This blog posts every Monday. Starting this year, every fourth Monday, except when not, is a Q & A with another writer. This week not.
As you dear, faithful, writerly readers know, I have been at work on the Far West Texas book. One of the individuals who appears and reappears throughout the narrative is Lt. John Bigelow, Jr. An officer in the Tenth U.S. Cavalry in the late 19th century, Bigelow had an illustrious father and his own impressive body of work in military strategy and tactics, in many ways anticipating the industrial-level wars of the twentieth century. So, having done a small Himalaya of reading on those Bigelows and the Tenth Cavalry, last fall at the conference at the Center for Big Bend Studies, I presented a paper on Lt. Bigelow, expecting to polish it up into publishable form lickety-split. Ha! It’s still not finished, but at least the draft is, and I submitted it. Wish me luck.
In the meantime, herewith, a few lessons learned
about working with a working library.
I’m several decades and several published books
down the pike now that I pause here, en blog, to confess that I never
fully appreciated what was involved with writing a book that necessitated a
working library. I just sort of accumulated whatever books I needed, or thought
I might need, willynilly, clearing bookshelf space, catch as catch can. Things
got rather pile-y, shall we say, and sometimes I wasted good working mornings
just hunting for things. I never fully appreciated how unwieldly some of
these working libraries can grow– and grow as, in many cases, they rightfully
must.
Some of my working libraries took up only a few
shelves, for example, the reading for my anthology Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary
Companion. The one for my Baja California book, Miraculous Air, took
up an entire wall, floor to ceiling, and the working library for my novel on
Mexico’s Second Empire almost twice as much space. Ditto my recent
book on Madero and
metaphysical religion. And… drumroll… most especially the
one I am using now on Far West Texas. The Texasbibliothek, as I call it, now
hogs and camels and elephants and Macktrucks an entire room.
You may wonder, why can’t I just borrow books from
my local library? Answer, Part I: I don’t have a relevant library nearby. Part
II: When I am writing I often need to have several different books at-hand;
many libraries will not lend out so many books at once, nor bring out so many
volumes to a reading room. (But yes, I have consulted books in libraries, and
in archival collections.) As I worked on that Baja California book, the Second
Empire novel, and the one on the Mexican Revolution, I often had five or ten or
even as many as, say, fifteen books open on my desk… such is the
Kuddelmuddel of my process.
So… for the types of books I was and am writing, this means having a budget– a realistic budget– for buying books. University press hardcovers can be, ouch. To save money, many a time I bought an ex-library edition off of www.abebooks.com— which for used books is, in my experience, more reliable than amazon or ebay. And for collectible editions, I would advise steering way clear of amazon and ebay because all sorts of sellers on there have no clue what a first edition is or how to accurately describe a book’s condition. Again, abebooks.com is good and better yet sellers who are members in good standing of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. An occupational danger is that you can get a jones for collecting, and start buying first editions. But that’s another blog post. I used to buy Italian shoes, let me put it that way.
As for organizing these working libraries, I posted previously about that here. Indeed, I got this current working library, my Texasbibliothek, into such superb shape that, as I was pulling out various titles for this paper on Lt. Bigelow, I had a little fiesta of self-congratulation every single time.
And reshelving the books? Something I do now with this Texasbibliothek that I have never done before– and I am shaking my head that it had not occurred to me sooner– is to tuck into each book a bookmark with its category.
UPDATE: See my November 11, 2019 post “A Working Library” for more about using bookmarks. My technique has advanced!
Making individual bookmarks with the categories
noted might seem more trouble than it’s worth, but the challenge is, many books
could go into more than one category, and if I have to remember or decide anew
which one it is each time I reshelve it, well…. then… unshelved books tend
to start piling up and sprawling into big, giant, King-Kong-scale
Kuddelmuddel!
Decluttering? Indeed I do declutter. However, for some subjects, as in these working libraries, the collections in themselves have significant cultural / scholarly value; they should not be broken up. One day I will find them a good home.
File this post under Future Reminder to Take My
Own Advice, and if some or all of these ideas also work for you, gentle reader,
verily I say unto you: Wunderbar!
Late last September, having finally rearranged
and set up my working library in my new office in Mexico City– the work in
question being a book on Far
West Texas— I had to pack it all back up again and ship it
across the Atlantic. (Why? Well, that’s a novel I’m not going to write, both
literally and figuratively).
Now that I’ve got my Texas books resettled on
their second set of new shelves in less than six months, I’m ready to take on
2018! But whew, I’ve got biceps after this job for a Hercules. The
thirty-eight boxes of books comprising what I now call the Texas Bibliothek– I
have landed in German-speaking Switzerland– arrived in mid-January. And a
couple weeks later, every tome and paperback and pamphlet and back-issue of Cenizo Journal
is in place, and I can carry my bike over head! I could scoop up and toss
dessicated Christmas trees, small donkeys and their Schmutzlis
out windows, too, should I take a notion!
ON ORGANIZING (AND TWICE MOVING) A WORKING LIBRARY: Ten Lessons Learned of Late with the Texas Bibliothek
1. Organize the books by topic– not as a
librarian would recommend, but as your working writer’s mind finds most
apt.
Ideas About Texas (Some, Anyway…)
After all, you’re the one who will be using these
books, not the general public. And even in a fairly substantial working
library, such as this one, there are not enough books to justify the
bothernation of cataloging and labeling each and every title.
If you have more than 50 books and if you do not
organize them in some reasonably reasonable way, why don’t you just open your
front door and let your dogs wander out and then you can go looking for them on
the freeway at four a.m., that might be more fun!
2. If any category has more than 30-40 books,
create a new subcategory.
Because trying to keep books in alphabetic order,
whether by author or by title, makes me feel dehydrated, RRRRRR.
3. Label categories of books with large,
easy-to-read lettering.
Because if you’re a working writer, like me you’re probably near-sighted…
Funny how book designers always have such unique
ideas about colors and font sizes and typefaces…. In other words, I don’t
want to have to look at the visual clutter of those spines to try to figure out
what this bunch is about; I let that BIG FAT LABEL tell me.
If you do not want to make labels, why don’t you
peel the labels off all the jars and cans in your pantry, mix ’em up, and then
try to find which one is the dog food and which one the canned pumpkin? That
would be a mile more hilarious.
4. When moving, before touching anything,
take photos of the whole shebang.
I do not have early onset dementia, but boy
howdy, moving house sometimes makes me feel as if I do. (Did I used to have a
working library? Was I working on a book? What day is it? Is Ikea still open?)
5. Then, before even touching those books, take a tape measure and write down the inches of shelf space required for each and every category.
I suspect that these things are in cahoots with pens and umbrellas.
A tape measure!
I realize this may sound very OCD.
But three moves ago, it did not occur to me to do
this with my working collection on Mexico’s Second Empire / French
Intervention, for my then recently-published book, The Last Prince
of the Mexican Empire. In the rush of moving
I allowed the moving company crew to pack the books,
willynilly-fefifo-rama-chillydilly, and then, on arrival, lacking space, never
mind bookshelf space, and so having to leave that particular library in a
half-unpacked, unsorted chaos, for the next few years more correspondence and
related research was bottlenecked than I want to think about. (That library now
has its home in Mexico City– that would be another blog post.)
The main thing is, you want to be certain you
actually have the bookshelf space you need plus ample wiggle room for
each category before you start packing– and then double
check the available bookshelf space again before you start unpacking.
And never, ever let anyone else pack them.
