Not Guilty. No, Guilty: My Day in Court

On a cold Sunday night I fly into San Francisco on a nonstop flight from Chicago.  No, this isn't a much deserved vacation, a voluntary trip to warmer climes.  My day in court is tomorrow, my turn to plead.  I've been dreading this day for months: it's the day I officially become a felon.

For those of you unfamiliar with criminal justice - and, believe me, I was definitely in that camp - there are many stages in the process from investigation to incarceration.  I am now at the pleading stage, more than a year after I first got wind that the feds were investigating me.  Since that time we negotiated a plea, and now I must appear before the judge to say those famous words: Guilty, your honor.  But before that - and I'll get to that in a moment - I must also say those other famous words: Not guilty, your honor. 

Oh, how I wish it were true.

I crawl into bed early but toss and turn for hours.  Unable to sleep, I wander the city’s neighborhoods: Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, Nob Hill.  I love San Francisco but take no notice of my surroundings.  I’m not a tourist after all.  I no longer bemoan my fate – it is what it is.  And I did what I did.

What I agonize over on this long walk is the fact that it’s now time to tell the world.  I’ve carried my little secret - that I'm soon to become a felon - for far too long.  My loved ones have to know. Why is it so hard to let the cat out of the bag, I wonder.  I should have told everyone ages ago.  But I can’t.  What I want to do is to crawl under a rock and hide from the world.  I open my mouth to come clean but the words won’t form.  Like a director preparing scenes, I imagine the entire film in my head: my stumbling, stuttering confession, the horror and upset on my [insert character here: mother’s, father’s, children’s] face.  

For a long time the uncertainty gave me an excuse to perpetuate the secret: why worry my family when I had no idea how things would turn out.  But the basic question – whether I would be charged – was settled months ago.  Yet I still procrastinate.  The reason, I understand, is that it’s such a horrible abasement.  I feel like the scum of the earth, like I’ve let the world down and failed to live up to expectations.  I’ve failed my family, my children, and it’s terribly difficult to admit.  I can’t think of anything that could possibly happen to a person, or at least to me anyway, more humiliating and upsetting.  The only fragile comparison that comes to mind is the anguish and heartbreak I imagine must weigh upon someone who comes out of the closet.  I feel as if I’ve been branded with a scarlet letter or, rather, eight of them: C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L. 

Well, the procrastination is now at an end.  My hand is forced.  With my guilty plea tomorrow the case will go public.  Better that my family hears the news from my mouth than from CNN.  I’m meeting my family several days later in Los Angeles; they think I'm on a business trip.  Although my gut churns at the prospect, I realize that I have to tell them.  And everyone. 

I meet my lawyer early the next morning and we drive to the Federal Building, a hulking, square behemoth that rises up from the slums of the Tenderloin like Tolkien’s Mordor.  I’m dressed in my best suit, my hair carefully combed.  The day is scheduled with a series of – to me anyway – meaningless bureaucratic shuffles. The sad fact is, I don’t know an arraignment from an orange.  I’m embarrassed to admit that as a budding lawyer I avoided all law school classes even distantly related to criminal law.  Everything I know about criminal law I learned from reading Presumed Innocent.  Knowing I would become a corporate lawyer I had decided that they were not, and would never be, relevant to my life. How wrong I was.  

The entire experience is bizarre and disorienting.  I feel as if I’m having one of those childhood nightmares we’ve all had, the one where you’re sitting at your desk in homeroom and look down to see that you’re wearing only underpants.  Or the one where you’re soaping up in the communal shower after PE and suddenly get an enormous hard on.  After so many years on the right side of the law, I can’t quite comprehend that now I’m on the wrong side.  

“Is this really happening?” I wonder.  “Is this really me?”  At the same time, I’m strangely intrigued: the process is interesting from an academic perspective.  It’s just too bad that it’s my life on the line.   

First, I appear before a magistrate judge, the purpose of which I cannot fathom.  The narrow courtroom is packed with friends and family, the fetid air filled with the sour stench of desperation.  Prisoner after prisoner, dressed in shapeless orange jumpsuits, are paraded in cuffs from a steel door at the rear.  They stand, abject, before the judge while the charges are read.  Drugs, drugs and more drugs; an endless loop.  An ounce here, two ounces there.  Only the substances differ.

I turn to my lawyer.  “Are there always so many drug cases?” I ask.

