Back in 2009 I wrote this introduction to an article for the online edition of Foreword Magazine:
With several books published, including a big fat historical novel forthcoming this May, it might seem that I just karate-chop my way through any writer’s block. In fact, for me as well as for many more prolific writers, it’s a daily struggle. Writer’s block can have a multitude of sources, but one that is almost universal is disorganization. It’s difficult to start on chapter 15 when you can’t find your notes— or when you’re facing such a Himalaya of notes that, well, to say the same thing, you’d have to spend an eon sorting it all out before you could sit down to write. I don’t think we need Dr. Freud to analyze this one. It’s a pedestrian problem with pedestrian solutions. Here are mine.
I’d link to that article but it’s gone dark and, in the many years of the meantime, I’ve modified and improved my list of tools. Right now I’m working on a nonfiction book which necessitates a working library and extensive filing system; in this post however I’m spotlighting the subset of tools I also find useful—and recommend— for writing a novel. (And, in case you were wondering, yes, I will be working on another novel soon enough.)
1. The logbook
This is my witness, my “shoulder-to-cry-on,” my champion, and if nothing else, once I’ve finished, an illuminating record.
2. The Kanban
The basic idea of the Kanban is here. My system is very simple. I tape together two file folders so that, when opened, they fold out to one ridiculously large rectangle with three sections. I use Scotch tape to tape it to the window behind my desk. The three sections are: 1— tasks I need to do; 2—tasks I am working on now (2 tasks at most); 3—tasks I have accomplished
Each task has its own Post-It. I move the individual Post-Its from one section of the Kanban to the next in accord with my progress.
3.A small notebook and / or 1/4″ stack of blank index cards
These I always carry with me to jot down ideas, words, overheard dialogue, and sometimes even drafts of paragraphs or outlines of plots. By writing things down, I don’t lose them and also— this is subtle, but crucial— by keeping pen and paper with me at all times, I signal to my “artist self” that I am ready to write.
Yes, one can use a smartphone to capture things when out and about, but think about it for, like, a nanosecond. When you are trying to write a book, should you be picking up your smartphone / aka portal to the world wide web of hyper-palatable distractions? For many well-considered reasons I purposely and rigorously minimize my smartphone use.
4. Plenty of Post-Its
I buy the canary-yellow 1 / 12″ x 2 ” blocks in bulk. I use them for the same purpose as the notebook and blank cards (and I sometimes carry these in my purse as well). Post-Its have the added advantage that I can stick them on drafts, other notes, and inside the covers of the books I’m reading, to note any vocabulary or syntax I’d like to use in my own writing. They also work beautifully for Kanbans.
It’s important to keep these organized and at-hand. I keep mine gathered together on a tray— having them all together makes it easier to find them and easier move.
6.Pens, Colored Pens, and Big Fat Yellow Highlighters
These require their own a special mug.
7. Index Cards Filesaka Recipe Card Holders
This is where the index cards go. Organization ongoing…
8.A Filing Cabinet (or 10)and Hanging Files
The more filing cabinets the better, but if you don’t have the room, filing tubs (plastic boxes with handles) and “banker’s boxes,” inexpensive cardboard boxes for files, work well. It really is astonishing how much paperwork flies around a book. There is the book research itself, but also all that goes into its physical production and marketing. That would be another post. Trust me, make sure you have the filing space, otherwise piles of unfiled papers will bottleneck whatever it is you’re aiming to do.
9.A Labeler Typewriter
The benefits of using tabbed hanging folders I understood, but a labeler? What was wrong with neatly hand lettering a label, for heaven’s sake? But when I finally took David Allen’s advice in Getting Things Done and started using a labeler — mine is a Brother PT-18R— I realized what I had was— I’m not kidding— a mental health tool. Chapter 4? Labeled. Notes on Minor Characters? Labeled. Very Zen.
UPDATE 2021: Forget the labeler, which requires cartridge refills, a battery and/or electricity. A few years ago I bought myself a restored Hermes 3000 typewriter and I use that for making labels. (It’s also handy for typing up letters and manuscripts, among other things, and especially when I want to do so definitively away from the Internet.)
For any files that get too fat and filled with too many Post-Its and index cards. When I’m ready to sort through it all, there it is. Meanwhile, the envelope gets labeled.
11. Some Way to Physically Grok the Whole—or at Least Sizable Chunks of the whole
Originally I had recommended cork boards and tacks. I still think that can be a good idea, however, my current office has no place to nail up cork boards. On the other hand, I have four large windows, so I can just tape up manuscript pages to those. I have also seen some writers string washline from one end of their office to the other, and pin up pages with clothespins. You could also array your pages flat on a dining room table. Whatever works.
12. Manuscript Box
Or were you planning to lose it in a pile? Felted with dust? Blown about in a breeze from the window? Eaten by the dog?
13. Limboland: A Place, Albeit Temporary, for Discarded Pages and Old Drafts
The wastepaper basket is not a good place to stuff your old drafts and cuts, because what if you change your mind? On the other hand, if you hold onto every precious word you’ve written, you’ll never feel confident making the surgical incisions, never mind the blood-spurting amputations that, well, you’ll probably have to make if you want your book to be any good. In other words, don’t toss those pages, don’t keep those pages, park them in Limboland, that is, out of sight, out of mind—but retrievable. I find it helps me as I am writing to know that it’s all still there. I find might dig around in there once, maybe twice. Once the book is published, if I don’t have space for these old drafts, then I make a fire to grill some smores.
Yes, you could leave digital versions on your computer. I don’t. Why? That would be another post, but suffice to say, there are immense benefits to seeing a draft printed out.
For my last book, Limboland was a series of cardboard bankers boxes. For my current work-in-progress, it’s the bottom shelf of a voluminous old cabinet down in the basement. What works for you? Watch out, though, if you stuff the pages under your bed your dreams might get squirrely.
This blog posts on Mondays. Fifth Mondays, when they happen to arrive, are for the newsletter. Herewith the latest posts covering Texas Books, workshop posts, Q & As, selected other posts and news, plus cyberflanerie.
Ignacio Solares, one of Mexico’s most outstanding literary writers, appears in English translation by Yours Truly in the fabulous new issue #72 of Gargoyle. Edited by poet Richard Peabody, Gargoyle is one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s most enduring and prestigious literary magazines. Check it out! Solares’ short story is entitled “The Orders” (“Las instrucciones”). My thanks to Ignacio Solares for the honor, to Richard Peabody for accepting it and bringing it forth, and to Nita Congress for her eagle-eyed copyediting. (My previous translation of Solares’ work, the short story “Victoriano’s Deliriums,” appeared in The Lampeter Review #11.)
The cover of Gargoyle #72, which includes my translation of a short story by Ignacio Solares, features spoken word poet Salena Godden.
By the way, if you don’t subscribe to Madam Mayo blog but would like to receive my very occasionally emailed newsletter (via Mad Mimi, my email letter service) just send me an email at cmmayo (at) cmmayo.com and I’ll add you to my mailing list.
MARFA MONDAYS PODCASTING PROJECT Ongoing! I’ve let the Marfa Mondays podcast sit for a while as I am working on the (related) book, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas. That said, I’m almost…almost… done with podcast #22, which is an unusually wide-ranging interview recorded in Sanderson, a remote town that also happens to be the cactus capital of Texas. Podcasts 1 – 21 are all available to listen for free online here.