Sounds obvious. Alas, for me, three moves ago, it
was not.
6. Save those neatly made shelf labels to
reattach to the new shelves, and also label– with mammoth, easy-to-read
fonts– each and every box.
Geology, Energy, Box 1 corresponded to category 40, requiring 17 inches of shelf space.
7. Number each box, e.g., 1 of 32; 2 of 32, etc.
These can be cross-referenced with the master
list of categories, which has the measurements.
8. Don’t be stingy with boxes!!
For moving books I prefer the so-called banker’s boxes
with punch-out holes for handles. Banker’s boxes are large enough to take a
heaping helping of books, and the handles make them easy to carry, however the
weight of a book-filled banker’s box remains within the range of what I, a
50-something female whose daily mainly workout consists of walking two pugs,
and, la-de-da, whatever biking and yoga, can easily haul up or down a staircase.
Yes, you could snag a batch of free boxes at the
grocery store, and yes, you probably could, as I certainly could, lift bigger
boxes with double the number of books in them– and most men can haul a stack
of two or even three bigger boxes at a time. However, whatever the upper-body
strength you have and shape you are in, when you are moving house, unless you
for some reason enjoy showering hundreds of dollars on, say, your
chiropractor’s vacation home, lifting huge, ultra-heavy, and unwieldy boxes is
penny wise and dollar dumb. Ox dumb.
Goodie for me, I learned this lesson three moves
ago, and I had an excellent chiropractor.
9. Take photos of the boxes, labels included.
Because you never know! Seems I have good moving
juju. Knock on wood for next time!
On reshelving day, gather together before commencing:
Papertowels
Cleaning spray for the shelves (they will be dusty)
If you are missing any one of these items, you will probably have to interrupt whatever you are doing to go get it, and then in, say, the kitchen, because you have Moving on the Brain, you will be distracted by some zombie command from the dusty ethers such as, I must now go to Ikea to buy garbage bags and whatnotsy whatnots…
#
Meanwhile, dagnabbit, people just won’t stop writing books on Texas!! Two more, post-move, essential additions to the Texas Bibliothek:
Wish me luck, gentle reader. I aim to finish my book on Far West Texas this year. By the way, I host an associated 24 podcast series, “Marfa Mondays,” which is woefully behind schedule because of these moves, but soon to resume. I invite you to listen in anytime to the 20 podcasts posted so far.
P.S. Using the free blogger platform, I also
maintain an online working
library of out-of-copyright (now in the public domain, mainly linked to
archive.org) Texas books— books which I could not or did not want
to attempt to purchase but would like to be able to consult at my
leisure. It includes a number of titles that might appear bizarrely out of
place (one is on Massachusetts, for example)– but after all, this is not for
the general public, but a working library in service of my book in-progress. I
mention this because perhaps you might find it of use to create such an online
library for your own purposes.
P.P.S. For those wondering, what is my take on
ebooks? First of all, I delightedly sell
them! And yes, I have bought some, and as far as the Texas
book research goes, when I need a book urgently and/or the paper edition is
unavailable or expensive, I have been known to download a Kindle or four– or,
as above-mentioned, download out-of-copyright books for free from www.archive.org and similar sites. I
appreciate that convenience, and also the ease with which I can search within a
text for a word or phrase. Nonetheless, on balance, I find ebooks decidedly
inferior to paper. Morever, I doubt that my electronic libraries will outlive me
in any meaningful way, while I expect that my working libraries of hardcovers
and paperbacks, including some rare
editions, may serve other researchers well beyond the horizon of my
lifetime.
As anounced in the last post of 2017, in 2018 I will be posting on Mondays on the following schedule:
First and third Mondays of the month: New writing / news / podcasts; Second Monday: For the writing workshop; Fourth Monday: Cyberflanerie and/or Q & A with another writer, poet, and/or translator; Fifth Monday, when applicable: Whatever strikes my gong.
BIG FAT CAVEAT: If you have a job and/or family situation that oblige you to use your smartphone like a bodily appendage, dear reader, a shower of metaphorical lotus petals upon you, but this post is not for you. Perhaps you might enjoy reading this post from 2012 instead. See you next Monday.
The challenge in a pistachio shell: How to maximize the quality of one’s email, both incoming and outgoing, while minimizing the time and effort required to dispatch it— all the while maintaining the blocks of uninterrupted time necessary for one’s own writing?
What works for me may not work for you, dear reader, but I know that many of you are also writers, and a few of you are artists and/or scholars, so perhaps—and here’s hoping— my time-tested 10 point protocol for dealing with email will be of as much help to you as it has been to me.
A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CONTEXT: EMAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!RRRRRRR
How is a writer to cope with this snake-headed conundrum-o-rama that just about everyone everywhere has been wrestling with since it first emerged out of the DARPA-depths of this rapacious fabulosity we call the Internet?
I’ve been slogging it out with email for more years than I care to count. It was sometime in the mid-1990s when I logged on to my first account; I but fuzzily recall the roboty-dialup-and-connection sounds and an inky screen with neon-green text. A few years after that, I was using this cutting-edge thing called an AOL account. (Whew, AOL, Paleolithic!) Now I use a nearly-as-ancient yahoo account plus a pair of gmail accounts all funneled into ye olde Outlook Express inbox, into which pour… pick your metaphor…
(a) Rains! (b) Niagaras! (c) Avalanches! (d) Gigazoodles of emails!
As anyone who remembers the late 1990s will attest, it seemed that overnight email blossomed into a hot-house monster—or, I should say, a Macy’s Parade of monsters— and for me, by 2009-2010, when I was on tour for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire at the same time that my father was in his last days, trying to cope with email, both professional and personal, had become a nightmare.
In 2011-2012 I was tempted to follow the example of “Swiss Miss” blogger Tina Roth Eisenberg after her three months of maternity leave: Declare email bankruptcy. Many a time I was also tempted to remove my email address from my website. Neither of those strategies appealed to me, however; I appreciated so many of those messages, and I also appreciated that, apart from spam and the occasional bit of nonsense, behind those messages were relationships that I sincerely valued, even cherished.
I also realized—and this is something I am writing about in my book on Far West Texas— that hyper-connectivity along with endless carousels of hyper-palatable distractions are now woven into the very fabric of modern life. As long as the electric grid continues functioning, I doubt these forces impinging on one’s experience of work, family, social life, politics, and travel, will diminish; on the contrary.
“hyper-connectivity along with endless carousels of hyper-palatable distractions are now woven into the very fabric of modern life.”
Over the past several years, chip by chip, I managed to whittle down that ghastly backlog (not to zero, but on some days it gets razor-close). More importantly, by trial, error, research, and mental muscle, I formulated a more workable strategy for dispatching the ongoing flow.
Again, that caveat: this post is not for those who need to be continually available to a boss, colleagues, clients, friends, or family.
IT STARTED WITH SOME ILLUMINATING READING… THEN THE FLOODLIGHTS SWITCHED ON WITH “THE MACHINE STOPS”
I gleaned many an insight and tip for managing email from:
For me the most enlightening reading of all, however, and strange to say, was a work of fiction from 1909: E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.”Astonishingly, that short story written more than a century ago by an Edwardian Englishman best known for his novel A Passage to India, envisions email, texting, Facetime, and the like. It also seems Forster anticipated the American diet built around corn-syrup heavy fast food. The main character, cocooned in technology, has turned into a heartless, incurious, yet hyper-connected blob.
