Audrey Kalman's Blog, page 10

You can’t make me go back to school

It’s that time of year again. How do I know? Not because the kids are swarming the elementary school at the bottom of my hill or the stores are full of backpacks and spiral-bound notebooks, but because I had a school anxiety dream.

Everyone has their own version of these. Mine usually involve being in a class I don’t understand, trying to convince the teacher that I am way too old to be in school.

My elementary school (long before I attended). I’m not going back!

This time, instead of dismissing the dream as nothing more than a stress response to my own kids returning to school, I got to thinking: what if I explore the areas where I might benefit from going back to school? Sure, I’m way past school age, but that doesn’t mean I can’t expand my mind. What lessons are out there waiting for me? How might I approach old situations in a new way? Could I, perhaps, even become something new?

It’s worth considering.

However, I promised a reprieve from the heavy-duty posts of the last few months. So that’s as much self-analysis as you’ll get for today. Instead, let’s go back to school together. Let’s take a tour of some of the cool science and philosophy sites I’ve discovered while researching my new novel about the intersection of technology and humanity. (If you follow me on Twitter, you may be aware of some of them.)

Reading just a few stories or watching a video or two from each of these is an education in itself. And, of course, a mighty distraction, but that’s a topic for another post.

Aeon

“Since September 2012, Aeon has been publishing some of the most profound and provocative thinking on the web. It asks the biggest questions and finds the freshest, most original answers, provided by world-leading authorities on science, philosophy and society.” Some bite-sized, some long; some written, some video. I love the wide-ranging topics.

Whewell’s Gazette

“Your weekly digest of all the best of Internet history of science, technology and medicine.” That just about says it all. Science birthdays, links to articles (popular and academic) on physics, astronomy, cartography, medicine, technology, life sciences, chemistry, esoterica, and more. I could—and have—gotten lost in these. I have bookmarked many to come back to. A curated feast.

MakeUseOf

“MakeUseOf is the world’s leading destination for learning more about technology and the many ways that it can improve your life.” From the practical (“Turn your phone into a personal security device for emergencies”) to the not-so (“How to make your own Dr. Who adventure for the BBC”).

TED talks on science

“A collection of TED Talks (and more) on the topic of science.” For those who like to hear from the source rather than reading.

Science-Based Medicine

“Science-Based Medicine is dedicated to evaluating medical treatments and products of interest to the public in a scientific light, and promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in health care.” It seems odd to me that presenting this as a favorite site might amount to a political statement. That’s one of the things that fascinates me about the current state of our culture: we argue over who has the right to define what is true.

Engadget

“Technology isn’t all about bits and processors. It’s the car with no driver, human organs printed in a lab and leisurely flights into space. It’s the future and we’re here to tell you all about it.” Probably the most commercial of the sites, but great for looking ahead.

Trendhunter

“TrendHunter.com is the world’s largest, most popular trend community.” More pop culture than deep science, but fascinating nonetheless, and definitely future-focused, featuring everything from gesture-controlling rings to 3-printed medical tools.

I’ll leave you with a taste of one of the recent videos from Aeon.

 

Where do you go to learn new things? And what do your school-anxiety dreams look like?

From the archives: My last back-to-school post from 2013.

The Nihilist on Vacation – Part II

On the cusp of returning home, the Nihilist finds herself wrung dry, cocooned as she has been for twelve days with her immediate family in a passing imitation of filial harmony. Escaping routine for a couple of weeks is like a drug—a numbing, demotivating drug. Oh, right. That’s why people go on vacation.

Now, as my family sleeps upstairs in our room at this utterly undistinguished hotel, I sit in the breakfast area lulled by the murmur of other guests. The TV in the hotel fitness room told me of flooding in Syracuse, a few towns away, where overnight torrents drowned the streets. I feel at a curious remove from myself, though not in a bad way. Maybe this is what it feels like to be relaxed!

Storm clouds from the hotel window.

Yet the future haunts me even as enjoy the moment. At this nondescript laminate table, I write down my thoughts as I have done nearly daily since I was old enough to hold a pen, the latest installment in the chronicle of my inner life that stretches back decades. I keep my thoughts on paper, in bound notebooks, each labeled descriptively, if not originally, Journal.

Title page of the first volume of my journals.

If I save my journals, will my as-yet-not-conceived granddaughter someday slit open a mildewed box to discover a bittersweet, fascinating, and burdensome treasure trove?