COOL STUFF ON MY RADAR ( = CYBERFLANERIE = ) The brilliantly brilliant Edward Tufteis offering his course on video. I took his in-person workshop twice, that’s how big a fan I am. I wish everyone else would take it, too, for then our world could be a little less fruit-loopy.
My amigo the esteemed playwright and literary translator Geoff Hargreaves has a most promising new novel out from Floricanto Press, The Collector and the Blind Girl
Poet Patricia Dubrava shares a beauty on her blog, Holding the Light: “Hearing the Canadas”
Cal Newport on “Beethoven and the Gifts of Silence.” Newport has a new podcast by the way, which is ultra-fabulous. Newport’s new book, A World Without Email, is a zinger of clarity. More about that anon.
Allison Rietta
Allison Rietta, artist, designer, yoga teacher, sound healer, and founder of “Avreya” offers a new series of digital books on contemplative practice that each, I am honored to say, include a writing exercise by Yours Truly. (These writing exercises are from my “Giant Golden Buddha & 364 More Free 5 Minute Writing Exercises” which you can access here.) Rietta’s digital books are so refreshingly lovely, and filled with wise and practical ideas for anyone seeking to improve the quality of their health and creative life. Here’s her introduction:
A series of five Contemplative Practice books based on the elements of nature: air, earth, fire, space and water. Each book is designed specifically to enhance that particular element and offers holistic, contemplative practices that include yoga asanas, pranayama, meditation, creative writing and visual art.
What’s in each book: Warm up and yoga asana-s (postures) Pranayama – a breath technique Meditation practice Creative writing prompt Art journaling prompt Practice pairings – Just as pairing food dishes with wine enhances the dining experience, this book offers pairings designed to complement each element such as, music, crystals, essential oils and mantras.
The books are designed to help yoga practitioners cultivate a personal home practice. The practices offered in these books may be done sequentially or separately.
Visit Allison Rietta here and find her new books here.
My amigo poet, playwright, literary translator and writing reacher Zack Rogow was interviewed by Jeffrey Mishove for New Thinking Allowed on “Surrealism and Spontaneity”: A most informative and charming video.
Anne Elise Urrutia’s Pechakucha on her grandfather Dr. Aureliano Urrutia’s “Miraflores”—something very special in San Antonio, Texas history.
This is the time of year for cooking, and with the pandemic, that means even more cooking. My partners in this endeavor, otherwise employed as my writing assistants, communicate by means of dagger-looks which I, by long experience, know to translate as “Gimme me the ham!” and then again, “Gimme the ham!” And then: “Gimme the ham!” Thank goodness for podcasts!
My go-to podcast for the past week has been Cal Newport’s “Deep Questions.” He’s the Joyce Carol Oates of best-sellerdom, that is, to say, how in thundernation does he manage to do so much (and be a tenured professor of computer science)? He tries to explain it in his podcast! As I stir soup and chop the potatoes (…and, as commanded, distribute tiny bites of ham…) I find his podcast strangely soothing.
I spent that terrible day and many of the days afterwards glued to the television– what a waste of time. Even still, if briefly, I worked on my query and submission letters, so determined was I, after having let my second agent go (long, boring story), to place my memoir, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico. That month, it seemed the publishing world, already in decline, had stopped dead. But later that very same month, an acceptance letter came from the University of Utah Press, and so Miraculous Air was published in the fall of 2002. All these years later, I am proud of that book, and I believe it is a healing book. I believe it will be read beyond my lifetime. Like other such books, it’s a gift, a gift to the artist, and by the alchemy of intention, persistence, work, skill, and time, a gift from the artist. This is what art is.
And books, by their nature, are time-travelers. Right now I’m reading (wild laugh) about the Thirty Years War. And Pierre Hadot on the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius.
So what do I have to say apropos of current events? If you’re interested, and you have a chunk of time and the attentional focus for something complex, this, which I wrote last fall, and this, which I delivered at a writer’s conference in 2016.
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Because I’m deep into doing some deep work, this Monday’s post is from the deepdom of the Madam Mayo archives: a note about Cal Newport’s Deep Work. (One of these days I’m going to make a kooky little desk-top altar to this guy, light a candle, and bring it flowers.)
Cal Newport’s “Deep Work,” Study Hacks Blog, and On Quitting Social Media
Originally posted on Madam Mayo Blog, September 26, 2016
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.
(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 courteous 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.
Well, yeah, it is sort of ridiculously ridiculous to rate from 1 – 12 a batch of books published over a wide range of years and in genres as varied as stories in translation, poetry, history, historical fiction, travel writing, biography, and autobiography. But it works for me! I have been posting these always-eclectic annual top books read lists for Madam Mayo blog since 2006. Aside from serving as a reading diary for myself, it is my gift to you, dear writerly reader: If you are not familiar with any given book on this list, should it appeal to you to try it, may you find it as wondrously enriching a read as I did.
(1) The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams By Jove and by Jupiter, whyever did I not read this sooner?! Every chapter a chocolate truffle, The Education of Henry Adams is a fundamental text for comprehending the culture and overall development of the United States.
P.S. Michael Lindgrin has more to say about ye tome, “this strange and beautiful journey of a book,” over at The Millions.
Reading Cather is a joy. Both of these Cather novels are well-deserved American literary classics. Over the past couple of years I have been turtling my way through Cather’s oeuvre. So far: The Professor’s House (top books read list for 2017) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (top books read list for 2018).
“You don’t need to take a book off the shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.”
(4) Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell I read this novel only because my book club picked it– lucky me. It’s wickedly funny, and, curiously, and most elegantly, written in crots. (I was unaware of Connell’s work when I wrote one of my own early short stories, also in crots, also published in the Paris Review. Well, howdy there, Mr. C! If you were still alive it sure would be fun to talk to you about crots!)
P.S. See Gerald Shapiro’s profile of Evan S. Connell in Ploughshares.
(5)Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu by Ted Anton Yet another work I wish I had read years earlier. Culiano was the author of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. His life ended early, and not well, alas. I never met Culiano but I was at University of Chicago for several years just before he arrived, so I knew the super-charged intellectual ambiance well– and I think Anton captures it quite accurately. Recently occultist John Michael Greer has been making noises about Culiano’s understanding of cacomagic, and this the unnamed subject of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, which is what prompted me to finally pick up this biography, which had been long languishing in my “to read” pile. (If you’re a metaphysics nerd and cacomagic is what you’re interested in specifically, however, Anton’s biography, otherwise excellent, will disappoint.)
(6) Tie:
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner Stegner is always a rare pleasure to read. I came away with immense admiration for John Wesley Powell’s many and visionary achievements. And the whole problem of water in the West thing!! Obvious as that may be, but I grew up in the West and it was not so obvious to me, nor to most people I knew at the time, and this book goes a long way towards explaining why. (Illuminating indeed to pair this work with a Cather novel… see above…)
A Desert Harvest by Bruce Berger This splendid anthology collects selected essays from Bruce Berger’s masterwork of a desert trilogy, The Telling Distance, Almost an Island, and There Was a River. P.S. Read my Q & A with Bruce Berger here.
