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For years I've been thinking about writing a memoirish book of essays about my experience as a maritial arts student. I even had a working title, Black Belt Essays. I even wrote and published two said essays. But that's as far as I've gotten with this project because of the time issues I keep writing about on Tuesdays and poor discipline and whine, whine, whine.

Just moments ago, I learned that someone else has written my book. Susan Schorn has written Smile At Strangers and Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly, which will be published next month.  #@!!  This is all because I am slow and inept!

Of course, my weak grasp of zennyness tells me that wanting, as in wanting to have written that book, as in wanting someone else not to have written it first, leads to unhappiness. Damn straight about that. But soon this moment of wanting and unhappiness will be in the past and over, and I will be on to another moment in which I will be slow and inept about other things. Yeah. I'm sitting here waiting for that. And waiting.

Oh. Here's a cheery thought. Schorn's book is about karate, and mine would have been about taekwondo. Plus, she teaches karate, while I can barely manage to maintain my own taekwondo skills, let alone teach anyone else. (I've already written one essay on that subject and am sure I can probably wring two or three more on it.) So if we both end up writing martial arts memoirs, they wouldn't be anything alike.

Now, that's a relief. I'm into that better feeling moment already.

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For years I have believed that if I could just find the perfect schedule, I would be able to crank out work in a Yolen-like manner, live in an orderly home, and reach some kind of spiritual and physical state of satisfaction, if not bliss. Work, creating order, and training all take time. The hours in a day remain the same, so determining how to use them becomes crucial.

I have yet to find that perfect schedule, which means that my schedule is always changing while I look forward it.

This past year my taekwondo training schedule has been changing because of changes at my school. I was on what I'll call the "winter schedule" in the spring, which involved training one evening a week with an occasional second evening class added when I could. Then in mid-June I went on the "summer schedule" when one morning class was added at the school to accomodate the kids who were out of traditional school. Then I could go to the one evening class that I could tolerate, but the morning class as well. I did two morning classes a week for something like eight years, so getting back to two classes--very, very good. Next week I go back to the winter schedule.

On the one hand, I need to train more than once a week to maintain my skills, but a lot of evening classes involving heavy sweating are hard to get into when you are more than eighteen years old, which I am. This means, by the way, that I have to try to find some time at home to add taekwondo to my personal workout/training mix. On the other hand, without the morning classes that I took for around eight years, I can now do a little writing before visiting the elders, which was added to my schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays about a year and a half ago. So we're definitely talking a glass half full situation.

I'm also thinking, as I write this, that perhaps I should think about creating seasonal schedules, with goals for the season.

Hmmm. Hmmm.

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I do understand that charts can be an efficient means of transmitting or storing info. Really, I do. I've tried charts for all kinds of things. So this Submission Tracking Chart calls out to me.

Here's the problem I've had with charts: I can't hold on to them. Or, when I've filled them out, I can't get around to printing out another. Truly, it's not them, it's me.

As far as submissions are concerned, I've tried keeping track of, say, short story and essay submissions on the inside of folders that contained a draft of the manuscript, back in the days when I was more likely to have a hard copy draft of the manuscript. The problem with that was that if I was being efficient, the file went into a cabinet. Back in the day when all submissions were made through the mail, sometimes a form rejection would arrive with nothing regarding what manuscript was being rejected and then I didn't know what submission it went to because I have a lot of files in my cabinets. Come on! Sometimes it would take months editors to get back to authors. How were we supposed to remember?

I've also tried keeping an expandable file with hard copies of all my rejected submissions for one particular project, which sounds organized, except I would have to keep going through all the materials in the folder to find out where I'd submitted. So then I made a list somewhere, though now I'm thinking, I should have made the list on the outside of the folder, huh?

Last summer I made a bunch of short story submissions and kept a list with dates on a white board here in the office. It's still there.

Most recently, I've been thinking about keeping track in my new journal software, because I shouldn't be able to lose that, should I?

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If you don't follow my personal facebook page, which is not to be confused with my professional facebook page, where all the photos are, you don't know that I was quite seriously traumatized yesterday. I realized that I had lost Chapter 11 of a fifteen chapter (to date) work in progress.

I understand how it happened. It's totally logical. A couple of months ago, I started working on the bedroom laptop for a half an hour or so first thing in the morning. This has really improved my output. But on the laptop I save directly to a flash drive (also known, I'm told, as a thumb drive, and, at our house, as a sticky thing). I also work on a desktop in the office where I save to the computer's hard drive. I save the hard drive's work to the flash drive and transfer the flash drive's work to the desk top's hard drive, thus, presumably, always having two copies of everything.

Things became more complicated about a month or more ago, when I decided to write a new Chapter Six. Each one of my chapters is kept in a separate file. So once I did a new Chapter Six, the original Chapter Six became Chapter Seven, and everything had to be moved from that point.

