NPR Interview

To hear Amy's and my interview with Mindy Todd on NPR station WCAI click on the CAINAN link and find The Point podcast.

Television doesn't make you look fat, just short for your weight.

I had my first television interview the other day. It wasn't exactly network prime time. It wasn't even sub-prime time. It was local cable access, which is only slightly higher on the media food chain than home movies and YouTube. It was in a real studio and the host was a real television personality, albeit one from the days before color. There were lights and multiple cameras and comfortable chairs to sit in. There was a disembodied voice from the control room making things sound more important than they probably were. All-in-all an interesting experience.

The host started the show by asking a few simple questions. I was feeling pretty good. I had all the answers and I didn't "Ummm or Ahhhhh" at all. It was then that things started to spiral out of control. The host took it upon himself to read a bit of the book, something that I was told we wouldn't do because, with the exception of a few people from England, who want to see someone read out of a book on T.V. The problem was that these were the only three sentences he read: "Biochemical linkages between rapidly urbanizing coastal watershed. Mediation of benthic-pelagic coupling by life cycle patterns and vertical mixing. Spatial and temporal variability...." (I can't even finish typing them they're so esoteric).

I heard the words but couldn't believe it. This was how he was going to represent my book? My mouth hung open. I looked into the camera lens and I could see all the way down the cable, into the living rooms, and directly upon the now glazed-over eyes of all twelve viewers (at least I hoped there were only twelve). Who would by a book like this? Nobody. I went into damage control immediately and spent the remainder of the show trying to convince whoever was still awake that this was all taken out of context and the book was loaded with funny bits in words that averaged only two syllables. The show finally ended and at that point I knew exactly how Richard Nixon felt - the media was after me too.

Writing Can Be Taxing

Another year and another tax deadline has passed with expected results – we owe. Ever since starting a business almost 15 years ago I've become accustomed to seeing the red digits of Turbo Tax's tally of my contribution to the National Balance Sheet flash across the screen. In all those years I have never been able to reconcile the fact that a fluctuating income requires constant re-evaluation of quarterly payments to the IRS. It was bad enough having to confront profit and loss annually. The thought of doing it four times a year was distasteful. Needless to say I would minimize the effort by using a method that Allen Greenspan would describe as "generalizing recent market conditions in a manner that would result in a favorable monetary outcome based on emotionally derived data.." That is to say – I guessed.

After a first-pass calcualtion based on last years "estimated" withholding's I rubbed salt into an already painful wound by finding a hand-written 1099 sent by my agent. It was, in essence, income (albeit very little) that had no withholding taken from it, resulting in an even higher tax liability. My tax software was very compassionate and understanding, prodding me to "think about any expenses that may off-set your income".

Someone once asked me, when did I consider myself a writer? I replied that it was a moving target. First there was completing a manuscript, then it was only after I held a printed copy of my book, next was when a warm body unrelated to me had purchased a copy. Sitting there at my computer I realized that the target had moved yet again. Real writers can deduct writing expenses! But what constitutes a writing expense? By the definition of the IRS "Anything that is necessary for the creation and /or delivery of goods and services."

Let's see...paper, pens, printer ink, easily justified. Home office..check, copies..check, one honk'in big dictionary (see previous post), check As I entered these deductions I could see the red number on the screen dropping as fast as Enron stock. This was good, but I was running out of things associated with the mechanics of writing. I needed to be more creative. That was all it took. After all, what is the largest component of a writer's product? Creativity. The creative process, one of the most intangible things on the planet, and I was on a quest to figure out how to deduct it. Office chair? No. Comfy office chair? Yes. Morning $4 latte to stimulate new ideas? Yup. Trip to exotic beach to research unused description of rare sand crab in chapter three? Definitely.

Writing is a goldmine of deductions. This explains why there are so many books out there – everyone can write, or at least try to write, so why not take advantage of Uncle Sam's generosity in the tax code? I take comfort in knowing that as a writer I belong to that triumvirate of professions (including musician and large U.S. automaker) in which the IRS does not expect you to earn a profit.