The Western Paradox by Benard DeVoto Edited by David Brinkley and Patricia Nelson Limerick with a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Crunchy! (I still have all my teeth, though!)
(7) Tie:
Lone Star Mind by Ty Cashion Professor Cashion articulates the kooky contradictions and tectonic shifts in both popular and academic versions of Texas history. A landmark work in Texas historiography.
Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film by Don Graham I will be writing about this work at some length in my book on Far West Texas. At first glance, for the splashy photos of the stars on its cover, it might appear to be the usual intellectually nutritious-as-a-Ding Dong film history book. But no! Graham knew Texas like almost no one else, and for Texas, Giant, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, was a film of profound cultural importance.
(13) The Chrysalids by John Wyndham I’m not a fan of sci-fi novels; I read this one about post-nuclear apocalypse Canada only because my book club chose it. I found it to be a page-turner with splendid prose throughout (although I did some eyerolling at the end when it did get a little “inner most cave-y” and “Deus-ex-Machine-y”). I can appreciate why it remains in print, and beloved by many, more than six decades after it was first published in 1955.
P.S. I can also warmly recommend the books by authors featured in my monthly Q & As.
My distraction free smartphone (DFS) stays in this zippered bag within the bag–unless I have a fully conscious, well-considered reason to take it out and use it. My smartphone, a garden-variety iPhone, is not shown because I used it to take this photo. What’s the little rectangle with the picture? I explain below.
As a writer your foremost resource is your creativity applied by the sustained power of your attentional focus.
Your foremost writerly resource is your creativity applied by the sustained power of your attentional focus. The Muse can gift you with a zillion ideas every minute of the day, but if you cannot plant yourself in your chair and stay focused on your writing, your book will ever and always remain an unfulfilled wish, a ghost of your imagination.
Most people have forfeited a more than generous portion of their attentional focus to their smartphones– to checking and scrolling through text messages, social media feeds, games, shopping, news, YouTube videos & etc. Ergo, I would suggest that if you want to get some writing done, don’t be like most people: consider your smartphone use. Very carefully.
And honestly. Yes, smartphones are gee-whiz useful. But when you consider how much of your time and attention they can so easily suck up, day after day after day, you can recognize how exceedingly dangerous they are to you as a writer.
And it’s not a one-for-one tradeoff: The more time you spend diddling with a smartphone, the more likely you are to suffer from what Nicholas Carr terms “the shallows,” making it increasingly difficult to focus for long on anything. In other words, if you’ve got the shallows, with an hour to work on your book, you no longer actually have an hour because you cannot focus on the page for that long.
There are 24 hours in each day. About a third of them are spent sleeping. Once those 24 hours are gone, they’re gone. If you want to fit in the hours and mental energy it takes to write a book, you have to make some choices.
Most people do not write books, and that includes most of the people who say they want to write a book. As if enchanted, they spend a many hours of their every day in a sort trance, looking at screens. I don’t know about most people, but I did not sign up for a stint on the Learning Planet to spend it, as it were, in Plato’s cave doing the watching-puppets-making-shadows-on-the-wall thing.
Of course, everyone’s life is unique in its joys, challenges, and responsibilities. I cannot claim that what works for mine will work for any one else’s. I share my strategies with the smartphone here not in the presumption that they are the only or the universal best, but simply in the hope that, because they have taken me no small trouble to formulate and refine, and they work very well for me, they might prove in some way useful to you as you consider your own strategies with your smartphone, should you be inclined to do so.
Everyone’s life is unique in its joys, challenges, and responsibilities. I cannot claim that what works for mine will work for yours.
Back in January of this year 2019 I posted on my distraction free smartphone (DFS) and in March on reclaiming “quality leisure,” to use Cal Newport’s term, as vital for enhancing not only quality of life, but creative energy. For me, these ideas clap together because, among other things, for “quality leisure” I have my reading, and I now make a habit of carrying a lightweight paperback for when I might otherwise succumb to checkin’-‘n-peckin’ the smartphone.
As I explained in the above-mentioned post, getting a smartphone to “distraction free” is not about simply going into “airplane mode.” Nor is it about rejecting the smartphone. I do use my smartphone; I am grateful to have such a miraculously powerful and convenient communications device and multi-tool. But, made distraction free, my smartphone serves me, I do not serve it– or rather, I do not serve the attention and data-harvesting corporations behind those cannily designed-to-addict apps. (They don’t call the father of captology B.J. Fogg “the Millionaire Maker” for nothing. See for example Ian Leslie’s reporting in The Economist.)
And without “itchy thumbs,” I can better attend to my writing.
I do use my smartphone; I am grateful to have such a miraculously powerful and convenient communications device and multi-tool. But, made distraction free, my smartphone serves me, I do not serve it.
A NOTE ON READING FOR QUALITY LEISURE
Like many writers, I read like a ravenous owl. For my work-in-progress I have been doing a good amount of reading, but alas, these books are generally too large or, in some cases, fragile to carry around; moreover, such reading requires sustained focus and note-taking. (Not a few of these I might term a three-coffee slog…) When I have no other option, I will read a Kindle, using the Kindle app on my iPad– not on my smartphone. Never on my smartphone!
For “quality leisure”/ smartphone substitute reading–that is, something appealing to me to do besides succumb to the siren call of the smartphone– I look for something not work-related that is physically lightweight, and, crucially, that I would, without hesitation, dip into in odd moments.
(Litmus test: would I find it appealing to read while waiting at the tram stop?)
This is the lineup for April: Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!; Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal; and John Muir’s The Mountains of California.
One at a time! An age ago I decided to make it a project to read Willa Cather’s oeuvre. So far: Death Comes for the Archbishop, The Professor’s House, My Ántonia, and as this posts, I have just finished O Pioneers! I can report that, as ever, Cather is sublime.
Since January of this year, so far so good (with the exception of one episode noted below): my smartphone, turned off and zipped in its bag within a bag, remains at once useful to me and distraction free. I do use my DFS for emergency communications –“emergency” being a necessarily elastic term– yeah, if I call it an emergency, then it is (ye olde “self-authority”)– and I also use a select few distraction-free apps such as a camera, calculator, and recorder.
For the full story and explanation of my distraction free smartphone (DFS), plus an app evaluation flowchart, should you be so inclined to consider making your own tailor-made DFS, see the original blog post, “It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone.”)
FOUR CHANGES SINCE JANUARY
(1) An Anti-Trigger for “the Gotta-Show-a-Photo” Trigger
I’ve become increasingly alert to how often an engaging conversation suddenly disintegrates because someone just has to take out their smartphone to show a photo– here’s my dog, here’s my kid being super cute, here’s me at this awesome place on vacation! The problem is, once taken out, there sits the smartphone on the table– to be picked up again in another moment to Google something, check something, show another something, text, check for texts, make or take a phone call… In short, there goes any coherent civilized conversation with those who are actually, I mean physically, present.
(Moreover, as we increasingly rely on visual media to communicate, we’re losing verbal skills.)
I cannot control other people’s itchy fingers for their smartphones, but certainly, I can address my own tendencies. Here’s my antidote for what I think of as the “gotta-show-the-photo” excuse / trigger for bringing out the smartphone: a little card I keep in the bag with my smartphone. It reminds me to keep the smartphone where it is– in the bag— and take the opportunity to exercise my skills with, you know, like, language.