On reading this sci-fi horror, I realized that one needs to evaluate a technology not by its gee-whiz-what-would-Steve-Jobs-say factor, but by how it affects the body. I mean, by how it affects one’s human body, brains to toenails, now, here, on Planet Earth.
THE BODY AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE THEATER OF SPACE-TIME
(1) Assuming one can afford it, does a given technology help one realize one’s conscious intentions born of free will?
(2) Does using said technology cause one to serve or to neglect the body?
(3) Is there a better available alternative?
These are the key questions to answer for a sense of the true and full (both monetary and nonmonetary) net cost / benefit of utilizing a given technology because if your body, which by the way, includes the brain, ends up not working the way it was meant to, well, in terms of going anywhere or doing anything or interacting with other people, that more than kind of sucks.
Some metaphysicians argue that we are not our bodies, but in essence,immortal pinpoints of consciousness. It seems to me that if they’re right, after we finish up here on Planet Earth, we have forever and eternity to do what immortal pinpoints of consciousness do; and if those metaphysicians are wrong, well, then they’re wrong, and we won’t be here anymore to argue with them about it anyway.
Either way, as I write this and you read this, we are conscious, each in our place in the Theater of Space-Time. We did not arrive here encased in technology, but in our human bodies, with all their pain and joy and bones and squishiness and awkwardness and grace. Why then would we want machines to do everything and our breathing for us— unless, of course one has the crap-awful luck to require an iron lung?
I want to utilize technology not to supplant but to enhance living this life— this human life on Planet Earth. Or, to use my new favorite metaphor, to enhance my experience of being here now in the Theater of Space-Time.
Technology is not bad per se, of course; it can help us survive and even thrive. But last I checked, a quality human life requires being able to breathe, walk, see, hear, exercise, sleep, eat nutritious food and drink adequate clean water, soak up some beauty, and interact in multitudinous ways with other people. What good is a technology that turns us into blobs staring at and fiddling with screens all day, even as we neglect our relationships? (Or walk into oncoming traffic?)
On the other hand, email, like pen-and-paper-correspondence of old, is one technology, a powerful one, that when properly employed can help us work with / get along with other people. And like pen-and-paper-correspondence of old, for a writer email can be a joy.
Dead-simple observations, I’ll grant you, gentle reader.
Another dead-simple observation: Email is like any other tool in that it can be used to good or bad purpose. For example, you could use a hammer to pound down a nail that might otherwise snag your sweater, or, say, pulp your neighbor’s pet goldfish (not recommended).
And on the scale of expertise, one can use email poorly, or with world-class finesse. Let’s say, my very Aristotelian aim has been to employ email reasonably well so that it may prove useful— and without the mental drag of noodathipious flooflemoofle!
DOWN WITH NOODATHIPIOUS FLOOFLEMOOFLE!
Finally, after years of frustration and experimentation… drum roll…. I am no longer overwhelmed by email. I have not arrived at “inbox zero” because….drum roll… I am not dead!
And knowing that I am not dead, other human beings in the Theater of Space-Time continually send me emails, and I, in turn, write them back. Ping, pong. And that Medusa’s hair of a conundrum-o-rama about pinging the pongs and pongings the pings, and which pings to pong, etc., is now wrestled down, at least in my own mind, to a pretty little pretzel.
YEAH, PUT SOME MUSTARD ON IT.
Now I can sincerely say that I welcome my correspondence (ahem, email). I love to hear from friends (lunch, yeah!), family (weddings, yay!), colleagues (congrats on your new book, lotus petals upon you!), and from readers, known to me or not, I always appreciate a kind and/or thoughtful word about my books / some subject of interest / relevant to my work. I even appreciate cat videos! (Just kidding about the cat videos. But cousin A., I don’t mind if you send me a cat video.)
Herewith:
1. SCHEDULED BATCHING
For me, of all the 10 points in my method, processing emails not one or two or three at a whim, but in scheduled batches was the game-changer.
I usually do 20 minutes of email processing with a stopwatch. It’s not that I am trying to hurry through my email, but rather, I am respecting the limits of my brain’s ability to effectively focus on it. I’m a speed-reader and I can type faster than lickety-split, but on most days I can deal with email for only about 20 minutes before my brain cells run low on glucose and I end up scrolling up and down the screen, dithering, feeling scattered— in short, procrastinating. (You might be able to do 10 minutes, or, say, an hour in one go— of course, not everyone’s energy to focus on their email is the same, or the same every day and in every circumstance. One can always set the stopwatch for a different amount of time.)
Don’t believe me about batching? Check out the extra-crunchy research at MIT (PDF).
By processing email in 20 minute batches, when the sessions all add up over the arc of the day, I find that I accomplish more in, say, one hour of three separate 20 minute sessions than I would have had I plowed on for an hour straight.
When the stopwatch dings, I do not expect to have finished— “inbox zero” is a fata morgana! And that’s OK, because I have another email batch session already scheduled (a few hours later, or five minutes later. It’s important to take a break, at the very least stand up and stretch.)
Above all, because I am focussing on email at my convenience, on my schedule, my attention is no longer so fractured. I need not attempt to wrestle with each and every email as it comes in; and of course, some emails cannot or should not be answered immediately. I aim to dispatch the average daily inflow. In other words, if, net of spam, I receive an average of 30 emails per day, then I should be averaging 30 emails dispatched per day— they need not be one and the same emails. One day I might dispatch 50, and another day, 10.
The point is, there’s no there there, as long as my email account is working, barring volcanic explosions of a geological nature, I’m probably never in this lifetime going to get to inbox zero. What matters is maintaining a consistently adequate dispatching process.
The easiest way to keep track of the process is to keep a running tally of all undispatched emails as of the close of the last session of the day. (In Outlook Express, for each folder of undispatched email, select all, go to the main menu, click edit, select “Mark all unread,” and it will automatically generate a tally for that folder.)
(And by the way, when the batching session is done, I close my Outlook Express. I never, ever leave it open. And would I never, ever, use any alarm for new email.)
I used to download email into an undifferentiated inbox at random moments and, oftentimes, even as email was still downloading, start answering willynilly. How about that for an attention-fracking technique!
Now I begin each email session as I would with a haul of paper mail: first,by taking it all in; second, deleting the junk; and third, organizing the correspondence I want to look at and/or answer into precisely labeled files.
Files are easy to create and, when emptied of their contents, to delete, or rename or whatever— a powerful tool within a tool. And I cannot overemphasize how effective a simple and flexible filing system has been for helping me focus and more quickly dispatch my email.
Of course, just like a paper filing system, too many files can be counterproductive. For me, the best filing system is one that holds 15 or fewer emails per file. So if I have a bunch of files with one or two emails, I might consolidate those; if I have, say, 50 emails in one, I might to break that up into, say, two to four more files.
My filing system changes depending on what I’m working on or dealing with in my life. This week, nearing the holidays, it looks like this:
INBOX (this has whatever I’m going to tackle now, preferably never more than 11 emails)
BACKLOG: TEXAS (anything to do with my book in-progress) BACKLOG: FAMILY BACKLOG: FRIENDS & COLLEAGUES BACKLOG: FINANCIAL BACKLOG: OTHER
I do not respond to rude or certifiably ultra-weird messages, and as with businesses that spew spam,* I add those email addresses to my “block sender” list. Happily, there are not many of those, and happily, once I’ve blocked them, with lightning ease, I never see their emails again!
Out of sight, out of mind.
*(Phishers tend to use one-time only emails; those I just delete.)