“You’ll never guess what I found,” she’ll marvel to her sons. “Grandma Audrey’s journals.”

Part of a journal entry from August 1, 1975.

Will the journals become to her what the by-products of my parents’ and grandparents’ lives have become to me—bittersweet, fascinating, burdensome? Bittersweet because they’re all I have left that’s tangible and fascinating because they offer more, in many ways, than a conversation or even years of living together ever could, a raw look inside their minds. And a burden for the same reason. These bits of their lives are a reminder—as is everything, it seems, for this time-and-mortality-obsessed writer—of time flowing irretrievably away.

A monograph authored by my mother in 1964.

I spent the last five days of my vacation sorting mementos in what once was my parents’ house. I found: A clinical note about one of my grandfather’s patients, 1914; my father’s report card from the Board of Education, The City of New York, 1935; my mother’s Summary of the Dissertation Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1955; a holiday card, drawn by me, featuring people with outsized heads and stick legs, 1965.

The intensity of effort these represent boggles my mind. To learn chemistry, quantum mechanics, engineering; to treat patient, make a life, graduate from MIT, marry and raise a child. And all for what? They are all dead now, the students and their teachers, the doctor and his patients.

The quintessential kid picture.

And yet—

They live on in me and in their grandchildren. The pen that will not be still is a thread connecting then to later. Progenitors and progeny roll from a little-understood past into a barely comprehensible future with the present moment as the pivot point, the looking glass, with me as the filter, the essential and elusive medium.

Will my granddaughter go home to her unimaginable house in a city I may never see to stash the stacks of journals in an unused storage area? Will she bring them out on days when she feels particularly sullen or depressed or nostalgic and sit cross-legged with a glass of wine beside her, reading her grandmother’s words, wondering at what went on inside my head and at how the strand of personal history reaches from the past to her and through her?

Or will her concerns be more immediate: the flooding and burning earth I have bequeathed her by my negligence, the untenable heat and the gnawing worry about where her next meal will come from as she tumbles into a future so different from my present I can barely conceive of it?

My next post will return to more practical matters, I promise.

The Nihilist on Vacation – Part 1

Dead in 70 years anyway.

So reads the Instagram tagline of someone I know well, like a self-referential epitaph. This person is a teenager every bit as tormented, apparently, as I was at his age. The difference is that today the world can know your torment, which is not confined between the cardboard covers of a journal. The torment is no less acute for its publicity.

I went on vacation with this person.

Somewhere over Nebraska

The idea of vacation is in many ways as absurd to me as the idea of retirement. I am blessed with the good fortune to live in a part of the world that many consider to be a premier vacation destination. Blessed, too, with satisfying work I cannot see wanting to stop because I pass some arbitrary chronological age. So, just as I feel there will be no need to retire, there is no need for me to vacation. What folly, then, drove me onto an airplane with my family?

We planned the trip because I felt, after several years stuck at home in my routines like a hamster exercising on the same sorry wheel day after day, an almost insuperable need for something to change. What better way to satisfy this need than to yank everyone out of their comfortable routines for two weeks? Plus, as the keeper of the family’s emotional life, it falls to me to curate the future, to make a memory we can all carry with us. (I didn’t say it had to be a pleasant memory.)

Manhattan from Brooklyn

I’ve learned a lot in the years since our last family vacation. Most importantly, that life unfolds primarily within my own head. This is both frightening and terribly empowering. Ergo: the mildly disappointing AirBNB apartment we check into on the Upper East Side of Manhattan will be of the same proportions whether I am ecstatic or bellicose. The same patina of grime will dim the walls; the same four measly, mismatched bath towels reeking of cigarette smoke will be stacked on the bathroom shelves; the foldout couch where Son #2 is designated to sleep by the chronological superiority of his older brother will still tilt him onto the floor and puncture his back with errant springs. These facts are immune to my emotions.

96th Street Station

I used to look down my nose at those Pollyannas spouting earnest self-help bullshit about making the world what you want it to be and changing your attitude to change your attitude, but I’m starting to think there may be something to it. The evening we check in to our apartment, I make a conscious decision to be cheerful rather than glum.

Times Square

Perhaps because of this, I find my emotional ship much more easily righted on this family trip than the last. Last time, Son #1’s intense turbulence just about sank me, leaving me with such a taste of bitter adolescent animosity that I was unwilling to attempt another getaway with the family for close to five years. This time, the travails—oops, travels?—are colored with the chest-souring ache of knowing this will be the last trip of our nuclear familyhood. I know this getaway is a somewhat selfish paean to my own role as a mother, a constructed experience I can cling to as I dodder into my later years. But then, aren’t all vacations?