These are my writing assistants, pugs Uli (right) and Washi (left). I keep this card with my smartphone to remind myself not to pick up the phone to show photos without a seriously considered and very good reason to do so. This little card with their photo, people can see that– plus see their not-so-secret Nahuatl names!
In our culture, my stance on the smartphone, not to mention my carrying this little card with my smartphone, might seem eccentric, even extreme. But I submit that it is our culture, in accepting widespread enthrallment to these djinn-like little screens as normal, that is extreme. As in freaky weird.
Why do I want to avoid showing photos on my smartphone to other people? Because I want to reduce the triggers to pick up my smartphone! Towards an effectively distraction free smartphone, this is not trivial.
In captology expert B.J. Fogg’s terminology, with this little card tucked in with the smartphone, I hereby provide a counter-trigger, should I have been triggered to pick up the smartphone to show some photos. For the full explanation of the DFS, and more about B.J. Fogg’s ideas, see my post, “It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone.”
(But OK… if I know you, and if I am really fond of you, and you are really fond of me, and you really, truly, truly, very truly really want to see my super cute dogs, I will take my smartphone out and show you photos of them, say, snoozing on the sofa, rolling on the grass, and/or holding the totally awesome squeaky squirrel toy! And even if I don’t know you all that well and you were to show me pictures on your smartphone of your dogs, or your kids, or your totally awesome vacation, I would be polite and say nice things because that would be sweet of you, and I accept, as I must to live happily in this world, that not everyone shares my ideas about what constitutes freaky weirdness.)
(2) Radio Swiss Classic
Another change is that, when traveling, I now use my smartphone for listening to music. (At home I use an iPad, usually parked in the kitchen, for that.) My go-to site is Radio Swiss Classic. No surfing around, no listening to podcasts, no social media, no YouTube, no people jabbering on (as on NPR), just Radio Swiss Classic– Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, endless free streams of it, 24/7.
Merci beaucoup and Danke schön, Swiss taxpayers.
(3) Uber
And another change is that on a recent trip where timely transportation was otherwise unavailable, I had to download and use the Uber app. Not a bad experience! (I know, I’m late to the parade on this one.)
(4) Texting (…Sigh…) When Required for Certain Financial Transactions and Emergencies
And yet one more, but alas, less felicitous, advent is that for certain online financial operations (and that would include booking a ride with Uber) one now must receive a texted code to confirm the login and/or transaction.
There are some work-arounds: for example, Go Go Grandparent allows you to book Uber rides without a smartphone, using a landline or flip-phone. For some other online financial transactions such as certain credit card purchases and transfers, you can call your bank and authorize skipping this step of a code sent by text message; however, they advise against it for security reasons.
Oh, how I hate texting.
My thumbs are allergic to texting!
Emergencies: I am thinking of, say, being buried in rubble after an earthquake– yes, that might be a good time to text. (Screaming could also help.)
A confession: On that same recent trip, which was to AWP, a ginormously gimungous writers conference held this year at the Oregon Convention Center, I texted with another writer to coordinate a meeting for coffee. I won’t say I regret the meeting– I was delighted to meet with an old friend. But of course, after my friend texted me that she would text me about getting together after the next panel concluded, I ended up checking for her next text. And checking again. And then checking. Just to meet for a 10 minute coffee between panels required multiple texts. I’m on the way. And Be there in 5. That sort of thing.
(On this note, this is one of the reasons I prefer smaller writers conferences where everyone has lunch and/or dinner in the same room, everyone meets in the bookfair or mingles in the hallways outside the panels– I can see everyone I want to see without having to arrange meetings.)
I have been holding the fort against texting and, in particular, Whatsapp, despite heavy pressure from family and friends. When I asked Cal Newport, author of the excellent Digital Minimalism, on his questions forum how he handles texting, he advised that one simply has to “train other people’s expectations.”
Hmmm… There’s a blog post I don’t think I’ll write.
Of course I can appreciate that in certain circumstances texting can be a very appealing and indeed the best method for timely communication. That said, texting can be minimized or eliminated by
(1) prior planning; (2) respecting those plans; and (3) trusting the universe that healthy relationships are possible and that no one will spontaneously combust without constant, tick-like messaging.
What I observe is that just about everyone is checking their smartphone all the livelong day, and expecting to be able to text and thereby expecting to leave everything last-minute flexible precisely because everybody else is checking their smartphone all the livelong day– and night.
Count me out. Apart from my wanting — and my need as a writer–to eliminate distractions from my smartphone, I do not want my relationships electronically intermediated by a corporation, at least to the extent that I can help it. When I’m in a writers conference I want to be in a writers conference, not off in the corner, or doing the smombie shuffle, checking my smartphone for the 157th time since breakfast.
As for communicating with and as disembodied consciousnesses– which is, effectively, what we do when we communicate with each other other than in person– there’s plenty of that going on already with email, the phone, print media and online media, and then, if you buy the idea, after this lifetime, bingo, there’s the whole of eternity for communicating with and as disembodied consciousnesses.
Like I said, what works for me may not work for you.
Just don’t try to text me.
LOOKING TOWARDS THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2019
So, since January, my DFS now has two additional apps, Radio Swiss Classic and Uber, both useful and welcome.
Yes, I will now send and receive text messages, however, only when obliged to do so for financial transactions, and for genuine emergencies– the latter being so rare that one has not yet happened for me whence texting appeared on the scene.
As I write this post, my distraction free smartphone (DFS) remains silently cozy in its zippered bag inside the bag– that bag, for now, in company with the paperback edition of Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.
FREEDOM APP, YES!
As for the laptop– where I do my email, wordprocessing, blog updates, and any Internet research– I recently installed the latest version of the Freedom app. I hadn’t been too impressed with the earlier version, but this new one is a ludic loop snipper par excellence. It’s curious how well it works.
I don’t need the Freedom app for my smartphone, but if you are struggling with reducing the pull to yours, the Freedom app might be something for you to consider.
Those of you who follow me here know that I am fascinated by attentional management and the creative process. Of late I have posted here on my advances in email management; finding time for writing (gimungous swaths of it!); and most recently, my distraction-free smartphone (which post includes an app evaluation flowchart to tailor-make your own, should you feel so inclined).
That last post about the smartphone appeared on the eve of the publication of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. Because I am a fan of Newport’s books, especially Deep Work, which I recommend as vital reading for writers, of any age and any level of experience, I expected Digital Minimalism to be good. As I noted in that post, if nothing else, in broadening our ability to think about the technology we use, Newport’s term “digital minimalism” is an important contribution in itself.
Reader, Digital Minimalism is beyond superb. It is a healing book, on many and profound levels, and I believe that it is not only vital reading for writers, but for anyone who finds themselves staring at a screen more often and for longer than they know is good for them– and, alas, these days, that would be just about everybody. (Including parents.)
In Digital Minimalism Newport says much of what I have said here at Madam Mayo (I found myself nodding, yes, yes, at almost every page), but he goes thirty miles higher and a loop-de-loop beyond.
And perhaps most importantly, for the general reader looking for something in the burgeoning self-help genre addressing the behavioral addictions of our Digital Age, as a tenured professor of Computer Science at an elite university, Cal Newport has authority rarer than an orchid in the Sahara.
