Driving Out-of-body in “the Cell Phone Lane”
I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that people talking on their cell phones while driving on the highway prefer the far left lane.
I do tend to look for patterns in things, so it didn’t take long for me to discover that when someone is doing 10 or 20 miles an hour under the speed limit in what is traditionally considered the “fast lane” or the “express lane,” more often than not, they are talking on the cell phone.
Then I began to notice something even stranger: cars in the “slow lane” on the far right would suddenly careen left across 2, 3 or even 4 lanes for no apparent reason.
I saw no slowpokes in front of them that they needed to go around. And even if there had been, there were no other cars in the adjacent lane to keep them from scooting over just one lane to pass. I saw no debris on the road to be avoided, no left-hand exits, and no exit-only right lanes that would cause these drivers to abruptly vacate their cozy little spots in the pokey lane.
What I did notice, whenever a car suddenly went skiing from the far right to the far left lane in front of me, is that, in every single case, the driver was talking on the cell phone. I have to assume that the pokey driver in the right lane received a phone call just prior to that rather reckless maneuver, and for some reason felt the need or instinct to cut across in front of numerous faster-moving vehicles in order to get to that cherished left-hand lane.
But why? The more I thought about it the more it made some kind of wacky sense.
When people are talking on the phone, their brains focus not on the road but on a mental picture of the person they are talking to, and perhaps even the environment that person is calling from. Effectively, the recipient of that call has now left his or her body.
As I understand it, in any out-of-body experience, the traveler maintains a thin umbilical to the corporeal body, in case there’s a fire or some medical emergency that needs to be tended to back at the ranch.
But the vacated corporeal shell body is in a kind of low-power state during this experience and can’t handle too many tasks. So it looks for a place where it can perform basic functions with a minimum of demands and distractions.
The far left lane is perfect for that.
In the slow/right lane, cars are constantly getting on and off at ramps and exits. And it is the slow lane after all: some drivers may be going even slower than the shell body wants to go and would necessitate passing. Many highways have disappearing right lanes, designated for exiting only. In some places, highway lanes branch off onto different highways. Getting stuck in one of these could short out the basic circuitry of the shell body.
Even discounting those rare left exits and leftward-splitting branches, the far left lane constitutes the safest, least mentally challenging option.
And the shell body is unlikely to come up behind another vehicle going slower than it wants to go in the left lane (unless it’s another cell-phone-talking driver’s shell in the car ahead). Drivers who want to go faster simply pass and go around, waving their special swear fingers out the window, unnoticed by the shell driver who is unaware that its vehicle is preventing dozens or hundreds of other cars from reaching (or exceeding) the permitted speeds.
Aside from the dangerous skating across multiple lanes of traffic to get there, the left lane really is the safest place for out-of-body vehicles. For this reason, I suggest we make it official. Designate the far left lane in any multi-lane road as “the cell phone lane.”
Or maybe we should broaden the designation to “the brainless lane,” or the “unguided missile lane,” or the “weapons of mass distruction lane,” to also accommodate people reading their folded up newspapers over the steering wheel, women putting on mascara, and couples having lap sex…in vehicles where cell phones also lurk, waiting like time bombs to go off at any moment and throw the entire balance of the universe off kilter.
Perhaps we should take all you socially and environmentally responsible drivers out of those snug little concrete-walled chutes we call HOV lanes and put the out-of-body vehicles in those. Maybe we could line the barriers on either side with pillows or at least old rubber tires so the shell people don’t even have to steer; they can just keep that right foot on the gas until a brain shows up.
The only challenge that remains is getting those virtually unoccupied vehicles into the brain-dead lane without killing their drivers and others in the process. That’s a much tricker matter.
Suggestions anyone?
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Budgeting Life
This, year (2007), for the first time in my life I planned out my entire year. The plan changed, of course, when I met with my agent and we talked about how best to focus my energies. But the significant thing is that I saw time as a finite commodity and realized that I needed to budget what I had if I am to accomplish what I want.
I knew I had three large projects on my plate and did not want to find myself at the end of 2007 wondering why they didn’t get done.
So I estimated the time investment required for each, determined a date each needed to be done, then divided the time for each by the number of weeks in the period I’d alloted for the project. To finish tightening my 2nd technothriller (cutting 100 pages), I needed to invest an average of 10 hours and get through 3 chapters per week. That was in addition to my “day job,” which, for whatever reason has slowed down so far this year.
