social media – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

This Writer’s PFWP and NTDN Lists: Two Tools for Resilience and Focus

This blog posts on Mondays. Second Mondays of the month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!

> For the archive of workshop posts click here.

Like many writers I nurture an oft-adjusted list of possible future writing projects (PFWP). I’ve been at this game for more years than I want to confess, so trust me when I say it’s surprisingly easy to get a sizzling-hot-slam-a-roni of an idea and then… have completely forgotten all about it anywhere from five minutes to five weeks later. But there they all are, captured in ink on my PFPW! (I keep mine in my Filofax. Other writers might prefer to keep theirs in a file on their computer or, perhaps, in a special notebook.)

Right now, February 2020, my PFWP list has four nonfiction books, three novels, a batch of stories, a couple of poems, a couple of translation projects, and an essay of creative nonfiction. Two of these possible future writing projects have been sitting on the list for over a decade. Oh, and just yesterday, I came up with a solidly good idea, if I do say so myself, for a scholarly paper about a cavalry officer’s adventures in the Guadalupe Mountains.

Will I ever get to them all? That is not the question.

My PFWP list is not so much a “to do” list as it is my very own rich and appealing menu. Whenever the time comes that I am ready to commit to a new writing project, I’m never left sitting there, spinning my wheels, wondering, ohmygosh, what can I write now? I simply whip out the PFWP and see which of those many projects feels right for me for a next-action.

All of them are appealing enough to me that were any one the only option I would gladly do it– or else I don’t add it to the list.

Meanwhile, one thing that helps keeps me going with my current writing project– the memoir of Far West Texas— is my NTDN list, that is, my list of the things Not To Do Now. These are things I feel pressured by others to do; or tempted against my better judgement to do; or expect / want to do at some point, but not now– “now” being the horizon for my current writing project.

TOP 5 ON MY NTDN LIST

(1) Download Whatsapp
Nope, I have never downloaded Whatsapp. Bless you, my many friends and relatives who have asked me for my Whatsapp, because I love you! I do want to be in touch, I do want to see your photos! But it’s either my book gets written + I answer email or I do Whatsapp + I answer email. I have only 24 hours in the day. May I be blunt? Would you really wish for me to not write my book?

(2) Get a TV
I gave away my TV an eon ago. I had a Netflix subscription once, but it so long ago I have forgotten when it was that I canceled it. Bless you all who can spend hours watching TV! But I don’t, I can’t, and that’s that!

(3) Participate on Social Media
FaceBook deactivated in 2015. LinkedIn minimal. Instagram zip. Twitter I’ve been on since the get-go, but for a long while now I only tweet the link to the once-a-month Q & A on this blog, and on very rare occasion something similar, as a courtesy to that writer and anyone else mentioned on my blog. I consider Twitter so toxic that when I log on I use a timer to keep the whole interaction under 3 minutes. Why so toxic? Let me count the ways… but that would be another blog post. Twitter is just evil.

> See also Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

(4) Pilates class
I recently gave up my weekly pilates, a wonderful class. I do think physical activity is important, but right now I don’t want to have to take time to get in my car and drive somewhere else and on a rigid schedule (um, the class doesn’t wait for me…). I’d prefer to take classes with a real person, but again, there are only 24 hours in the day, and to make time for writing I have to let some things go. I do take walks everyday, and weather permitting, I bike, and I also do yoga every day, both on my own, and with online yoga classes which, by their nature, commence, pause, and conclude in my own home at my own convenience.

(5) Teach a writing workshop
This is terribly tempting because I love teaching writing workshops. I am always charmed, challenged, and inspired by my students! And I believe my own writing is much better for having taught various workshops over so many years. But right now I need the time and creative energy for my book. Therefore, barring a possible mini-conference workshop next fall, I am not teaching again until (maybe) later this year. In the meantime, I console myself with writing a once-a-month workshop post for this blog.

My NTDN list is actually far longer, and it includes everything on my PFWP list, by definition. But you get the idea.

Of course, each writer’s PFWP and NTDN lists are going to be as unique as his or her fingerprints. My point is not that the items on my lists would be good for you or anyone else, but simply that, in my experience, too few writers trouble to make these lists in the first place—and then wonder why they feel at a loss about what to write, and then even when they do know what they want to write, they often find themselves spending their time and mental energies in ways that do not support their writing.

If you haven’t already made your PFWP list, simply muse: What writing projects sing (or whisper) to you as possibilities? Be sure to keep a notebook and pen with you at all times. Your best ideas just might come to you when you’re out and about. Or taking a shower. Or folding laundry.

And as for a NTDN list, what are some activities that might tempt you, or be warmly or even hotly encouraged by the people around you, but that, on reflection, you would consider a fatal drag on your time and mental energies for accomplishing your current writing project(s)? Or what are some things that you would be delighted to do, just not now?

A Slam-dunk (if Counterintuitive) Strategy to
Simultaneously Accelerate, Limber Up,
and Steady the Writing Process

It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (DFS),
Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own

What the Muse Sent Me about the Tenth Muse,
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.