My intention in this week’s post is not to provide a full review of Digital Minimalism, but rather to focus on one chapter, “Reclaim Lesiure,” and, more generally, the importance for writers of quality leisure.
QUALITY LEISURE
Writes Newport:
“The more I study this topic, the more it becomes clear to me that low-quality digital distractions play a more important role in people’s lives than they imagine. In recent years, as the boundary between work and life blends, jobs become more demanding, and community traditions degrade, more and more people are failing to cultivate the high-quality leisure lives …crucial for human happiness. This leaves a void that would be near unbearable if confronted, but that can be ignored wih the help of digital noise. It’s now easy to fill the gaps between work and caring for your family and sleep by pulling out a smartphone or tablet, and numbing yourself with mindless swiping and tapping. Erecting barriers against the existential is not new–before YouTube we had (and still have) mindless television and heavy drinking to help avoid deeper questions–but the advanced technologies of the twenty-first century attention economy are particularly effective at this task.” (p.168)
I think that bears repeating.
“Erecting barriers against the existential is not new–before YouTube we had (and still have) mindless television and heavy drinking to help avoid deeper questions–but the advanced technologies of the twenty-first century attention economy are particularly effective at this task.” — Cal Newport
Newports recounts the experience of a writer who tried to go cold turkey from digital distractions. As that writer summed it up, it was “Torture.” Writes Newport:
“[He] felt uncomfortable, in other words, not because he was craving a particular digital habit, but because he didn’t know what to do with himself once his general access to the world of connected screens was removed.” (p.168)
Then:
“If you want to succeed with digital minimalism, you cannot ignore this reality… The most successful digital minimalists, therefore, tend to start their conversion by renovating what they do with their free time–cultivating high-quality leisure before culling the worst of their digital habits… When the void is filled, you no longer need distractions to help you avoid it.” (pp.168-169)
NOT THE DREAMTIME OF A CHARTREUSE MOON OR, THE PERILS OF PROCRASTINATION
As anyone who has taken on writing a book or three knows, only in the dreamtime of a chartreuse moon do they “write themselves.” It happens. But the experience is more often one of initial enthusiasm soon weighted down by one frustration and then twenty-nine others, delays for good reasons, for stupid reasons, more frustrations, distractions galore… and so, slowly, or quickly, a slide into the warmly inviting moist sand of procrastination.
Some books escape this trap. Most do not because the writer soon feels bad about having procrastinated–oh, very bad– and on top of this, in march the clanking, hammering, pounding round-n-round of woulda-coulda-shouldas… which makes the mere thought of the book so disagreeable that… eventually… it sinks deeper into the quicksand… and deeper…. And there it dies.
So how did I manage to write so many books, including the epic historical novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire? A novel, moreover, that deals with Mexico’s most complex transnational episode and recounts it by means of a Jamesian roving omniscient point of view? Whatever you may think of my novel, were you to read it, I am sure you could agree that it was not a modest undertaking. I won’t tote up all my challenges and frustrations over the eight years I needed to research and write it. For purposes of this blog post, the answer to the question is that, apart from a perhaps unusual streak of tenaciousness in my personality, when the going got really funky with The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I happened upon the lifesaver–I grabbed it!– of psychologist Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit.
And now here I am in the midst of another multi-year book project– multi-year by its nature–but also one that, alas, has been interrupted by two other books, a death in the family, and two household moves… I was starting to sense a bit of dampness there in the encroaching sand, as it were. But then, in one of the boxes I opened after my latest move, I found again my dog-eared copy of The Now Habit. I reread it, and I can report that Fiore’s advice is as consolingly golden as ever.
And then, after reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, in the light and freshness of that, I sat down and went through The Now Habit yet again.
It was eerie to be reading Fiore’s The Now Habit in 2019, for it appeared in 1989, before anyone, outside a coterie of high-tech scientists and miltary people, had more than a notion, if that, of the Internet.
When I first read The Now Habit in the early 2000s, email had become a thing, but only a few writers had one of those newfangled things called “websites.” I did not yet know of a single one with a blog (I don’t think I’d yet heard of blogs). Cell phones were just phones. To get to school, we walked a mile in the snow without shoes (just kidding). For mindless procrastination there were trashy fiction, newspapers, magazines, and TV on tap, ever and always. In short, writers have always had to battle procrastination, albeit relatively low-octane stuff compared to the engineered-to-be-addictive apps of today.
But back to the question of quality leisure.
Of immense value for me in Fiore’s The Now Habit was the chapter “Guilt-Free Play, Quality Work.” Speaking to us from a time essentially free from “digital distractions,” Fiore says much the same thing as does Newport: for health, happiness, and productivity, we need quality leisure– or, as Fiore calls it, “guilt-free play.”
Writes Fiore:
“Attempting to skimp on holidays, rest, and exercise leads to suppression of the spirit and motivation as life begins to look like all spinach and no dessert… we need guilt-free play to provide us with periods of physical and mental renewal.”
It’s counterintuitive: when we seriously, urgently want and need to get work done, why first schedule play?!
Writes Fiore:
“Enjoying guilt-free play is part of a cycle that will lead you to higher levels of quality, creative work. The cycle follows a pattern that usually begins with guilt-free play, or at least the scheduling of it. That gives you a sense of freedom about your life that enables you to more easily settle into a short period of quality work. Having completed some quality work on your project, your feeling of self-control increases, as does your confidence in your ability to concentrate and to creatively resolve problems. In turn your capacity to enjoy quality, guilt-free play grows.” (p.82)
Play and work enhance one another in this cycle:
“…You are now well-rested, inspired, and ready for greater quality work. Guilt-free, creative play excites you with motivation to return to work.” (p.82)
I would urge anyone who wants to overcome procrastination to carefully read Fiore’s The Now Habit; he has much to say about the ways over-work can lead to procrastination, and the precise way to schedule guilt-free play with what he calls an “unschedule,” and how to overcome blocks to action. (Much of this good old-fashioned, yet oft overlooked, common sense, for example, what he calls “Grandma’s Principle,” that your scheduled guilt-free play should come after a good, solid half hour of quality work– “your ice cream always comes after you eat your spinach”.) My purpose here is not to review Fiore’s book however, but to focus on the counterintuitive importance for writers of quality leisure.
“GUILT FREE PLAY” AND “QUALITY LEISURE”
First, it should be triple-underlined that the “quality” of leisure is not necessarily related to its cost. Golf resorts, wide-screen TV manufacturers, purveyors of recreational vehicles, time-shares, sports equipment, Princess Cruises, et al would like you to imagine that what they’re selling is “quality leisure,” and the more expensive the upgrades the better!
But “quality leisure” could be an activity as pennywise as sitting in a chair in your livingroom and knitting a scarf from a ball of yarn that had been stashed in your closet for the past 20 years. Or, say, baking peanutbutter cookies; playing with your dog; walking out to the park and tossing around a frisbee with a friend. Biking to your public library to read War & Peace. Or playing baseball, curling, taking a yoga class, doing yoga on your own in your backyard, or on the beach at dawn! Scottish country dancing, baking bread, watching Casablanca at your local film school’s movie festival. Learning to play the guitar or the kazoo. Baking lasagne. Casting bronze sculpture! Or squishing together a super weird alien head the size of your fist out of papier mache!
