Sunday, January 31, 2016

To whom it may concern

Nova Ren Suma has a lot to say about the long hard journey to finding your place, and it's inspirational in its own right; I recommend reading the whole thing. But I wanted to riff here on one particular line, which isn't the main focus of her post: "I was much better at blogging (and had more readers!) when I was angsty and unpublished and wanting to drown a box of rejection letters in the sea."

I think a lot of factors have contributed to decreases in blog readership generally over the past few years, most of it involving the wearing-off of novelty and the proliferation of new social media platforms. Yet I have noticed that, as Nova Ren Suma said, there are bloggers who blog more when they're having difficulties, just as I tended to keep a diary during the worst times in my life, the times when I most needed to vent.

I also notice, and I think many of us do, that some blog posts that draw the biggest response are those in which we openly discuss our problems. This is probably because people respond to honesty, are relieved not to be alone in their own pain, and/or want to reach out in comfort when they see someone suffering.

All this is making me think about online presence, what it is and what it's for. It can be promotion and marketing; it can be a performance. It can be the simple desire for communication, the establishment or continuation of a community. It can serve as a vent. It can be a mixture.

I started this blog because I wanted to talk about writing, and I didn't know many writers IRL. I loved the idea of having my own little platform out here in the world, for whoever cares to stop by. I suppose I've continued it for the same reason, which is also the same reason I write in general. It's even better when there is an exchange, when someone comments, but I keep on writing regardless.

I'm doing a lot of writing for myself lately, which is why I've been blogging a bit less than formerly, but I'm still here. Still reading blogs, too.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The redo loop

I posted at YA Outside the Lines about redoing, and when to stop redoing. (The theme for the month is "do-overs.") I reminisced about the olden days, when editing a manuscript--and especially retyping it--was technically more difficult than it is now, and discussed where the comparative ease of revision can take us. I'm grateful that computers make multiple revisions and major rewrites easier, but it's also possible to have too many options.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Making room

I continued some decluttering this weekend by reviewing my TBR list. This is distinct from my TBR pile, which is a stack (OK, technically it's multiple stacks) of books I already own and do want to read, but--later. Either I'm not in the mood for them right now, or I'm already reading something else.

The TBR list is a list of books I want to read, but that I will have to buy or borrow. I have a notation for each book: available in my library's system, or not? If it's not in the library system, I'll have to buy it. When I'm ready to get new library books, or to make a trip to the bookstore, I consult this list.

The list has more than 250 books on it. At the rate I've been reading, that's almost three years' worth, and I keep adding to it. And, of course, there is the TBR pile here at home, and the books I receive as gifts, and my rereading habit.

So I've started weeding that list. I'm letting go of books that I added impulsively, those that are not in my library's system and for which I can't even find a sample online to tell me whether they're worth buying, and those that I want to want to read more than I actually want to read them (if you can follow that).

The books on this list may not have been taking up any physical space, but they were taking up some mental energy, even if just a small amount. I continue my quest to free up space, and time, and energy.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Librarian appreciation

Today I had to get a piece of information--an equation, to be specific--from a document.
Someone had sent me an html version of the document, but all graphics were stripped out of it, and that included the very equation I needed.
Once upon a time, I could have gone to the shelf, pulled down a paper copy of this document, and looked it up in two seconds. But we don't keep paper copies anymore.
I decided to look it up online; I knew the host site generally has both pdf and html versions.
The website was down. For ten minutes I waited for the blasted thing to load, and it never did.
I tried to find the document on other sites. My searches were fruitless, even though I had very specific information to narrow them.
I then checked the microfilm in the library, since I knew that this publication had been stored that way up to a certain date.
The microfilm versions ended just three months before the date of the document I needed.
The librarian checked another source that she thought might have the document, but it didn't.
Finally, the librarian was able to find a PDF version somewhere. I don't know where. Librarians are always performing that kind of magic.
I love the internet, but it is a very big place. It's a graveyard of broken links. You don't always know where to look. Sites go down, sites disappear.
I think of school administrators who have cut librarians (and even libraries) because "we have the internet now."
Yeah, good luck with that.

Sunday, January 17, 2016


A couple of useful quotes:

"We fear disturbance, change, fear to bring to light and to talk about what is painful. Suffering often feels like failure, but it is actually the door into growth. And growth does not cease to be painful at any age."
--May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

"... if you spent most of the morning reading Twitter and then scribbling weird, indecipherable notes to yourself on your arm then you are probably on the right track to becoming a successful artist. Or to being homeless. Those things aren't mutually exclusive."
--Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy

And Becky Ramsey has a great blog on the perils of perfectionism.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

The missing ingredient

I was thinking about movies that should be better than they are. You probably know the ones I'm talking about: they have a great cast, a good director, a solid premise. And they're terrible. Sometimes you catch them on late-night or weekend TV. Seeing the big names in the credits, you think, "Wow, why haven't I heard of this movie before?" And ten minutes in, you think: "Oh. This is why."