“That’s all there are,” she says.  “You’re the exception.”

I’m also an exception in that I’m still a free man sitting amidst the onlookers.  In my fancy suit I look like what I am: a lawyer.  During a break, another criminal lawyer come over to speak with mine.  She fumbles when introducing me:

“This is Eli.  He’s a corporate lawyer.”

“Oh, are you taking a tour?  Checking out the exciting life of the criminal bar?”

Now I fumble.  “Well, err, I’m, um, you see….”

Once she leaves we turn to each other and smile.  “Well, that was awkward,” I say.  “You might as well just tell people that I’m a criminal.”

Finally, my name is called.  I stand and everyone stares.  I am the first defendant the entire morning not escorted from the back.  The proceedings are short and uneventful.  For whatever reason, at the arraignment I’m told to plead not guilty.  When prompted, I shakily mouth the words.  Oh, if only it were true.

Following that, I’m escorted to the FBI offices on a higher floor.  A young agent leads me through a warren of cubicles to a small room filled with antiquated photographic equipment.  She takes my prints on a wheezing, decrepit machine and then begins to stick white objects onto a small black board.  I glance over her shoulder and see that she’s preparing a board for me, the same type of board I’ve seen in movies and mug shots.  She hands it to me and I read: “FBI San Francisco, 12/19/13,” followed by “LEIGH SPRAUGE” in capital letters.  I point out her spelling mistake.  She frowns but nonetheless fixes it.  I’m instructed to hold it to my chest and look at the camera.   No one says “say cheese.”  I don’t know the protocol: do I smile?  In the end, although I alternately want to laugh, cry and scream (in that order), I force my lips into a thin line.

Now it’s time for the U.S. Marshals.  Prior to today, I never even knew such an organization existed. Now I see that they seem to be in charge of getting prisoners from point A to point B.  Looks like a dismal job.  Apparently the FBI photos are proprietary, because for whatever reason the marshals want their own set.  I’m beginning to feel like a model at a photo shoot.  I sit on an uncomfortable metal chair abutting a cinderblock wall as a marshal fumbles with the camera, a basic press-and-shoot model tethered to a computer by a cord.  The unmistakable prison-house clang of steel on steel filters through the wall.  I hear the din of prisoners’ shouts and calls somewhere in the distance.  

I sit quietly and try to rid myself of this disorientating sense of displacement that’s dogged me throughout the day.  And I sit.  And I sit.  The marshal can’t figure out how to work the camera.  Soon, reinforcements are called. Over the next thirty minutes marshals continue to arrive until a small crowd is huddled over the equipment.  Based upon their confusion and clumsy fumblings, it’s clear that somehow this isn’t customary procedure.  I wonder if I should offer to help - it looks so simple - but following the reception by the FBI to the spelling mistake I decide to keep quiet.  Finally, after an hour of increasingly frustrated attempts to take my picture, the marshals give up.  I’m escorted through a locked steel door to my attorney, who whisks me to the day’s highlight: the hearing at which I will plead guilty.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL

Well, I have news.  And, unfortunately, it's not good.  

How I wish I was telling the world, as I have at various times in the past, that I'm the proud father of a new baby, or that I married my sweetheart or that I published a novel.  But no.  Not today.  Today, my news is bad.  Thankfully, I don't have cancer, nor is a close family-member sick.  News related to death, dying and sickness is always the worst.  But among the various sorts of non-medical bad news, this is about the worst that I can think of.  Worse than getting fired, worse than divorce.  Worse - dare I say it? - than having your dog die.  In fact, my news ranks right down there with a burning house or a broken leg.  On a bad news scale of one-to-ten, my news is about a zero.  One if I'm generous.

Sorry, I didn't mean to drag this out, especially since I already more-or-less gave the news away in the title. But now that it's time to announce my news to the world, or, in any event, to my own limited readership, it's surprisingly hard to say.  It's bad, it's embarrassing, it's pathetic.  If I had a rock to crawl under, I'd be doing it right about now.  But here in sub-zero Wisconsin, all I've got are snow drifts.

So here goes....Scrunch up my face, open my mouth, force the words from my throat:  

I'm going to jail.

There.  Putting it in tiny type helped a bit.  As did the fact that, for me anyway, writing is easier than talking.  But it was still hard.  The truth is, I can hardly believe it.  I know it's true but it seems a bad dream, like I'll wake up and it will all be gone.  I'm not saying I'm exceptional, or that I don't deserve punishment.  But as bad as it sounds to say, I always thought jail was for someone else. Which, come to think of it, is probably what most convicted felons say.  Or wish.

