Perhaps, dear writerly reader, you have heard of Freedom, the app that blocks the Internet so you can focus on your writing (or whatever offline task). It is not cheap; prices have gone up more than a smidge (ayyyy!) since I purchased it some years ago for a mere USD 10. Nope, I don’t use it. End of review.
[UPDATE: As of March 2019 I use the latest version of the Freedom app and can recommend it. I plan to post about my experience with the Freedom app on one of the second Monday of the month workshop posts in 2021.]
Of course, a more economical alternative for
those who work at home would be to simply switch off the wi-fi signal.
But never mind, there you are, glued to your
computer, same screen, same keyboard, same desk, same chair, and whether
you’re using the Freedom app or you’ve turned off the wi-fi signal, either can
be reversed (that is, the Freedom app turned off, or the wi-fi switched back
on) in a matter of the slight inconvenience of a moment. Staying off-line when
you’re working on a computer is akin to trying to diet with an open box of
chocolates within reach! As they say, Don’t think about the pink
elephant. Or, elephant-shaped chocolates with a cherry in the
middle! Or, for a more au courant Internetesque analogy, Don’t think about
cats! And certainly not cats wearing hats!
YE OLDE NONELECTRIC TYPEWRITER
Yet another strategy for diminishing the pull of
the Internet, at least for some writers some of the time, would be to get up
from the computer, aka the distraction machine, and hie thee over to ye
olde typewriter.
My typewriter went to Goodwill years ago. But
now, with a book to complete, I am seriously considering going back to using a
typewriter. I am old enough to remember typing up my papers for school and
college, that satisfying clackety-clack and the little ding at the end
of the right margin… The calm. The focus.
Speaking of analogerie, I am also, as those of you who follow this blog well know, massively, as in an-entire-parade-ground-filled-with-dancing-pink-elephants-and-cats-in-hats-all- under-a-rain-of-chocolates, massively, relieved to have deactivated my Facebook account. That was back in August of 2015. Yes indeed, having eliminated that particular bungee-pull to the Internet, I have gotten a lot more writing done, and I am answering my email in a more consistently timely manner.
So, typewriters. I spent an afternoon of the
Thanksgiving weekend doing some Internet research. Herewith:
WHERE TO FIND A GOOD OLD (AND MAYBE REALLY OLD)
NONELECTRIC TYPEWRITER
Why nonelectric? It might be nice to type in the
tipi! But also, it seems that some of the best workhorse typewriters are
nonelectrics made back in the mid-20th century. The only nonelectric
typewriters currently being manufactured are from China and although cheap,
they’re crap, so if a nonelectric typewriter is what you want, think
vintage.
For a rundown on vintage brands and models, both
nonelectric and electric, Polt’s The Typewriter Revolution is an
excellent resource. On his website Polt also maintains a list of
typewriter repair shops.
You could start combing through the cheapie
listings on EBay
and Goodwill,
and if you have the time and can stand the skanky vibes, peruse the stalls in
your local flea market. You might even grab a typewriter for free– perhaps the
one gathering cobwebs in your parents’ garage…
But it seems to me that, if you want to start
typing ASAP on a good vintage machine, the best strategy would be to shell out
the clams to a dealer who specializes in refurbishing or
“reconditioning” quality typewriters, and who offers his or her
customers a guarantee. I should think you would also want to confirm that it
will be possible to source ribbons.
UPDATE: Behold! My 1961 Hermes 3000 Pica from Typewriter Techs
A few US dealers who look like promising
possibilities:
Olivers By Bee Oliver Typewriters Manufactured from 1890-1930s. An Etsy shop for antique typewriters.
Edited transcript of remarks by C.M. Mayo for the Panel on “Writing Across Borders and Cultures,” Women Writing the West Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 15, 2016
How many of you have been to Mexico? Well, viva México! Here we are in New Mexico, Nuevo México. On this panel, with Dawn Wink and Kathryn Ferguson, it seems we are all about Mexico. I write both fiction and nonfiction, most of it about Mexico because that is where I have been living for most of my adult life— that is, the past 30 years— married to a Mexican and living in Mexico City.
But in this talk I would like to put on my sombrero, as it were, as an historical novelist, and although my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, is about Mexico, I don’t want to talk so much about Mexico as I do five simple, powerful techniques that have helped me, and that I hope will help you to see as an artist and write across borders.
I start with the premise that truth is beauty and beauty is truth, and that seeing clearly, seeing as an artist, is what brings us towards truth.
My second premise is that through narrative we become more human—and that sure beats the alternative.
My third premise is that writing about anyone else, anywhere, is to some degree writing across a border. The past is a border. Religion is a border. Gender is a border. Social class is a border. Language. Physical conditions— people who have peanut allergies are different than people who do not have peanut allergies.
“writing about anyone else, anywhere, is to some degree writing across a border”
THE CHALLENGE
The challenge is this: As Walter Lippman put it, “For the most part we do not first see and then define, we define first and then see.” And I would agree with Lippman that in our culture, for the most part, and of course, with oodles of exceptions, we are not educated to see, then define. Ironically, the more educated we are, the more we as literary artists may have something to overcome in this respect.
The poet e.e. cummings put it this way: “An artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.”
Betty Edwards, the artist who wrote Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, calls seeing as an artist “a different, more direct kind of seeing. The brain’s editing is somehow put on hold, thereby permitting one to see more fully and perhaps more realistically.”
How many of you are familar with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain?
How many of you have tried that exercise where you take a black and white photograph of a face, turn it upside down, and copy it?
Turning the picture upside down tricks your brain to get past the labels of that is a nose, or, say, that is an eyelid, a wrinkle, a cheek… You are just drawing what you actually see, this weird jumble of shapes and shadows.
You turn it right side side up and, wow… it’s Albert Einstein!
And why is seeing this way, seeing as an artist so important? Because if we as writers cannot see as artists, with that wide open, innocent sense of attention and wonder that would see first, and then, maybe, define, whether we are writing about a Mexican or a Korean ballet dancer or a Texas cowboy or the old lady who died in the house next door one hundred years ago— whomever we are writing about, if we cannot see that human being with the eyes of an artist, our writing about them will not be fresh, it will be fuzzy, blunt, stale, peculiarly distorted. In a word: stereotypical.
It will be distorted in the same way that people who do not know how to draw will make the eyes too big, the foreheads too small, and ignore most of the shadows—the face they draw looks like a cartoon, not the way the face actually looks, because the left side of their brain was busy labeling things.
Seeing as an artist, on the other hand, is seeing without filters. Radical seeing. For us as writers this means seeing without prejudice, without bias, without the… shall we say, enduring presumptions.
It is, to quote the artist Betty Edwards again, “an altered state of awareness.” And “This shift to an altered state enables you to see well.”
So how do we get to that altered state? And then see?
FIVE TECHNIQUES FOR RADICAL SEEING
Technique #1 It starts with slowing down, being here now, in your body. Breathe in and breathe out, slowly, keeping your attention on following each breath, in and out. In and out. Five to 10 of these usually works just fine. If you’re really stressed out and distracted, maybe more. Whatever works for you.
Technique #2 This quiets the so-called “monkey mind.” Using a pen and paper, and using the present tense—using the present tense is key—simply writing down what you want to set aside for the duration of your writing session.
I write:
For now I’m not going to worry that The phone might ring. I am concerned that the front tire of my car looks low. I am worried that so and so will say thus and such…
Whatever. You just write them down and set them aside. And because you are writing them down, no worries, they will be there for you when you need to pick them up again.
Really, it is that simple. And incredibly powerful.
Now to actually seeing as an artist. I think of it as adopting the mindset of a four year old child. A four year old is old enough to speak and maybe even read and write a little bit, but young enough to have no presumption, no bias, no definitions, no worry about time, no social status to defend. No need to be “cool.” It’s just, you’re four and you’re noticing things, playfully. Innocently. Dangerously. Like that little boy who asked, Why isn’t the emperor wearing any clothes?
So we can start noticing things. Like, ooooh, the person sitting next to us.
What is the shape of her hair?
What’s on her left hand?
If you could touch her sleeve what would it probably feel like?
Other people may inform us that a wall is, say, pink. But if we can see as an artist, get past all the filters, we will see that the wall is cotton candy pink, over there. Down in the corner, away from the window, it might be more of an ash rose. Over there, where it catches the glow from the reflection, it’s a salmon pink. Up near the ceiling light, almost white. It’s gray, it’s lavender. That wall might have hundreds of different colors.
“The uniformity of the wall’s color is a social fact, and what I perceive, in every day life, seems to be such social facts, rather than the facts of optics… To perceive the wall as variously colored, I have to suspend my normal socially informed mode of perception. This is what an artist does.”
Other people may inform us about other people, such as, say, Mexicans. Mexicans are like this or, Mexicans are like that. But if we can see as an artist, we may see something, someone who does not fit into, shall we say, the enduring presumptions.
Such as Maximilian von Habsburg.
Maximilian von Habsburg
Speaking of emperors, Maximilian wore some very nice clothes. Beautifully tailored suits and uniforms.
Who has heard of Maximilian?
Most Mexicans will tell you that Maximilian was not Mexican, that he was Austrian, he was the Archduke of Austria, he was a puppet monarch imposed by the French Imperial Army. But at the time Maximilian died, executed in Mexico by firing squad in 1867, there were many Mexican monarchists, a minority of Mexicans certainly, but many, who considered Maximilian Mexican, as he did himself—he considered himself the mystical embodiment of his people, his subjects, the Mexicans.
