Two Scientists In My Life

For more than fifty years I have been surrounded by scientists and engineers that are my colleagues, teachers, customers and suppliers. Naturally I have great admiration for all my acquaintances and all dedicated scientists, like Madam Curie and Albert Einstein.

I am not stingy in expressing my admiration of my colleagues who are working long hours at their offices and laboratories, sacrificing their private and family lives. But recently I have had two scientists on my mind and I wish to follow in their footsteps and do as they are doing. One is Elaine Smith in California and the other is Joe Ferenci from Hungary.

Elaine is five feet, two inches tall and weighs maybe less than one hundred pounds. She is second generation American of Japanese origin and in her late fifties. She is working at a large oil company and I understand she is the developmental chemist for engine oil additives. Nowadays engine oil specifications are getting tighter to meet EPA requirements. The percentage of Sulfur, NOX content, viscosity of oil in the winter months and fuel economy are great concerns in our industry. Global warming and green chemistry are additional items to make scientists and engineers busier and work diligently to find the right solution.

Two years ago Elaine invited me for lunch at her company function at the International Colloquium of Tribology at the Technische Akademie Esslingen in Esslingen, Germany, near Stuttgart.

She made the presentation of her paper just before lunch about new additives for engine oil. Several colleagues were still discussing her paper about the interesting results and possible joint developmental work for further application under her supervision. I believe that whatever presentation she made it will contribute greatly to the lubricant industry.  Over our buffet lunch I was listening to their discussion with great interest. Her voice was monotonic and she carefully explained the experimental results and cited numbers on Sulfur and Zinc contents in engine oil and the amount of NOX content after a six months field trial in the Los Angeles, California area.

One thing was very clear, that the people around her showed great respect for her and her work. Her innovation might be a great jump to meet the GF-5 new specifications in engine oil.

After lunch I exchanged business cards with her colleagues. Then Elaine and I left the restaurant and walked to the conference. It was a fifteen minute walk from the restaurant to the place the conference was held. In January Esslingen’s temperature is not terribly low but damp. I felt it was colder than in Detroit that has dry low temperature. We walked on the street, lightly covered with snow and ice.

Elaine wore a winter jacket that she used to wear on the East coast, about thirty to forty years ago when she was in college. It did not look warm and the faded gray coat did not fit her well at all, but she did not seem to mind.

“It is chilly and colder than in Detroit,” I said as I broke the silence. “Really?” Elaine said as a question. Quickly I saw her lips had turned purple. “I am getting cold too,” she admitted. “The hot soup at lunch does not affect us in the cold January weather in Esslingen.” After this comment I was quiet for a while.

Later we talked about the conference topics and research issues on engine oil additives and industrial lubricants. Of course, she did most of the talking. After this we split up for different sessions. She went to the fundamentals of lubrication and I was in the metalworking fluids session. During the session I could not concentrate on the speakers.

Elaine’s image came into my mind continually. She did not care about what she wore or what the world thought about her appearance. She continuously devoted her time to research without any distractions.

This was quite a contrast from my case. Before I left for the conference, I organized my suits for each day with different clothes. On Monday, a gray pants suit, Tuesday, a pink wool suit with shirt, Thursday, a red wool jacket and black pants. I even brought medium high heels. I took the same care with my hairdo. I went to a beauty parlor and had a haircut and dye job. I do not spend a lot of time on my appearance but I do care for clean clothes and try to match my clothes to the weather, season and the occasion.

I could feel and imagine that her focus was on just one thing, her work, and her research on additives for engine oil disregarding everything else. Her path is straightforward to achieve her goals.

That evening when I talked with Kwang about Elaine’s devotion, I told him again that I enjoyed being with her and respected her and wished I could have that single-minded devotion to my work. He did not say a single word on the other end of the telephone, but for a long time I had not spoken of my work ethics with him, and I was thrilled that he had just listened. Always my mind was focused on the priority in my life “family is first”.