I am sure there is some logical, techie way to have renamed everything, but I shuffled instead. Between the moving back and forth between drives and the shuffling, Chapter Ten, which should have become Chapter Eleven was lost, and Chapter Eleven and Twelve were duplicates.

Sad, sad, sad.

Well, guess who saved the day. Yes, yes, that's right. Computer Guy. He backs up the desktop's harddrive every week, but he doesn't override past backups because...Well, we won't get into that. It is enough to say that he was able to find the missing material in the back up from a few weeks back.

I didn't work much today because am still recovering from this experience.

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I'm sure it can, because it always does.

I've bored you before with the struggle I have with work now that I've lost a couple of days a week to eldercare. Working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday means I have to lose time each one of those days getting myself back up to speed. But at least I had a schedule, even if it was one that didn't work very well.

Then I lost my Thursday and then my Tuesday morning martial arts class. On the one hand, that does free up some time for work, and it looks as if I ought to be able to do at least a little something each day. On the other hand, I'm doing the martial arts training one night a week and trying to do some training at home to compensate for the second lost class. Chaos in terms of getting my life in order again.

I made a change a few weeks ago that involved rolling out of bed and trying to write a few hundred words first thing. Then I'm off for the morning physical training routine and, most days, distraction due to family issues with a plan to get into real writing mode by mid-day. I think that eventually this is going to work out for me, since I now can do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The last few days, though, I needed to do some home-related things here at the house. Since I'd started that do-a-few-hundred words thing and was into little bursts of writing, what I did was sit at the computer for a few minutes, go do one of those things that needed to be done. Work for a little while, do something else. Today I haven't been feeling well, so I'd work at the bedroom work station (Yes! We have a bedroom work station!), go back to bed, drag myself back to the work station, get myself back to bed.

Progress is being made. It's not stellar, but it's there. However, I am really feeling the upheaval of being between schedules and never having anything finished.

I also keep imagining trying to explain this work process to a group of grade school students. I'm hoping the process will have evolved into something else before I have to do that.

Off to bed.

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I am constantly struggling with my craving for novelty, which the Internet helps me feed. Nonetheless, I do recognize that the problem is me, so I enjoyed Stop Blaming the Internet.

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Speaking of not doing everything I need to do, as I was, this at Mitali's Fire Escape nudged me into going over to Amazon to update my blog there. Whadayaknow? I hadn't updated in two and a half months or thereabouts.

I know I could link this blog to Amazon, but I want to keep Original Content totally independent. Also, I have this vague plan to make the Amazon blog about more nonprofessional interests.

I considered doing Goodreads or Indiebound, as Mitali suggested in her blog post, but who am I trying to kid? I'll never keep those things up to date.

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My work life involves one main writing project, historical research for another, this blog, occasional posts for an Amazon blog, occasional business e-mail, short story and essay submissions, a writing meditation thing, and professional reading. Yet I can only work three days a week. Needless to say, many things are not getting done. In fact, I have two white boards in my office, one for a business To Do list and one for a personal To Do list. I haven't had time to update either one of them since February 21.

This afternoon I had a couple of hours I was going to use for cleaning my desk and doing three submissions. I have this long-term fantasy that if I were just tidier and more organized, I would be able to do anything. I have another long-term fantasy about getting manuscripts out of my office.

What to do? What to do?

I moved a stack of books and found a file I was looking for. I made one submission.

Hurray!

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Yesterday, I managed to foist off Easter dinner on another family member. Easter dinner is traditionally my meal. Why was I so happy, even eager, to see the thing go off to Massachusetts?

Because I don't want to take time off from work to get ready for it!!!

The shopping, the cooking, the cleaning...I most definitely would have had to take Good Friday off to get it all done. It can take me two or three days to get ready for a holiday gathering, easily.

I kind of hate myself, but not all that much.

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I've noticed that I haven't been receiving e-mails from any of my five listservs for a couple of weeks. That was okay. I didn't have time to deal with it recently, anyway. But this week, I began to get suspicious. And I've been getting odd e-mails from my Internet access provider regarding some kind of full mailbox. Couldn't imagine what those folks were talking about.

Then today I said to my computer guy, "Guy, do you suppose there's some connection between the e-mails I've been receiving from the Internet folks and the e-mails I haven't been receiving from all my listservs? Because I gotta wonder."

He looked into it, waved his hands over the computer keyboard, said a few incantations, and the next thing I knew, I had over 700 new e-mails downloading.

So now I'm more than 700 messages behind with the listservs and 363 posts behind with the blog reader.

Yeah, I'm gonna go sign up for Twitter! And Facebook, too!

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So, here I am, back from my retreat. No, we did not stay in the cabin to the left. We hiked there on snowshoes yesterday. That's my back you see in the interior shot. I'm stripped down to my thermal undershirt, which, I believe, had a paint stain on one of the cuffs. Can't imagine how that happened. As my companion said, we didn't look as if we'd come up from the resort; we looked as if we'd come down from the mountain.