In sum, “quality leisure” can be pretty much any activity that you truly enjoy doing and that you find energizing. (Hint: TV watching and pecking at the smartphone don’t count. Neither does bar-hopping or sitting around toking weed.) Newport has more to say about identifying and pursuing quality leisure. Before I return to that, a brief note about the “artist date.”
THE ARTIST’S WAY
By this point I imagine that many of you writerly readers may be thinking, didn’t Julia Cameron say something like this in The Artist’s Way?
Indeed she did. Cameron’s concept, a potent one, is what she calls “the artist date.” The idea is that this is scheduled quality leisure (to use Newport’s term) / guilt-free play (to use Fiore’s) but you go alone— absolutely not with someone else–and do something that nurtures your artist self. For me it might be something like a visit to a museum, reading a Willa Cather novel for an hour in a favorite coffee shop, or attending an organ concert. (In one of my most challenging moments in writing The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, one “artist date” I made for myself was to attend a planetarium show. Of all things.) Some people might like to get out the crayons or the Play-Dough. Of course, there’s no formula; what nurtures one artist, or writer, might not another.
So, advises Cameron, if you want to get some good writing done, go forth, by yourself, at a scheduled time, and do some fun and possibly wacky-nerdy thing!
Cameron’s The Artist’s Way was originally published in 1991, before the tsunami of digital technologies swept over our world, and yet like Fiore’s The Now Habit, it offers wise and timeless advice for writers. Cameron has a New Age spiritual slant, however, and that isn’t every Atheist’s slug of coffee. With that caveat, I warmly recommend The Artist’s Way.
CAL NEWPORT’S LEISURE LESSONS
Back to our computer professor and attentional focus expert Cal Newport and his latest, Digital Minimalism. In the chapter “Reclaim Lesiure,” Newport offers specific insights into which types of leisure are most effective for filling the void otherwise taken by low-quality digital distractions, and for enhancing well-being and productivity. These are those endeavors that:
(1) “prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption”;
(2) “use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world”; and
(3) tend to be those “that require real world, structured social interactions.”
Newport is not talking about eliminating digital technology, and in fact he points out ways in which websites, email, social media and more digital technologies can assist us in engaging in more and higher quality leisure. There is, Newport concedes, “a complex relationship between high-quality leisure and digital technology.” In my own case, I recently found out about and registered for a university extension course (which I attended in person) on a website. Many similar examples of how texting, social media, and YouTube, can assist and enhance real world meetings and activities no doubt pop into your mind. Newport stresses: “The state I’m helping you escape is one in which passive interaction with your screens is your primary leisure.”
“The state I’m helping you escape is one in which passive interaction with your screens is your primary leisure.” — Cal Newport
Newport concludes his chapter “Reclaim Leisure” with four practices, each amply explained, argued, and with illuminating examples:
Fix or build something every week;
Schedule your low-quality leisure;
Join something;
Follow leisure plans, both seasonal and weekly, stating both the objectives and the habits you aim to establish.
AND TO CONCLUDE WITH FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT
Here is an example of one writer’s quality leisure activity: Swiss writer, playwright and artist Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) painted the bathroom adjacent to his office. This is a partial view, of side wall, back wall, and ceiling. I decline to publish here the principal appurtenance.
Thanks to poet Joseph Hutchison, who recommended Dürrenmatt’s work to me, as I am temporarly living in the area, I made it, shall we say, one of my “quality leisure” activities to visit the house / museum, now the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel. (I would also call this visit “guilt-free play,” to use Neil Fiore’s term, but not an “artist’s date,” as Julia Cameron defines it, because I did not go alone.)
In the museum:
In English: “I can play with this world: that is my freedom as an artist.”– Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Here is the writer at his desk, as shown on the cover of this book (which I would translate as Dürrenmatt: His Life in Pictures):
You could leave it hanging in the tree in the backyard… not what I am recommending, however. Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.
SMOMBIE: It’s a word that popped up in Germany only in 2015. It’s hard to imagine now, but a decade ago, a scene, typical today, of smombies shuffling along city streets would have been but a cliché in a sci fi novel. But here we are.
When we lack the words to precisely describe something, it becomes difficult to recognize it, never mind debate and discuss it. Albeit some decades ago, the Digital Revolution burst upon us all, a series of tsunamis of such dizzying celerity that our vocabulary is still catching up. Only a few years ago a much-needed term was coined by Jake Knapp: “Distraction Free iPhone.” I came across the term when I read Knapp’s recent update on his experience here.
DISTRACTION FREE SMARTPHONE = DFS = defis
I’ll switch that last word from “iPhone” to “smartphone” to make it Distraction Free Smartphone, DFS for short. I did not think of my smartphone as distraction free until now, but for the past several years, that’s precisely what I have been moving towards, a DFS. Hmm, that sounds a mite snappier!
And I hereby tweak DFS to “defis,” which, I note, is the plural of “defi” which means “challenge” or “defiance.” Indeed, using a distraction-free smartphone is an act of defiance towards smombiedom.
BEYOND PRO OR CON
The magic is, this new word, DFS, or defis, nudges us beyond the rigid ping-pong of pro or anti-smartphone; forward-looking or old fogey. As I wrote in a recent post:
“The reigning paradigm is the same one we’ve had since forever: if it’s digital and new it must be better; those who resist are old fogeys. It’s a crude paradigm, a cultural fiction. And it has lasted so long a time in part because those who resisted either were old fogeys and/or for the most part could not articulate their objections beyond a vaguely whiney, ‘I don’t like it.’
“As an early adopter of digital technologies for decades now (wordprocessing in 1987, email in 1996, website 1998, blog 2006, podcast and Youtube channel 2009, bought a first generation iPad, Twitter 2008, and first generation Kindle, self-pubbed Kindles in 2010, etc.), I have more than earned the cred to say, no, my little grasshoppers, no, if it is digital and it is new it might, actually, maybe, in many instances, be very bad for you.
“In other words, adopting a given digital technology does not necessarily equate with ‘onwards and upwards’; neither does rejecting a given digital technology necessarily equate with backwardness. I so often hear that ‘there is no choice.’ There is in fact a splendiferous array of choices, and each with a cascade of consequences. But we have to have our eyes, ears, and minds open enough to perceive these, and the courage to act accordingly.”
Of course, when it comes to using digital technologies, different people have different needs, different talents, goals, obligations, opportunities, and vulnerabilities. A responsible mother with young children will probably want to use Whatsapp with the babysitter; a real estate agent who wants to stay in business needs to be available to clients, whether by phone, email or text– and so on. Some people slip into the vortex of addiction to social media or gaming far more easily than others…
My aim here is not to judge other people (although I’ll admit to some eye-rolling at smombies slapping themselves into streetlamps), but to examine the nature of digital technology and my own use of it. I am not a mother with young children, nor a real estate agent. Games bore me, always have. I am a writer of books. I blog about digital technology because first, it’s my way of grokking it; and second, I trust that what I’ve learned may be of interest to my readers– for I know that many of you are also writers.
We writers are hardly alone in the need for uninterrupted chunks of time. Brain surgeons, composers, painters, historians, statisticians, sculptors, software engineers… many people, in a wide variety of professions and vocations need, to quote Cal Newport, “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task,” that is to say, engage in what he terms “deep work.”