Jaron Lanier’s “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”

As of this year, the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

If you know who Jaron Lanier is you will understand why he, and probably only he, can get away with such a title for a commercially published book, a title that most people today, and that would include writers with books to promote, would consider hoot-out-loud humbug.

But perhaps they would not if they more fully understood the perverse and toxic nature of the machine Lanier terms BUMMER.

BUMMER = Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made Into an Empire for Rent

Writes Lanier:

“BUMMER is a machine, a statistical machine that lives in the computing clouds. To review, phenomena that are statistical and fuzzy are nevertheless real.”

And more:

“The more specifically we can draw a line around a problem, the more solvable that problem becomes. Here I have put forward a hypothesis that our problem is not the Internet, smartphones, smart speakers, or the art of algorithms. Instead, the problem that has made the world so dark and crazy lately is the BUMMER machine, and the core of the BUMMER machine is not a technology, exactly, but a style of business plan that spews out perverse incentives and corrupts people.”

BUMMER sounds like science fiction. But alas, as Lanier explains, the business plan behind social media, and the use of proprietary algorithms to hook users into addiction and subtly distort and shape interactions among users, is both real and seriously icky. You’ve probably read or heard something about FaceBook’s shenanigans, but in Lanier’s Ten Arguments you’re getting a far broader, more detailed analysis and argument, in a wierdly charming package, and not from some random TED pundit, but from one of the fathers of the industrial-cultural complex now known as Silicon Valley.

As Jaron Lanier states in his acknowledgements, the title Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is inspired by Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. I, too, consider Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television a personal inspiration and a masterpiece.

Call me a pessimist: I doubt that Lanier’s book will have any more influence on the general public’s social media habits than did Mander’s on television watching, which came out in the late 1970s. But perhaps such works may assist you in marshaling your attentional power for your creative endeavors, as they did for me, and for this reason I enthusiastically recommend them to you, dear writerly readers.

Carpe diem.

BUT BY THE WAY…

I have not deleted my social media accounts. What I have done is deactivate FaceBook (back in 2015), abandon Twitter (totally, 2021) and now only very rarely participate on LinkedIn and academia.edu, mainly to announce a publication. While I agree with Lanier’s argument that social media is perverse and and toxic, and I sincerely wish that I had never signed up for FB and Twitter in the first place, the fact is, I did, and because of that existing online record and username, I am not ready to hit the delete button. Moreover, I am still digesting some parts of his argument (in particular, I do not accept his hypothesis that the problem is merely what he terms BUMMER).

~~And, yes, I know, this blog, on the Google platform, blogger, belongs to BUMMER. A better and paid platform is on my to-do list.~~ [UPDATE January 2019: Here at last this blog is on self-hosted WordPress at www.madam-mayo.com]

As for using Google search– definitively BUMMER– I switched to Duckduckgo as my go-to search engine a good while ago.

What’s the specific strategy that would be right for you? I would not presume to say.

But what is clear— and we don’t need Mr Lanier to inform us on this simple point— is that if you want to write anything substantive, and you don’t have the abracadabradocity to summon up more than 24 hours in each day, social media can be a lethal time-suck. The years will scroll by, as it were… and funny how that is, though you Tweet #amwriting often enough, you never wrote what you planned to write…

What’s more, the visibility you can achieve with social media, and the sense of “community,” albeit intermediated by proprietary algorithms of a corportation, are Faustian bargains: you will pay in the end, and on many levels.

P.S. For those who have the inclination and/or sufficient cootie-proofing to handle esoterica, I can also recommend philosopher Jeremy Naydler’s splendidly researched and elegantly argued In the Shadow of the Machine: The Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness— also just published. You might find it worthwhile to keep in mind, if you read In the Shadow of the Machine, that in his Ten Arguments Jaron Lanier mentions (oh so briefly, blink and you’ll miss it) Waldorf schools. (More about that connection here.)

It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone
(Plus an App Evaluation App to Tailor Make Your Own)

Notes on Stephen L. Talbott’s The Future Does Not Compute

Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.

Cal Newport’s “Deep Work,” “Study Hacks” Blog, and On Quitting Social Media

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.

>> Speaking of cognitive dissonance, I have plenty to say about that in my wiggiest book review yet.

DOES “SOCIAL MEDIA” INCLUDE BLOGS?

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.

This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (DFS):
First Quarter Update

Poetic Listing

Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.

Adios, Facebook! The Six Reasons Why I Deactivated My Account

I have been on Facebook since 2008, back when I was about to start the tour for my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. It was my amiga the crackerjack historical novelist Sandra Gulland who urged me to sign up. No question, Sandra was right, FB is a powerful way to get the word out about my books, podcasts, lectures, workshops and book signings.

The now deactivated Facebook page (If you find another C.M. Mayo on FB that would not be me)

Plus, FB has been an unexpected pleasure: I could keep up with family, both close and distant, and friends, new, old and previously long-lost. I smiled wide to see photos of a relative’s 80th, jokes and memes posted by cousins and neighbors, videos of the antics of one of my old book editor’s puppies, and so on.