His skin was very pale and he had this down-to-here red beard. As you might recall, the Habsburgs had once ruled Spain. So to Louis Napoleon and the Mexican monarchists, for the throne of Mexico, Maximilian seemed a logical and very apt choice. And the Pope thought so, too, by the way.
Technique #3 Do your reading and research, and I could talk for an hour or more just about reading and research…archives and handwriting and photographs and newspaper clippings… but the clock is ticking.
One thing I would urge you to consider is to read for perspectives outside your comfort zone. For example, I am the last person who would pick up the memoir of Princess Di’s butler. But in fact, that memoir, Paul Burrell’s A Royal Duty, as well as many other dishy English and European palace memoirs that have oozed out over the past couple of centuries, helped me see palace life in ways I might not have been able to otherwise—to crack its brittle surface of glamour and glimpse some of those oh-so-very human beings.
Technique #4 Always, always question the source. You might be surprised— I certainly was— by how many “facts” rendered in standard histories turn out to have originated in wartime propaganda or were complete fictions tossed off by political enemies. Whenever someone says something about someone, ask, what was their aim? What was the information they had at the time? Their biases? And what were their incentives?
Finally:
Technique #5 Visit relevant places, if you can, always trying to see them from the point of view of your characters. When you’re there, put yourself in their shoes. You may or may not have sympathy for them, but your artist’s imagination, your artist’s eye, must.
MAXIMILIAN’S POV
I’d like to end with a brief reading from the novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, from a flashback in Maximilian’s point of view.
When he was a twelve year-old boy, there was a distinct moment of a gray winter’s day in the Hofburg when he looked up from his schoolwork, the endless hieroglyphics of trigonometry, and caught sight of his reflection in the window. Four o’clock and it was nearly dark outside. He had been horrified: how old he looked. The life drained out of him! In a whisper that neither his older brother Franz Joseph nor their tutor could hear, he solemnly swore: I shall not forget who I truly am.
Adults, it seemed to Max, were as butterflies in reverse: they too, had been beautiful and free, but they had folded in their wings, cocooned themselves, and let their appendages dissolve until what they became was hard, ridged, little worms. One’s tutor, for example, reminded one of a nematode.
Twiddling concern with numbers, “practicality” in all its Philistine guises makes Maximilian stupendously bored. He needs vistas of sky, mountains, swift-running, sun-sparkled water; he needs— as a normal man must eat— to explore this world, to see, to touch its sibylline treasures: hummingbirds. The red-as-blood breast of a macaw. The furred and light-as-a-feather legs of a tarantula. God in all His guises: mushrooms, lichens, all creatures. As a boy, Max had delighted in his menagerie: a marmoset, a toucan, a lemur. The lemur had escaped, and left outside overnight, it had died of the cold. A footman had opened the door in the morning, and there the thing was, dusted with snow and stiff as cardboard.
“I detest winter,” Max had declared. Franz Joseph, Charlie, and the little brothers, bundled in woollens and furs, they could go ice-skating or build fortresses for snow-ball fights; Max preferred to stay inside with his pets, his books, and the stoves roaring. The one thing he relished about winter, for it was a most elegant way of thumbing his nose at it, was to go into the Bergl Zimmer and shut the door behind him. Its walls and its doors were painted with murals, trompe l’oeil of the most luxuriant flora and fauna: watermelons, papayas, cockatoos, coconut trees, hibiscus. Where was this, Ceylon? Java? Yucatan? Sleet could be falling on the other side of the Hofburg’s windows, but this treasure of the Bergl Zimmer, painted in the year 1760 for his great-great-grandmother the Empress Maria Theresa, never failed to transport one into an ecstasy of enchantment.
Mexicans, walls, in the news. Couldn’t resist.
So in this excerpt I am writing across multitudinous borders and cultures: about a man, when I am a woman; about an Austrian turned Mexican, when I was born in Texas and grew up in the suburbs of California, then moved to Mexico, remaining a legal resident, not a Mexican citizen; someone whose native language was German, when mine is English; one of Europe’s highest ranking aristocrats, when I have no title nor did any ancestor I know of; someone who was born more than a century before myself; furthermore, someone whose personality, religious beliefs, political values, pastimes, intellectual interests and aesthetics were all dramatically different than my own.
Did I get Maximilian “right”? I don’t know. There is no triple-certified committee of quadruple-authorized red-bearded blue-blooded Austrian-Mexican monarchist-Catholic-sailing-and-botany-enthusiasts to tell us. And even if Maximilian himself were available to provide feedback by means of time travel or, say, a credible séance, would that Maximilian, plucked out of 1866 or disembodied orb of some 150 years of floating about the astral, have the self-awareness, confidence, and good will to communicate to us a valid yea or nay?
What I do know is that what I wrote, that bit I just read to you, is the product of my applying these five techniques, including heaps of reading, archival research, and a visit to Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, and however good it may or may not be— let the gods and the reader decide— it is a mammoth stretch beyond what I could come up with in my first drafts.
EMPATHY
The stretch is towards empathy. But be careful: Empathy is not the same as sympathy. I do not have sympathy for Maximilian von Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and so-called Emperor of Mexico and all that he represented and fought for; but for Maximilian the human being, I do have empathy. That empathy was something I achieved because I wanted to see him.
“Recognizing the reality of another’s existence is the imaginative leap that is the birth of empathy, a word invented by a psychologist interested in visual art. The word is only slightly more than a century old, though the words sympathy, kindness, pity, compassion, fellow-feeling, and others covered the same general ground before Edward Titchener coined it in 1909. It was a translation of the German word Einfühlung, or feeling into, as though the feeling itself reached out… Empathy is a journey you travel, if you pay attention, if you care, if you desire to do so.”
In other words, such seeing takes heart and the writing that results is a journey of the heart, both for the writer and for the reader— although the latter may not choose, or perhaps may not be able to take such a journey. One can proffer “the pearls of the Virgin,” as they say in Mexico, and there will always be unhappy souls who loudly proclaim that they do not like hard little white things.
In the spirit of seeing past stereotypes, I would like to leave you with a quote not from an artist nor a beloved poet nor an esteemed literary writer but a Harvard Business School Professor of Marketing. In her wise and provocative Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd, Professor Youngme Moon writes, “Wherever you go, what matters less is what you are looking at, but how you have committed to see.”
This blog posts on Mondays. As of 2019 the second Monday of the month is devoted to myworkshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. (You can find my workshop schedule and many more resources for writers on my workshop page.)
Wherever there be a parade of people, there’s an opportunity for a writerly exercise. This is a quick and easy one, or rather, five. The idea is to look– using your artist’s eye, really look at individuals and come up with two words (or 3 or 4 or 7) to describe them.
Yep, it is that easy.
It helps to write the words down, but just saying them silently to yourself is fine, too. The point is to train your brain to pay attention to detail and generate original descriptions. This helps your writing reach beyond stereotypes (e.g., she was a short Asian woman or, he was a tall black man, or she was a blonde— and other such staples of workshop manuscripts) and so offer your reader something more original, more memorable, and definitively more vivid. “The vivid dream,” that’s what it’s all about.
So, there you are in the airport and, as some random person walks by:
1. Come up with one word to describe the shape of this person’s hair; a second word (or two) for the color of his or her shoes, naming a food item of that same color. For example:
knife-like; chocolate pudding
Now I have the raw material to string together a brief but extra-vivid description, for example:
She wore a knife-like bob and slippers the color of chocolate pudding
Again, find one word for the shape of the hair, and one word for the color of the shoes, referring to a food item.
curve; pork sausages
His head was a curve of curls and he wore pinkish clogs, a pink that made me think of pork sausages
sumptuous; cinnamon candy
She had a sumptuous Afro and sandals the red of cinnamon candy
stubbly; skinned trout
He had stubbly hair and tennis shoes the beige-white of skinned trout.
(Is “stubbly” a shape? Oh well! Don’t tell anybody.)
By the way, it doesn’t matter if the words you come up with are any good or even apt; the point is to practice coming up with them. (Why the color of a food item for the color of the shoes? Welllll, why not? Make it the color of some sand or rock, whydoncha.)
2. Is this person carrying anything? If so, describe it with one adjective plus one noun, e.g.:
fat purse
She carried a fat purse
lumpy briefcase
He leaned slightly to the left from the weight of a lumpy briefcase
crumpled bag
She clutched a crumpled bag
Dixie cup
On his palm he balanced a Dixie cup
3. Gait and gaze
loping; fixed to the ground
He had a loping gait, eyes fixed to the ground
shuffling; bright
She had a shuffling gait but bright eyes
brisk; dreamy
Her walk was brisk, her gaze dreamy.
tiptoe; squinting
She seemed to tiptoe, she was squinting at the monitor
4. Age range
older than 10, younger than 14
perhaps older than 20
I would believe 112
obviously in her seventies, never mind the taut smile
5. Jewelry?Tattoos?
a gold watch; a silver skull ring
feather earrings; a toe ring
eyebrow stud; hoop earrings
a wedding band on the wrong finger; an elephant hair bracelet
So with the benefit of this wild mélange, here’s what I came up with for a fictional character:
She wore a knife-like bob and slippers the color of chocolate pudding. She carried a fat purse. Her walk was brisk, her gaze dreamy. Perhaps she was older than twenty. She had a wedding band on the wrong finger and an elephant hair bracelet.