I'm writing this post from a ranch in Arizona where we have taken Sara for school vacation. I suspect my next entry will be an essay about ranches in Arizona. As you can see I'm already planning my tax strategy for next year.

Spell Check - An Evil Tool

Let me start by admitting that I'm a terrible speller. In grade school I was always first-round knockout material in the spelling bee, stumbling over the simple words like breth and allready. I would go so far as to change a word in a sentence rather than risk getting it wrong. Things didn't improve in later years, when I was confronted with the added burden of writing book reports and papers containing even more words. This was when I discovered that I'm also a terrible editor. I see what my brain expects me to see. If I wrote "vassal" when I meant to write "vessel", no amount of review would expose the mistake.

The inability to spell or edit the written word makes for a poor foundation for a budding writer. Creativity and vocabulary can only make up for so much of the "fingernails on the chalkboard" reaction to repeated spelling mistakes. Errors of any form tend to derail the reader's involvement in a story, which is why I saw the advent of spell-check as my literary savior. Not only did my digital English teacher point out my mistakes, but she corrected them for me as I was typing, leaving me free to unleash a torrent of words as fast as my fingers could butcher them. No longer having to worry if "I" came before "E" regardless of where the letter "C" happened to be hanging out. It was like being free of the times tables after the invention of the calculator.

As with the fallacy of a free lunch, users of spell-check must pay the price for its convenience. This payment comes in the form of blissful ignorance - with no little red squiggles underlining my text, I saved the document knowing that every word on the page had been vetted for accuracy by my personal expert speller. It was not until my manuscript had past the point of no return, printed, bound and distributed that one reviewer pointed out today that "Fisichella did make the common mistake in his book of referring to a 'principle investigator' instead of a principal investigator'." Ouch! The question now is, short of a personal phone call, how do I make every reader understand that it was the fault of the little man in the box, not me. I know the whole 'principal is your pal' thing, but somehow I don't think anyone will believe me. Especially anyone who had seen my third grade spelling tests.

The Things They Don't Tell You

One of the things they don't tell you when you begin to write a book is that eventually someone will read it. This may seem like an obvious end use for the printed word, just like a doctor snapping on a rubber glove is a good predictor of certain events, but the thought that a person would soon be reading what I wrote didn't sink in until the final days before publication. The reason for this was simple. As a novice writer I was constantly reminded not to self-censor. "Let the ideas flow unhindered", was the mantra. Don't worry about spelling, grammar or punctuation, that can all be taken care of later.

The problem is that "later" eventually becomes "now", when those mistakes of form and style must be addressed. So distracted is the writer in finding all those split infinitives and dangling participles that it's easy to lose track of what the words are really saying. And what they are saying are all of the embarrassing, soul baring and relationship straining things you put in there while your censor was out for coffee.

For me this hit home on two occasions. The first was when I realized that some of my colleagues may read the book. I completed the original draft of the manuscript before I was a full-time employee of the Oceanographic Institution. Now that I must sit across the table daily with people who know much more about the subject of oceanography than I do, adds a level of anxiety that I was never prepared for. I found out today that the institution library has just purchased copies of the book for their shelves and for each of our ships. What this means for me is potentially being at sea for many weeks, trapped and surrounded by what I expect will be my harshest critics. I now realize that writers live mostly in solitary places to avoid such situations.

The second set of readers that I neglected to anticipate were my parents. I visited them this weekend and presented them with a copy of the book. In every instance where I envisioned the day that I would hand over a copy of my first book, the fantasy never involved them actually reading it. Show it off to their friends, yes, place it conspicuously on the coffee table, probably, open it up and start reading it in front of me, never. At that moment I couldn't remember a single sentence of what I had written, but truly believed it was two-hundred-and-thirty pages of things I didn't want my mother to see.

In the end they said it was great. But parents have to say that because even after fifty years they still feel responsible for your self-esteem. I'm holding out for the autonomous critics. Those that have no horse in the race. The readers my uncensored self was writing for.