Best coffee on the east coast

Bagels unreproducible in California.

And yet—

My family members will have their own experiences. They will feel the hot garbagey breath of Manhattan riffling their hair as we catch the train at 96th Street. They will marvel at the sheer volume of humanity streaming past on every street and avenue. They will develop an affection for Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and praise New York bagels, which, no matter how hard anyone tries, cannot be adequately reproduced in California. They will discover the morally complicated joys of Uber. They will notice the wave of emotion that unexpectedly grips their mother as she stands on a hot gray afternoon staring into the Nihilist’s dream of a memorial at One World Trade Center, black rectangles within the footprints of the fallen towers. They will prick up their ears to the sound of the Charles Mingus Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, where we eat an expensive but much-needed meal while bathed in the club’s reddish glow.

A fitting tribute.

Empty stage–no photography allowed during the concert.

And yet—

It occurs to me that the role I simultaneously cherish and resent as keeper of the family’s emotions is not unlike my simultaneously adored and reviled role as chief cook and nutrient dispenser. Perhaps, as in the kitchen, if I relinquish even a tiny bit my death grip on all the feelings of the family, my fellow travelers on this intimate journey will be freer to feel and bear their own experiences.

This, then, is the promise I make on the morning we leave New York City for the second half of our putative vacation in the country, in the house my father built and bequeathed to me on his passing and that of my mother: to let go, just a little bit. Already, Son #1 has asked if he can return home early (impossible, for many logistical reasons) and my emotional ship has spent a few minutes quaking in the wind of his unhappiness. (Or is it my perception of his unhappiness? No, he has stated outright that a stay in the country will engender that most horrendous of feelings, boredom.)

With this promise held close­—let them feel their own damn feelings and occasionally cook their own damn pancakes—I go from bed to bed on this final morning in our now-familiar rented apartment, performing yet another task that seems always to fall exclusively to me: rousing everyone from sleep to start the day.

Where we caught the Metro North to leave the City.

And now for something completely different

Check out my latest short story, just published by Sand Hill Review, “Put the Sweater on the Dog.” I’d love to hear what you think!

Gardening Into the Apocalypse

Readers often ask fiction writers the tiresome question: “Which part of your story is true?”

The correct answer is: “The whole thing.” After all, if a story doesn’t express a Greater Truth, why bother telling it?

That said, I understand the urge to parse a story for “facts.” Coming from a journalism background, I’m sensitive to the reader’s desire for sourcing and verification (to the extent that anything can ever be sourced or verified, given the frailty of human memory and the chasms of misinterpretation into which even the most well-meaning of reporters can fall).

The chasm that can swallow facts (Grand Canyon 2008)

I decided to pull back the curtain just a bit on my forthcoming novel (still untitled), which has, at its center, the lifelong friendship of two women. Their friendship was enabled by their mothers’ friendship, which was based, at least in part, on gardening.

I can share these facts from my life:

I have a lifelong friend.
Her mother likes to garden.
My mother liked to garden.

The facts take us no further

That’s about as far as the facts can take us. I won’t say which of the women in the book is me and which is my friend because I can’t. They are neither of us; they are all of us. My characters embody the traits and habits of scores of people I have encountered over the years.

Nonetheless, to scratch the readerly itch to know what’s “true,” I offer the following annotated passage from my novel, with facts called out.

I learned the habit of martinis [true] from Jon’s grandma [actually from Carol Winfield] and I learned the habit of gardening from my mother [true], who refused to remain contained in our small house [not true; our house was big]. She started with vegetables: tomatoes, beans, peppers, squashes, cauliflower [not true; she never grew cauliflower]. My father dug a narrow strip out of the back lawn [not true; it was more like an enormous rectangle] and erected a chicken-wire fence to keep the deer, raccoons, and chipmunks from decimating her plantings [true; the critters devoured everything that wasn’t fenced]. After a few years she had mastered vegetables and moved on to flowers. My father stood by as she further excavated the lawn to make flower beds, shaking his head and grumbling about how annoying it would be to mow around the patches [true; the lawn was his domain and he defended it fiercely].

The lawn my father loved to mow.

