Okay.  I'll try to keep this from being too much of a rant, but the truth is, I hate Daylight Savings time.  I hate it most here in the United States.  I may not like it much in other countries, but the US version makes no sense at all. 

Of course I know all the arguments in favor of Daylight Savings time.  It saves energy.  It helps tourism and leisure businesses as people stay out playing later.  It reduces car accidents during later commute hours.

But did you know that more people die of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents in the days after a time change?  How about the fact that kids have to go to school in the dark, or that early commuters have more accidents.  Worse, here in the US, the 2007 change that took us out of step with most of the rest  of the modern world actually reduced the energy savings we had before. 

Daylight savings time has been around a long time.  Ben Franklin is often credited with the idea, but from what I've read, this was from an article joking that Parisians could benefit from getting up earlier.   It didn't get officially implemented until over a century later.  Most of modern Europe adopted it in 1916 and the US quickly followed suit, matching the times of year for turning your clock forward and back.  During World War II, the US went on War Time - Daylight Savings Time ran year-round. 

In the 1960's the US and most of the Europe coordinated their Daylight Savings time.  If you're going to have it, this makes sense. 

But then in 2007, the US decided to advance the change in the spring by 3 weeks and delay the return to Standard Time in the fall by a week.  I wasn't happy with the idea before, but this just seemed insane. 

First, it took us out of step with the rest of the world.  And of course it meant that more kids had to go to school in the dark for longer in the year.  The US Department of Energy conducted a study that showed this change had ZERO benefit, and subsequent studies proved that although a trivial amount of energy for light was conserved, there was a substantial increase in the demand for heating, far offsetting any potential benefit. 

I know, I'm biased.  I'm an early riser and like to be in the surf at sunrise.  I hate the fact that in March, I can't get in the water at 6am.  But what really gets me about Daylight Savings time is how illogically it's implemented. 

Let's think about this in terms of its goal - to take more advantage of daylight hours.  Sure, near the summer, particularly in northern latitudes, it makes sense.  Very few people get up at 4:30 in the morning, so why not make the sunrise 5:30am and give us more light in the evening.  I get it. 

But in Winter?  As far as I know, it's still winter. 

Look, if we're going to have Daylight Savings time, it should be symmetric with respect to the solstice.  The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and the summer solstice is the longest day of the year.  Right now, we start Daylight Savings Time about 10 weeks after the winter solstice.  Europe starts 3 weeks later.  We end Daylight Savings Time about 6 weeks before the winter solstice.  This is crazy.  If it was too dark to start Daylight Savings less than 10 weeks from the darkest day, why would you wait to end it until 6 weeks before the darkest day? 

I heard one argument that the US extended the ending date to make it more light for kids on Halloween.  Who goes out trick or treating when it's light? 

Aside from the loss of early surf sessions and the confusion working with other countries caused by the inconsistent time changes in the US, the lack of any proven benefit to that 2007 change, and the studies that show it has actually caused harm, suggest to me that we should at least go back to the policy from before 2007, or better yet, revisit the whole idea of Daylight Savings Time.

Writing a novel is supposed to be creative and cathartic.  It's the ultimate expression of great stories through your ideas, emotions, and deep thoughts framed with human drama and moments of humor.  But getting from that first blank page to a work of 300 or more pages is intimidating, even if you've done it before.

When I started my first novel,  The Silicon Lathe, I knew I wanted to tell a semi-autobiographical tale of my life as a young entrepreneur starting out in the Silicon Valley.  After a long career filled with my experiences  of  innovation, creativity, and altruism confronting ambition, greed, manipulation, and downright evil, I knew I had more than enough material for a novel, probably several.  Wherever there's money to be made you will find the best and the worst in people. 

And I was lucky.  Since the novel is about the history of the Silicon Valley, I could just start at the beginning of my career and finish at the end.  To bring the proper context to the reader, I took the logical approach of opening each section with the year's global events.  It was easy to put together a simple outline for the book. 

When I wanted to add sections about extreme sports and juxtapose them with the challenges, successes and failures, all I had to do was insert them in the proper places. 

My second novel, Ethics (unpublished), was a cathartic book.  I started by writing the first and last chapters, then worked from back to front to fill in an outline.   I poured my heart into the novel  and often found myself writing long emotional diatribes.  My early readers pointed out that I'd gone a little far with most of these and suggested some trimming or perhaps more accurately, some serious clear cutting.  But with the outline, this clean up was easy to do and Ethics is arguably my best work to date. 

With The Shadow of God, an outline was essential.  This was my first foray into the mystery/psychological thriller genre.  Imagery was a key part to very subtle foreshadowing as were the clues that I dropped in each section.  As the San Francisco Book Reviewer said:

"Jackowski lays out the information in such a way that everything is in place long before you discover it. This is a very smart book, perfect for both readers who like to try to solve the crime before the characters do and readers who love to reread mysteries to see all the hints early on."

The outline enabled me to decide where to put the clues and even to move them around when I made organizational revisions.   Even better, when I was well into the book and wrote something that required corresponding changes earlier on, those places in the book were easier to find using the outline - certainly easier than searching for key words or reading for situations whose locations I couldn't quite remember months later. 

Unfortunately, in my latest novel, I decided to try to write it without an outline.  It hasn't gone well.  I've written sections to introduce each of the main characters, have set up several ominous situations, have laid down hints to start leading the reader astray, but the fact is, since I'm not sure where I'm going, it's kind of hard to bring the reader along.  I find that I have too many options.  I start down a path, then backtrack or second guess myself.  It has taken me far longer to get less than 25% done than it did to write an entire outlined novel.  I'm starting over with an outline and will refine it to a couple of levels before I start continue writing this book. 

What I've learned is that outlining is not just an organizational tool.  It forces you to think through your story and to make decisions so that when you're heads down, you know where you've got to get to.  Even better, when you hit a block on a particular subject or character, you can just decide to write a different section and come back to the difficult one when you're ready.  

Unlike a building, where you need to lay the foundation before getting into the heavy construction, as a writer, if you have an outline as your plan, you have the freedom to construct the story and then to come back to lay that foundation with clues and foreshadowing.  

For me, the outline is my safety net.  I won't write without one again.