Hmmm, maybe that’s the opening for a story. Or something.
By the way, if you’re stuck standing around in an airport, or some such place / situation, these little exercises, silly as they may seem, are better for your writing game than ye olde pulling out the smartphone. The former trains your brain to do what a writer naturally does. The latter gives you the shallows, and so makes the former even more difficult.
Find out about a must-read book, a must-read blog, and a must-watch TED Talk by Georgetown University Associate Professor of Computer Science Cal Newport, all in one handy post at his Study Hacks Blog, “Quit Social Media.”
What Newport says in that post is provocative– undoubtedly just the title will rub many people’s fur the wrong way, and no surprise, it already has many commenters a-huffing & puffing.
Here is my comment on Cal Newport’s post:
Thank you for this blog, for your TED Talk, and for your books, especially Deep Work. I am a writer with 2 finance books published under another name, plus 4 literary books, plus an anthology– all of which is to say, I understand the nature and immense benefits of deep work.
But dealing with the Internet… that has been a challenge for me over the past several years, and especially when all these shiny new social media toys seemed to be so necessary and (apparently) effective for promoting one’s books. Every publicist, marketing staff, my fellow writers, all seem slaves now to social media. I can assure you, every writers conference has a panel on book PR and social media.
For a while, at the enthusiastic urging of one of my writer-friends (by the way, a best-selling and very fine historical novelist), I maintained a Facebook page, but when I realized what a time-suck it was, and how FB made it intentionally and so deviously addictive, I deactivated my account. I had also come to recognize that people addicted to FB, as seemed to be not all but most of my “FB friends,” often as they might “like” and comment on my posts there, are probably not my readers. (My books require sustained focus; I admit, they can be challenging.) I deactivated my FB more than a year ago, and I breathe a sigh of relief about it every blessed day.
As for your book, Deep Work, much of what you say was already familiar to me from my own experience as a writer, but I appreciated the reminders, especially in light of these contemporary challenges to sustaining focus. What was especially interesting and intriguing to me was the new cognitive research you mention. Next time I teach a writing workshop you can be sure that Deep Work will be on the syllabus.
Do I miss interacting with friends and family on FB? Yes, but now I have more time for higher quality interpersonal interactions, such as, say, emails, telephone conversations, and–Land o’ Goshen!!– actually getting together in person.
However, for the record, I’m not (yet) giving up the three social media tools I still use, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, because:
(1) With LinkedIn and Twitter I appreciate having a way to contact certain individuals when email is not a workable option (nieces and nephews, you know who you are!);
(2) I appreciate the broadcast opportunity, modest as it is. Check out my YouTube channel here. As for Linked In and Twitter, usually I just zip in to tweet a blog post or a podcast, then out, and not every day;
UPDATE: Twitter, meh. Now, with the rarest of exceptions, I tweet once a month, as a courtesy to the authors who do a Q & A for Madam Mayo blog.
UPDATE Sept 2021: The world would be a better place without Twitter. As for YouTube, it has a lot to answer for its ham-handed censorship in 2020-2021. My channel is still there only because it hasn’t been a priority for me at this time to move the content to another platform.
(3) I turned off their notifications;
(4) I do not find these services addictive, as I did Facebook, hence, I am not tempted to constantly check them.
In sum, for me– and of course, this might be different for you– at this time– and no guarantees for the future– the benefits of maintaining my LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube accounts outweigh the costs.
SPEAKING OF COSTS
Speaking of costs, one of the vital arguments Cal Newport makes in Deep Work is that pointing out the benefits of utilizing any given social media tool is not enough; one must also take into full account its opportunity costs in your actual practice. Oftentimes these costs are devastating. But fear of “missing out,” fear of admitting that one could have done so much better than to have spent weeks, months, even years of precious hours agog at mindless trivia– in short, the fear and pride behind cognitive dissonance– make many otherwise highly intelligent people blind to this simplest of common-sense arguments.
One question that popped up in the comments there at Study Hacks blog was about the definition of “social media”: Does it include blogs? Ironically, since he publishes comments and on occasion responds to them, I consider Cal Newport’s “Study Hacks Blog” to be social media. I do not consider this blog, “Madam Mayo,” to be “social media,” however, because an eon ago I closed the comments section.
That said, dear thoughtful and civilized reader, your comments via email are always welcome. I invite you to write to me here.
P.S. My recommended reading lists for my writing workshops are here. You will find Cal Newport’s excellent Deep Work on my list of works on Creative Process. And you can read my review of Cal Newport’s earlier book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, here.
Photo by C.M. Mayo. Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site in Far West Texas. Confession: After I snapped this photo with my iPhone I checked my email, just to see if I could! Alas, I could.
The aim of literary travel writing was– and
remains– to bring the reader to deeply notice, that is, get out of her head
and into the world of specific sounds, smells, tastes, textures, colors, ideas,
histories, geographies, geologies… In the words of Kenneth Smith,
“You have to open space, and deepen place.”
Start with escape velocity: from wherever you
are, whoever you are in your known world, you rocket out, beyond the orbit
of ordinary life. You float around out there– there being your own
backyard or, for that matter, the island of Molokai– for a spell. Then, with a
story to tell, you splash back to earth.
Next step: craft the narrative, rendering your experience in and understanding of that time and place as vividly, as lyrically, and engagingly as possible. I’ve had plenty to say about the craft of literary travel writing; what I want to touch on here are some of the steps in the process and how they have or have not changed with the lure of digital technologies and the tsunami of the Internet.
THEN: In olden times of yore, I mean in the 1990s, when traveling in Baja California for my travel memoir Miraculous Air, I carried around a pen and bulky notebook, and a camera with so many lenses and dials that if I were to pick it up today I wouldn’t remember how to operate it. To get every raw thing down that I would need for my book, I had to scribble-scribble-scribble, and during interviews and/or at the end of a day’s driving and hiking or whatever, boy howdy, I felt like a squeezed-out sponge and my hand like an arthritic claw. Once home, I spent hours upon hours typing up my field notes. And neither film nor film processing was cheap. Such was the first step of the process.
Charlie Angell, expert guide, in the Solitario, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Far West Texas. Listen in anytime to my podcast interview with Angell here.
NOW:These days, for my book in-progress on Far West Texas, I carry a pen and a slim Moleskine to jot down this-and-that, but my main tool is my iPhone. Rather than scribble my field notes and interview notes, I simply turn on my iPhone’s dictation app and press “record” — when finished, I have a digital file. I also take loads of photos and videos. Oh yes, this is infinitely easier on me as I am traveling, and as far as the pictures and video go, the cost is zip. Once home, however, transcribing the audio field notes takes me hours upon hours, and it is exhausting.[*]
[*]Yep, I have voice recognition software but it
doesn’t work well enough– in the time it would take me to correct the
gobbledygook I might as well transcribe from scratch. I expect this to change.
For some of my podcasts I have used a transcription service, but field notes
are another matter– too detailed, too personal. Furthermore, as tedious a job
as it may be, transcribing my field notes helps me hyper-focus, recall more
details, and gain further insight.
I am the first to admit, were I to do another
literary travel memoir, while I would dictate my notes, I would need a better
strategy for getting them transcribed. So I’m working on this mid-way. Ayyy.
ON UTILIZING / PROCESSING / PUBLISHING PHOTOS
& VIDEO
THEN: Photos stayed in a box. A few ended up in the book. (Several years after the book on Baja California was published I uploaded a few to my website. You can view those here.)
NOW:Photos and videos can be amply shared on this blog, the website, Twitter, etc. A few will end up in the book, I expect.
Is this aspect of the process really that different because of the Internet? A few years ago I would have said so– I got very excited about the multimedia possibilities in ebooks. But I now believe that while our culture is increasingly oriented towards visual media, as far as books go, not much has changed, nor will it because what readers want is text.
I’ll grant that some literary travel memoirs
might offer a few more images and color images than might have been
economically feasible before. I’ll grant that ebooks can include video or links
to video. And I’ll grant that a few people may find out about and read my book
because of a photo or video they Google up on my websites. A few. Most people
surfing around the Internet don’t read books, never mind literary travel
memoir. And there is nothing new about that.
ON FINDING BOOKS
THEN: To find books on Baja California, I scoured the shelves at John Cole’s in La Jolla, El Tecolote in Todos Santos, and a very few other bookstores and libraries, including the Bancroft at UC Berkeley. I thought the bibliography on Baja California was enormous, and I ended up owning a wall of books.
NOW: Amazon!!!! Although the other day I bought a rare book about the town of Toyah on www.abebooks.com. Over the past few years I have also bought a few books from bricks-and-mortar shops including the Marfa Book Company and Front Street Books in Alpine, and more from the bookstores in various state and national parks. And I go to the always fabulosaLibrería Madero in Mexico City for out-of-print Spanish language books. I have consulted a few archives and collections… But I get most of my books from amazon.*
*I hasten to add that for research purposes I am mainly buying paperbacks and used reading-quality books, the kind I’ll take a highlighter to, not rare books. Buying rare books from amazon is not the best idea for many reasons, one of them being that the multitudinous sellers of used books oftentimes describe a book as “new” when it is actually a stamped review copy, stained, or missing a dust jacket, and so on. For quality rare books from reputable sellers, I can recommend www.abebooks.com , www.abaa.com , and www.biblio.com.