A week later, after the close of the conference, Kwang picked me up at the Detroit airport. On the way home, in the car, I talked about Elaine and my wish to do research like her for forty five minutes straight, without touching any other topic. After he had listened to me patiently, “Remember your age, Kook-Wha,” was Kwang’s final comment.

Now Joe Ferenci is about five feet, three inches and one hundred twenty five pounds, and very old. He resides in Budapest, Hungary. He has a thin layer of gray hair and wears thick gold-framed eyeglasses.

In the last eight years I have seen him every other year at the International Colloquium Tribology in Esslingen, Germany. I saw him from a distance at the conference room and hall at the mayor’s receptions in Esslingen and Stuttgart. I did not have a chance to say “hello” to him because of my busy schedule with other colleagues from the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Germany and other countries. We were catching up on industry news, especially new product lines and new rules for EHS (environmental, health and safety) in Europe.

In January 2010 Joe was at the Parker, the same hotel in Esslingen where I stayed. I sat at a table where I could see the people come to the door for breakfast.  Joe came in wearing a black suit with a white shirt. I forget what color of necktie he wore, but one special thing hanging around his neck was a black traveler pouch which contained a name tag for the conference inside. He sat down two tables across from me and got coffee and stood up and approached the buffet table. His fragile figure and the very slow movements of his feet added years to his actual age. Then he put a pile of food on his dish and on a separate plate he placed two German sourdough rolls, and sat at the table and started to have breakfast.

While I was chewing my boiled egg and cucumber I was trying to guess his age and debated about how I might start a conversation with him. I ordered one more refill of my coffee and the waiter poured the coffee with precision, not spilling a drop. “Danke Schoen,” I told him, smiling. He nodded and disappeared.

Joe was busy with his breakfast. He had a big appetite. He had not brought any reading material, such as daily newspapers, Die Spiegel or other magazines, like most of the other gentlemen did. He just seemed to concentrate on his eating. After a couple of sips of coffee, I approached his table.

“How are you, Joe? I have seen you at every conference,” I started.

“Yes.  Yes,” Joe replied with a strong accent. He tried to look at my nametag to catch my name.

“My name is Kook-Wha Koh and I come from the USA and attend every conference as you do.”

“Yes. Yes.” Again he said “Yes. Yes.” with a very quiet and brittle voice with no strength at all.

“Where do you come from?” I asked him his country of origin.

“Budapest.” Again a short whispered answer.

“Hungary.” I finished for him.

I hesitated for a few minutes as to whether I should ask him his age. Taking all my courage, “May I ask your age?”

“Eighty-two years old. Next month I will be eighty-three.” Surprisingly, his voice was quite louder than before as he proudly told me his age.

“Thank you.” I asked for his hand and held his hand very tightly.

“When is your presentation?”

“Tomorrow. Wednesday.” Again he answered with a stronger voice.

“Mine is on Thursday, the last day of the conference,” I told him.

With a strong accent, he said, “I developed a new engine oil additive and it improved fuel economy ten to fifteen percent in the field test.” He finished with sparkling bright eyes and several hand gestures.

I thought ten to fifteen percent improvement is great but it depends on the base line that is chosen. Improvement of fuel economy, even one to three percent is a great number. Ten to fifteen percent is an extremely good number if we can achieve it. Frankly, both scientists who I admire are working on engine oil additives. I had many questions as a layman on engine oil additives, but I stopped my line of questions and praised his work for his age.

Before I left the breakfast room I said, “Good luck, Joe, with your presentation tomorrow.”

Joe Ferenci continues to work as a technical director in Budapest. His research work is presented to the world and contributes to our society. I prayed for his health and that he may have many more years of research work.

Admiring these two scientists and continuing my own work, I hope that I also have many more years to go before my own retirement with the following prayer:

Please, always put my family first, and let my passion for my work stay in my heart for a long, long time.

