Einstein was right.

Albert Einstein was once asked what he thought was the most powerful force in the universe. He replied, "compound interest."

And it's true (of course it's true, you condescending git, bloody Einstein said it) that exponential growth -- compound interest being a type of exponential growth -- can produce effects that are utterly counter-intuitive. Like that old Indian story about the sage who beat a king at chess and asked as his reward "merely" for a grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, etc. The king thought he'd gotten off lightly, but by the time he'd reached the 64th square, there wasn't enough rice in the kingdom to meet the demand.

(I put this story into This Private Plot. In more detail. You'll have to wait.)

It's like the betting tactic called an accumulator, where you place all your winnings from one horse race onto the next, and so on. The Economist once had an article (which I couldn't find before writing this, so the details are fuzzy and probably fabricated) that calculated what would have happened if you'd started with a dollar in the 1920s and, by good fortune, switched your accumulated investments at the beginning of every calendar quarter into the sector of the economy that was going to perform best during that quarter -- gold, or real estate, large-cap stocks, etc. Of course, the final number was some ludicrous sum, probably greater than GDP of the entire solar system.

And, of course, nobody did it. Because nobody can reliably predict the economy, especially economists. If they could, they wouldn't stick around being economists. They'd be Grand-Dukes or Hugh Hefner or something. Anything but an economist. Even a mystery novelist, and we don't make any money.

The Economist followed this up with an alternative calculation -- what happens if you switch your accumulated earnings into the sector that was the best performer in the previous calendar quarter? In other words, if your investment strategy is, like most people's, just a little reactive. You can't predict the future, but you move as quickly as you can to catch the rising tide. It's once a quarter -- surely the trends will keep going just for a few weeks more?

Uh-uh. In this scenario, if I recall, you end up with a net loss over the years. Or perhaps about a hundred bucks, the price of a Starbucks coffee in, oh, 2012. In other words, if you hear about a good-performing investment, it's already too late for you.

Now with this in mind, suppose I'm a shyster (not too great a stretch). I pick, say, 1,024 likely millionaire investors and write them a letter, boasting of my prowess at foretelling investment performance. (Why 1,024 and not a round 1,000? Pay attention.) And to prove it, I'll predict which way Apple's share price will go by the end of the week. But to half of those investors, I say it'll go up; the other half get a letter saying it'll go down.

At the end of the first week, in which Apple has increased in value, I forget about the 512 investors who got the "Apple goes down" letter -- and they'll forget about me long before the next scam -- and I send the other 512 another letter. Again, one half get the upswing prediction, the other half the downswing.

Well, you see where this is going. After just six weeks, I'm down to a mere sixteen potential investors. Ah, but those sixteen people have just watched me predict, with uncanny accuracy, the performance of a leading stock for six weeks in a row. So by now, they've probably taken the bait, and I can stop -- I don't even need to go the full ten weeks that would bring me down to my last surviving (but hugely impressed) millionaire.

Hang on, why did I get started on this? Oh yeah, that exponential growth thing also works in reverse. Numbers get smaller very quickly if you keep halving them, instead of doubling like the chessboard conundrum. From about a thousand* investors, we're down to a mere sixteen in only six weeks, and only one remaining if I'd gone for ten weeks.  But the point about my shysterdom is that, somewhere along the journey -- likely, long before even six weeks are up -- I only need one or two of those astounded and greedy millionaires to hand over their fortunes to me to, er, manage, and it's next stop Bimini.

(Where is Bimini? And do they have extradition orders?)

And that's what I want to write about: family trees. But another time, because this is quite long enough.

*It was 1,028 because it's an exponential of two.

Ta-daaaa!!

Just typed the words "THE END." For the first draft, anyway. I gave the last line to Oliver.

That was Chapter 23, the coda that pulls the carpet out from under Oliver's feet, about 3,000 words.

Total word count for the novel, just shy of 140,000 words. In other words, much, much too long. About twice as long, in fact, as the traditional, plain, one-crime-only, read-it-on-a-plane mystery novel or thriller.

This Private Plot has a more elaborate plot, more of the length and complexity of a recent Reginald Hill or Christopher Fowler novel (two of my current favorites), but my target is still to pare it back closer to 100,000 words. Time for a Staples run, for blue pencils and red pens. And the book will undoubtably* be twice as good for being two-thirds the length. (First casualty -- all those self-indulgent bad jokes.)