I have been thinking of my mother and her gardens recently as another growing season gets underway, although, here in California, the growing season is admittedly less seasonal than the east coast climate where I grew up.

A vision came to me as I consolidated my few tomato plants in their containers around a portion of my drip irrigation system so I can follow the water district’s strict new outdoor irrigation schedule (even-numbered street addresses may water on Tuesdays and Fridays between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m.).

I saw myself pushing piles of dirt around, shoveling the seemingly endlessly shit of life in a not-at-all-endless cycle of drudgery doomed to end in my own death and, eventually the death of the planet.

Worms at work in my compost pile.

What can I say? You already knew about my tendency to fatalism.

The Greater Truth

But in attempting to make a steaming cup of something palatable out of a cup of crap, I come back to the philosophy that has long sustained me in the face of these dire thoughts.

We are here to do the little things we love.

Tending a pea plant, helping a baby into the world, composting food scraps, mixing a perfect martini, teaching physics to a college student, mowing the lawn, writing a novel—these are precisely the acts that contain within themselves no meaning whatsoever and yet may add up to our only reasonable defense against the apocalypse.

Purple pea pods (say ten times fast)

Happier (but perhaps just as meaningless) news

I’m excited to say that a chapter from my novel in progress (not the one accepted for publication) won Honorable Mention in the “Publisher’s Choice Novel Chapter” Division in the San Mateo County Fair’s Literary Arts Competition. It’s a little thing, but done with love. For anyone near San Mateo, stop by. I’ll be at various events at the Fair this week, celebrating literary achievements of all kinds. See where I’ll be and when on my author page.

What psychological tricks do you use to defend against impending doom?

I am a casualty of the war between head and heart

After twenty-four years of getting nostalgic every time I hear Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” because I listened to it the morning after my husband proposed, I discover the song is about a break-up.

It seems the heart knows no logic. Or perhaps it’s the ear or the body’s musical core that are immune to logic. Logic, after all, is the currency of the intellect, the Spock-ification of everything, the natural state of macho men. Illogic is the realm of the mysterious inner feminine, of dream fragments that flicker across our corneas, of the hormonal slurry polluting—or perhaps enriching—the veins of women of a certain age.

Can we manage to exist in both realms?

Living mostly in a slipstream of sensation overlaid with an insufficient webbing of reason, I drift in and out of touch with my inner feminine. I find myself dreaming of girls and boys too young to evoke any concept of gender. In waking life, hormones gone haywire hijack my sense of self, igniting a consuming anxiety that seems completely beyond my control and that transforms me into someone I don’t recognize. I find myself flummoxed by the tension between thought and feeling, by the possibility that sensations of all kinds, from the most pleasurable to the most unendurable, might take me over without notice. Yet the converse offers little comfort. If my thoughts influence what I feel, then I must be responsible for any unpleasant feelings. What a Scylla and Charybdis: Either I cause my suffering or my suffering is a random visitation.

An Italian fresco depicting Odysseus’s boat passing between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Scylla has plucked five of Odysseus’s men from the boat. [Public domain; via Wikimedia Commons]

And so I arrive at the familiar battleground of head and heart where, since childhood, I have found myself swept up in their epic clash. Head and heart stand in, of course, for masculine and feminine. Perhaps this recent takeover by feelings is a cry from the heart, a cri de coeur from my feminine side. “Listen to me!” she demands. “If you don’t pay me my due, I’ll fuck up your whole life.”

I have been paying dues. I have spent hundreds scrutinizing my emotions and tinkering with my biochemistry in an effort to ward off these ambushes.

All this unfolds against the backdrop of a family in the throes of adolescence. One son on the cusp of adulthood, one still in the depths of transformation. One who would never admit it but who is in touch with his feminine side, who nurtures the deep dreaminess and non-linear thinking of the artist; the other who sees no point in talking about feelings. He would rather discuss theoretical physics. Heart, head.

The thought occurs to me that perhaps theoretical physics is a manifestation of the deep feminine. In this arena, time doubles back on itself. I listen to Free Fallin’ and I’m on the road to work all those years ago with the windows of my ’86 Toyota Celica open to the clammy air of a July morning in New England. I am both there and here, then and now.

I should feel cheated that the song that became a soundtrack to pivotal moment of my life is not what I thought. Tom sings about being a bad boy, about leaving, about free falling into nothing. But all I hear is a voice tugging me into the slipstream where there is no Scylla and no Charybdis, where I am neither head nor heart, masculine nor feminine, young nor old.