“Literary travel writing is about first perceiving in wider and sharper focus than normal; then, in the act of composition, shaping and exploring these perceptions so that, as with fiction, it may evoke in a reader’s mind emotions, thoughts, and pictures. It’s not meant to be practical, to serve up, say, the top ten deals on rental cars, or a low-down on the newest ‘hot spas.’ Literary travel writing, at its best, provides the reader the sense of actually traveling with the writer, so that she smells the tortillas heating on the comal, tastes the almond-laced hot chocolate, sees the lights in the distant houses brightening yellow in the twilight, and, after the put-put of a motorcycle, that sudden swirl of dust over the road.”
Writers have always battled distractions, but with the ubiquity of smartphones, and increasingly sophisticated app designs and algorithms to lure us and trap us into “the machine zone,” we’re at a new level of the game– or the war, as Steven Pressfield would have it.
Whatever might or might not be an optimal use of digital technology for you, I know this:
A book that can claim a thoughtful person’s time and attention is not going to be written by someone who is pinged by & poking at their smartphone all the live-long day.
“OUT IN THE WORLD”
Some writers have outright rejected smartphones– but so few, in fact, that only two come to mind: John Michael Greer, a prolific blogger and author whose stance on modern conveniences is, as he titled a collection of essays on his vision of the post-industrial future, Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush; and journalist Sebastian Junger. As Junger said on the Joe Rogan podcast:
“when I’m out, I want to be out in the world. If you’re looking at your phone, you’re not in the world… I just look around at this– and I’m an anthropologist, and I’m interested in human behavior– and I look at the behavior, like literally, the physical behavior of people with smartphones and… it looks anti-social and unhappy and anxious, and I don’t want to look like that, and I don’t want to feel like how I think those people feel.”
While I say a quadruple “AMEN” to Junger’s comment, I decided to keep my smartphone because I value having the emergency information-access and communication backups enough to pay for the smartphone for that alone; plus, I much prefer using the smartphone’s camera and dictation app to having to carry separate appliances, and I use these often in my work.
For me, the question was never whether or not a smartphone is useful. For me, obviously it is. The question is rather:
How can I maximize the benefits of this sleekly convenient multi-tool / communications device, while blocking its djinn-like demands, and so with sharpest powers of observation and consciously directed concentration, stay awake in this world?
I had answered this question by turning my smartphone into a distraction free smartphone, as I realized when I read Jake Knapp’s post.
Knapp’s version of “distraction free” turned out to be different than mine– he deleted his smartphone’s Mail and browser apps, which I kept. And when I Googled around a bit to find other writers who had tried to convert their smartphone to distraction free– and they were astonishingly few– I found that each had a different version of distraction free. Some recommended using grayscale, which I did not find helpful– but you might. Again, no surprise, what works for one writer may not work for another.
And that got me noodling… over the year-end holidays, instead of going to the movies, I stayed home and made my App Evaluation Flowchart for a Custom Distraction Free Smartphone, which you will find at the end of this post.
THIS WRITER’S DISTRACTION FREE SMARTPHONE (DFS or “defis”)
In early 2019, here’s where I stand, comfortable at last, with my smartphone. My defis, as it were. In order of importance, I use my smartphone as / for a:
Camera (for stills and video)
Audioplayer (various apps for audio books, podcasts, and music, which I usually listen to when flying or driving, never when walking or on public transport)
Emergency Mail
Recorder (dictation app for interviews)
Google translator
Emergency telephone
Emergency Google Maps
Emergency Safari
Calculator
Flashlight
In essence, I use my smartphone only when I decide it will serve me for a specific purpose, e.g., to take a photo, make a call, record an interview. Otherwise, it stays in the charging station at home or zipped into its felt bag in my backpack, wifi off, roaming off. I do not allow it to beep, rill, cheep, chirp, ding, ping or vibrate.
Other than the above-mentioned apps, I have deleted all apps (except the ones Apple will not allow me to delete; those I corralled into a folder I labeled “NOPE.” Do not ask me what they are, I do not remember.)
No social media apps, no Whatsapp, no news, no games.
All– all– notifications are off.
About the smartphone as a phone: I make a call from the smartphone maybe two or three times a month. I never check voicemail. Ever. I don’t know how to check voicemail and don’t tell me its easy because I don’t want to know how.
If you leap to conclude that I’m living the life of a Luddite you’d be wrong. I do make and receive plenty of phone calls– except for emergencies, on a landline. I Skype. I spend hours galore on email– but at my desk, on a laptop. On the laptop I also manage my website and blog. I podcast, too, editing the audio with GarageBand (listen in anytime here). And I film and edit short videos for my YouTube and Vimeo channels.
When I first got an iPhone nearly a decade ago, oh, did I fiddle with apps, apps for this and apps for that and apps that would confect a fairy’s hat! I was becharmed by apps! Ingenious things, apps are.
I was on FB, too, until 2015.
But I am a writer of books, and this smartphone rabbit-hole-orama, it wasn’t working for me.
THE TWO MAIN PULLS
For me, the two main pulls to pick up the smartphone have been:
(1) to see any messages from people and/or about matters I care about; (2) to have something convenient to read / look at when I’m away from my desk and feel bored.
Once I had this clear, I could formulate a more effective strategy than vaguely “finding a healthy balance” or blanging down the anvil of will power.
Over the past several years, trying to figure this out, backsliding, and trying again (and again) to figure this out, what I have found actually works is to remove or minimize temptations to even look at, never mind pick up, the smartphone when it is not in my fully conscious and decided interest to do so; and crucially, I have replaced those “pulls” to look at the smartphone with what are, for me, either superior or at least realistically acceptable alternatives.
B.J. FOGG
B.J. Fogg of Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab has been an influence in my thinking about the smartphone. His basic equation for inducing a behavior is Motivation + Ability + Prompt (all three simultaneous), or B = MAP.
You can read more about Fogg’s behavior model here.
He’s all very sunny and even uses puppets when talking about his behavior model and how it can help people improve their lives, and I for one sincerely appreciate this. But I suspect that people with darker designs (oh I dunno, like those starry eyed newbies with VC in Silicon Valley who would launch a platform / app that, with maximum speed and efficiency, sucks the life-hours, money, and data out of you) also look to professor Fogg as a guru.
What I’m saying is, more likely than not, you are being very, very cannily manipulated by any one of a number of apps to pick up and remain focused on your smartphone despite what you know perfectly well are your better interests.
And understanding the way in is to understand the way out.
THIS WRITER’S STRATEGIES
I don’t pretend that my strategies will work for other writers. This section is not meant to be a series of recommendations but an example: what works for me, a working writer. (If you want to go direct to the App Evaluation Flowchart for a Custom Distraction Free Smartphone, just scroll on down to the bottom of this post.)
(1) Focus digital communications on email, and always at the desk, on the laptop
This is, to-the-moon-and-back, the most powerful strategy for me. (Read about my game-changing 10-point email protocol here.) I take email very seriously. However, with rare, emergency-level exceptions, I check email only on my laptop, only after 3 PM, and I batch it. I thereby establish the boundaries I need to be able to do my work, and I can truthfully say, “I welcome email,” and “the best way to reach me is by email.” And if not perfect, I am ever better about responding to email in a timely manner– since I have relatively fewer distractions!