The announcement is not exactly cathartic.  I didn't really expect it to be. But I decided to put it up here for all to see as a way to, at the least, explain my failure to post these past several weeks.  As far as excuses go, this is much better than 'the dog ate my paper'.  Once I knew where I was going, posting tips on writing just didn't feel very important.  My friends and family all know already anyway.  I sprung it on them as a wonderful Christmas/New Year's present.  Now they are diligently drafting me letters of support, telling the judge that, despite my misdeeds, I am still a good person.

In this post I am not going to discuss my crime or my punishment.  That's all for later. But I do want to emphasize that my crime was a nonviolent one, committed while I was a lawyer in the Wild East (Russia) for a notoriously corrupt oligarch.  That said, it was still a crime, a federal felony no less.  And I in no way intend to try to justify myself or blame others.  To paraphrase Popeye: "I yam what I yam and I done what I done."

I don't intend to leave you hanging.  Or not for long anyway.  In coming posts, I will chronicle my experiences as I wend my way through the criminal justice system and face my punishment.  I know that that's not the original intent of this blog, but to me it somehow seems more worthwhile.  While there are millions of blogs on writing, only a very few are devoted to a first-person POV look at crime, incarceration and the criminal justice system.  Let me take you along with me on a vicarious trip I hope you will never have to take.

There are several moving, heartfelt blogs out there written by ex-cons, but, maybe unsurprisingly, the thoughts and experiences of this population are underrepresented on the internet.  As an eternal optimist, I decided to try to make the best of a bad situation and use my gift for writing to chronicle my journey.  In so doing, I  hope that maybe I can open hearts and minds, and raise awareness of important issues related to incarceration and the criminal justice system.  I hope too that I can help others going through the same thing as me.  Being labeled a felon can make you feel awfully alone, upset and confused. Knowing that you're not the only one can be of some comfort.

As I like to say, just because I did a bad thing doesn't mean I'm a bad person.  Unfortunately, we as a society are often too quick to categorize, placing people into baskets of good or bad, worthy or not worthy.  I hope that I am able to bring some subtlety to the topic, to open eyes, and to further debate.

I'M GOING TO JAIL.  

There we go.  I said it again.  No turning back now.  

Guest Post on Writers Helping Writers

Hello readers.  Happy 2014!

Looks like I'm already failing in my primary New Year's resolution: to post more often.  

In my defense, my kids had a school break of almost one month so my days were filled with trips to the swimming pool and to the movies.  Not that I'm complaining: I love spending time with my kids and it's a real gift to be able to spend so much time with them.  But my posting suffered.

Watch for new posts soon. For anyone who missed it, I just wanted to highlight my guest post on colloquial speech published at Writers Helping Writers.  I was very pleased with the enthusiastic comments the post generated and hope that some of the readers of that piece have now ventured onto my blog.  Welcome!

A big thank you to that blog's founder and curator Angela Ackerman, who is a great editor, wonderful to work with and a tireless advocate for her excellent site.  Thank you Angela for giving me the opportunity to post.

Guest Post on Writers Helping Writers

I decided to give my readers an advance head's up on the exciting news that my guest post will be appearing January 4 on Writers Helping Writers.  The post will be about use of colloquial speech in fiction.  I'l add a link once it is posted.  For those of you who haven't yet checked it out, this site is a great resource for writers with hundreds of useful posts on all aspects of writing.  Personally, I check it out at least once a week, usually more often.

Forget Query Letters: Focus on the Query Sentence

As I was lying in bed last night I put myself to sleep writing a facetious ode to the bane of every writer's existence: query letters.  By the time I drifted off I had a pretty good poem going, but of course, when I woke up this morning all I could remember was the first sentence: "Query Letters, O How I Hate Thee."

If someone were to take a survey, I am certain that query letters would rank right up there with resume cover letters and Harlequin romances as the most hated forms of prose. That said, they are an essential step in turning a manuscript into a published book.

So what is there really to say about those wonderful nuggets of gold designed to open the magical world of agents, representation and publication?   A lot, actually.  But it just so happens that most of it has been said already.  So I decided to write from my own personal experience, which happens to be instructive.