It was wonderful having this plan for the three projects. I woke up every day focused, with a very specify goal–perhaps I’d even exceed it and get ahead of schedule. Now things have changed. My previous fiction goal was doable by the end of the year. I could have a new version done in time for the big conference in October.
Now, I can only achieve an interim fiction goal for 2007. I am starting a whole new book, one whose characters have just been born and whose world was only invented a month ago. And I can’t ask myself to try to write a whole book in 7 months. Sure, I do it all the time in my job. I write whole books in 2 months, non-fiction books. But fiction is very different. You have to first invent the world, then describe its workings in a way that is entertaining and compelling.
Some authors can write whole books in 3 or 6 or 9 months. Maybe I can now that I am in more familiar territory with a protagonist who is no smarter or more capable than I am. It saves a lot of research time. But I can’t expect this of myself, or I risk failure. Besides, there is no particular carrot dangling out there for a December 31 completion, no conference, no publishing sweet-spot, no opportunity.
So here I am committing to complete the new novel by the end of April 2008. I should be halfway through it by the end of 2007. I have vowed to keep all new novels under the 120,000 word limit, so at about 450 pages, that means I have to write, revise and revise again about 225 pages between now and December 31. That’s a little over 32 pages a month, or 7-8 pages a week. Horray! It’s doable, even if things pick up at the day job. Hell, I can write 10 pages a day when I’m on a roll.
So, here’s my brain: If I can do half a novel in 7 months completing and really refining fewer than 10 pages A WEEK, I could double up on that and crank out the whole damn book without breaking a sweat. Yikes!
But then reality sets in. First of all, 10 pages a week means one day a week devoted to the novel. That leaves 6 days a week for other things. Now I commit to 2 days a week. No problem. Even if client work ramps back up, I’ve got the normal 5-day work week to offer. Still doable.
Oh wait, I forgot about the other 2 big projects I wanted to complete this year: a business/consumer book about setting and meeting expectations and a video documentary about my grandfather.
The business/consumer book WILL get done. It’s already started and will run about 200 pages. Piece of cake, based on my experiences with businesses and with relationships in life. But it takes time too, though only for a couple of months, even including the proposal my agent needs. And I can’t postpone my grandfather’s autobiography: my mom and her 2 brothers are already gone. This is a project of love, for my family, and needs to be finished this year.
So today, right now, I must stop wandering and create a new map for 2007. Once I have it, I will have no trouble following it.
First Day in Eldritch, Texas
Hello all!
Today is my first day in Eldritch, TX, the mythical setting of my new novel series in development and the world reflected in my model train village.
Eldritch is a rather obscure adjective meaning “weird, eerie, supernatural.” A fitting name for the places I inhabit.
As an author, I have written 2.3 technothrillers so far, none of which have yet won the publishing lottery, but they have come close. I am now embarking on the Eldritch series: think X-Files & Indiana Jones meet Northern Exposure & M*A*S*H. And, to round out the fiction portrait, I am, myself, a character in two Clive Cussler best-sellers!
Some of my posts here will surely address my state of mind as I craft new tales and populate new landscapes. They will also offer tips for writers who may not yet have shed the requisite gallons of blood, sweat and tears to find direction in this crazy business.
I’ve also published a book about health and hormones (women’s and men’s) called What Part of Menopause Don’t You Understand? The Ultimate Hormone Toolkit (available at Amazon. com). I am virtually rabid about the injustices and damage being done to women and men each day by a healthcare system that is dysfunctional at best and manipulated by greed at the highest levels. I do what I can to help people take control of their own wellbeing. I suspect many, perhaps most, posts will address health issues.
And, finally, I actually make a living as a writer and management consultant to high-tech industries, improving and streamlining operational processes, documenting products and procedures, and providing marketing collateral and services. Some posts will surely address the roller-coaster life of a writer/consultant.
Then there are the loose ends–those miscellaneous strings dangling from the tapestry of a life that holds together only tentatively–threads that, if pulled, could unravel the whole garment that stands between me and raw exposure. You’ll see those here as well: my rantings.
I hope you’ll join me in this adventure.