Many of my writer friends agonize over emails (as well as social media comments) from trolls and nuts and spammers. I tell them as I tell you, dear reader, it really is this simple to make them all go away. The challenge is, your ego, prompted by its its arch sense of justice, might jump-up-and-down-insist on responding to them, but your ego, if it’s like most people’s, including mine, should not be in driver’s seat here. Surely you have better things to do with your time and attention than engage with emotionally stunted, social-skill-challenged, and possibly dangerously disturbed individuals. (If you lived in a big city, would you leave your kitchen’s back door open to the alleyway 24/7?)
If you relish unnecessary fights and pointless thrills, well, as they say in Mexico, dios los hace y ellos se juntan (God makes them and they get together.) I prefer the Polish saying, Not my circus, not my monkeys.
[ VIDEO ]
Viva Moti Nativ! (Seriously, I took Moti Nativ’s Feldenkrais workshop, it was a blast.)
4. PRIORITIZE & TACKLE
Stopwatch ticking, after having done the DDO, then I prioritize emails (and other related tasks as noted below), and then I tackle them.
There’s no magic formula here: I might think about it for a moment or three, then decide what should come first.
(Once dealt with, I archive each email by year. Some people just delete them; in my repeated experience, however, that is not a good idea.)
5. SWEEP OUT THE SPAM FOLDER ONCE PER DAY
I check the spam folder once per day because that is precisely about how often I find an important email in there. These days floods of spam are coming from phishers (easy to spot for many reasons, also because they vary their email addresses); those I don’t touch, I just delete them.
(I remain perplexed by correspondents who do not check their spam folders. On the other hand, checking too often wastes time—small amounts, but they add up.)
.
6. APPLY & ADJUST “SENDER FILTERS” AS NEEDED
I’m not talking about an app or programming or anything complicated. By “sender filter,” a concept I grokked an eon ago but a term I first encountered in Cal Newport’s Deep Work, I mean some specific information on one’s contact page that, ideally in a kind and generous spirit, encourages potential senders to not send email— so that, for the few emails that do squeeze through, I am able to respond quickly, politely, and thoughtfully.
My contact page includes a long lineup of sender filters: First, a newsletter signup (mainly for those who want to know when I will be teaching a workshop or post a new podcast); then it answers FAQs, such as “where can I find your books?” (I am ever-amazed by that question in this day of amazon and Google, but I do get such emails fairly often); for book club inquiries; the best way to reach me for media and speaking inquiries; answers to writerly questions (“how to find a publisher,” etc.); rights inquiries; press kits including high res images; and finally…
… (few indeed seem to have the attentional snorkel gear to arrive there at the bottom)….
… if someone still wants to email me, he will find my email address.
Like many other writers, back in pioneer days, once I had a live website showing my email address, I found myself receiving so many messages from people seeking my advice about / feedback on / encouragement of their writing, it would have been impossible to answer them all individually. As a solution, many authors have opted for what I think of as “The Wall of Silence”— no email address at all—and/or what seems to me a snotty-sounding third-person notice along the lines of “Wiggy Blip is so famous and busy being fabulously famous, he cannot possibly deign to acknowledge your email.”
Cal Newport’s various sender filters conclude as follows— I quote from his book, Deep Work: “If you have an offer, opportunity, or introduction that might make my life more interesting, e-mail me at interesting (at) calnewport.com For the reasons stated above, I’ll only respond to those proposals that are a good match for my schedule and interests.”
Of course, some emails, even from perfectly civilized and well-meaning people, do not merit a response— they presume too much, they’re eye-crossingly vague or, as in a few cases, they clearly neither expect nor invite a response. But as for myself, because my own sender filters work beautifully, my stance is that I will do my darnedest, most reasonable best to answer everyone, whether family, friends, students, literary colleague, or mysterious Albanian, who takes the trouble to write to me a civilized email.
On occasion a sender blazes past or perhaps never saw the relevant sender filter, so I reply with the link or paste-copy the text of my long-ago posted answer to their question. (For example, I am often asked by students, friends, relatives, neighbors and utter strangers if I will read their manuscript. Here’s my answer to that one.)
If you want to comment on this blog, which I sincerely welcome, click hereand what you’ll see the simplest of sender filters, stating that I read but do not usually publish comments. It works blazingly well. Trolls and their ilk took a hike, never to return! (As for my fierce-looking writing assistant, I assure you, dear reader, Uliberto Quetzalpugtl only bites cheese.)
P.S. Cal Newport’s take on some industrial-strength sender filters. Personally I would not want to use such forbidding sender filters, but for some writers, and some people, that might be the right strategy. In any event, a sender filter beats the daisies out of the Wiggyesque Wall of Silence.
UPDATE: For a good example of a strong but both friendly and polite sender filter, see publishing consultant and blogger Jane Friedman’s contact page.
FURTHER UPDATE: For a Groucho Marx-esque example of sender filters by someone whose religious ideas seem to attract trolls like bananas do fruit flies, see John Michael Greer’s page for his Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn.
7. FUNNEL IT ALL INTO MOOOOOOOOOOOORE EMAIL!
Over the past year and some I have freed up chunkoids of time and energy for email by deactivating my Facebook account, minimizing Twitter and LinkedIn (including turning off email notifications), and closing this blog to published comments.
In other words, I have reduced the number of channels for people to communicate with me, funneling as many communications as possible into ye olde email.
I tell everyone who asks, the best way to find me is by email.
Yes, I receive more email as a result, but interestingly, many of my “friends” who were so chatty & likey on Facebook rarely if ever trouble to send me email. I have also found that many of the younger generation do not respond to email. Hmmm, also interesting! (Have a nice life, kiddos!)
Well, at least we still have telephones. But sorry, don’t count on me to retrieve my voicemail, I am too busy answering email!
(What about texting and Whatsapp? Ask me again after I’ve lugged home my taxidermied hippopotamus.)
8. BE QUICK & CLEAR, MY DEAR, BUT ADD DETAIL TO CUT THE CLUTTER
The emails I send myself have a clear subject line and the text clearly calls for or implies expected action or inaction. For example, some of the younger generation in my family prefer to text rather than use email, and getting them to answer an email, such has been my experience, requires laser-like focus in this regard. Hence, subject lines like this:
Re: Super Quick URRRRRgent Question about X—
or, say:
Re: Confirming dinner at at 9 PM this Saturday
What do I mean by “add detail to cut the clutter?” Minimize the number of emails needed to arrange things by politely making specific actionable proposals and provide websites, addresses, phone numbers and any other information that your correspondent might need, and hence avoid further emails. For example, instead of blah blah blahing about when and where to maybe kind of sort of meet for coffee, go ahead and make a specific proposal, e.g., “How about if we meet for coffee at 4:30 PM this Tuesday or, if you would prefer, 5:30 next Wednesday at Café Thus-and-Such, 123 Avenue ABC.”
Cal Newport offers more detailed advice about this brain power-saving email tactic on his blog, Study Hacks and his book, Deep Work.
9. WHEN CALLED FOR, FOR HEAVENSSAKES, JUST APOLOGIZE (BRIEFLY)
10. AT THE END OF THE LAST EMAIL SESSION FOR THE DAY, REPEAT AFTER SCARLET…
[ VIDEO ]
It is a fact that for me, as well as for everyone who uses email, night falls in this Theater of Space-Time… and falls again, and again…. Funny how that happens once every 24 hours… until it doesn’t. I guess. In the meantime, some emails fall through the cracks of all good intentions.