(Why am I buying so many books? Because I need to
read and consult them and, alas, I do not live anywhere near a good English
language library. And I admit, I do have a thing for rare books, especially on
the Mexican Revolution, Baja California, Mexico’s Second Empire, or Far West
Texana. Uh oh, that’s a lot.)
Bottom line: Not only is it easier to find books
now, but the bibliography on Far West Texas and Texas makes that on Baja
California look puny. Um, I think I’m going to need a new house.
Is this aspect of the process of writing a
literary travel memoir really that different because of the Internet? It would
seem so, but I’m contrasting an apple and a Durian, as it were. Baja California
is a very different subject than Far West Texas. Many of the books I found
useful on Baja California are not easy to find online, even today, while, so it
seems to me now, if I sneeze someone hands me a book on the Great State of
Lonestarlandia.
I do miss ye olde brick-and-mortar bookstores.
But I do not miss being unable to find what I was looking for.
Anyway, not every travel memoir requires such
intensive reading.
And yet another consideration– and a topic for
another blog post– is that it’s always easy to under- or over-research any
given book.
ON THE INCONVENIENT LUXURY OF BEING
INCOMMUNICADO
THEN: Traveling in remote places on the peninsula I more often than not found myself incommunicado. (Back then, many small towns in Baja California did not yet have telephones.)
NOW: Few stretches of any highway, anywhere, including the most offbeat corners Far West Texas, are without cell phone reception. Many campgrounds and all hotels, properly so-called, have wifi. Digital distractions are legion. Or, another way to put it: the digital leash stays on– unless one is willing to confront friends, colleagues, and family. That takes energy. Or, another way to put it: that takes training.
While traveling, no, I do not text, no, I do not
email (except when I fall into temptation!), and no, I do not answer my cell
phone while I am driving or possibly fending off mountain lions! Sounds easy.
Sounds curmudgeony. But for the kind of travel writing I do, trying to immerse
my consciousness in an unfamiliar place, and come back with a vivid narrative,
very necessary.
Is it really that different? Not so much as it
might appear. It has always taken a strategy plus herculean effort against
formidable economic, physical, psychological, and social pressures to protect
uninterrupted stretches of time for deep work.
>> See Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Highly recommended.
ON FINDING (NONBOOK) RESEARCH MATERIALS
THEN: If it wasn’t in a book or a paper file, usually, for all practical purposes, it didn’t exist.
NOW: Whatever, Google.* And the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas is a fabulously rich– and free- resource.
*Don’t get me started about the Maoist Muddle,
aka Wikipedia.
Is it really that different? Yes.
To take but one example, it is radically
different to be able to look at all the real estate on the Internet. I can be
sitting in Mexico City and with my iPad and surf around, looking at all these
places for sale in Far West Texas– whether a luxury ranch or a humble hunt box / trailer— I can see the
kitchen, the bedrooms, ayyy, the bathrooms… I hasten to add I am not looking
for anything in the Texas real estate market, but those listings, the
descriptions and photos, constitute a window onto a people and place– in the
not-so-distant past, this sort of at-hand detail was available only to licensed
local real estate agents.
ON ANONYMITY & KARMA
THEN: In the 90s in Baja California I talked to a lot of people who wouldn’t know me from a denizen of the fifth moon of Pluto and who would probably never learn about, never mind pick up and read my book. I found that very freeing.
Everyone will be famous for, like, 2 seconds, LOL
NOW: Still true in 2016 in Far West Texas, but almost everyone who feels moved to do so can whip out his or her smartphone and Google up my name for scads of links from my webpage to podcasts to this blog to academia.edu to LinkedIn, Twitter, blah blah blah, and all about my book on Baja California, my novel, my stories, and my book on the Mexican Revolution with the uber-crunchy title! I Google other people, too. I can follow the Twitter feed for the Food Shark in Marfa! I interview Lonn Taylor for my podcast! Lonn Taylor writes about me for the Big Bend Sentinel! Sometimes when I go out to Far West Texas I want to wear a wig and dark glasses a la Andy Warhol! But seriously, human nature hasn’t changed; most people respond very generously when asked sincere questions about their art, their business, their research, and/or their opinion, and I believe this will remain the case whether people know about my works and/or Google me or not. Moreover I expect that it will remain the case long into the future that the majority of Texans, and for that matter, denizens of the planet, will not be avidly reading literary travel memoir and couldn’t care a hula-whoop about the oeuvre of moi. (Oh well!)
Is it really that different because of the
Internet? Having published several books, one thing I do appreciate, although
my ego does not, is that books go out to a largely opaque response. You can
talk about sales numbers, “big data,” reviews, and prizes, and it
doesn’t change the fact that an author does not know when any given person is
actually reading or talking about or feeling one way or the other about his or
her book– and anyway, the readers of some books will be born long after their
authors have passed to the Great Beyond.
Still, I think it best to assume that there is
karma with a capital “K” — opaque as it may be. In other words, you
might not have to, but be prepared to live with the consequences of what you
have written. Translation: truth is beauty but cruelty is stupid.
ON DISTRACTIONS
THEN: The main distractions were the television and the telephone.
NOW: It’s the magnetic rabbit holes-o-rama of the Internet. In some ways this is more difficult for me as a writer because I use the same machine, the laptop, for writing as for research, for email, and for social media and surfing. (Oh, so that’s the problem! Well, at least I don’t watch television anymore.)
Is it really that different? Yes, because
technology really is taking us somewhere very strange,
and in some ways, for many people, smartphones are beginning to serve as an
actual appendage. But no, because since the dawn of written history we have
ample evidence that people have been tempted continually by hyper-palatable
distractions of one kind or another and have been taken advantage of by those
with the wherewithal to take advantage. Hmmmm…. religion…. slavery….
alcohol… opiates…. cigarettes…. casinos…. spectator sports…. mindless
shopping…. television… or even, as they did even back in the days of the
atl-atl, lolling around the campfire and indulging in idle & malicious
gossip…
THEN: As work progresses, I would publish an occasional article in a magazine or newspaper such as, say, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal— and I would actually get paid. I also published a number of longform essays in literary magazines. I got paid, a bit, and I treasure the beautiful copies.
NOW: Although I continue to publish in magazines, mainly I post digital media– articles on this blog, guest-blogs, and text, photos, videos and podcasts on my websites, plus I send out my emailed newsletter a few times a year. Downside: My short works make less money. Upside: publishing articles is quick, easy, and I retain control. Further upside: when people Google certain terms, they get me. For example, try “Sierra Madera Astrobleme.”
Is it really that different? Alas, yes. See Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget.
I would tell any young writer getting started today that if you want the freedom to write things you will be proud of, first find a reliable alternative income source and from there, always living below your means, build and diversify your sources of income away from the labor market. (Getting an MFA so you can teach in a creative writing program? That might have made a smidge of sense two decades ago. Now you’d be better off starting a dog grooming business, and I am not joking.) Yes, if you are brilliant, hard-working and lucky, you might one day make a good living from your creative writing. But why squander your creative energy for your best work worrying about generating income from, specifically, writing? Quality and market response only occasionally coincide. Jaw-dropping mysteries abound.
FURTHER NOTES: WHAT ELSE HASN’T CHANGED
(MUCH)?
The Call to Dive Below the Surface
One might imagine that with all the firehoses of
information available to the average traveler, literary travel writing now
needs to offer something get-out-the-scuba-gear profound. But this has been
true for decades– long before the blogosphere and Tripadvisor.com & etc.
thundered upon us.
As V.S. Naipaul writes in A Turn in the
South– waaay back in 1989:
“The land was big and varied, in parts wild. But it had nearly everywhere been made uniform and easy for the traveler. One result was that no travel book (unless the writer was writing about himself) could be only about the roads and the hotels. Such a book could have been written a hundred years ago… Such a book can still be written about certain countries in Africa, say. It is often enough for a traveler in that kind of country to say, more or less, ‘This is me here. This is me getting off the old native bus and being led by strange boys…’ This kind of traveler is not really a discoverer.”
Organizational Challenges
Another thing that has not changed is the
need to keep things organized– whether digital or paper. When I sit down
to bang out a draft and then polish (and polish & polish & polish) a
literary travel narrative, I need to constantly refer to my field notes, books,
photos and videos, so it is vital that I have these resources where I can
easily find them– and when done for the day, or with that section, that I have
a place to easily put them back (and from where I can easily retrieve them as
need be). This might sound trivial. It is not.
Here’s what works for me:
BOOKS: Shelve by category, e.g., Texas history, geology; regional; rock art, etc, using big, easy-to-read labels on the shelves;
PAPERS: File in hanging folders in a cabinet, e.g., travels by date, editorial correspondence, other alphabetical correspondence, people (as subjects), places;
PRINT-OUT OF THE MANUSCRIPT: Shelve at eye-level in a box (along with a large manila envelope for miscellaneous scraps and Post-Its).
TRANSCRIBED FIELD NOTES AND INTERVIEWS: Store in three-ring binders;
DIGITAL FILES: Save in folders on the laptop, e.g., audio by date and place, photos and video by date and place;
WEBSITES, PODCASTS, VIDEOS: For websites and etc, I often use posts on this very searchable blog as a way of filing notes that I can easily retrieve (here’s an example and here’s another and another and another and another);
Notes on Peyote, for example.