First of all, I don't hold myself out as an expert on query letters.  But I am good at learning from my mistakes.  Lucky for me, I make a lot of them.

When my manuscript was finished, I joyfully set out to pack all its wonders into my query letter, hopeful that agents would take the time to wade through the dense prose.  This was their chance at the latest NYT bestseller, after all, and I extolled virtue after virtue.  How am I ever going to fit everything onto one page?, I thought to myself. My solution: smaller type.

With that, I sent out the letter to twenty or so agents specializing in my genre and waited with anticipation like a toddler waiting for Santa Claus.  And my wait was about as productive.  A month later, I had an inbox full of rejections and only one half-hearted 'hit'.

As I stared down at the densely-packed page of convincing arguments as to why my novel was 'it', I had a vision.  For those who have never had one, I imagine it will sound pathetically prosaic. My vision consisted of imagining myself as a poor, overtaxed agent struggling with an overloaded inbox and the unenviable task of wading through thousands of query letters each week.

You know what I realized?  That if I was that agent I would be skimming those letters with the skill of a speed reader, my mouse on the delete key, focusing on the very first sentence and nothing more.

So you know what I did?  I stopped thinking about the query letter as a letter and focused on the 'query sentence'.  What came after that sentence could be pure schlock but that first sentence had to be wonderful, had to demonstrate the potential for my book, and had to focus with a laser-eye on my concept and why it would sell.  Because you know what?  If I was lucky, the agent would read this sentence and - miracle of miracles - go on to read more.  The first sentence - the QUERY SENTENCE - is the all-or-nothing, hail Mary pass.  Nothing less, nothing more.

Translating vision into reality turned out to be easier said than done.  I struggled over my query sentence like Goldilocks and her porridge: too long, too short, too boring, too self-promoting.  But in the end, I had a sentence that was, if not 'just right', at least something I could live with.

So I sent it off to another twenty agents and I received ten requests for the full manuscript. Coincidence, you say?  Maybe.  But the difference was so dramatic that I doubt it.

I debated about whether to include my actual 'query sentence' in this post and ultimately decided not to. I may add it later.  But even without the example, I urge you to consider my advice to forget about the 'query letter' and focus on the 'query sentence'.  The goal is to catch an agent's attention and, if my vision was right, this is the way to do it.

The Mirror Cliche and Other Temptations on the Road to Literary Hell

For once, I am going to write a short post.  I promise.  

I was sitting at my computer this morning forcing myself along on my usual 10-2 writing bout, a euphemism for my excruciating daily wrestling match with my latest novel, when it came time to describe my main character.

The tale is told in the first person so, of course, I was more than tempted to resort to the good old mirror. And the fact that there was a mirror (actually, in my case, a reflective car window) in the scene for reasons other than my protagonist's narcissistic navel gazing justified my temptation. 

Mirror gazing is, of course, a cliched literary device we've all seen.  It is used by the best, and the worst, of us and most readers undoubtedly barely even notice.  I've come across the good ol' mirror in Stephen King, Michael Chabon, T Jefferson Parker, Robert Butler.  And that's just in the past few months.  So I figured I was in good company.

But then I got to thinking about how rarely in daily life I look into the mirror in contemplation of my beautiful features. And I decided that I didn't want to impart my down-to-earth character with the narcissism implied by staring lovingly into the mirror.

A quick google search revealed to me that I wasn't the first writer in the world to become fed up wit the cliche.  Which is why this post will be short: I'm not exactly treading new ground.  A few of the best examples I came across to avoid those tempting reflective surfaces include:

• Description in relation to other characters
• Pure, expository prose, i.e., don't beat around the bush and just tell us already
• Piecemeal character descriptions, i.e., the sprinkle approach to revealing attributes little by little
• Using another character's dialogue to describe the character, as in:  "You bastard, you're just so pretty I can't stand it.  Your button nose, your almond-shaped eyes and your pouty red lips make me go weak in the knees."

 I'm sure there are many more that I haven't listed.  In my case, I went with my last example: another character meets my protagonist and comments on his looks (albeit a bit more subtly than my example above).