I have a minor sense of anticlimax, not because of withdrawal from my private world, but because I know -- as I mentioned in an earlier post -- that I have the cardigan mis-buttoned in terms of the plot, and there's a yellow legal pad peppered with notes of major scene shifts already waiting for me, which I've been ignoring in the race to the finish line. So in a way, this is a false first draft, an imposter, instantly obsolete, waiting for the dope test. (I had a dope test once. If confirmed that I'm a dope.)

But at least I can say I've written another book now. 


"There's no such word. Just testing.

A legend in my own lunchtime.

My friend, Leigh Ann, puts together a lunchtime program on creative writing for the kids of the F.E. Bellowes Elementary School in Rye Neck. For the second year, she asked me back to be the visiting author. And I just spent a great hour talking about mysteries to -- and listening to -- about thirty of the brightest, most attentive, most enthusiastic bunch of third-, four-, and fifth-graders on the planet.

Truly a highlight of the year. And worth putting off finishing my own book!

Thirty-five years later . . .

In 1975, the disco group Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, featuring Sir Monti Rock III, released a song called "Get Dancin'," which anticipated a lot of hip-hop by including some self-referential lyrics: "Here comes DJ Disco Tex/Truckin' with his Sex-O-Lettes . . ."

Total crap. So why can't I get this tune out of my head this morning?

And so to bed.

Since I haven't give him anything to do in years, Evan Marshall has probably forgotten that he's my literary agent. But he seems to be doing okay with his other clients, his own series of mystery novels, and his first-class multimedia endeavors to teach fiction writing, through books, software, and an indispensable website, Write a Novel Fast. Try it.

One memorable piece of advice I picked up from Evan was never to end a chapter with a character going to bed. (To sleep, that is.) The goal of any mystery or thriller -- or any book at all, for that -- is to keep the reader turning those pages, desperate to know what happens next. Closing a chapter with the end of a day is like handing the reader a bookmark. And, as Evan points out, since many people do their reading in bed before going to sleep themselves, you're making it all too easy for them to put the book down and turn the light off.

But I just broke that rule, deliberately. (As opposed to the times before I read Evan's wisdom, when I did it in sheer blissful ignorance.) I decided to cut my planned final chapter into two. (I know, the fragmentation of this draft is getting a bit like Zeno's paradox, with Achilles never managing to catch up with that bloody tortoise.) And today, I completed Chapter 22 (3,000 words), which wraps up the mystery.

It ends with my protagonists, Oliver and Effie, going to bed to, er, celebrate the successful conclusion of the murder investigation -- a little scene that, in my not-so-humble opinion, is the perfect blend of eroticism and restraint, reflective of the similar final moment of Murdering Ministers. (In that book, Oliver and Effie were sharing a bath at the end.) You might well expect the words "THE END" to follow. Go ahead, go to sleep. As the commentator* said, "They think it's all over."

Only the sharp-eyed might have spotted the hint that there's just a little more to come. And you might need a good night's sleep first, because it's going to surprise you. (And that's tomorrow's writing assignment.)

*Kenneth Wolstenholme, just after Geoff Hurst had scored his third goal in the 1966 World Cup final, giving England their 4-2 win over West Germany. Happy days.

Naming rites.

First draft of Chapter 21 -- actually, a short codicil to Chapter 20, but written from a different viewpoint -- completed in one day. Now, only the last chapter to go. And rather a lot to pack into it.

The best bit of today was thinking up a new character name. (Yes, I know, it's a bit late in the book to introduce new characters, but his very brief appearance makes sense, I promise.) It's a purely comic character who's a pompous theater critic. So I went back to my lists and decided, for now, on "Wedgwood Gallimaufrey." (It beat out Clovis Milkthistle, which I thought was too Hobbit-like.)

This Public Plot.

Just finished the first draft of Chapter 20 -- pursuit and trapping of the murderer. Wa-a-a-ay too long. Over 8,000 words, trimmed back to 7,000. But this is not a thriller -- it's a whodunit, and once the perp is named, you don't want to detain the reader too much longer, no matter how intriguing the chase. So it's gone to my writers group with a demand that they tell me what to cut.