The Reality of Fiction

My daughter Sara and I attended a storytelling at the local library tonight. She sat on the floor near the front with her friends and I sat in the back with mine. The stories were nothing exceptional, and the only running theme I could determine was that they all involved cholesterol. Bacon was mentioned in each one. Since these were all works of fiction, I figured that the person telling the story was just hungry. You can do that when you tell fiction - wing it to reflect your mood. If the kids had been little screaming monsters my guess is that the stories would have involved alcohol.

It was during the last story that things got weird. The storyteller leaned forward in his chair and began what he described as the most scary story of the evening. It was about a girl named Sara (or Sarah, you can never tell in narration) who was adopted, had a pink bicycle, was forgotten at school by her parents and had a fiery temper. I could see my daughter sitting there relating to all those attributes but the last one. I could relate to all of them. And yes, there was an incident with the school bus today that caused me to wait at the wrong bus stop, leaving her abandoned for a brief period of time, but that's another story and not entirely my fault. All-in-all a strange series of coincidences that caused me to take more interest in the tale being told.

This got me thinking. In the absence of our own involvement in a work of fiction, why do we hang on the next word, or scene? What is it that draws us into something which doesn't exist in reality. As a plot unfolds, the author, director or narrator can, on a whim, take us in a different direction, a different place, a different time, and we would never know. Why as spectators do we let ourselves be manipulated in such a way? The scholarly answer is that we read or watch fiction to be transported, to sever our ties with reality and escape. I don't entirely buy this. To me this makes fiction sound like a narcotic. If this were the case heroin would be more effective and involve less eye strain. No, I think I tonight I discovered the real appeal of fiction. The fictional work is a window into the mind of the author. Reading fiction is an act of voyeurism. In the final chapter of a book, you're not reading to see what the characters will do. They can do anything - live, die, repent, it doesn't matter. What the reader wants to know is what is the author thinking? What's going on in her mind that will cause a character to do one thing over another? If we only read for the sake of the story then why do we care one way or another about the fictional outcome of a character's situation?

In the HBO series The Sopranos, the very last second, of the very last episode caused an entire viewing nation to shout a collective "What the f#*@k" at their televisions. This wasn't because of anything that happened to the characters in the story. It was because the writer suddenly pulled the shade down on the window of his mind. As an audience we were caught peaking under the tent. Hauled away like children as the last enticing glimpse into the writer's most personal space was blocked from view. We all crave to know more about others than we know about ourselves. This is because wh...

Everything you wanted to know about algae

Art is not supposed to be competitive. Michelangelo wasn't thinking of one-upping Giorgio Vasari as he lay on his back painting Adam's testicles onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He was creating great art and had more pressing concerns, like who picked the name "burnt umber". I never thought of the publishing process as a competition. Every book stands on its own merits, each having unique qualities that speak to the infinite moods of the human condition. At least that is how I felt before I discovered Amazon's sales rankings at the bottom of the web page. It was only a number, but one that beckoned like a siren. An attempt to quantify the qualitative.

Intuitively I knew that sales rankings are meaningless when it comes to describe the value of entertainment. After all, Freddy got Fingered made a heck of a lot more at the box office than Death at a Funeral. Still, I confess to clicking on the link to find out where Seven-Tenths stood among the hundreds of thousands of titles lining the virtual shelves of the super-cyber-store. To my amazement my book had cracked the top 100 of titles related to oceanography. In the first few days on Amazon's charts the book rose steadily to peak at #11. Now I'm sure that this meteoric rise was probably caused by an aunt or any number of other relations purchasing copies out of some sense of familial obligation, but hey, I was on a ride. I looked at who was above and below me, happy to yield the upper spots to Ballard, Cramer and Cousteau. Below me was slime, literally. I was content in the knowledge that Seven-Tenths was besting (but not by much) a problem solver's guide to algae.