But that got me to thinking about other cliches that are out there and I would be interested in reader feedback on your favorites.  A few examples that came to mind from my own writing include:

• Using sighs to denote boredom or frustration.  Oh, I love my sighs.
• Foot tapping for impatience.  I can't remember when I last saw this in real life but my characters do it all the time.
• Rolling eyes to indicate....What exactly do rolling eyes indicate, anyway?  Disbelief?  Frustration?  Boredom?  I'm actually not sure about that one other than that most books I read have at least one instance of eyes that role.
• Circumstance and coincidence:  I actually try to avoid this if at all possible because it bugs the hell out of me when I see it.  Bad TV dramas are the usual culprit.  A little is ok but when major plot points turn on it than count me out.

Gideons: Too Bad they Don't Distribute Tolstoy

I was in a hotel room the other day and pulled out the bible from the drawer in the end-table under the lamp.  I guess you could say I was bored.  Very bored.  I was also curious - not to read the scriptures, I am not at all religious - but to answer the nagging question: Who in the hell is Gideon and why does he does he put his bible in hotel rooms?

I know Gideon is a character in the bible and, like most people, I have heard the term "Gideons Bible" at various random points in my life.  I have certainly come across my share of copies in hotel rooms from Honolulu to Hong Kong to Moscow. Honestly, without much thought or consideration, I had always assumed that it was a particular type or translation of the bible, similar to the King James Bible. Or maybe a version that excerpted the sections dealing with Gideon and his doubts about God.  What I didn't realize, but found out through a bit of Googling this morning, was that I was wrong.  What it is is a worldwide organization of men - only men, although members' wives can become 'auxiliaries' - devoted to distributing bibles.  And not just any men either. Gideons only accepts as members "professionals and businessmen".  Does that mean a factory worker cannot volunteer to distribute bibles?  Apparently so.  For some reason, only professional men are considered capable of placing bibles into hotel rooms.  Is the thinking that otherwise they might have to worry about theft of the merchandise?

I suppose I should have been better informed as I grew up in a small town only 20 miles from Janesville Wisconsin, the place that Gideons Internatonal was founded 100 or so years ago.  But I've been in the town hundreds of times and never saw any advertisement or mention of the connection.

Fine by me.  

The Bible Shortage?

I don't typically criticize philanthropic organizations or non-profits, but the work that Gideons does seems so tragically wasteful in the world that we live in.  I'm sorry, but I can't help but think what a waste of time, money, resources and effort it is to stick bibles into hotel rooms.  Last year, according to their site, the organization had revenues of approximately $150 million.  Imagine if that much money, and the efforts of an energized volunteer base, were put into something useful, like ending hunger or helping the poor.  Or what about promoting literacy, without which there is not much need for bibles in the first place?

Is there really a shortage of bibles in this world?  It's my view that anyone who actually wants a bible most likely will find access to one.  Most churches hand out copies to their parishioners.  I have never heard about poor people in developing countries suffering because they don't have a bible.  They suffer because they don't have enough food or can't read and write.

Does Anybody Read Them?

Another thing is that, to the extent I have checked them, the hotel-room bibles always appear untouched and unread.  The organization is apparently touchy about this subject because it is the first issue addressed in the FAQ section of their site.  According to them, each bible has a six-year life span and is read by approximately 25% of travelers.  Yeah, right.  0.25% more like it.  The bibles I've seen, with their unblemished covers and stiff binding, appear untouched by any actual reader.  In this age of the internet, wouldn't it be easier to work out a deal with the hotel chains to send each guest an electronic copy by e-mail?

And one point of bible etiquette:  are the bibles only for reading in the room or is it acceptable to take your copy with you when you check out?  If not, is it considered stealing if you do?  Just wondering.

The Gideons web site states that their mission is to "reach the lost".  If that is truly their mission they seem to have found a wonderfully bizarre means of doing it.  Is there really a higher percentage of 'lost' people in the Ritz Carlton or the Hilton down the street?  They must have a tremendous miss to hit ratio.

Another interesting tidbit is that they distribute literature to members of the armed forces, but in this case what they distribute is not the same bibles that they place in hotel rooms but only copies of the New Testament.  I wonder why that is?

I Vote for Tolstoy

Which got me to thinking.  If distributing books is what they like to do, what about distributing something else?  Imagine how great it would be to enter a hotel room knowing that the drawer contained some random, varied selection of the world's great literature.  Readership of the classics would skyrocket.  Or, baring that, maybe a selection from the Times bestseller list.

Just a thought.  In my dream hotel I would check into my room to find a copy of Anna Karenina or Farewell to Arms in my desktop drawer. I've been meaning to read those for ages.

Fact in Fiction: Fact or Fiction?