Anyway, as Cal Newport writes in Deep Work,
“[I]n general, those with a minor public presence, such as authors, overestimate how much people really care about their replies to their messages.”
Newport’s bluntness may sound cruel. I don’t think it is; rather, he points to a cruel fact: that even when surrounded by other people, in fundamental ways we are each of us in this Theater of Space-Time alone. Writing is a technology that permits us to send thoughts from one axis of space-time to multiple others. And this is precisely why I write books— and why I read books, and why I welcome correspondence, albeit in electronic form.
And no, I am not worried that one day, should my one of my books be made into a movie starring Brad Pitt, or something, I might need to raise the Wall of Silence, or else bring on a bucket brigade of secretaries to cope with cannon-hoses of incoming emails.
Why am I not worried, pray tell?
(1) Because my 10 point system works splendidly well.
(2) Furthermore, should the need arise, it would be a simple matter to add more sender filters / templates, and perhaps, now and then, an autoresponder.
(3) Moreover, I need only note the numbers of smombies I see on city streets to conclude that, alas, the world of those of us who still have the cognitive focus to actually read the sorts of literary books I write and to engage in thoughtful correspondence is, and seems destined to remain, a cozy one.
And if I turn out to be wrong, so what? Then I will get a secretary! In the meantime, I shall make do with my writing assistants (although, alas, with emails, those two are all paws).
C’est moi on (whew) August 30, 2014 at Meyers Spring, an important rock art site of the Lower Pecos, on the US-Mexico border near Dryden, Texas. As you can see, in my left hand, I am carrying a white umbrella. So I didn’t need the hat. And that black backpack wasn’t the best idea. I also should have worn a lightweight bandana. Oh, and more sunblock. Always more sunblock. The long-sleeved white shirt and hiking trousers were both excellent choices, however.
Just returned from hiking with the Rock Art Foundation in to see the spectacular rock art at Meyers Spring in the Lower Pecos of Far West Texas (yes, there will be a podcast in the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, in which I exploring the Big Bend & Beyond in 24 podcasts. More about that anon).
I got a few things very right on this trip and a few things, well, I could have done better. Herewith, for you, and for me– this will serve as my own checklist for my next rock art foray– 12 tips for summer day hiking in the desert:
1. Don’t just bring water, lots of water, more water than you think you can possibly drink– bring it cold and keep it cold.
Everest Lumbar Waistpack
Of course, not drinking enough water can be seriously dangerous. But warm water when it’s this hot is just bleh–and if you’re carrying a plain old plastic water bottle in your hand, out here in Texas, boy howdy… (Last year, I hiked this way over Burro Mesa in the Big Bend National Park. Six hours. Head-slapper.)
The thing is, you don’t just want to hydrate; you want to keep your core from overheating, so every swig of cold water really helps. Before heading out, fill your insulated water bottles with lots of ice. In your car, keep them in an ice chest or, if that’s not possible, wrapped in a blanket, or whatever’s handy, until the moment you have to take them out. I did this for the first time, and wow, what a difference.
Yes, sun block stinks and feels gross, but if you’re like me — a descendant of those who once roamed the foggy bogs of the British Isles– if you don’t, you may end up helping your dermatologist buy his ski condo. And no, he probably won’t invite you.
> Watch this fun video, “How the Sun Sees You.”
> For those with actinic keratosis (that’s the fancy term for seriously sun-damaged skin), try Perrin’s Blend. If that doesn’t work, off to the dermatologist you must go.
This protects you against the sun, keeps you cool (the white reflects the sun), protects you from bug bites and scratches. Light clothes always beat dark! Flip the collar up to protect your neck. About scratches: the desert tends to be filled with cactus and thorny scrub.
4. Knot a light-colored scarf around your throat.
This protects you from the sun. A bandana works fine. Mike Clelland (more about the guru in a moment) suggests cutting the bandana in two, so it’s lighter. Porquoi pas? But I didn’t do this. Alas. Bring on the Perrin’s.
5. Wear tough but lightweight trekking trousers.
For the same reason you want to wear the long-sleeved white shirt: trousers protect your body parts, in this case, calves and knees, from sun, scratches, and bugs. Do not wear shorts unless, for some reason you probably should be working on with your psychiatrist, you don’t mind scarring and blood.
And do not wear jeans. I repeat, do not wear jeans.
6. Keep your pack as light as possible, in both senses.
Hey, you’ve not only gotta stay cool, but you’ve gotta hump all that water!
A few specifics:
> Use a lightweight pack and carry it on your hips, rather than the flat of your back (see photo of lumbar waist pack above). This helps keep your back cool. But I don’t speak from experience on this one: I’m going to try this for next time.
> Carry lightweight insulated water bottles.
> Ditch the hat and ditch the heavy hiking boots (more about that below. There are, of course, other places and times when a hat and hiking books would be advisable).
> Skip the camera or use a lightweight camera (I use my iPhone).
> Eat a light breakfast and bring only a little food– since this is a day hike, you can eat a big dinner when you get back. But you will need sustenance on the trail. I recommend date, fruit and nut bars– love those Lara bars— that is, food that is high in energy but won’t spoil in the heat, and that doesn’t require any dishes or utensils. Don’t bring anything with chocolate in it. (I brought a Snicker’s bar. Ooey… gooey.)
>Bring a white plastic grocery bag and use it to cover your pack. Two advantages: the white reflects sunlight and keeps it cooler than, say, an unprotected black or other dark-colored pack, and, in case of rain, will help keep it dry.
> Highly recommended: Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpackin’Tips, a superb resource for keeping it lighter-than-light, yet making sure to bring what you need for comfort and safety.
> And be sure to visit Clelland’s blog for many helpful videos and more.
7. Watch out for killer bees!
Africanized bees have arrived in some desert locales north of the Mexican border. What do bees want? Sweet things and water. So don’t carry around open cans or bottles or suddenly pick up open cans or bottles– bees may smell the water or soft drink from afar, crawl inside, and then, if you do anything they don’t like, such as pick up that can, they will go bezerk, and call in their buddies who will also go bezerk and might sting you hundreds of times.
No kidding, people and animals have died from killer bee attacks.
So be especially careful around any blooming plants where bees might be feeding. Ditto any open water, such as a tank, spring, or any puddle. And whatever you do, if you see a hive, don’t go anywhere near it. Normal honey bees, however, are not a problem. Unless you have a severe allergy, a few stings might actually be good for you! (Read more about bee sting therapy on the Apitherapy Association webpage). Your real problem is, it’s hard to tell the killers from the honeys until they attack.
8. Wear gaiters.
I followed Mike Clelland’s tip and bought a pair from Dirty Girl Gaiters (they’re for guys, too). They weigh about as much as a feather, they’re easy to attach to your lace-up running shoes and indeed, they keep the dust out.
Their biggest advantage is that you can therefore avoid wearing those ankle-high and heavy hiking boots. You’ll exert yourself less and therefore, on the margin, stay cooler. (I’ll admit however that on this last hike, a loose ball of bubble-gum cactus went right through the gaiters and stabbed me in the ankle. Oh well!)
www.dirtygirlgaiters.com
9. Forget the hat and trekking pole; use a white umbrella.
Really! Who cares if it looks nerdy? It’s nerdier to pass out from heat stroke or end up looking like a tomato. So let those guys in jeans, black T-shirts, and baseball caps cackle all they want, as they sweat & burn & chafe.