PRINT-OUT OF THE MANUSCRIPT: Shelve at eye-level in a box (along with a large manila envelope for miscellaneous scraps and Post-Its).
Sounds like I know what I’m doing! The truth is, no matter how often I declutter, books and papers tend to mushroom into unwieldy piles and ooze over any and all horizontal expanses. Piles make it easier to procrastinate. And procrastination is the Devil. I have been struggling mightily with getting my field notes transcribed. All that said, a book gets written as an elephant gets eaten– bit by bit. It’s happening. Stay tuned.
No, as an author I’m not all jumping-jacks about self-publishing— publishers can and, on many an occasion, actually do provide important added-value to a book. (My own have been published by Grijalbo-Random House Mondadori, Literal Publishing, Milkweed Editions, Planeta, Unbridled Books, University of Georgia Press, University of Utah Press, and Whereabouts Press— whew, that list is as much a testimony to the diverse genres of my books as to the tumult in the publishing industry.) But as I noted in this previous blog post, the light flashed on for me when I realized, no matter what happens with my future books, because I have self-published several ebook editions and the print-on-demand paperback, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, and because digital bookshelf space is marginal cost zero 24/7 (in other words, click, it’s in the store, and nothing digital is going out of print anytime soon), for the rest of my natural life, I will always play some role, whether large or minuscule, as my own publisher. And towards that end, I realized, it would behoove me to figure out, or rather, continue trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing. Over the past few years, for my imprint, Dancing Chiva, I’ve explored my way around a good part of this newfangled digital labyrinth (PODs, Kindles, iBooks). But of course, there is always more to learn; publishing is a fast-changing game.
Ergo, I signed up for the Independent Book Publishers Association’s 2 day 2015 seminar “Publishing University”. It was, in two words, Austinesquely fabulastic.
Herewith— may they serve you or someone you know— my notes:
1. How Books Sell
The keynote at lunch was by Peter Hildick-Smith, CEO of Codex Group, on “How Books Sell.” I was encouraged to hear that this veteran of the publishing business, who’s crunched more than a few truckloads of numbers, believes that “there is a lot of untapped potential in this industry.” [My comment: Crowd pleasingly encouraging! I confess, this prompted evil thoughts about Pet Rocks.]
Hildick-Smith said there are three pillars to selling a new book, and you must have all three:
(1) Discovery (Readers are aware of the book) (2) Conversion (They decide to buy it) (3) Availability (It is available to buy when, where and how buyers want it)
On Discovery +Most people, when thinking about how to sell a book, conflate discovery with conversion. +The vast majority of book buyers are not even aware of best-selling authors! +Internet promotions (via email, social media, free Kindles, etc) has “generated a lot of low quality discoverability.” +Analog publicity remains very effective. The quality of discoverability is key. +The book needs to get rated. But books must be read before they can be rated. Therefore offering free ebooks as a way to improve discoverability is low quality. + The discoverability source affects 5 star ratings.
Notice that HarperCollins added “author of Bel Canto“
On Conversion +Many times there is a disconnect here. There is no conversion to sales without discovery. “Conversion” is not about liking, it is about acting— actually deciding to buy the book. +Statistics show that the author series brand is the biggest factor. In other words, author brand is key. Ergo, best-sellers are dominated by brand authors. Their fans are 15 x more likely to buy their favorite authors and to give more favorable reviews. “Brand author” = 500,000 fans or more. +An author brand is a “rare and valuable asset” but this is not the same as “being famous.” Lots of famous and even belovedly famous people publish books that tank.
+Readers do not always connect the author with the title of the book. In other words, they may love the book but not remember who wrote it. Key: if the author wrote a book with a recognizable title, it makes a difference to add “Author of XYZ,” to the cover.
[My comment: As a reader, yes, it does influence me to learn that the author is also the author of a book I have read and loved, but mainly when I am browsing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore; on a screen, I have to squint to read that line of text. I plucked out this example, of Ann Patchett’s Run, see image right. The simple design with large font size for the author name and title works well for viewing on a screen. It also says, “bestselling author of Bel Canto,” though that looks like a mushy blur on my iPhone.]
Hildick-Smith then gave a slide show of a study on buyers’ reactions to alternative book covers. Oftentimes it was the ineptly designed books that performed better (!!) And it rarely worked to have the author’s face on the cover, even when that author is both famous and attractive.
[My comment: my notes become a bit thin at this point. He went into a lot of detail about the elements of cover design.]
On Availability The speaker ran out of time, alas, before he could delve into this topic, but I don’t think many in audience minded because his slide show about book covers was so entertaining and full of practical advice. [My comment re availability: yep, it drives me bananas when I visit an author’s website, decide to buy the book, but then cannot find a link to buy.]
Sum up: +Be bold, stand out; +books are an extreme niche business; publish for the untapped 85 million buyers; +recommendations can take 6 months to deliver; +brand authors are a massive sales factor; +it’s not one size fits all; +a book’s message is a mini-story that must connect; +brick-and-mortar bookstores remain the the largest discovery source, not amazon.com; +to sell books, you must have discoverability and convertibility and availability.
2. The Art of Making Books
Tim Hewitt, sales rep for Friesens, gave an excellent and fascinating talk about the elements of a traditionally printed book.
I didn’t take elaborate notes on this one, but I was delighted that he could answer my question, Why is the POD (print-on-demand) paperback so much heavier than an offset-printed similar sized book? I have two editions of my book in Spanish, one printed in the U.S. as a POD under my own imprint, Dancing Chiva, the other offset printed (traditionally printed) in Mexico by Literal Publishing. The editions are the same design and size (only a couple of centimeters of difference), but the Literal Publishing edition is both nicer and substantially lighter weight.
Hewitt’s answer was that the machinery for PODs requires heavier paper, but with offset printing, you can go with lighter weight but still thick paper, which saves money on paper and shipping, and also maintains spine width.
[My comment: It occurred to me at this point that if one has a large enough review copy campaign, because of savings on both shipping and postage, it could make sense to print the review copies traditionally, even if the bulk of sales are expected to be POD via amazon and other online booksellers. Well, of course, that’s a question of plugging in the numbers at the time.]
Hewitt emphasized that, before deciding on your paper, it is key to understand, who is your target audience / the end user of your book?
[My comment: For my latest book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolutionand the Spanish translation Odisea metafisica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, the answer is, primarily students, Mexicophiles, and scholars. That means a good-looking but affordable and easy-to-find paperback edition available on amazon (and on various other booksellers sourced from Ingram). However, in Mexico, where fewer book buyers buy online, this means a traditionally published paperback available in major urban bookstores, hence the Literal Publishing edition. (A hardcover edition for libraries? I’m working on it. Yes, the Kindle edition is already out.)]
[My comment: It’s a mistake to assume digital editions have zero environmental impact. It’s also a mistake to assume digital means immortal; in fact, digital files degrade much faster than acid-free paper. I’ve already had some files and software from the late 90s turn into garbage. Sometimes, dagnabbit, paper is superior.]
3. Book Metadata from Head to Toe
Laura Dawson of Bowker, the ISBN agency, gave this super chewy talk about ISBNs, Library of Congress numbers, BISAC categories, and best practices.
Tanya Hall, CEO of Greenleaf Book Group, gave this riveting talk— it was at the tail-end of this cram-packed conference, so that’s saying a lot.
+ Why video? Discoverability. Video is 52 times more likely to show up on Google search than text results.
+Video gives a personal connection, humans are drawn to other humans, used right it can increase the trust factor, use it to set tone at events.
+It’s memorable.
Some types of video you might produce: animation, behind-the-scenes., book trailer, expert trailer, a reading, talking heads, daily tip, tutorial
Tips [My comment: I didn’t get all of them, I was flagging.]:
+ Subject should face light to avoid being backlit
+ Add your logo to your videos (a watermark or what’s called a “bug”)
+ Consider a personal message and/or opening
+ Use music to set tone / build emotion
+ Transcribe video content to increase searchability [my comment: Jane Friedman convinced me to do transcriptions of my podcasts for this same reason. Transcription, however, is extremely time-consuming and tedious work. If you can afford it, I would recommend hiring someone to do it; nonetheless, you’ll still have to go through it yourself and make corrections. Yes, I know about speech recognition software. I tried it out and there was so much gibberish in there, it turned out to be faster, easier, and far more reliable to get it done by a human being. Yes, that may change.]
+ Commit to a regular schedule [My comment: sounds optimal but not necessarily doable… I’d rather be writing…I’ve committed to regular schedule with this blog, but that’s my limit.]
+ Put your video on your website, a video landing page can increase conversion by up to 80 percent.
+ Participate in the community, comment on other videos on YouTube [My comment: sounds optimal but…I’m out of breath just thinking about it…]
+ Upload your video to amazon and goodreads [My comment: Yes, that goes on my “to do” list…]
+ Keep it short, 60 seconds if possible
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My current enthusiasm is for making 1- 2 minute edited videos that can work like a step-up from a GIF to illustrate an article / book / blog post— although I realize that these don’t necessarily help sell books or “go viral,” as would, say, a baby moose frolicking in a lawn sprinkler. I do have a couple of longer videos about my latest book on my “to do” list— a trailer and a talk about some of the rare esoteric books I consulted, which I’ll get to… oh, lala, one of these days– and maybe sooner rather than later.