We read a newspaper article and expect it to be true.  Journalists are fired for 'fabricating facts', which is really just a polite way of saying 'telling lies'.  The same goes for memoirs and other non-fiction.  Remember A Million Little Pieces?  It's still out there but is now marketed not as a memoir but as a "semi-fictional novel", whatever that is.  But what about fiction, literary and otherwise?  How should facts be used and, if they are, is it ok for the author to fudge them, take creative license?

I began to think about this after an aspiring author in my writing group read a chapter from his novel about a patient in a mental institution in the 1960's.  The patient was purely fictional but the institution was based on a real place.  Fine, right?  Of course.  That's what authors of fiction do after all: blend reality and make believe by taking real things from their real lives to create an imaginary world.  The old writer's adage - write about what you know - assumes just this type of melange.  But this author was worried, uncomfortable about taking creative license with the facts.  He wasn't sure where to draw the line.  Which got me to thinking: is there a line?  Do authors of fiction owe their readers some fealty to the facts?  Are there any rules of thumb?

Find a Balance

In my experience, the first rule of thumb is to find a balance.  It goes without saying that authors of fiction often use facts.  It is, in fact, this very blending of reality and make-believe that can make fiction so enjoyable.  I recently read Owen King's Double Feature and found his descriptions of movie making to be informative and enjoyable while, at the same time, firmly connected to the story that author was trying to tell.  So too with another book I recently read: Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue.  Reading his descriptions of Oakland I felt as if I was actually there, had actually seen the places he described.  And the descriptions were not gratuitous but essential to understanding the characters, who were firmly of their time and place.  In these books facts are a tool, a device used to make a lie - the fiction - engrossing and believable.  The authors find a balance in which facts further the story they are trying to tell.

On the other hand, who among us has not read a novel that becomes bogged down by facts.  I find this to be particularly true with genre fiction, in particular, thrillers.  Page after page of detailed descriptions of weapons.  Pedantic, detailed descriptions of geography that read more like a page from a textbook. Dan Brown, master of the genre though he may be, is in my opinion guilty of this sin with his overly-detailed descriptions of architecture and Renaissance paintings.  The details do not so much further the plot as broadcast to the world the author's intensive research and mistaken belief that the facts must be as interesting to his readers as they evidently are to him.  The equation has been inverted: facts should be for the writer to use in furtherance of his story, not for the reader as an attempt by the author at forced edification.

Don't Be Sloppy

The second rule of thumb is to be accurate.  If you decide to use facts, then give your readers the courtesy of thoroughly researching them.  It is one thing to knowingly veer from the facts in furtherance of your story but another to use facts that you think to be true but which are not.  Readers can be a demanding lot.  If you have your protagonist driving around in a green 1974 Mustang convertible then they have a right to be raise a ruckus (Mustangs only came as hardtops between 1974 and 1982). Research is for you, the author, not your readers: it gives a good author the ability to write with authority on a topic in which she may not be expert and to pick and choose the particular facts that further the story instead of regurgitating a textbook page on, say, virulent strains of SARS.  

Research also then gives you the ability to take creative license, which should always be a conscious, informed decision, not a mistake.  It was just this issue that troubled the writer in my group. He wanted to base his novel in a particular time but use a psychiatric term that was no longer in use at that time. He was uncomfortable about doing this because, he said, it wasn't accurate.  Whether to take artistic license or not is a decision that he, as the author, needs to take for himself.  But what is crucial is that he is doing it consciously, knowing, based on his research, what is factual and what is not.  

One way to address artistic license is to be upfront about it.  Many fiction books are prefaced with an author's note such as this:  “Readers may note that we have taken certain liberties with ....”  In my view, this approach is perfectly fine and much preferable to taking license and not admitting it.  But in the end, it is the author's decision.  Some fact-focused readers may object to artistic license but then, after all, we are talking here about fiction.  As long as the fact is fudged consciously, then it is the author's decision whether or not to do it.  

Be Believable

Readers read fiction knowing it to be false but with the hope of being drawn into a world that feels real. Judicious use of facts is a wonderful way to do this, a way to blur the line between reality and make believe in order to draw the reader into the story.  And, in fact, the facts may not be facts at all but pure make believe.  The author's task is to make it believable.  Maybe your story depends on a special, one-of-a-kind car, faster than any production model ever made.  That's fine as long as it feels like a real possibility.  But if you are describing someone who puts the pedal to the metal in his Toyota Corolla and takes it up to 250 mph, all of a sudden you are no longer believable and your readers will be lost.    Fiction, after all, doesn't have to BE real, it just has to FEEL real.