Meanwhile, only two chapters to go, one of them very short. I may even finish this week.

Whaddya-call-it?

My point about La Grimsdyke is not to turn this blog into a bunch of boring grammar lessons. (Too late.)

I've been leading up to a question that's been on my mind recently. And that is, do we have a word for that first inkling that a stubbornly long-held belief may actually be up for grabs?

I don't just mean a change in your assumption or your opinions, like when you download a favorite old song from i-Tunes that you haven't heard for years and find it's not quite as good as you remember. (Boy, The Nice were a disappointment forty years later.) Or when that hunter green on the walls of your office that looked so classy when you bought the house seven years ago starts seriously getting on your nerves, but to paint the room a lighter color now means finding a swing space for about a thousand books on the built-in bookcases, which you do like, but even they need a coat of paint.

I mean when your mental defenses weaken enough to allow a slight challenge to the dogma with which you've been indoctrinated from childhood, the belief system that has been the very core of your relationship with the universe.

Such as that moment when you realize that Mrs. Grimsdyke may have been wrong about the possessive form of Dickens or not using the serial comma (don't get me started).

Such as the first time you use a shopping cart in a supermarket, when your mother had so sworn by the humble hand-basket throughout your childhood that you thought wheels were some indication of moral turpitude. (I have a lot of those.)

Such as the possibility that birds don't sing simply to offer praise to God, as you were seriously told in Sunday School, but that mating and territoriality may play a role. And that evolution is a distinct possibility. And that for an infallible guide to life, the Bible does have a somewhat patchy history and more than a couple of internal inconsistencies. Including two contradictory accounts of the creation of Eve in the first three pages, for God's sake, but in twenty years of church-going, you never heard a minister mention that point.

Such as that scratchy moment when, after scornfully questioning the validity of a so-called "Next Generation," you're faintly aware that you may be coming to prefer Patrick Stewart to William Shatner as the Captain of the Enterprise. (WWJD = What Would Jean-Luc Do?)

Or David Tennant's Dr. Who to the Tom Baker of your teenage years.

(Don't worry, Sean Connery, your reputation and toupee are unshakable. Although this new Bond is a lot better than everyone was expecting . . .)

We need a word for it. Because it's been happening more as I get older.

The rest is sibilance.

So how did I get onto Mrs. Grimsdyke?

(With a fork-lift truck. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

But I digress . . . No, it was back when in the comments to an earlier post, I mentioned Gene Wilder's movie The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. And I noticed the possessive.

My Mrs. Grimsdyke was probably a man. (I don't mean she was a cross-dresser; I went to a boys' high school and the masters were all men. Well, they wouldn't be masters if they weren't. Although we did once have a substitute math teacher who was a hundred-year-old woman who made us call her "ma'am.") My vagueness is only because I don't remember which particular English teacher taught us how to form the possessive of word ending in 's.'

(Shout out here to my tenth-grade teacher, Robin MacGibbon, who's the reason why I'm a writer now.)

I learned all those arcane rules about adding the apostrophe only, for both plurals and words with an s-sound at the end -- the boys' bedroom, Dickens' Bleak House, Vaughan Williams' "London" Symphony, Shakespeare's sonnet "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." And naturally, like a good little acolyte, I would defend this to the death.

But one day, I defected. (That's defected.) Because I realized the people who added an apostrophe 's' to all names weren't acting out of a pathetic ignorance of the English language. (Or to put it another way, they weren't just being American.) This was actually an alternative rule, constantly and consistently applied. And -- shades of St. Paul on the road to Damascus -- it suddenly made sense.

Take, for example, a restaurant I used to go to a lot in Greenwich Village, called "Gus's Place." If you used my classical form of punctuation, it would be "Gus' Place," which you'd have to pronounce "GUSS PLACE." But nobody does. They all say "GUSSIZ PLACE." And it's ludicrous to write it one way and say it another. Gus already knows this.

So I dumped my crumbling belief -- noblesse oblige -- and from now on, all plurals get an apostrophe only, but all names and singular words ending with the 's' or 'z' sound get an apostrophe plus an 's.' Simple.