* The story is factual but the names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Vacation Suspense – Part 1

Blog 13 01

One of the biggest challenges writers seem to face is finding the time to write. If you don’t have the privilege of writing for a living, one must contend with a day job, spouses, kids, pets, or any number of things higher on the priority list than putting word to paper.  This month held an extra challenge for me in that I dared to take a vacation.  Oh the horror!  The blog deadline!  The explosion of submissions for critiquing!  The book study!  Blog editing!  Would I ever be able to keep up?  The answer, in a word: no.

On the first day of vacation, I let my Twitter followers know that I would try to answer the question: Will a writer write while on vacation? After that, I kept them updated with daily statuses on how things were going telling them each time to ‘Stay tuned.’  Did I write anything?  Yes, on the third day I penned a paragraph while sitting on the beach.  Yea!  On the fifth day I caught up with email, sent out some tweets, and wondered if that counted as writing.

In the end, my writing mind rode the vacation trail and did not create a blog post or anything more than that paragraph on the beach. As I read that sentence, I realize I’m falling into a trap many writers set up for themselves which is to think you are only succeeding if you achieve some arbitrary amount of specific work.  The truth is that I did compose something.  I also thought about what I might write which is an important part of the process.  So, despite being on vacation, I produced this piece on my first day back.

It is, however, two days late to my editor. Will she forgive me and find a way to help me polish it in time for posting on the 24th?  Will Part 2 offer interesting and helpful insight on suspense?

Stay tuned…

Slogging Through the Jungle with a Hatchet

You may have heard something about the ongoing fight between Amazon and Hachette Book Group. It started in the boardrooms of both companies over the new contracts that, effectively, allow Amazon to set the prices for Hachette’s and eventually all publishers products.

But that’s not all. It also says the publisher, by a certain future date, must submit “electronic versions” of their books – and covers – with shipments, and to allow Amazon to print-on-demand (POD) any orders the publishers cannot fulfill within a specified amount of time. I haven’t seen the contract, but enough people have to warrant over 1000 authors signing a letter and buying a two-page ad in the New York Times Sunday Edition to protest the contract’s language. It’s getting nasty, just the kind of stuff that good, suspense novels are made of!

Diana Hirsch got this topic started back in August with her Amazon, Hachette and the wretched $9.99 price point, but I saw a sidebar there that warrants a bit more discussion. I wear both hats in this fight. My first novel, The Freya Project, was published by Countinghouse Press. I self-published my second book, Seoul Legacy, the Orphan’s Flu, with aid of the University of Michigan Library’s Espresso Book Machine. Anyone can use their million-dollar “book” printer. My per-unit cost in each case (tradition vs. POD) was about the same. The difference was that I could have printed just one POD book if I wanted instead of hundreds or thousands, so the overall publishing cost difference was huge and that’s what drove my decision to POD for my second book.

You can bet Amazon has a few Espresso Book Machines at the ready, and what’s really at stake here are jobs. Thousands of workers bees throughout the book distribution channel are about to be handed pink slips. Traditional printing houses will fall if they don’t get onboard the e-train, and the biggest ones will fall the hardest. Publishing is going to bleed all the way back to the pulp forests. This contract, this new business model, if it comes to fruition, will literally rewrite the definition of the word “print” in all dictionaries by the year 2050. I alluded to this in my blog back in March, And now, the 2050 POE prize winner for…. Amazon has already captured the prize – the consumer.

Don’t blame Jeff Bezos and his Amazon.com; he just expanded the vision. Blame Johannes Gutenberg; he started it when he put all the first scribes out of business! By 1460 – a mere 21 years after he invented it – Gutenberg’s moveable type presses were operating all over Europe. What happened next changed the course of history. Over the next 500 years, print would evolve into the worldwide format for all sciences, medicines, religions, and all other forms of education. It allowed us to record history and for the masses to learn. Jeff is merely taking over where Johannes left off.

I don’t care how they define “print” in 2050, so long I’m still able to read it. That’s the consumer’s hat I wear in this fight, and it’s the hat I care about the most. I don’t care what price point publishers put on e-books, either, so long as Mr. Bezos & Co. keep their long-standing consumer protection clause; Amazon’s seven-day, no questions asked, money back guarantee. If you don’t like an e-book, return it for a full refund within a week. I have both bought and sold eBooks this way on Amazon.com for years, and have yet to experience a refund from under either hat.