The white umbrella protects you from sun and the rain and– crucially– helps keep your head cool. A hat will trap heat on your head– not what you want out here. Plus, in a tight spot, you can also use the umbrella as a trekking pole. Added bonus: scares mountain lions. I would think. Don’t take my word for that, however. Also good, once folded, to toss a rattlesnake or tarantula. Not that I’ve had to do that, either. Just saying.
In shade, if possible. (Oh, right, you have your umbrella!)
12. In your car, leave a reflector open on your car’s dashboard and another over your stash of cold water.
If you’ve had to park outside, after a day of baking out in the desert, it’s going to be an authentic Finnish sauna in there– unless you use a dashboard reflector. In which case it will still be a chocolate-bar-melting warm, but infinitely more bearable. I picked up my pair of dashboard reflectors at Walgreen’s for $3.99 each and I was glad indeed that I did. Certainly, you could also just use ye olde roll of aluminum foil.
Where do you find the time? (Was it hiding in the crawlspace?) It’s not so much finding time as it is prying your physical presence and attention away, either permanently or for a spell, from someone, something, someplace less valuable to you—if you really do want to write, that is, not just pretend and fantasize and gripe. Herewith, 30 ideas— some of which might make you shake your head, but some just might work for you. For me, most of these have always been no-brainers, but I confess, a number of them took me awhile to recognize and/or fully appreciate.
Possibility 2. Cut the digital leash, the crackberry, whatever you want to call that soul-sucking hypnotic thumb-twiddler. That’s right, I am suggesting that you turn off all notifications and do not “text.”The price of this is that you must therefore continually combat tidal waves of exasperation from loved ones and others that you are not instantly and always available to them. Find the humor in this. Because really, how blazingly ridiculous. > This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own)
Possibility 3. No drugs. Duh. And I include prescription drugs here, too. Exercise, eat lots of vegetables, drink raw juice, meditate… do whatever you possibly can to avoid adult onset diabetes and joint issues and so having to take drugs, for aside from suffering from lousy side effects, you’ll waste countless hours waiting for doctors to write prescriptions, then getting them filled at the pharmacy, dealing with insurance, and complications, and so on & so forth. Ah! But I am not a medical professional, so I have no idea what you should do.
Possibility 4. Reduce, better yet eliminate, or at least make use of your commute. If you can possibly live closer to where you need to be during the day, even if you have to sell half your furniture to fit into a smaller place, do that. Otherwise, try to get into the habit of writing while commuting. I hear some people have been able to do that. I admire them genuinely.
Possibility 5. No drama. Mantra: not my circus, not my monkeys. If you relish fighting / debating / gossiping because you find it entertaining, that’s your writing mojo leaking like water onto the asphalt. Incessant worrying about other people’s problems that are not yours to solve is also silly. You can be aware, you can be concerned, you can be compassionate, and when they are your problems, then they are your problems.
Possibility 6. No ruminating over the past. Regrets, nostalgia, whatever, writing gets done in the now.
Possibility 7. Less fantasizing about the future. Again, writing gets done in the now.
Possibility 8. Quit nursing grudges against editors / agents / other writers / reviewers / readers. Oh, the injustices of the literary world! These can vacuum up untold hours with yammering in workshops, at conferences, and over sad and grumbly cups of coffee. But listen here: the so-called gatekeepers and the clueless readers and half-literate kids glued to their handheld devices, they’re just doing the best they can, too. So are the peasants wading through their rice paddies in Burma. You are luckier than a lottery-winner to even be able to write at all. So strive to always improve and write for those who appreciate what you do, knowing that, of course, even if you one day win the Nobel Prize, only the teensiest portion of the population of Planet Earth will have heard of you, never mind actually read anything you wrote. Bottom line: If you can’t stay focused on doing your own best work, you’re not writing, you’re back to ruminating.
Possibility 9. Stop picking up the telephone. As Marie Antoinette might have put it, Let them send email. If you can, pay for an unlisted number and caller ID and change your telephone number at least every other year. If that little click to voice mail distracts you, why, just unplug it! And, pourquoi pas? Plunk it in the oven!
Possibility 10. Eliminate recreational shopping, aka “retail therapy.” Whew, this one adds up over a season, a year, two years. So never, ever shop in stores or on-line or in fact anywhere anytime without your list. If an item is not on your list, do not buy it. Shopping malls are time- and money-gobbling maws and believe it, the marketers, watching your every move on their cameras, are more sophisticated than you think you are. Not only does recreational shopping squander prime writing time, but it tends to fill up your house with clutter– a time-suck in itself. Go to a park, a museum, a library, the seashore, a basketball court, have fun and refresh yourself as necessary, but stay way away from the maw. I mean, mall.
Possibility 11. Do not accumulate a large and varied wardrobe based on navy, brown and/or beige. And better yet, give all that away to Goodwill. If you wear clothing that is black and/or coordinates with black, you’ll be able to make fewer shopping trips, pack faster, and do far less laundry and dry cleaning. And since black makes colors “pop,” your blue sweater, say, will appear brighter. Yet another advantage: black makes you look slimmer. (Ha, maybe I was a Jesuit in my last life.)
Possibility 12. Cancel the manicure. Horrendous time sink there. Plus, the polish is toxic and it flakes. (Nobody notices or cares about your fingernails anyway except manicurists, I guess, and those who get manicures themselves. Last I checked, they aren’t getting much writing done.)
Possibility 13. Quit following the stock market on a daily basis. This is a tick-like habit that achieves nothing but a heightened sense of anxiety. On par with spectator sports.
Possibility 14. Quit playing computer games. On par with drugs. Or any other addiction. Including following the stock market on a daily basis.
Possibility 15. Do not color your hair. Depending on how often you feel you must cover up the roots… for most people who color their hair this is about once a month. If you add highlights or lowlights (which, my dears, if you do color, you probably should lest you sport that “helmet look”), you’re talking about two hours-plus in the salon chair. You might be able to read something fluffy but you probably cannot write while someone is poking and pulling at and washing and blowdrying your hair. Go au naturel for as many as 30 hours a year, free and clear.
Possibility 16. Ignore spectator sports. Do not attend games, do not watch or listen to or otherwise follow games, do not discuss games, and whole weekends for writing will emerge from the sea of froth.
Possibility 17. Do not indulge in expensive, time- and space-consuming activities such as, oh, say, collecting and expounding upon various types of fermented grape juice. Come on, folks, once it goes into a carafe, 99% of your guests won’t know the difference between one chablis and the next chardonnay. Pick a reasonable brand and stick with it, white and red. For me, it’s Monte Xanic— or else it goes into the pot for coq au vin.
Possibility 18. No more hauling laundry. You’ve got to get your clothes clean so, failing a maid to do it for you, get a washer / dryer for your house or apartment. If you do not have space, if it’s not allowed, or you cannot afford this, then consider a portable washer/dryer because hauling bags to the laundro-mat or down to the basement only to find the machines full, that is one woolly mammoth of a time suck. (If you’re paying for each load at a landro-mat, you might find it cheaper in the long run to use your own portable washer. I wouldn’t know, since I’m fortunate enough to have a washer/dryer, but a little bird told me…)
Possibility 19. Never hunt for your keys / wallet / purse / cell phone. This is an easy fix. The moment you step in the door, you always, always put them in the same place, a designated hook or a bowl or a basket. This might seem minor, but those two to ten minutes of running around with your hair on fire add up.