Am I now everything, or nothing?

Wrinkle-free style for the modern writer

I recently had a discussion with my son about why I enjoy editing so much. He admitted—to my surprise, since he’s not much of a reader or writer—that he enjoys editing too. “It’s like ironing a big pile of wrinkly clothes. It’s really satisfying.” (Not that he has ever actually done this.)

This seems to me a perfect analogue to the pleasure of editing. Smoothing rough prose is satisfying in the same way that ironing is satisfying. You start with something less-than-presentable and end up with something you can wear proudly.

Of course, to iron well or edit well, you need reliable appliances.

Get out the irons

My previous editing bible

When I began writing professionally, my bible was Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, mostly because it was what I used in my college and graduate school writing courses. I still have that slim paperback somewhere.

Recently, I have taken on some professional editing jobs. This caused me to break down and buy a new style manual. Editing the words of others requires a more definitive (and up-to-date) style guide. So I bought a one-year subscription to the Chicago Manual of Style Online. I look forward to getting answers to all sorts of tricky questions, such as the correct adjective to describe people who live in Argentina. Argentine, Argentinian, or Argentinean? I couldn’t find that tidbit in the manual, but there were some discussions in the online forum.

My current editing bible

Lest I come across as a grammar-obsessed quibbler (any fellow serial comma devotees out there?), I’ll say that I try not to be slavish about adherence to style. In fiction, it’s fine to break the rules. For a good reason. (Like emphasis.) But when I’m being paid to edit the work of others, I need a consistent guide to the choices I’m suggesting, and, occasionally, a neutral third-party to help make my point.

That said, I loved the recent New Yorker article by long-time copy editor Mary Norris, “Holy Writ: Learning to Love the House Style.” If you have ever tried to iron the wrinkles out of a piece writing, you’ll enjoy what she has to say.

If you’re a writer, what do you find satisfying about working with words? Do you like editing, or would you rather let someone else do the ironing?

Are you a robot? I am.

I had planned to write about feeling overwhelmed by tasks and projects despite my evolving ability to say no (a skill everyone should hone). Then I thought about how much I am able to accomplish every day and began wondering why I don’t feel more overwhelmed, what with three careers (author, birth doula, and marketing consultant), volunteer activities, and family and personal commitments. How do I manage it?

Maybe the same way you do. In a word: templates.

I use e-mail templates for many situations: sending contracts to clients, responding to inquiries about the Nursing Mothers Counsel, and following up with prospects. I use Microsoft Word templates for creating various kinds of documents. I use newsletter templates for e-mail marketing in Emma (which I use with my clients) and MailChimp (which I use as an author).

Templates are life rafts for the overcommitted. Just assemble, address, and send—little thought required and much time saved. Why reinvent the wheel each time you have to send a piece of correspondence that is essentially the same as hundreds of others?

But if so much of my daily activity consists of simply assembling components I’ve already created, what does that make me?

In a word (or two): a robot.

This conundrum is articulated perfectly in a 2012 Wired article titled “Better Than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—Take Our Jobs” by Kevin Kelly. “When robots and automation do our most basic work, making it relatively easy for us to be fed, clothed, and sheltered, then we are free to ask, ‘What are humans for?’”

This question may induce a certain level existential anxiety. Yet I find the idea of technology taking over routine aspects of my work life quite appealing. We are at a relatively primitive stage of office automation, which arguably began with the invention of the typewriter. I create templates, but still must store them, hunt for them, open them, modify them, address them, and check them over. Far too much of my time goes toward managing interactions and responses in ways that are ripe for robotic takeover.

The unevolved state of automation is not for lack of trying by technologists. Siri’s inventors, for example, recognize her limitations and have undertaken to build a more responsive digital persona that learns as it goes. I look forward to a day when a personal digital assistant is truly that—rather than a shrunken computer with a clumsy interface and a tendency to misunderstand my intentions.

Not everyone is so sanguine about where automation is headed. The video below from C.G.P. Grey takes a darker long-term view, comparing humans today to the horses of the early automobile age—blithely unaware that new technology would eventually render them (no pun intended) unemployable.  Artificial creativity, anyone?

What do you think? Do you fear being usurped by robots or welcome the freedom that might come from having the time to contemplate what humans are for?

* * *

For an up-to-the-minute conversation on the state of automation, see Reddit’s Automate stream. Or, for an in-depth look, see The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, by Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee.