The thing is, making videos is a very different endeavor than writing, and it eats up time for writing. Delegate the video-making to a service or a freelancer? Ouch, that’s a bit of a pricey proposition, and frankly, I’ve been underwhelmed by most of the ones I’ve seen. (Translation: I’d really rather make my own.)
More importantly, I doubt my readers, current or potential, are those who spend their free hours surfing around on YouTube.
Do I sound a bit down on video? I do relish learning about the ever-expanding menu of options for marketing books, what others are doing and have found valuable for them. But book marketing is a bottomless abyss of more, more, always something more one can do. After listening to all the ideas and experiences and whatever data there might be about this or that, one simply has to refocus on one’s intentions and priorities, decide what to do and what not to do, and move on.]
5. And a felicitous observation on the emergence of so many new “hybrid” or “independent” publishers
Greenleaf Book Group is one of several new so-called “hybrid” publishers at the seminar, and I am happy to see them because it seemed to me that there was a yawning gap that needed to be filled. On the one hand, there are traditional publishers and on the other, various vanity presses, from CreateSpace to Lulu and all the rest of those that publish anyone and everyone and their uncle’s chinchilla’s macaroni recipes.
What is needed, and so I see from this “Publishing University” seminar is beginning to emerge, is a viable business model that offers not only professional quality editing, design, and marketing, but some curation. So yes, the author does shell out the clams, but his book won’t end up swept up with the roaring river of riffraff.
(Put another way: every book is a needle in a haystack, but the smaller the haystack and the nicer the hay, the easier it will be to find it.)
Of course it would be lovely if the author didn’t have to pay for anything, and instead received Niagaras of royalties and kowtows from all major bookstores, Oprah, and newspapers of national and international circulation. But the fact is, many books are worthy of readers but, for various reasons, cannot be expected to cover their costs if traditionally published. (University presses take on scholarly and some literary works, but their budgets are increasingly constrained. Oftentimes, to publish a given book they require “underwriting,” as they so delicately call the clams, from the author’s employer or a foundation.)
Related to this is the emergence of more accessible a la carte services, including book design, cover design, cataloging and metadata consulting, editing, copyediting, ebook file testing and quality assurance, indexing, and of course, ye olde book marketing. For example, Firebrand Technologies, TLC Graphics, and Philadelphia-based Parlew Associates are now on my radar.
Another of these “hybrid” or “independent” publishers is poet and novelist Michele Orwin’s Bacon Press Books, which has a carefully curated catalog. The latest from Bacon Press Books is the paperback edition of Kate Blackwell’s brilliant collection of short stories, You Won’t Remember This, which was originally published in hardcover by the now sadly defunct Southern Methodist University Press. (Buy your football tickets here.)
There were more panels I attended, all excellent, and, lacking a robotic avatar, many more I couldn’t attend.
Another benefit was the chance to talk with the various vendors, among them, graphic designers, freelance publicists, editors, and many printers, as well as old friends and workshop students. In addition to Michele Orwin, there were several people from She Writes, including Barbara Stark-Nemon, who took my fiction workshop at the San Miguel Writers Conference, and whose historical novel Even in Darkness is just out; and Denise Camacho, President of Intrigue Publishing. Literary, scholarly, cookbooks, Christian, mystery, history, diet advice, bear attack memoir, marketing how-to— participants were publishing an astounding variety of books.
In sum, if you’re at all interested in learning about the nuts and bolts of publishing, whether as a small publisher or as a self-publisher, the IBPA’s Publishing University is an all-star 2 day conference. Next year, 2016, it will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love By Cal Newport Grand Central Publishing, 2012 ISBN: 978-1455528042
My heart sank when I opened the box from amazon.com. Why had I bought a hardcover edition of what surely must be airport-bookstore-biz-section fluffo? (When I indulge in fluffo it’s the cheaper Kindle editions— and only for perusing on airplanes, hair salons, and the like). But lo, Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You turns out to be both an unusually insightful and practical book. It’s addressed to younger readers, from wannabe movie actors to disgruntled cubicle workers to maybe-biologists-maybe-astrophysicists, but of course I read it as the 50-something literary writer that I am. I’ve “made it” as a writer, I guess you could say, if only because I’m still at it after having published several books, and every once in a while I get the breeze-at-my-back of a glowing review or an award or an invitation to speak. And I’ve taught creative writing workshops for over a decade, so I’ve had many a conversation with beginning writers who want to “follow their passion.” In sum, I hereby throw the weight, such as it may be, of my career and experience behind Cal Newport’s Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion.
Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion
That may sound strange, for I am passionate about what I do. In a sentence: passion isn’t enough because it will never be enough. (And as any writer, or any artist, passionate about their work can tell you, some days are just head-banging torture.) When beginning writers say they have passion for writing, methinks what they really have passion for is their idea of being a writer, which is as different as the first date with the dorm hottie from celebrating a 30th wedding anniversary.
So if it isn’t necessarily following your passion, what describes “great work”? According to Newport, it involves creativity; it has impact; and you’re in control.
Hmm… sounds like writing.
Rule #2: Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Newport argues that “the craftsman mindset is the foundation for creating work you love.” Certainly that has been true for me. I could retail a hundred stories of beginning writers who couldn’t weather their first workshop. They come in with the notion that you have talent or you don’t, so they’re resentful, even deeply angry when the workshop leader and other students don’t shower their manuscript with lotus petals of praise, and they’re quick to conclude: I don’t have talent, I give up. They don’t think: I need to get some skills in the craft of writing. Ah, how rare that is. And the impulse is one of generosity. Writes Newport:
“Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people people approach their working lives.”
(Which, I guess, is why most people begrudge their boss / customers the minimum and spend the balance of their days in the Gulag Architelevisiono.)
Newport continues:
“[The craftsman mindset] asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is ‘just right.’ and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career… you need to earn it— and the process won’t be easy.”
Newport then provides a checklist of jobs to avoid: Those that do not provide opportunities to develop rare and valuable skills (e.g., working on a frozen foods packing plant’s conveyor belt isn’t going to cut it); those that provide a good or service you think is bad for the world; those where you have to work with people you really don’t like.
That still leaves a wide open world, for many. The point is, if you’re fortunate enough to have a choice in where and with whom you work, and you want to find work you love, choose the job that enables you to develop a rare and valuable skill, and then— this is crucial—proceed to actually do that. To do that, you have to develop the five habits of the craftsman.
Here is where I began to sit up straight and make use of my highlighter.
Newport’s Step 1, “Decide What Capital Market You’re In,” “winner-take-all” or “auction,” was something I hadn’t thought about before. (He is using the term “capital” to include “human capital.”) In my own case, writer of literary books, it seems to me that I’m not in as narrow a market as the television scriptwriter (“winner take all,” i.e., the script is all), but close. So what I need to do is write the best book I can write. (Why blog? Because I want to clarify my own thinking, and to share that with you, dear writerly reader.)
Two points Newport makes here: if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re probably not developing your skills, and you need patience. In my experience, yes, developing skills is sometimes toe-curling and yes, you need patience, shipping containers full of it. (And boy howdy am I lucky that my first efforts at literary writing date from well before the advent of the Internet.)
Rule #3 Turn Down a Promotion
Newport asserts, and I agree, that:
“Giving people more control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness, engagement, and sense of fulfillment.”
So if you want to love your work, first get good at what you do, then think about getting control over what you do.
But watch out for traps. First, taking control too soon, when one doesn’t have adequate skill, may be unsustainable (Ye olde “don’t quit your day job to write a first novel.”) And second, if you really do have valuable skills, you will be sure to encounter resistance to your leaving or at least loosening the leash (from an employer, an agent, an editor). Your employer may promote you— not into a better job for you in terms of developing your skills and control over your time, but ye olde “golden handcuffs.”
In developing this argument, Newport devotes a chapter to what he calls “The Law of Financial Viability,” all common-sense advice for most college graduates and anyone else who needs to make regular debt payments. My one quibble with this book is here: Many people considering a new career are middle-aged or retired, and for some of them— a minority to be sure, but an important one— the financial viability of any given enterprise is not so crucial an issue. They can afford to take a year to write a novel, or open a yoga studio, or what-have-you; but this doesn’t mean they want to remain at the level of a hobbyist. Furthermore, what the market pays is sometimes a poor indicator of meaningful value, and especially in the arts and politics, the best lead with vision, rather than follow the pennies and dimes and dollars and expense account steak dinners. The book would have been far stronger had it considered this demographic as well.
As for myself, before turning to writing, I had a career as an economist specializing in international and development finance. As I am sure you can imagine, dear reader, in saying adios to that for the life of a literary writer, I made some elephantine trade-offs. That said, I did not proceed until I’d already published two books on finance plus an award-winning book as a literary writer. And that said, if I could do it again, I’d do it again because, as the Estate Lady says, “the hearse doesn’t have a trailer hitch.”
Rule #4 Think Big, Act Small
Newport argues that “a unifying mission in your working life can be a source of great satisfaction,” and he illustrates with the case of Pardis Sabeti, a happy and successful Harvard professor of evolutionary biology whose mission is “to rid the world of its most ancient and deadly diseases.”
As for finding big ideas, Newport introduces the concept of “the adjacent possible” and the caveat: you cannot recognize the adjacent possible until you get to the cutting edge of your field. Writes Newport:
“If life transforming missions could be found with just a little navel-gazing and an optimistic attitude, changing the world would be commonplace. But it’s not commonplace; it’s instead quite rare. This rareness, we now understand, is because these breakthroughs require that you first get to the cutting edge, and this is hard— the type of hardness that most of us try to avoid in our working lives.”