Amazon’s consumer protection clause is the rising tide that lifts all boats. If the author or publishing house insists on staying anchored to their price-point, then let them, just as long as the consumer can get a refund if they don’t like the book for whatever reason. Frankly, Amazon’s seven-day policy should be thirty-days, to encourage bulk purchases.

The main reason new authors have such a hard time breaking into the industry has been the same for hundreds of years; they are just not-quite-good-enough to warrant the all expenses required to “launch” a new author. Amazon’s proposed business model finally buries that hatchet. It allows a publisher to take a chance with someone or something new without the fear of going broke. It allows the author to take a chance without the fear of losing audience. It also allows the reader to take a chance without wasting a lot of time, or money.

Too many good voices are going unheard. For every one David Baldacci there are fifty Bonnie Virag’s. I dare you to put down her The Stovepipe, a true story about growing up in the Canadian Children’s Aid Society. Hers is the most gripping novel I’ve read since Frank McCort’s Angela’s Ashes. Virag only has 29 five-star reviews on Amazon.com, compared to McCort’s 2,400, but download The Stovepipe and I guarantee you will want to be number 30.

As I see it, new authors are the only authors who will need an agent – a megaphone, if you will – in the Amazon business model. Word-of-mouth has always been the best form of advertising. If readers like what you write they will tell two friends who will tell two friends, etc. They always have and they always will, especially where reading material is concerned. The internet only amplifies today’s voice, but it does so on the same scale that moveable type amplified reading almost 500 years ago.

Right now, Hachette & Co. should be driving fast and taking chances instead of slogging along in the fast lane and holding up traffic. Think of the internet as the carpool lane in rush hour, Mr. Hachette – give someone else a lift and you’ll both get there faster.  Smaller advances, say, a tenth of the size of Baldacci’s, could be paid to new promising authors. All publishers should be trying to find –and fund – new voices like Ms. Virag’s. If only one turned out to be as successful as David Baldacci or Frank McCort have they’d be in the money. Two or more and they’d be fat cats with cigars. Again.

 

Next Month. A look at what the future holds for pulp.

I have no doubt someone will print a 600th Anniversary edition of the Gutenberg Bible. I suspect all religious material will still be in “print” by 2055, but what chance do newspapers have? Or magazines? Or books? And, what does history hold for all the printed matter in existence now? Is a first edition of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire treasure or trash? Those questions answered, and more, in November. Thanks for dropping by!

A Glass of Water

Finding something to write about is never easy for me. I get one idea and then another. But, when I actually sit down to write, the ideas no longer seem terribly interesting. So I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I saw Fareed Zakaria on CNN. The program was interesting and when I sat down to write I had lots of ideas.

Fareed’s program is called the Global Public Square. It comes on every Sunday morning and repeats in the afternoon. I like it because Fareed doesn’t invite on his show the usual talking heads who don’t seem very knowledgeable about what they are discussing. Instead, he invites people who are considered experts in their fields or are high up in government or the head of the country under discussion.

On September 7, this year, he had a very interesting program, part of which was about the brain and water. His guest was Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent.

Sanjay was saying how, when he first got up in the morning, and while he was dressing, he drank eight to sixteen ounces of water. He does this every day and has been doing it for awhile. He is very pleased with the result: He’s fully awake, energized and focused by the time he leaves for work.

Our brains are 75% water. We sleep all night, hopefully for six, seven or eight hours. During that time we don’t have anything to drink. When we wake up in the morning, we need to hydrate our brain as soon as possible. If we don’t give it water first thing in the morning, it’s impossible to catch up during the day.

I’ve read a number of articles that essentially say: What you don’t use, you lose and that’s certainly true of your brain.

Everyone I know wants to keep their brain as sharp as possible. They don’t want to slow down and lose their “edge”.