Possibility 20. Never hunt for Internet passwords (or wait for the “resend password” email). Keep track of passwords, some way, somehow. I use Grandma’s recipe box, which was deemed seriously uncool on the Cool Tools blog, but it works beautifully for me and, so they tell me after reading that infamous blog post, many of my friends. (So there.)
Possibility 21. No boat. Do not ever even shop for a boat. Do not even think about shopping for a boat. Unless you plan to sell your house and live in the boat. Ditto RV, camping equipment, or motorcycle. And anyway, you cannot live in your motorcycle. If you like to go out overnight into nature, check out Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpacking Tips. (Watch out, though, he features a link to his UFO page.)
Possibility 22. No second home. On par with the boat. No, worse.
Possibility 23. Stop buying loads of soft drinks and bottled water. Take into account the time it takes to shop for them, carry them to the car, lug them out of the car, store them somewhere in the pantry or the fridge, then recycle the bottles and cans… Drip, drip, drip goes your time (and money). A good water filter will pay for itself and quickly. (See also #3, above. Whoa, just read the list of contents on those soft drinks. Ick.)
Possibility 24. Prepare your meals with mis-en-place. Even when making a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, it sure does help to do mis-en-place. If you hate cooking, you probably never heard of the mis. Check it out. (If you want to keep it easy by microwaving everything or relying on take-out, see #3 above.)
Possibility 25. Take email seriously. In other words, stop letting it pile up and become a giant, throbbing source of lost opportunities, embarrassment and guilt. Email is vital for a writer— as vital as letter writing in days of yore, so do it well. This also means get quick-on-the-draw to delete spam. > Email Ninjerie in the Theater of Space-Time
Possibility 26. Use a metaphorical “bucket” for all your to do lists and ideas. In other words, quit trying to keep everything from next week’s dentist appointment to the ideas for your novel in your head. I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system and thereby free up yottabytes of short term memory for more creative work. (One day I may set up a little altar in a corner of my office to St. Allen.) For me, a Filofax is an indispensable tool for implementing GTD. > Why I Am a Mega-Fan of the Filofax. > Listen to this podcast of November 6, 2013 about the GDT method for creative people. (I couldn’t find the direct link; you may need to scroll down for it once you land on that page.)
Possibility 27. Keep your closet decluttered and organized. Clutter not only makes it difficult to find things when you need them, it pulls and yanks and pinches your attention to decisions you haven’t made (like, whether to get rid of that old mustard-colored shirt, but which might maybe go with something, or sew back on the two missing buttons?) So you’re rushed and addled, right at the start of the day. It all adds up over a week, a month…
Possibility 28. Fie to piles. Piles are sinkholes of chaos and, to pile on another mongrel of a metaphor, they tend to sprout and ooze all over the place like fungi. (Yeah, did that need an editor.) Any time you need to do anything important, pay taxes, file a claim, send out a manuscript, if you have to paw and dig through piles to find what you need you will add possibly hours, possibly days, possibly weeks or even months to the process— not to mention a walloping dollop of time-sucking anxiety. So get a filing cabinet, even if it has to be a cardboard box, and make proper, labeled files, and dagnabbit, file things.
Possibility 29. Let go of things you won’t use but someone else might. This might sound strange as a source of time for writing, but think about it: any clutter, anywhere, becomes a drag on your time and attention. So all those old winter coats, faded towels, mismatched dishes, clothes than haven’t fit for 10 years, overflows of flower vases, toys… For heavenssakes, sell that stuff, gift it, and/or make regular runs to Goodwill or the like. (But remember, trying to sell it will take up your time.) As my favorite estate lady Julie Hall puts it, “the hearse doesn’t have a trailer hitch.”
“My top recommendation for the holidays is the Kindle of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing ($10). A one-time Shinto shrine maiden, Kondo bases her “KonMari” method on the assumption that one’s house and all the objects in it have consciousness but, boy howdy, even if you’re a die-hard materialist, follow her method and you’ll zoom to a wiggy new oxygen-rich level of tidy.” — C.M. Mayo
And last but far from least:
Possibility 30. Remember your pen and notebook. Always, except in, say, a swimming pool, keep these on your person; you never know when the muse may whisper. What I’m saying is, some of the most valuable writing time arrives in snatches— while you’re standing in the dog park, about to get out of the car, riding an elevator, etc. In other words, you might not have been planning to write, but write you do because write you can.
It reminds me of how gallery owners complain that customers (more often lookyloos) don’t know “gallery etiquette.” It’s the same with nonwriters and writers. Nonwriters usually mean well when they ask a writer, “So how’s the book doing?” Though alas, this is often followed by the more knife-like, “How many books have you sold?”
Uyyy doubly rude…
What they don’t realize is that (in most instances) this is akin to asking someone who was just turned down for a long overdue promotion, or maybe even fired, “So how much do you make?” because, as Sara Taber so eloquently points out, the book is almost never doing as well as its author had hoped it would, and for most literary books earnings tend to hover well below the level at which one might cobble together a non-food-stamps-worthy living. Furthermore, publishers report sales with such a long lag, a writer never really knows her overall sales numbers at any given moment.
Herewith some of my favorite replies (and if you’re an author with a book out, may they serve you):
(With a wink): I’m getting away with it… How about you? (This is thanks to Paul Graybeal of Marfa’s Moonlight Gemstones, by the way.)
(Breathily, Nancy Reaganqesque): Why my dear, that’s like asking a woman her age! How have you been?
(Beaming, ready-to-judo): Oh, great! It’s been such fun! You know, I think everyone should write a book. Do you have a book you’d like to write?
(Shrugging, Jimmy Fallonesque): Well, I haven’t moved full-time onto my yacht– yet. But thanks for asking. How are you?
(Sweetly smiling): Not nearly enough. Would you like to buy one . . . or 6 for your friends? (Thanks to Julia Bricklin for this one)
(Gleaming stare, revealing teeth): Sooooo verrrrrrrry welllllllll… in fact… my doctor has been able to… reduce my meds… (Continue staring silently for three beats…) Just kidding! How are you?
Notice, the trick is to lob that conversational ball back into their court. Unless you might have something aside from your book to offer them, for instance:
Won-der-fully! Thanks for asking! Oh, and by the way, I’ll be doing an event at the bookstore next Thursday at 6 pm, it would be wonderful if you could come!
Great! Oh, and by the way, if it works for your book group / workshop / class, I’d be delighted to come talk about the book!
The thing is, I don’t think most people asking these rude questions have any idea they’re being rude; I doubt they care all that much about one’s answer; they’re just asking out of innocent curiosity, to show enthusiasm, usually, and as casually as an acquaintance might ask about your kids (whom they don’t know), or your kitchen remodeling project, or even just chat about the weather (get any of that hail?).
Some who ask the rude question really do care, they do mean well– why, they’re delighted to know a real-live published author! For those folks, the “I’m getting away with it,” or “wonderfully, thanks for asking!” works fine.
But then there are those, usually with a toe in the publishing business, or ambitious to write / publish themselves–and usually they are men– who persist with the outrageous, “What was your print run?” (Yes, this has happened to me several times.)
Well, I say, bless ’em. Because they need blessing. I answer, “You know, I have no idea. I am so busy with my next book… ” and when they insist (yikes, some of them do), “What do you mean, you don’t know what was the print run?” I put on the Scarlett O’Hara:
“Why, golly gee, numbers just go in one ear and out the other.”
Or, to be a little more nose-in-the-air-y:
“Nowadays, you know, it’s almost all POD… print-on-demand.”