It reminds me that creative work isn't just a matter of formulas and recipes. There certainly are formulas if you want them. Often, they even work. And yet, these should-have-worked-but-didn't movies show that you can have all the right ingredients, and the product still doesn't work. You can follow the formula and find there's still something missing.

Years ago, I heard a radio story about some people who attempted to find a formula for hit songs. In the process, they also discovered what elements people hated in songs. They used this information to create two songs: one that sounded like a generic pop hit, the other a crazy mishmash of unpopular elements. And yet, the second song was more interesting.

There is some spark we look for in creative work, something difficult to define. Maybe it's passion, or belief, or honesty, or freshness. Maybe it's inexpressible.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Trial and error

I've been thinking about mistakes and wrong turns, how much they're a part of writing (and life), and how sometimes the wrong turn becomes the right road. So much good work seems to be a product of trial and error. Julia Forster even has a guest post on Nathan Bransford's blog to that effect. She calls it "How Not to Write a Novel" but maybe that is how to write a novel, or anything else: exploring, testing, failing.

When keeping scientific records, you don't erase or delete mistakes. You strike them with a single line and write the correction nearby. Sometimes it becomes important to know what was written originally, so the single line is used to keep the original legible. "We went that way, but turned around," it says.

We're all just finding our way. A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it's not necessarily the most interesting route.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

M Train

I'm reading M Train, by Patti Smith. What I like most is the way she treats ordinary days and small events as significant, meaningful. She pays attention; she finds layers and connections in everything. Small objects lead to big ideas. And suddenly walking to a cafe for a cup of coffee and a piece of toast becomes an adventure, the way it is when you're traveling and every detail is new and interesting. Since I've been reading this book, I have also been looking at my own familiar world with the eyes of a traveler, an adventurer.

She's also a good example of following your heart. Many times in the book, she does thinks that make no sense from a practical point of view--buys a ramshackle house, gives all the money in her pocket to a stranger simply because he says so, travels across Mexico in the hope of writing a tribute to coffee--just because they make her happy, or they feel to her like the thing to do at the moment. We give a lot of lip service to following your heart and living in the moment and knowing that money isn't everything, but how often do we actually live that way? It feels like a revelation to be reminded it is possible to live that way, to take risks and seek magic, to answer to the voice inside instead of all the external voices of other people's expectations.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Fresh starts

The divisions we apply to our days, the separations that we call "months" and "years," are to some extent arbitrary. They are partly based on our relationship to the sun and moon, but the month that we call the "beginning" of the year is arbitrary.

Nevertheless, there are some psychological benefits to our practice of turning a calendar page and starting a shiny new year with a fresh clean page. If there are any patterns we've been stuck in, any useless baggage we've been clinging to, this may be a good time to make a break. It doesn't hurt to reflect on where we are and what we need, what changes we'd like to make, where we'd like to go next.

Here's to a new year, new eyes, new purpose.

Friday, January 1, 2016

Change is in the air

2015 was a year of big change for me.
Most of the changes were not external. I did not move, nor change day jobs. My relationship with my significant other did not change. There were no births or deaths within my immediate inner circle.
Yet internally, there were earthquakes. I'm a planner, goal-oriented, organized. For years, I have given my time and energy to certain goals and activities. Sometimes my progress was fast and usually it was slow, but I kept moving forward and I never doubted what I wanted or where I was going.
In the past year or so, that turned upside down.

One of the amazing things I've found within the writing community is that many of us go through the same things at the same time. I was blessed to experience the excitement of my debut-novel year with other debut novelists. When I was having second-book doubts, I had other sophomore novelists with whom to compare notes. When I suffered a period of burnout, I found I wasn't alone there either.
During the past year, I've been reassessing my goals and commitments, and trying to figure out what's next for me. It's not just a case of trying to figure out a new road to reach longstanding goals. I've reached some of my goals, and others I'm not so sure I want to pursue anymore. It's the goals themselves that I'm questioning.
And then I see this post from Becky Levine in which she says, "I’ve been feeling as though my antennae are out, [scanning] ... for the next big thing on my Life’s To Do list." And I see this post from Natalie Whipple on a much rougher change in direction, a post in which she says, "It's funny, how you can accomplish all your goals ... and yet not have any of the expected results." And this from Jody Casella on letting go and making changes, in which she says, "Shedding stuff from my house had a weird ripple effect. Once you shine a spotlight on things you've had for years and ask yourself: Do I need this? Do I want it? Really? You might find that everything, potentially, is a candidate for the recycle bin."
Change is in the air: good, bad, and in between.

I do want to acknowledge that there were a couple of external changes that also had an impact: some health challenges which are still ongoing, and a change in one of my closest friendships, in which my friend has had to step back to deal with her own health challenges. I've had to face the fact that time and energy are not inexhaustible, and so my incentive to spend them wisely is even greater than before.

I don't know what this new year will bring. I have more unknowns in my future than I've had for a long time. But I'm starting to see this as an opportunity, and I've also been reassured to remember that I'm far from the first to undergo a time of upheaval, reassessment, and exploration.

May we all have a good year, wherever it takes us.