Drinking a glass or two of water first thing in the morning sounded to me like an easy thing to do and it certainly was safe. So I decided to experiment. Starting on September 8th, that Monday, I began drinking a glass or more of water each morning while I was getting dressed. And I’m still doing it.

I’ve found that by the time I come into breakfast, I’m more awake, alert, and focused. I don’t have that sleepy “trying to wake up” feeling I used to have. I feel energized. I can’t wait to get started with my day. Best of all, with this water start, I keep my energy longer and seem to have more throughout the day.

So, if you’re looking to give yourself an extra boost in the morning, drink a glass or two of water first thing. You’ll thank yourself all day!

 

If you’d like to see Gupta’s interview in its entirety and the portion that inspired me to write this blog, follow this link: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/09/10/why-sugar-is-worse-than-fat/

You can write and publish your story in 10 hours

I dare you.

Do you remember when writing was fun and carefree? I do. As a kid, I would pull out a notepad and write stories just because that’s how I chose to pass the time. I mostly wrote fantasy stories, some science fiction without all that technical mumbo-jumbo. My dragons had their own rules of behavior and almost every character had an apostrophe in their name.

I created bizarre plot twists. I didn’t fuss with grammar or sentence structure. I didn’t care if the stories were proper writing; I just wrote a rough draft that I always thought was complete. I had fun.

Somewhere along the way, writing became structured and proper. Because of that formal format reality, I look at those drafts now and I think, “What silly little creations.” Why did I bother? Why did anyone or I care?

I expect that if you’re reading this blog, you remember that feeling, or you know someone who has. You, as a reader, can tell when the writer was having a good time and when it was an assignment. I invite you to rediscover that freedom and write with abandon. No doubt, you still have one of those stories down on paper or in your head. This month, I dare you to complete it and publish.

I talk a lot about self-publishing as if it’s gospel. The fact that I’ve done it twice–soon to be three times–does not make me an expert, but I feel confident in it. I know the powerful feeling of control, a feeling that comes from writing, editing and finishing a piece of work. Hitting the Publish button on Amazon is a daring and satisfying moment. I want you to experience that feeling.

Why should you?

Even if you don’t dream of publishing, I challenge you to do this. It’s a sense of accomplishment to write a draft, to edit that draft and by publishing it that means you finish something that you’ve started. Maybe you just have a story to tell, say it’s a letter to your parents, and wouldn’t it be cool to download it onto their Kindle for Christmas? Maybe you have a story about you and your friend. How cool would that be?

When you were in school and had an essay exam, the class eventually ended and you handed in your work as-is. At that moment, you were done. It was a relief, wasn’t it?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is coming up in November. The concept behind NaNoWriMo is to kickstart you into completing a full-length first draft, but writing 50,000 words in 30 days can be intimidating. Even though that breaks down to 1667 words a day, or 69 words an hour, that finite number may be too large to be comforting. I suggest something doable.

My idea is a spin off from JA Konrath’s blogpost back in August 22, 2013.  The idea mingled fun with structure. Pretend writing is your business. Sit down at the beginning of your 8-hour business workday and write a story, edit it and publish it online. It can be that easy.

My two published short stories have been a result of that challenge. My approach was to start at 8am with a cup of coffee and an open Word document. I write one sentence so the screen is no longer blank. Then I just write, completing my first, rough draft by 12noon. I take a typical hour lunch break. From 1-5pm, I rewrite and edit my text. You can format and upload your text in that timespan as well, but consider taking a dinner break, and then work an hour or two of overtime creating an account, formatting the text, uploading it to the site, and adding cover art.

True, each time I began with a vague story idea and direction, but that was it. There was no outline, no structure, and no definitive plan. I could just as easily have pulled out one of my silly little fantasy stories and see what I can do with it now.

My first e-Book experience was my memoir about a trip my mom and I took. The book–Mom, Star Trek and Las Vegas: A Grand Adventure required research because Trekkies or Trekkers will know if a name is incorrect or a date is wrong. I thought I could sit down in one eight-hour stretch, but I did not. I wrote an hour here, two hours there, made 20 minutes for research here and so on. I was committed to finishing it, whatever the timeframe.