The beauty of embracing your opposite (#BOAW2015)

This will be the fourth year I have participated in August McLaughlin’s Beauty of a Woman Blogfest. I am honored to have the opportunity to write on a topic I might not otherwise consider, but which always causes me to reflect deeply. My posts from previous years:

2014: Three beauties and a redefinition
2013: I want to be like Carol Winfield even when I’m dead
2012: Tribute to a different kind of beauty

And on to this year’s…

As a society, we’ve made progress in the last fifty years. We’ve come a long way, baby.

 

Still, we spend way too much time thinking about how our private parts define us. That’s both understandable and disappointing.

Understandable because the human brain is wired to categorize. Friend or foe? Sustenance or poison? Safety or danger? Woman or man?

Disappointing because I believe one of the hallmarks of evolution is the ability to recognize shades of gray (presumably up to fifty). Or perhaps we simply need to rediscover this recognition. Eastern philosophy came up with the idea long ago that “feminine” and “masculine” constructs co-exist within an individual.  We all have characteristics of each gender, to varying degrees, to the extent that we wish to label any characteristic as either feminine or masculine.

This is not to discount the excruciating pain suffered by people who feel their biological gender is at odds with their perceived sense of self. I recently heard a fascinating story on the new podcast Invisibilia (definitely worth checking out all their stories) about a person whose sense of gender flipped multiple times during each day. I do see evidence of evolution in the increasing ability of mainstream society to discuss transgender issues—witness the popularity of the Amazon original show, Transparent. People who experience gender outside of the norm have a lot to teach all of us about our own preconceptions and biases.

This brings me to the question: What do we mean when we talk about “the beauty of a woman?” More, I would hope, than whatever today’s culture deems outwardly appealing in terms of facial features and body type. Do we dig deeper, then, and praise inner strength, courage, generosity? But what makes these traits inherently beautiful in a woman? Is it because we still believe, at some level, that women are weak, cowardly, and abstemious?

Is Eve pretty? (Peter Paul Rubens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

I would like to devote the rest of this post to celebrating the beauty of the human. (I know, we could use another word for our species that doesn’t include “man.” Homo sapiens, then.)

We all arrive on this earth blessed with gifts and hampered by challenges. Whether male or female, we use those gifts and overcome those challenges in a thousand different ways. Our chromosomal, hormonal, and even enculturated differences are minuscule in comparison to the differences between us and other species. So why not focus more on what unites us? Perhaps if each gender could open to what we stereotypically consider the characteristics of the other, we could save the world. The men who march us to war (and it is, overwhelmingly, men) would find their hearts opening in what might be considered a feminine way to the lives and situations of those against whom they formerly raised arms. The women who sit meekly in their places would find what we often think of as a masculine trait: the power to lift their voices in protest and take action for their beliefs.

And that would be, simply—beauty.

By Gregory Maxwell [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Red pens and true selves

Humbled and irritated by the experience of receiving my publisher’s feedback on my novel, I dove (swooped? wallowed? waded? tiptoed?) into the revision process.

No matter how many years I have spent being edited—and knowing that editing is good for me and my work—I still struggle with the fundamental question: when does editing legitimately improve the text and when does it muck with my vision to a degree that I can’t accept?

Editing myself

I’m in the middle of that conflict now as I strive to figure out how to address my publisher’s concerns. I agree that I don’t want my book to be dense, difficult to get into, and confusing unless one has read it three times. On the other hand, I don’t want it to be vapid, facile, and completely spelled out. Somewhere between those two extremes lies the sweet spot that marries my vision for the book with a compelling narrative that grips—and holds—the attention of a large percentage of readers.

Wow, this should be a piece of cake.

I’m guessing that most of my blog readers aren’t in the middle of revising their fifth novels. So what does this process have to do with the average citizen?

We all have something we hold dear: a value, a principle, a way of being. We all have had those dear things challenged—by a boss, a child, a spouse, a friend. What’s tricky is when the immovable object of our conviction meets the unstoppable force of someone else’s faith. At worst, the result is a conflagration born of clashing values: terror at the barrel of a gun, a bomb. When we can access our better selves, what results is the discourse of civil society—and even a way to bring that society to a better place.

I’m opting for the latter approach with my publisher. Because I know she comes from a place of compassion and support, I can listen to her words and absorb them. The judgment I make about what to change and what to preserve in my writing will not be made blindly, but informed by the input of someone who shares my ultimate goal.