In that torrent of FB feed arrived many treasures too, such as artist Hope Swann’s daily door picture; gorgeous paintings by other artist friends including Mariló Carral, Kelley Vandiver and Edgar Soberon; a video— I forget who “shared it”— of a 90 year old yoga teacher; links to read about fascinating books; political news in Mexico and abroad which I might have missed otherwise; news of a dear friend’s book prize (yay, Leslie Pietrzyk!!); and oodles more.

I am grateful to FB for providing this platform, and grateful to my FB friends (and friends of friends) who have helped make it such a richly interesting experience. (And muchas gracias, Mikel Miller, for recently forming the Mexico writers group on FB and so energetically championing my writing there—and including a chapter from my book on Baja California in your Kindle anthology, Mexico: Sunlight & Shadows.)

In sum, as many of you well know, there are excellent reasons to participate on FB. Nonetheless, after months of dithering, I deactivated my account.

Here’s why:

1. I find it increasingly unsettling that a corporation not only mediates my interactions with my friends and family but also shapes them by its algorithms, then harvests and sells the data on those interactions to third parties. (Translation: it’s looking a mite too 1984.)

2. Not all, certainly, but much of the FB feed is trivia—(I love you, N., but I don’t need to see the sandwich you ate yesterday in Barcelona)— or upsetting (I agree with you, J., that animal abusers should be punished, but I’d rather not have been slammed with the photos). Some of the FB feed is assuredly not trivia— the passing of a beloved grandfather, the birth of a baby, a child’s graduation, the adventure of a lifetime— but because of FB’s algorithms, posts are broadcast to “friends” its bots deem relevant, and it can become so. I mean, if S. didn’t invite me to her birthday party, why did she imagine I would want to see a photo of her blowing out her birthday candles?

(I’ll admit, maybe I never “got” FB in this regard; I rarely posted anything from my personal life. In the real, meatspace world, social networks are intricately nuanced; FB, for all its “groups” and feed settings and ever-morphing privacy options, turns it into a one-size-fits-all spew. Adding nuance: I guess that’s what the algorithm engineers will be working on from the dawn of FB ’til Kingdom Come.)

3. FB is annoyingly addictive, albeit for some people more than others. For me, staying off FB like trying to diet with an open box of chocolates at arm’s reach.

UPDATE: And it’s addictive by design, of course. It’s all about hooking your brain into the machine zone.

4. If I’m going to get this out the door before I’m 94, I need more time and mental energy to finish writing my book about Far West Texas.

> Yo! Checkout the latest podcast, my interview with rodeo barrel racer Lisa Fernandes!

5. As far as book promotion goes, FB isn’t the “wow” it first seemed (especially after, for reasons known only to itself, FB changed its algorithms). Furthermore, although many of my readers are on FB, many are not, or don’t follow me there. Yes, one can create author and book “fan pages,” but that is a form of “sharecropping”— after all, FB owns the digital platform— with all the attendant disadvantages for the sharecropper. (My current philosophy: “Likes” on FB are given so promiscuously, they don’t mean much, if anything. From my own platform, that is, my website, true fans of my work, legion or scant may they be, are always welcome to subscribe to my newsletter.) Moreover! As noted above, FB sucks up time and energy that I could apply elsewhere to better effect. (In case you were wondering, for book promotion, apart from writing the next book, that would include blogging, sending out that newsletter, freelancing for magazines, podcasting, an occasional postcard campaign, and… drumroll… answering ye olde email.)

UPDATE: Speaking of “sharecropping, yes indeed, this blog is sharecropping on Google’s platform. It has been on my to do list for an age to move the whole enchilada over to WordPress. Stay tuned.

UPDATE, January 2019: Dear writerly reader, you are now reading this blog on self-hosted WordPress. Viva!

6. Though I will miss the casual interactions of “liking” and “sharing” on FB, I prefer to meet friends, family and colleagues in person, that is, on our terms, not FB’s, and also to talk on the phone or by Skype, and… more drums… answer my email.

Speaking of email: friends, family, students, readers: I am sincerely happy to hear from you! As always, you can write to me at cmmayo (at) cmmayo (dot) com. And now that I’m free of Facebook, I shall be able to answer you in a more thoughtful and timely manner.

And of course, I welcome your comments on this blog.

As ever, I blog on Mondays.

P.S. To deactivate a FB account, log in, then go to “settings,” then “security,” then click on “deactivate your account.” Oh, but FB doesn’t let you go that easily! The whole ooey-gooey-extra-velcroey process made me shake my head and laugh out loud several times. By the way, this is not the same action as deleting the account. I can imagine that I might need to log on again in order to contact someone whom I couldn’t contact otherwise, or possibly, for some other very good reason. But to participate as I did before? Definitely not.

UPDATE: Yet another reason to deactivate FB.

FURTHER UPDATE: November 2017. Still massively relieved to have deactivated FB. In case you were wondering. But still have not yet moved this blog over to WordPress… It will happen.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: 2018: See novelist Nancy Peacock’s blog post, “Quitting Social Media.”

YE VERILY ANOTHER UPDATE, JULY 2018: Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social media Accounts Right Now.

JULY 2018: A nonprofit’s take on FB.

UPDATE, JANUARY 2019: Now the battle is against Whatsapp. I wonder what’s next?