, even if Alan Ladd had to stand on a box to kiss the heroine. We worship the pituitary cases who star in the National Basketball Association, though recent events have shown them to be a bunch of big babies.

There are times when height has its advantages. Seeing over crowds comes to mind. Changing light bulbs. Hiding my candy stash on the top shelf so my kids won't find it.

But nobody thinks of the disadvantages.

America is full of well-dressed guys who stand at the national average of 5-foot-9. The 2 percent of American men who are 6-foot-3 or taller can't buy off the rack. We have to search out the "tall" sizes ironically hidden away on a bottom shelf. Or, we go to "Big and Tall" shops, which are stocked with crawly double-knit pants and shirts in patterns that can be seen from the space shuttle. Apparently, the clothing industry thinks we're so desperate, we'll wear anything to keep from going around large and naked.

I avoid the clothing problem by working at home, where I can throw on the same raggedy jeans and T-shirts for days on end and nobody cares. I've worn a necktie only once in the two years since I left the workaday world. That was for a wedding and there was no avoiding the noose. Even that necktie said "tall" on the label. Bet you never considered that neckties come in sizes, but tall guys know. We wear a regular tie and it comes up short. We get the ends to match up, then go around all day looking like Oliver Hardy.

Working at home means doing the housework and that has its own disadvantages for the oversized. Most center around back pain.

Just as they don't make decent clothes for guys my size, they also forget us when they're designing household tools. I thought of this again the other day when I was vacuuming the house, stooped over, sweat dripping off the end of my nose. Your standard vacuum cleaner is designed for someone who stands maybe 5-foot-2. People that size can vacuum an entire house and the only time they'll bend over is to unplug the thing. (And even that can be avoided if you perfect the method of yanking the plug out of the wall from across the room.) But a person my size has to work bent at a 90-degree angle. Otherwise, the sucking end of the vacuum doesn't touch the floor, which pretty much defeats the purpose.

Brooms and mops come with standard 4-foot-long handles. A tall man spends much time using them, he ends up stooped over like a question mark.

Sinks are at crotch height for us big guys, which makes splashovers even more embarrassing. Dishwashers are practically on the floor. A front-loading clothes dryer requires a touch-your-toes maneuver and the open door is at just the right level to bark our shins.

I know what you're thinking: These tools are designed for women. The manufacturers assume women do all the housework, so they build the various labor-saving gizmos with them in mind. But recent surveys show men are doing more and more of the housework, and only some of the respondents were lying.

Somewhere out there, an entrepeneur is designing king-sized cleaning implements. I predict he or she will make a fortune. But it'll probably come too late for me. I'll be old and stooped by then and the current cleaning instruments will finally be the right size.

In the meantime, if you need a light bulb changed, I'm your man.

(Editor's note: This column is from 1999. The weight numbers have been changed to reflect current, sad realities.)