Many people have told me that they would prefer to communicate with me on FB or Whatsapp, but… too bad! I am a writer who writes books, which means that I need to funnel communication into specific times, not allowing interruptions to leech my attention willynilly throughout the day. If someone cannot summon the empathy to appreciate that, well, like I said. (Anyway, I love you guys.)
This strategy allows me to keep the smartphone silent and in the closet (its charging station) or zipped in its bag inside my backpack. In B.J. Fogg’s terminology, I have hereby eliminated the motivation, the ability, and the prompts to pick up the smartphone. So I don’t.
(2) When out and about, if there’s a chance of having to wait a spell, carry a paperback
Recent Reading: J.M. Synge’s The Aran Islands Ye, verily, of the time before Instagram and TripAdvisor (A classic of travel writing and the Irish Renaissance, and a reading cure for “the shallows”) weighing in at about the same as a potato
This is the second most powerful strategy for me, and simple and old-fashioned as it is, it took what seems to me now an embarrassingly long time to figure it out.
I’ve always been an avid reader of books and magazines, but when I got an iPhone, suddenly, in spare moments, such as waiting at the dentist, in line at the grocery store, waiting for a friend in a coffee shop, I found myself pecking at it. I was reading, but… it was, in fact, more often skimming, watching, and surfing.
As Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, reading a book and clicking & scrolling on a smartphone (from, say, website to website, to Twitter to FB to Whatsapp to YouTube to Instagram feeds x, then y, then z), do two very different things to one’s brain. The latter literally retrains your brain, resulting in what Carr calls “the shallows,” and once you’re in the shallows, tasks requiring sustained cognitive focus– such as writing a book– become ants-in-the-pants-nigh-impossible.
Don’t tell me I could use a Kindle app to read ebooks on my smartphone; I don’t and I won’t because, again, my goal is to remove as many siren calls to the smartphone as possible, relying on acceptable or superior alternatives. For me, a paperback provides a superior reading experience to an ebook; and if it’s not too heavy, I don’t mind tucking a real book in my bag.
But, by the way, I do read Kindles on occasion, using the Kindle app on my iPad, as a last resort only, when a paper copy is unavailable. I also use my iPad for reading news (which I inevitably regret), a select few favorite blogs, and for listening to audiobooks and podcasts in the kitchen. (If not in its charging station, or with me as I am doing something like say, folding laundry, my iPad remains parked on the kitchen counter.)
In B.J. Fogg’s terminology, with this strategy, I have reduced the motivation to pick up the smartphone. Also in his terminology, I build a tiny habit: when tempted to take out the smartphone to surf, take out the paperback. (You can watch Fogg’s TEDx talk on tiny habits here.)
(3) For a calendar, “to do” lists, and selected contacts, use a Filofax
This strategy is an old one for me, tried and true. As Getting Things Done guru David Allen says, “low-tech is oftentimes better because it is in your face.” The Filofax is a century-old British system designed for engineers that is so efficient it still has legions of devotees, among them myself, for over 30 years now. My lovely and ridiculously sturdy cherry-red leather Filofax normally stays next to my laptop on my desk; I can, but I rarely carry it with me.
As for contacts, I keep the addresses and telephone numbers I need at-hand in the Filofax and the rest in a separate system, but not on the smartphone because, again, I aim to focus my communications on email, and always on the laptop. (My smartphone does have emergency contacts.)
In B.J. Foggese: For my to dos and calendar, I have no motivation nor prompts to pick up the smartphone.
(4) For an alarm clock use an alarm clock (and for a watch use a watch)
Back in the days of my starry-eyed wonderfest with apps, I downloaded three different alarm clock apps. The cornucopia of “alarms,” from harps to waterfalls to drums to roosters yodeling, that was fun. But I deleted them all and instead use a little plastic alarm clock powered by two AA batteries. It weighs almost nothing, cost less than ten bucks, and works just fine– so I can keep the volume on the smartphone on mute. Don’t tell me I could adjust the volume on the alarm clock app because I don’t want to touch the smartphone if I don’t have to, and certainly not as the last thing at night and first thing in the morning. And I don’t want the smartphone parked anywhere near where I sleep.
This strategy might sound silly. How is the alarm clock app different than say, the calculator or the flashlight or the camera or diction app? The answer is, by definition an alarm clock distracts, it prompts me to pick it up to turn it off– and that is precisely what I do not want my distraction free smartphone to do.
This is not trivial.
In B.J. Foggese: another motivation, ability, and prompt to pick up the smartphone eliminated.
(5) Use paper maps
You read that right. People laugh at me. I laugh back! Sometimes I use a store-bought map but more often, before I go out, I’ve Googled on my laptop and printed out or sketched the directions. I do make use of Google Maps on the laptop and on my smartphone in emergencies– this is one of the reasons for which I keep a smartphone. But by relying primarily on paper, rather than GPS via the smartphone in realtime, I have removed yet another reason to pick up and start poking at the smartphone.
An added benefit, crucial for me as a travel writer, is that my sense of space, direction, and the lay of any given landscape have remained sharper.
(If you love the planet and believe everything paper should be digital, I would invite you to Google a bit to learn about the energy realities of server farms and what precisely goes into smartphone batteries.)
(6) Always carry a pen and small a notebook
Another opportunity to not pick up the smartphone.
(7) Make it a habit to keep the smartphone zipped inside its bag
I don’t make a habit of holding my smartphone in my hand, carrying it in a back pocket, or setting it down on the desk or table next to me. Unless it’s an emergency, or I have an excellent, fully conscious reason to take it out and use it, the smartphone stays dead quiet and out of sight in its bag inside the bag.
In B.J. Foggese, I thereby reduce my motivation, ability, and prompts to touch it.
IN CONCLUSION
My smartphone is now simply (albeit miraculously!!) a lightweight selected multi-tool (camera / recorder / audio player / caculator / flashlight) and emergency information-access and communications device which I carry when I go out of the house, unless it is to walk the dogs. (I never take it when I walk the dogs because when I walk the dogs, I walk the dogs.)
My smartphone does have Mail, Safari, and Googlemaps buttons, but because I rely on my laptop for email and other Internet access, and paper for out-and-about navigation, I no longer feel that pesky tug to pick up and peck at the smartphone– but I do have these apps available to me should I need them. And sometimes I do need them.
Ditto the telephone.
Again, and of course, what works for me may not necessarily work for you. But may this new term, Distraction Free Smartphone, or as I would suggest, DFS, or defis, serve you in thinking through your own concerns and strategies for your own smartphone and your own writing.
DFS MODE
I’ll add one more term: “DFS mode.” A smartphone need not be distraction free almost all the time, as mine is. Let’s say one needs to be available on Whatsapp, voicemail, email or to use some other app for family or work that may ping, ring or ding-ding you at random intervals, and so be it; then, for the time alloted for writing (or other deep work), one’s smartphone could be put into DFS mode. As I hope I have made abundantly clear, this would not necessarily be the same as “airplane mode.”
P.S. Cal Newport’sDigital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World will be out next month. From what I’ve read of his other books and blog, this promises to be a pathbreaking book. If nothing else, the term “digital minimalism” adds depth and nuance to our thinking about digital technology and our use of it.
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.