Writers who took the 8-hour challenge, published by August 30. That was eight days after the issued challenge. I’ve read some of the published work and some of them read as if written in 8 hours. But so what? The author wrote, edited, and completed the work. That was the fun of it.

On October 6, after 18 hours and 45 minutes, give or take, I was an officially published author. That was 45 days after the initial post. Final word count: 5657 words, about 22 pages.

My mom memoir e-Book won a national award: third place in the NFPW 2014 Communications Contest.

My second eBook–Lessons from Dad: A Letter to You–was a prelude to my upcoming novel memoir. I released it on June 14, 2014: Father’s Day. I counted it by the number of edits–four, including initial draft–rather than hours, which I estimate took 12 hours. That book is 5111 words, or 21 pages. For 99cents, both books are a bargain read.

What’s the number one reason people don’t do this? Without conducting scientific research, my personal experience is “I don’t have the time.” Wrong. You don’t make the time.

You say you’re too busy, that there are too many other tasks distracting you? You have dinner to cook. Your kids have after-school activities and you’re the driver. You volunteer at the library. You work a 9-to-5 job and commute an hour each way. You have a report to write. There are weekly soccer matches to attend, so you wake up at 6:45am every Saturday. You go to church. You have a monthly date night with your spouse. Your favorite TV show has begun a new season. Repeat week.

Excuses. All excuses. They are reasons, but they are also excuses.

I will attempt this by my next blog post. So, what does my life look like? I don’t have kids to factor in, but I picked up about five extra shifts at my part time job between now and then. I’m traveling out-of-state, teaching Zentangle classes, co-hosting a monthly art group, having a Halloween scrapbook crop at my house, celebrating my 11th wedding anniversary, and raising funds to dance in February’s THON.

I am madly editing my dad memoir novel for ePublication on November 20, my father’s birthday. I’m promoting that book on Twitter, Instagram and my Facebook Author page. Let’s not forget that I have my own blog to maintain, including my annual Halloween blog hop post.  There are articles to write for Michigan Scrapbooker Magazine. I’m editing posts for this blog, critiquing submissions for this writers group, and writing the follow-up November post of this challenge. In utter madness, I also signed up for NaNoWriMo this year.

And there are the daily mundane To-Do items: doctor appointments, cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, mailing birthday cards. Did I mention I was married and have a husband to not ignore?

If I can find time in that, then you can make time in your schedule.

This is not a setup. I don’t have a finished work sitting in the wings planned for this blog challenge. I have ignored my Jimmy the Burglar story for way too long. I mentioned it first back on this blog in March and haven’t touched it since. That’s seven months. I’ve written segments in my head but nothing on paper.

Do you feel that if you don’t write for X-minutes at a time then you’ll lose your flow, and focus and might as well not even start? If you choose to accept this challenge, make it work for you. Don’t have a whole day? I bet you can find an hour a day for 8 days. Maybe 30 minutes for 16 days. Does it take longer than 10 hours? So what? Don’t let the timeframe freeze you, but use it as a guideline, an incentive, a strong deadline.

Don’t be embarrassed by it. Don’t expect best-selling material, although you might surprise yourself. It’s most likely a short story, and there is nothing wrong with that. My books are the length of approximately three of this 1650-word blog post.

What’s in it for you is a sense of accomplishment and completion. As writers, we are always in the middle of something. Or, we write that first draft and never go back to it. I’ve done NaNoWriMo for three years, and I have yet to continue one of those 50K drafts. Unfinished work is a plague on would-be writers.

Stop whining.

You raise kids and release them into the world after 18 years. You write that college essay in 50 minutes and then submit it for a grade. You plan a wedding and eventually the bride walks down the aisle. At some point, there’s that moment of letting go. Stop the mindless edits and let your writing be that free.

As an incentive, I promise to download your book and read it and review it, even if it takes me a few months to get through them. Add your link to the comments section in my November 18 post, or share your thoughts about the overall experience.

Discover what kind of book you can to write in 10 hours!