Newport details each step of Professor Sabeti’s career, and how she focused on her training and only after achieving a high level in her field did she identify her defining mission.
That resonated with me. My mission? To bring my readers to richer levels of understanding and an awakened sense of curiosity and wonder. Sounds simple, but only after writing several books could I articulate that so concisely. And I know the big doesn’t happen without the small. As far as writing a book goes, it’s one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. And sometimes— forklift in the industrial quantities of patience— after weeks of work, one has to discard the draft to start over. It might also mean reading and reading and reading and reading and… whew… more reading, not only about the subject, but the craft itself, which includes, of course, the essential task of reading other books in the same genre, not as a passive consumer, but actively, as a craftsman.
Wrapping up this fourth rule, Newport offers a last chapter on marketing. He argues that
“[f]or a mission-driven project to succeed, it should be remarkable in two different ways. First, it must compel people who encounter it to remark about it to others. Second, it must be launched in a venue that supports such remarking.”
He illustrates with “rock star” computer programer Giles Bowkett who realized that “the best way to market yourself as a programmer is to create remarkable open-source software.” So he did. For Professor Sabeti, the venue was prestigious scientific journals— so she published. (Speaking of venues, this is the main reason why, for many authors, self-publishing turns into such a disappointment.)
As for his own book, Newport confesses:
“If I had published a book of solid advice for helping recent graduates transition to the job market, you might find this a useful contribution, but probably wouldn’t find yourself whipping out your iPhone and Tweeting its praises. On the other hand, if I publish a book that says ‘follow your passion is bad advice,’ (hopefully) this would compel you to spread the word. That is, the book you’re holding was conceived from the very early stages with the hope of being seen as ‘remarkable.'”
Ah, our modern fame-crazed culture. But one thing I’ve learned as a writer: a good blurb is gold. And word of mouth, though it can’t always be quantified—(that’s another subject)— is better than gold. Yes, Newport nails it.
Newport’s own career is indeed remarkable. The author of a series of best-selling books, including How to Be a High School Superstar and How to Win at College (which I thought excellent and regret not having been able to read back in my day); and the host of the blog Study Hacks: Decoding Patterns of Success, he is also a PhD from MIT, now a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. In the conclusion, itself well worth the price of the book, he recounts how he applied the four lessons to his own career.
I highly recommend So Good They Can’t Ignore You for everyone from teenagers to retirees, in short, anyone looking to spend their days in a long-term commitment to satisfying, meaningful activity. You can call it “work” if you want.
An eon ago, in a writing workshop, the then famous teacher whispered to this then whippersnapper the secret of writing books: Sitzfleisch. In other words, the ability to endure sitting in the chair for long periods of time. Well, some decades on, I may not have won the Nobel Prize (yet) but I am indeed talented at enduring daily marathons of sitting. This may be good for my writing (and all the podcasts), but dangerous for my health. My writing assistants haul me out for regular walks, and there’s a bit o’ yoga going on, but that is not enough.
Back of the StandStand box
A standing desk to the rescue.
After some lickety-split googling on the subject, I settled on the StandStand. (For the record, I have no relationship with this company other than as a delighted customer.)
Finally, I have mine home in Mexico City and assembled. It’s a superb product. It’s made of bamboo and easy to assemble– so it’s light-weight, appealing to the touch, doesn’t allow my laptop to overheat, and it’s portable. Oh, and it was inexpensive, especially in comparison with some of the mechanically operated standing desks.
Looks like I may have Standfleisch, too. (Is that a word?) Onward!
Up and at ’em with the StandStand!
2019 UPDATE:
Still delightedly using the StandStand. One of my writing assistants has taken over the chair.
P.S. You can now find many Madam Mayo posts for the workshop archived here.
Where do you find the time? (Was it hiding in the crawlspace?) It’s not so much finding time as it is prying your physical presence and attention away, either permanently or for a spell, from someone, something, someplace less valuable to you—if you really do want to write, that is, not just pretend and fantasize and gripe. Herewith, 30 ideas— some of which might make you shake your head, but some just might work for you. For me, most of these have always been no-brainers, but I confess, a number of them took me awhile to recognize and/or fully appreciate.
Possibility 2. Cut the digital leash, the crackberry, whatever you want to call that soul-sucking hypnotic thumb-twiddler. That’s right, I am suggesting that you turn off all notifications and do not “text.”The price of this is that you must therefore continually combat tidal waves of exasperation from loved ones and others that you are not instantly and always available to them. Find the humor in this. Because really, how blazingly ridiculous. > This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own)
Possibility 3. No drugs. Duh. And I include prescription drugs here, too. Exercise, eat lots of vegetables, drink raw juice, meditate… do whatever you possibly can to avoid adult onset diabetes and joint issues and so having to take drugs, for aside from suffering from lousy side effects, you’ll waste countless hours waiting for doctors to write prescriptions, then getting them filled at the pharmacy, dealing with insurance, and complications, and so on & so forth. Ah! But I am not a medical professional, so I have no idea what you should do.
Possibility 4. Reduce, better yet eliminate, or at least make use of your commute. If you can possibly live closer to where you need to be during the day, even if you have to sell half your furniture to fit into a smaller place, do that. Otherwise, try to get into the habit of writing while commuting. I hear some people have been able to do that. I admire them genuinely.
Possibility 5. No drama. Mantra: not my circus, not my monkeys. If you relish fighting / debating / gossiping because you find it entertaining, that’s your writing mojo leaking like water onto the asphalt. Incessant worrying about other people’s problems that are not yours to solve is also silly. You can be aware, you can be concerned, you can be compassionate, and when they are your problems, then they are your problems.
Possibility 6. No ruminating over the past. Regrets, nostalgia, whatever, writing gets done in the now.
Possibility 7. Less fantasizing about the future. Again, writing gets done in the now.
Possibility 8. Quit nursing grudges against editors / agents / other writers / reviewers / readers. Oh, the injustices of the literary world! These can vacuum up untold hours with yammering in workshops, at conferences, and over sad and grumbly cups of coffee. But listen here: the so-called gatekeepers and the clueless readers and half-literate kids glued to their handheld devices, they’re just doing the best they can, too. So are the peasants wading through their rice paddies in Burma. You are luckier than a lottery-winner to even be able to write at all. So strive to always improve and write for those who appreciate what you do, knowing that, of course, even if you one day win the Nobel Prize, only the teensiest portion of the population of Planet Earth will have heard of you, never mind actually read anything you wrote. Bottom line: If you can’t stay focused on doing your own best work, you’re not writing, you’re back to ruminating.
Possibility 9. Stop picking up the telephone. As Marie Antoinette might have put it, Let them send email. If you can, pay for an unlisted number and caller ID and change your telephone number at least every other year. If that little click to voice mail distracts you, why, just unplug it! And, pourquoi pas? Plunk it in the oven!
Possibility 10. Eliminate recreational shopping, aka “retail therapy.” Whew, this one adds up over a season, a year, two years. So never, ever shop in stores or on-line or in fact anywhere anytime without your list. If an item is not on your list, do not buy it. Shopping malls are time- and money-gobbling maws and believe it, the marketers, watching your every move on their cameras, are more sophisticated than you think you are. Not only does recreational shopping squander prime writing time, but it tends to fill up your house with clutter– a time-suck in itself. Go to a park, a museum, a library, the seashore, a basketball court, have fun and refresh yourself as necessary, but stay way away from the maw. I mean, mall.
Possibility 11. Do not accumulate a large and varied wardrobe based on navy, brown and/or beige. And better yet, give all that away to Goodwill. If you wear clothing that is black and/or coordinates with black, you’ll be able to make fewer shopping trips, pack faster, and do far less laundry and dry cleaning. And since black makes colors “pop,” your blue sweater, say, will appear brighter. Yet another advantage: black makes you look slimmer. (Ha, maybe I was a Jesuit in my last life.)
Possibility 12. Cancel the manicure. Horrendous time sink there. Plus, the polish is toxic and it flakes. (Nobody notices or cares about your fingernails anyway except manicurists, I guess, and those who get manicures themselves. Last I checked, they aren’t getting much writing done.)
Possibility 13. Quit following the stock market on a daily basis. This is a tick-like habit that achieves nothing but a heightened sense of anxiety. On par with spectator sports.
Possibility 14. Quit playing computer games. On par with drugs. Or any other addiction. Including following the stock market on a daily basis.
Possibility 15. Do not color your hair. Depending on how often you feel you must cover up the roots… for most people who color their hair this is about once a month. If you add highlights or lowlights (which, my dears, if you do color, you probably should lest you sport that “helmet look”), you’re talking about two hours-plus in the salon chair. You might be able to read something fluffy but you probably cannot write while someone is poking and pulling at and washing and blowdrying your hair. Go au naturel for as many as 30 hours a year, free and clear.
Possibility 16. Ignore spectator sports. Do not attend games, do not watch or listen to or otherwise follow games, do not discuss games, and whole weekends for writing will emerge from the sea of froth.
Possibility 17. Do not indulge in expensive, time- and space-consuming activities such as, oh, say, collecting and expounding upon various types of fermented grape juice. Come on, folks, once it goes into a carafe, 99% of your guests won’t know the difference between one chablis and the next chardonnay. Pick a reasonable brand and stick with it, white and red. For me, it’s Monte Xanic— or else it goes into the pot for coq au vin.