And I immediately had one of those encounters of the Grimsdyke kind with a fellow mother at the local elementary school, who still espoused the classical approach and claimed her authority from the fact that her child had two names that ended sibilantically. (Just made that word up.) Say the kid was called Chris Ferris. She said it would therefore be "Chris' recent arrest," "Chris Ferris' juvy record."  Yeah, but you're saying CHRISSIZ, for Chrissiz sake, I diplomatically explain, so write it that way. I was met with the blank stare of the undeprogrammed cult member.

Here's why I like the alternative rule. It reflects widespread general usage. And it can be used without ambiguity and almost without exception. Some people say we still have to apply the old rule occasionally to deal with the odd tongue-twister. I don't think "Aristophanes's The Wasps" (ARISTOPHANEEZES) or "Socrates's legacy" (SOCRATEEZES) is that hard to say, but I'll defer.

They key thing, as the Hatter might have accepted it, is to say what you mean, and then write what you say.

Good night, Mrs. Grimsdyke, wherever you are.

You remember Mrs. Grimsdyke, right? She was the sixth-grade English teacher who hammered into you all you ever needed to know about grammar and punctuation. And she spoke with the infallibility of the Pope. The Grimsdyke way was the only way.

Mrs. Grimsdyke was like that founder* of the Jesuits, who may have claimed that indoctrinating a child for his first seven years was enough to win him for life. I've worn one of my hats -- corporate communicator -- for thirty years. And it constantly amazes me that senior managers, lords and ladies of their profession, can peruse a draft of some communication that may be of earth-shattering significance to the future of their business, and yet the only comment I'll get is "I was always taught not to begin a sentence with a conjunction." (Oh yeah? Try reading Chapter 1 of Genesis some time.)

When I'm hired to work on a project for a client, I make it clear that my ultimate loyalty is to the reader. I'm getting paid to make the materials I write as clear, as concise, and as friendly as possible. An informal, conversational tone promotes understanding, which saves the rampant cost of misunderstanding. At a more subtle level, it also diminishes the distance between the (supposed) author and the reader, enhancing the credibility of the message. It's my job to convince the client -- well, the client's lawyer -- that "It is imperative that the employee submit his/her claim for any loss in a timely fashion" doesn't change its meaning when it becomes "Don't wait too long to send in your claim." Never mind that it has a contraction and seems to be in the second person.

I had a client pay me to work my magic on a complete range of informational materials for his company's employees. And then the same client paid me all over again to remove every contraction -- every "don't" became a "do not," every "you're" a "you are"  -- simply because the CEO "had always believed" that contractions were incorrect in a business letter. Protests that I wasn't writing a business letter fell on deaf ears. So I apply the Beechey doctrine. I try to persuade them twice to do things my way. And then I do it their way with a clean conscience.

Language is a moving target. What's right versus what's wrong can often be what's new versus what's old. Although neither of these should be confused with what's good versus what's bad.

That doesn't imply an anything-goes free-for-all, embracing every faddish abbreviation or misspelling with uncritical glee. (To the end of my days, I will spell "all right" as two words, even if "alright" makes it into a dictionary.) Writers should know grammar backwards and forwards, just as they should know the ins and outs of their word processing program. These are the tools of the trade, and it's ludicrous for any professional to take pride in, say, scattering commas by guesswork or "where they feel right."

But an exploration of the basics quickly leads you into the current areas of controversy. And you discover that there are nuances, shades of gray, competing rules -- a world beyond the unbending grammatical celibacy of the Grimsdykes.

Maybe formal writing hasn't actually changed that much. Maybe what's changed is that excessive formality is now marginalized. I remember those ancient rules about whether to use "yours sincerely" or "yours faithfully" to sign off a business letter. But I never use either these days -- it's usually "best wishes" or even "love." I mean, why not?

So take a stand on the controversies. Stick to your position. Draw a line in the sand and be prepared to defend it. Just equip yourself with a better argument than "that's what I was taught in grade school."

*I've seen this apocryphal quote variously attributed to Ignatius Loyola or to his disciple and co-founder of the Society of Jesus, Francis Xavier. I once saw the "incorruptible" remains of Francis Xavier in a church in Goa, India. Or at least the bits that weren't collected by souvenir hunters -- his forearm's in Rome and another arm-bone is in Macau.