When a writer has spent several years working on a book she has more emotion invested in it than the casual reader would guess. So if it’s another writer who is asking and your book is doing splendidly, why rub in the salt? (327,583 as of last Tuesday! Take that!) Or, more likely, since your book isn’t selling anything like Dan Brown’s latest, why make your neighbor (oh, say, like the divorce lawyer with the car wash franchise who is going to write a novel “one day”) view you with head-shaking pity?
It’s NOTB, none of their business, they shouldn’t ask such questions, but they do, so… So what?
Dear writerly reader, why not consider “the question” an opportunity to practice your charmfest of impromptu dialogue writing skills?
“why not consider ‘the question’ an opportunity to practice your charmfest of impromptu dialogue writing skills?“
But I don’t find writing a “humiliation banquet,” quite the contrary. I am grateful that I have the skill and (most days) focus to write and that, in one way or another, my work finds readers. I’m always happy to see more royalties but I don’t measure my success as a writer by numbers alone. A single reader who approaches my work in a spirit of respect and intellectual curiosity, and to whom my book makes a meaningful difference, is worth more to me than 10,000 readers who just want a beachside page-turner.
(Bless you all who write beachside page-turners! May you all live happily ever after on your yachts! But I don’t read such books and wouldn’t have the wherewithal to write one, and anyway, even if I had a hundred bagilliwillion bucks, I couldn’t be bothered with a yacht. To start with, I’d have to deal with the yacht dealer, and then I’d have to decide on the floor plan, and then the upholstery, and then engine specifications, and then I’d have to staff it, and then I’d have to insure it… my God, I am falling into a dead snore just thinking about it!)
So how, with book sales presumably well under 327,583 as of last Tuesday, does one make a living as a writer? All I can say is, if you want to make a living writing literary books you’ll need to be (a) wildly lucky (b) incorrigibly persistent (c) exuberantly productive (d) more hard-headed than a rhino in a steel helmet inside a Panzer tank and (e) totally flummoxed by shopping (except for books, of course). And by the way, most literary writers don’t make a living from their books but from teaching, freelancing, editing, and/or other work / income.
The “humiliation banquet” comes with the promotion part… and for that, thank goodness for the vast and ever-growing literature on sports psychology!!
P.S. Check out my Conversations with Other Writers podcast, an interview with Sara Mansfield Taber about Born Under an Assumed Name, her fascinating and beautifully written memoir about growing up with a father who was an undercover CIA agent.
“Whenever someone asks me how much money I make from my writing or how many books I’ve sold, I have two responses, one of which I use when I feel like they’re serious and really interested in why anyone would write for a living, and the other of which is designed to flip the question back at them. The first is, ‘My freelance article work, teaching, and speaking make a small but comfortable living. My books are my passion projects, and I write them to change the world, not to earn a living or become famous.’ With this response, I’m inviting the questioner into a conversation about why we do the work we do, and whether our work lives up to the values we profess to hold.
“The second response is for those people who I don’t think are up for a serious conversation: I say, ‘You go first: How much money do you make?’ That usually shuts down the conversation right away. I think people are curious about making art for living, and in my experience from teaching writing workshops for a couple of decades, a lot of men think of writing as a way to earn some income in retirement. Which is so not the point of why I write!”
When is it a library and when is it hoarding? A personal library can easily mushroom (ay, and paperbacks do seem to multiply, in multitudinous multitudes) into a gnarly mess. And what good is a library where you can’t find the darned book you’re looking for?
When I was younger and did not have so many
books, I loved them each and all, and never gave a one away (though I did, to
my everlasting regret, sell my Nancy Drew mysteries collection to my sister).
Then, ten years ago, we moved and I had to give away more boxes of books than I
imagined possible. Funny, it got easier and easier… and what with all the
extra shelf space, so did going to bookstores and amazon.com… and once again,
I found my shelves piled with piles and in general chaos (no, Travels in the
Yucatan does not belong with the Beatrix Potter bio, and yikes, did I
really need 11 books on crop circles??)
In the process of decluttering anew, these ten
questions, in the following order, let me decide quickly and easily what to do
with each book. I’m filing this post under Future Reminders to Take My Own
Advice; should this serve you also, gentle reader, that would be grand.
1. Am I reading it now?
If yes, goes to the READING NOW shelf. If no, on to question 2.
2. Am I planning to read it in the next [fill in
the blank]?
For me I have enough shelf space right now to say, “the next couple of years.”
If you live in an empty movie theater you might be able to ask, “Am I planning to read it in the next century?” But if you live in a tiny house on wheels your time frame may shrink to, say, “the next five days.”
Do try to be realistic, if inevitably (sigh) optimistic.
If yes, goes to the READING SOON shelf. If no, on to question 3.
3. Is it part of a collection?
Collections have value on many levels, and the
moreso when curated with thought and care. Mine include autographed first
editions; Mexican art books; Baja Californiana, Maximiliana, and 19th and 20th
century English language travel memoirs of Mexico.
If yes, goes to the appropriate shelf. If no, on to question 4.
4. Does it have serious sentimental value?
Because everything may have some sentimental value, this needs to be rated on a scale of, say, 1 – 10. I have enough shelf space right now that a minimum of 5 on a scale of 1 – 10 works for me.
If yes, it goes to appropriate shelf. If no, on to question 5.
5. Is it necessary for reference?
This also needs to be rated on a scale. I’m going
for a 7.5 on a scale on 1 – 10. If you live in a mansion, maybe a 2 or 3 would
do; if you live in Manhattan in 2 feet square, maybe you’d need it to be an
absolute 10 +.
If yes, goes to REFERENCE shelf or appropriate shelf by subject. If no, on to question 6.
6. Would someone I know be happy to have it?
If yes, goes into an envelope / box and out the door! If no, on to question 7.
7. Can I sell it?
A lot of people don’t realize that some of their
older books have value. (How about a 1st edition signed copy of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake?
You might buy a car with that.) And even if they’re crummy old paperbacks,
if you have enough of them, I suppose you could squeegee together a little
mountain of cash.
If yes, it goes onto the TO SELL shelf. And answer question 8. If no, skip directly to question 9.
8. Yeah, but honestly, am I really going to get
around to selling it?
The transaction cost might not be worth it.
If yes, well, cool beans. Stop here, and proceed to next book. If no, on to question 9.
9. Can it be donated?
It’s a lovely idea to imagine that the donation
of a book might help a library or other nonprofit, and ultimately, be read by
others. Please do it! (Certainly a lot of organizations would be thrilled to
have that signed first edition of Finnegan’s Wake.) And don’t overlook
historical associations and university libraries. Grandpa’s self-published
memoir of his time as a POW during WWII; great grandma’s xeroxed and
saddle-stapled family history; a highschool year book from 1939 or, say, 1899,
might be very welcome on certain shelves. That said, alas, some books are in
such bad shape (coffee stains, cracked spines, yellowed, torn pages, etc) that
no one wants them, and when you haul them over to, say, Goodwill or your local
library, you’re not helping; you’re just giving someone else the unpleasant
chore of throwing it in the dumpster.
If yes, goes into the DONATION BOX. (I keep mine in the hall closet. When it fills up, it goes to the basket in the basement, and when that fills up, it all goes into the back of the car, and from there to wherever it needs to go.) If no, on to question 10.
If the answer has been “no” to all ten questions, light a candle and give it a blessing if you must, but PUT IT IN THE PAPER RECYCLING BIN. This really is the last, the very last, very horrible, very sad, very karmically problematic resort. Oh well!