Possibility 18. No more hauling laundry. You’ve got to get your clothes clean so, failing a maid to do it for you, get a washer / dryer for your house or apartment. If you do not have space, if it’s not allowed, or you cannot afford this, then consider a portable washer/dryer because hauling bags to the laundro-mat or down to the basement only to find the machines full, that is one woolly mammoth of a time suck. (If you’re paying for each load at a landro-mat, you might find it cheaper in the long run to use your own portable washer. I wouldn’t know, since I’m fortunate enough to have a washer/dryer, but a little bird told me…)
Possibility 19. Never hunt for your keys / wallet / purse / cell phone. This is an easy fix. The moment you step in the door, you always, always put them in the same place, a designated hook or a bowl or a basket. This might seem minor, but those two to ten minutes of running around with your hair on fire add up.
Possibility 20. Never hunt for Internet passwords (or wait for the “resend password” email). Keep track of passwords, some way, somehow. I use Grandma’s recipe box, which was deemed seriously uncool on the Cool Tools blog, but it works beautifully for me and, so they tell me after reading that infamous blog post, many of my friends. (So there.)
Possibility 21. No boat. Do not ever even shop for a boat. Do not even think about shopping for a boat. Unless you plan to sell your house and live in the boat. Ditto RV, camping equipment, or motorcycle. And anyway, you cannot live in your motorcycle. If you like to go out overnight into nature, check out Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpacking Tips. (Watch out, though, he features a link to his UFO page.)
Possibility 22. No second home. On par with the boat. No, worse.
Possibility 23. Stop buying loads of soft drinks and bottled water. Take into account the time it takes to shop for them, carry them to the car, lug them out of the car, store them somewhere in the pantry or the fridge, then recycle the bottles and cans… Drip, drip, drip goes your time (and money). A good water filter will pay for itself and quickly. (See also #3, above. Whoa, just read the list of contents on those soft drinks. Ick.)
Possibility 24. Prepare your meals with mis-en-place. Even when making a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, it sure does help to do mis-en-place. If you hate cooking, you probably never heard of the mis. Check it out. (If you want to keep it easy by microwaving everything or relying on take-out, see #3 above.)
Possibility 25. Take email seriously. In other words, stop letting it pile up and become a giant, throbbing source of lost opportunities, embarrassment and guilt. Email is vital for a writer— as vital as letter writing in days of yore, so do it well. This also means get quick-on-the-draw to delete spam. > Email Ninjerie in the Theater of Space-Time
Possibility 26. Use a metaphorical “bucket” for all your to do lists and ideas. In other words, quit trying to keep everything from next week’s dentist appointment to the ideas for your novel in your head. I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system and thereby free up yottabytes of short term memory for more creative work. (One day I may set up a little altar in a corner of my office to St. Allen.) For me, a Filofax is an indispensable tool for implementing GTD. > Why I Am a Mega-Fan of the Filofax. > Listen to this podcast of November 6, 2013 about the GDT method for creative people. (I couldn’t find the direct link; you may need to scroll down for it once you land on that page.)
Possibility 27. Keep your closet decluttered and organized. Clutter not only makes it difficult to find things when you need them, it pulls and yanks and pinches your attention to decisions you haven’t made (like, whether to get rid of that old mustard-colored shirt, but which might maybe go with something, or sew back on the two missing buttons?) So you’re rushed and addled, right at the start of the day. It all adds up over a week, a month…
Possibility 28. Fie to piles. Piles are sinkholes of chaos and, to pile on another mongrel of a metaphor, they tend to sprout and ooze all over the place like fungi. (Yeah, did that need an editor.) Any time you need to do anything important, pay taxes, file a claim, send out a manuscript, if you have to paw and dig through piles to find what you need you will add possibly hours, possibly days, possibly weeks or even months to the process— not to mention a walloping dollop of time-sucking anxiety. So get a filing cabinet, even if it has to be a cardboard box, and make proper, labeled files, and dagnabbit, file things.
Possibility 29. Let go of things you won’t use but someone else might. This might sound strange as a source of time for writing, but think about it: any clutter, anywhere, becomes a drag on your time and attention. So all those old winter coats, faded towels, mismatched dishes, clothes than haven’t fit for 10 years, overflows of flower vases, toys… For heavenssakes, sell that stuff, gift it, and/or make regular runs to Goodwill or the like. (But remember, trying to sell it will take up your time.) As my favorite estate lady Julie Hall puts it, “the hearse doesn’t have a trailer hitch.”
“My top recommendation for the holidays is the Kindle of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing ($10). A one-time Shinto shrine maiden, Kondo bases her “KonMari” method on the assumption that one’s house and all the objects in it have consciousness but, boy howdy, even if you’re a die-hard materialist, follow her method and you’ll zoom to a wiggy new oxygen-rich level of tidy.” — C.M. Mayo
And last but far from least:
Possibility 30. Remember your pen and notebook. Always, except in, say, a swimming pool, keep these on your person; you never know when the muse may whisper. What I’m saying is, some of the most valuable writing time arrives in snatches— while you’re standing in the dog park, about to get out of the car, riding an elevator, etc. In other words, you might not have been planning to write, but write you do because write you can.
Sturdy, Customizable, Portable Paper-Based
Organizing System: The Filofax Personal Organizer
Why a paper-based organizing system in this
digital age? First, as Get Things Done
guru David Allen puts it, “low-tech is oftentimes better because it is in your
face.” Second, last I checked (channeling Jaron Lanier
here), I am not a gadget. I cherish the tools that help me stay organized, yet
allow me to abide within generous swaths of Internet-free time—formally known
as normal life (you know, when you didn’t see everyone doing the
thumb-twiddling zombie shuffle). The Filofax personal organizer is one of
them.
I got my first Filofax over 25 years ago and it has been a love story ever since. Part of this English company’s century-old line of organizers originally developed for engineers, it is a beautifully made 6-ring loose leaf binder. With the Filofax diary, address book, paper inserts and other items that get tucked in there, for most users, it fattens up to the size of a paperback edition of Anna Karenina. Or, say, a Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. Right, it does not fit in a coat pocket.
Depending on the model, the Filofax personal organizer comes with an assortment of pockets on both the inside and outside flaps. Mine also includes a pen holder on the right and a highlighter holder on the left, and it closes securely, so no loose items (such as that drycleaner’s ticket) can fall out.
Filofax sells a cornucopia of inserts for the 6 ring binder, from a wide variety of configurations for the diary refill, to a personal ruler/ page marker, maps of most major cities, a pad for assorted sticky notes, checkbook holder, business card holder, super-thin calculator, extra paper in a rainbow of colors, index tabs, a portable hole punch, and an address book, among other items.
Countless are the ways to configure one’s Filofax personal organizer. I’ve evolved into using the Week on Two Pages diary for noting appointments, birthdays, and any time-sensitive to-dos; two rulers/ page markers; the assorted sticky notes pad (though now with my own, more economical, Post-Its); the address book at the back; plus a “page” of plastic sleeves for business cards. I stash items such as stamps and paperclips in the front inner pocket (especially handy when traveling). Tickets (drycleaners, concerts) go in another pocket.
In addition, I made up several tabbed sections to index my personal, financial, business, and other to do / might one day do lists, to which I slap on ideas scribbled on Post-Its as they occur to me. The tabbed sections follow my personal interpretation of David Allen’s Get Things Done (GTD) system—his basic idea being, capture all your to dos in one “bucket” you regularly revisit, and thereby can clear your mind for more clarity and creativity in the present moment. (To track more complex medium and long-term projects, I use the Projecteze system of a Word.doc table which relies on the sorting feature—that’s another post.)
As for address book, it’s not my main nor my only
address book, just the addresses I like to keep handy in this particular
system—so, in part, it serves as a paper backup for the most vital addresses,
and those I regularly consult when making appointments or sending birthday
cards and such.
Usually the Filofax stays open on my desk– which
works for me, but clearly that won’t be ideal for those who work in less
private and/or mobile situations. I take it with me when I travel or attend
meetings where I might need to review my schedule or consult the to do lists
and/or address book.
High-end stationary, luggage, and department stores often carry the Filofax line of organizers and inserts—as does amazon.com— but to ensure that I get exactly what I want when I want it, I order the refill for the following year from the Filofax USA’s on-line shop on September 1st. At year’s end—following the advice of my tax accountant who says it could be handy in case of an audit—I file the diary with the rest of that year’s tax documents.
There are four major disadvantages to this
system. None of them torpedo it for me, but they might for you:
(1) It’s a paper-based system, and for those who
want their hand-held and/or laptop to be their all, and the many
bells-and-whistles of a cloud-based system, clearly, it’s a head-shaker.
(2) High cost. You get what you pay for, however,
and I have been happy to pay for the refills and other accessories because
their simple and elegant design inspires me to stay better organized. For those
who bristle at such prices, however, it would certainly be possible to make a
homemade version of many of the inserts.
(3) Security risk. One’s office or house could
burn down or someone could steal the Filofax—but then again, they couldn’t hack
into it at 3 in the morning from Uzbekistan, either.
(4) Bulk and weight. I can easily toss my Filofax
into a briefcase or shoulderbag, but without an on-call chiropractor, I
wouldn’t want to haul it around on a walk. That said, when I go for a
walk, I go for a walk.