It became a race. Me against the life story of an autotrophic organism. And like all races, some have the legs and some don't. At last count the seaweed was winning by a fair margin. My only solace was that Cousteau was poised to drop off Oceanography's top 100. I think it was Shakespeare's mother who said "Will, don't expect anything more than short-lived success as a writer, so go out and get a real job". There was a woman who understood publishing.

I'm not too worried. The ink on the pages of Seven-Tenths has barely dried and we haven't begun to get the word out that it even exists, so I think I'm going to resist the temptation to look at sales statistics...at least until my aunts go shopping again.

Book Formats

The only demand I made to my publisher...OK, it was more of a request, first-time authors don't get to demand much, was that we make the book accessible to blind and visually impaired readers. Since the subject matter was a lot about Amy's success in spite of her vision problem, it only made sense to make sure the material could be appreciated by others with vision loss. Leapfrog press was very supportive of this and has taken steps to assure that the book will soon be available in a variety of electronic formats, including large print (for download) and Daisy for text-to-speech readers. It will also be available in most e-book formats.

The Library of Congress has indicated that they will be making a recording of the book for the blind and visually impaired at some time in the future. That's nice of them, though what "some time in the future" means to the government has never been clear to me. In 1920 the Equal Rights Amendment was to become adopted "some time in the future", but I'm not sure it's close to happening anytime soon.

Reviews for Seven-Tenths

"A lost man finds his calling, and an oceanographer with dimming eyesight illuminates the dark sea. A dissatisfied engineer, David Fisichella, stumbles upon a life at sea. As Amy Bower, a scientist at a highly respected oceanographic research institution, loses her eyesight, her research increasingly reveals the workings of the ocean. An inspiring story of dedication, perseverance, courage, and love."

--Deborah Cramer, author of Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage and Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World.

"Fisichella shows a genuine appreciation of the everyday struggles faced by a blind professional.... His humorous accounts are mixed with poignant recollections as his wife's vision slowly but steadily deteriorates... He understands that a reluctance to rely on others is not a lack of trust but a fear of losing control."

--Judith M. Dixon, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress

"A fascinating and open window into the life of an ocean scientist. If you like sea stories with pirates, exotic ports of calls and unforgettable characters, this book is for you. If you want a page turner that will have you laughing out loud one minute and on the edge of your seat the next, block out a couple of hours before you begin, because you won't stop. If you appreciate good writing and descriptions that put you right in the picture, this book will come alive for you. If you want to be inspired by one woman who faces the challenges of disability and the glass ceiling and triumphs every day and every time, you will love this book. Amy Bower, an SEA alumna, shows us that vision is far more than eyesight and limits are just an horizon that beckons. And if you want a love story that shows the best of human nature, get this book. The ocean covers seven-tenths of the planet, but in Dave Fisichella's wonderful story you will find ten-tenths of a good read."

--John K. Bullard, president, Sea Education Association

"Wondrous observations about the world's oceans, Somali pirates, and most of all, the story of one woman's devotion to her scientific career despite enormous obstacles, are woven together with skill and empathy. A memoir that will entrance anyone looking for a second chance at life and love." E.B. Library Journal

"...(C)aptivating and interesting...Fisichella keeps your attention throughout the book...I'm going to pass this one on..." Robert Schmidt, Amazon top 500 reviewer

"Seven-Tenths is a memoir that has elements of science and geography. I enjoyed reading every page of this unique book... Five stars..." Robert Yokoyama, Amazon top 500 reviewer

“Love, Piracy and Science at Sea.” That subtitle really caught my attention right off the bat. It sounds like it has something for all tastes. It delivers on it too. It's a touching memoir of an engineer who, when his marriage was falling apart and his job dissatisfied him, found out that helping others also helped himself. ... Fisichella does an excellent job of explaining things in nontechnical terms and his easy narrative style made this book a pleasure to read.... There's a lot going on for a book this size. It was so absorbing that I read it straight through. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys memoirs or is fascinated by tales of adventure at sea. A superb memoir, it is a very human story about how one man's dissatisfaction with the state of his life led him to make the changes that turned his life around. I give this book 4.5 bookies!

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