My Personal Experience with Healthcare.gov: How I Tried and Failed to Enroll

With all the talk lately about healthcare.gov I decided to give it a whirl, see if all the doomsayers chanting that the site was an abject failure were right.  I also had my own personal motivations, of course: I am currently uninsured, priced out of the existing health care market because of my status as a self-employed independent contractor.  So you could say I set out on my adventure hoping that the naysayers were wrong and that I would find myself some affordable health insurance.

During the years I have been uninsured I have never become sick, so in some sense view health insurance as an unnecessary luxury I cannot afford.   I’m 43, good health, no preexisting conditions.  But the fact that I am just one illness away from financial ruin has always nagged at me.  This worry prompted me many times over the years to explore my options, but the overpriced plans with humongous deductibles that were presented to me were worse than a viable option: they were nothing more than highway robbery that would do little, if anything, to protect me should I actually become sick.  I just could not justify spending more on my health insurance than my mortgage for such skimpy, scant coverage.  As a result, I have been a passive supporter of the president’s initiatives, hoping that the law would fix what my own experience has shown to be a broken system.

So on November 10 at 12 p.m. Central Time I logged onto the site.  At first glance, I was pleasantly surprised.  The site is well-organized and professional, pleasing to the eye with clearly marked tabs to answer common questions and easy to navigate features.  In that, it is a far cry from many out-of-date, poorly designed governmental web sites I have seen and used in the past. 

A notice in bold type at the top of the site caught my eye.  The notice listed various times when the online application would be unavailable.  At least the times were defined.  What struck me was this vague warning:  “Between Saturday evening, November 9 and early morning Tuesday, November 12, there will be times when … you will need to return on Tuesday afternoon to review and submit [your application].”  I interpreted this to mean that there was a strong possibility that I would be able to fill everything out but be required to return in several days to actually apply for coverage. 

With warnings like this that basically admit that all your efforts to apply may be in vain, I can see why many may be deterred from using the site.  But I decided to press forward.  I clicked on my state (Wisconsin, one of the states whose governor defaulted into the federal system) and was instructed to create an account.  I clicked on the large, blue ‘create account’ button at the top of the screen and….nothing happened.  The button gave the impression of being clicked (it turned gray and appeared to be depressing when I clicked on the mouse) but did not take me to an account page.  I continued to click for approximately five minutes to no avail.  I returned 30 minutes later, then an hour later, then two, and was still unable to create an account. 

So in my case, even the dire warnings to the effect that I may be unable to complete my application were inaccurate.  Unable to create an account, I was unable to even begin the process.  This was even worse than what I expected when I set out to enroll.  What I’d expected (and hoped) was to be able to finish the process, see my options, but be required to come back at a later date to actually enroll in coverage.  I plan to return to the site in the coming days, as I’m sure this is no doubt a temporary problem. 

I do have some sympathy with the designers of the site.  It is clearly a massive undertaking and very complex.  It has to account for a large number of individual variations including, for example, providing different sites and systems depending on which state the applicant is from. 

In the interest of fairness, I should note that the site also provides the option of applying by phone instead of online, meaning presumably that even with the site’s dysfunction people who call should still be able to enroll (I didn’t try this option).

I am optimistic that all the assurances we’ve heard will come true: that the site will eventually be fixed and everyone who wants to will ultimately be able to enroll.  What is unfortunate is the deterrence.  Obamacare needs people to enroll to be successful.  The site’s problems may very well deter the very populations they need for success: those, like me, who are relatively young and healthy but who want coverage to assuage that nagging doubt at the back of their mind that they could be ruined by an unplanned illness.  It is this sector of the population, raised on the internet and the flawless workings of Amazon.com, who will be least sympathetic to the failures of the site. 

The problems discredit what in many respects is a good and noble program to fix a broken market.  As an uninsured American I support Obamacare and hope that the site’s defects will ultimately be resolved.  But Obamacare now has a black eye that will be hard to overcome.  In addition, the problems harden a stereotype harbored by many in the population that if, given the chance, the government will invariably screw things up. 

There were many who wanted Obamacare to fail, and this unfortunate, unnecessary screw-up provided them with the ammunition – the proof – they craved.