Editing others

Editing will be very much on my mind as I prepare to give a presentation with Lisa Meltzer Penn at next month’s meeting of our local California Writer’s Club branch. On February 21, we’ll present Red Pen Secrets: Editing Tips and Tricks. Our aim will be to help writers understand the editor’s perspective. What do we look for when we’re editing? What makes a compelling story? What are some things every writer can do before submitting a piece? Most of all, we want to convey that editors have writers’ best interests—and best writing—at heart.

Editing thine own self?

Initially I thought of titling this post “To thine own self be true.” Then I read these thoughts at Bigthink.com. I had interpreted the statement as meaning to thine own self be true, as opposed to being true to someone else’s self. Clearly, I had no idea the myriad interpretations that could spawn from six little words of Shakespeare.

Writers or readers, have you ever questioned what seemed to be the bedrock of your belief about yourself? Have you ever had to defend that belief?

My Top Ten Top Ten

A top ten list satisfies on so many levels. It offers a shortcut: Discover what your favorite critics thought was worth seeing or reading—and use that as a starting point for your own moviegoing or book purchasing. It fulfills our need to fit in: Quickly review what everyone else is clicking on, reading, or viewing—and be ready for that cocktail party conversation.

But the world has enough top ten lists. So rather than add to the chaos, I offer instead a Top Ten List of Top Ten Lists.

Here, in no particular order, are ten lists I have stumbled across painstakingly researched, highlighting many of the random diverse topics that interest me. There’s something here for readers, writers, movie buffs, techies, and foodies. The rest of you… well, what else is there?

For writers

Jane Friedman’s favorite digital tools – I’ve subscribed to Jane’s blog for several years. She offers trenchant observations and her guest bloggers offer insights for writers of all stripes, but especially self- and independently published types. Her collection of digital tools is helpful to writers or anyone who works digitally.
Write to Done Top 10 Blog contest – I’m not sure how I stumbled across this, but this writing site is having a contest to come up with the Top 10 writing blogs. Timing alert: the deadline for submitting your favorite is December 24, so get over there right away if you want to nominate. Or come back later to see the results.

For geeks, techies, and science buffs

MakeUseOf – I never thought of myself as particularly geeky but I must harbor some inner geekiness. I really like this site. Every day they offer five, ten, or more tech articles in plain English with a how-to bent. In the spirit of the season, they also have a best-of list.
Science Magazine – Miraculous things have been going on in space and in the labs.
Nature – I couldn’t resist this one. Who doesn’t like a cute animal? And these picks from Nature offer more than your average cat video.

Google searches reveal trends – In the best tradition of watching us watching ourselves, Google lists the top trends of 2014 based on trillions of Google searches.

For readers and moviegoers

Maureen Corrigan’s top twelve books – In the great tradition of getting all my news from NPR (as my kids are constantly teasing me I do), I like to listen to NPR book reviewer Maureen Corrigan. She bucks the top-ten trend this year by putting forth twelve favorite titles.
Metacritic’s best movies for 2014 – This may be getting a little too meta. Not only does Metacritic list the best movies of 2014 according to critics, it offers links to 95 individual critics’ top ten list. Helpful or overwhelming? You decide.
Goodreads readers’ choice awards: Best nonfiction of 2014 – What do other readers of non-fiction recommend? 134,872 have spoken at Goodreads.
Alltop site aggregation – Alltop is like a list of lists; they gather the top stories from a collection of online sites like the New York Times, Techcrunch, and Lifehacker, and put them all together for you.

Bonus – for foodies

Food Curated – I stumbled across this blog/video site in my search for top tens. It doesn’t have a top ten per se, but here’s a link to the blog roll. And the videos are worth checking out, too, like the one below on a small yogurt company.


Personal writing news

1) The fifth edition of the Fault Zone anthology, Diverge, has just been published by Sand Hill Review Press. It’s edited by yours truly and contains some great stories, essays, and poems by local bay area writers. It makes a great holiday gift!

2) I just created a book landing page for Dance of Souls using Booklaunch, which I discovered through a Webinar hosted by another favorite blogger, Joel Friedlander (a.k.a. The Book Designer). Booklaunch is a pretty slick and easy to use tool. I’ll definitely be enlisting it in 2015 to promote my next novel. Check out the page here.

Your top ten?

What floated to the top of your list in 2014? Books, movies, food–I’d love to hear.