While retreating, I refused to check my e-mail. It was a lot easier than I would have thought, in part because Internet access was so slow at our timeshare unit last week that there wasn't a lot of temptation to go on-line. This morning I decided that I could live like that. Not without e-mail, but without checking it so often. Certainly without checking it first thing in the morning.

I check my e-mail first thing in the morning, and if I find things from family members, I feel compelled to blow off thirty or forty minutes of valuable workout/workbook/worktime responding. Or sometimes I get inquiries from people regarding appearances. I blow off valuable workout/workbook/worktime responding and almost always never hear from the inquirer again. Sometimes I'll see listserv e-mails I want to respond to. And there goes some more workout/workbook/worktime.

Wouldn't life be better, I thought as I lay on my wonderful bed at my mountain guesthouse, if I waited until mid-day to check my e-mail? Wouldn't my day be off to a much better start if I tended to my workouts and that so-called writing meditation I've been doing in my workbook and then got some real work behind me before I faced whatever turns up in the e-mail? Wouldn't I accomplish so much more? Wouldn't I at least feel better?

Then, while I was still lying there in bed, I came up with this idea regarding my listservs. Instead of wallowing around in all of them every day, why don't I assign each one one day of the week? I only check child_lit on its assigned day. I only check the kidlitosphere on its assigned day? I could go on and on re. all my listservs, but I'm sure you get my point.

With all the time I'll be saving with the e-mail plan, listserv assignments, and avoiding tabloid news stories, I should be able to write a new book every six months.

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Today I was out hiking, when, after several hours, I had an idea for revising an essay I finished last Monday. The idea involved reworking the material for use as a presentation for teenagers or as an article for an educational publication for high school teachers.

Or maybe both!

I got the idea for the essay I was considering revising on September 28th, when I spent a big part of the day (a Sunday) reading. I finished a book called Chi Walking. I kid you not, it helped me formalize some thoughts about kids trying to publish their writing, which related back to the day last spring when a teacher at an elementary school asked if I had any advice for kids wanting to do just that. I had to tell her I didn't believe kids should be publishing their work.

Awkward moment.

One of the ways I justify all the time I spend doing non-work related stuff is that I try to convince myself that I could very well come up with some fine ideas by doing so. And on September 28th, and then again this afternoon, I think I did.

So wouldn't I be a fool to stay home and work on Wednesday when I could be hiking and, perhaps, coming up with a seriously important writing idea?

Of course, ideas are all well and good. You have to do something with them, though. So unfair.

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Justine Larbalestier has a post up on writing and structure in which she refers to herself as an idiot savant novelist. I definitely feel that way about my writing past. I get the feeling, though, that she doesn't feel as badly about being an idiot savant novelist as I do. I want to be better than I am, while she seems to be all whatever. In fact, at one point in her post she actually says, "Whatever."

Perhaps this is the difference between being from Oz and being from northern New England. There's a lot of sun down under, is there not? While when I was in high school I heard that there was a lot of suicide in Vermont because of the long winters. You hear that kind of thing about where you live while you're in your formative years, and it can't help but have an impact on you.

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I think we're all clear on my terrible work habits. Chris Barton at Bartography is working on changing his. Not that I mean Chris has terrible work habits. But he is trying to change his work habits, terrible or not.

For instance, he's started getting up early, bless him. I have rolled out of bed between five and six on occasion, but my gut feeling is that doing it every day can't possibly be good for me.

Chris is also cutting back on Internet time. He seems to be sticking to that plan, too, because recently he's only been posting at his blog on Sundays. That seems as if it could be way too radical a shock to my system. However, I might try to take an Internet break once a week as he's been doing.

This reminds me of a time when I was thinking of taking up fasting. Sure, I thought. I could fast. Yeah. On Sundays. I could fast once a week on Sundays...On Sunday afternoons...Absolutely...On Sunday afternoons from, say, 12, 12:30...Maybe 1 o'clock...Yeah...I could fast on Sundays from 1 o'clock until...hmmm...how about 5:30?...5:00?

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The desk, itself, doesn't seem as if it will be that bad to clean this time round, though this is my third partial day working on it, which certainly makes it sound like quite a job, doesn't it? I'm not including the stuff on the floor or the various in-baskets and vertical files in my assessment.

Intriguing things I've found so far:

The most recent issue of The Horn Book. It looks totally alien to me. Don't think I've looked at it, can't even remember it coming into the house.

A back issue of The Horn Book. Looks familiar.

A reprint of Techniques for Understanding Literature: A Handbook for Writers by Professor John Reynolds, which I bought while I was all excited about visiting The UConn Co-op in January. I thought I'd read it during that fantasy study month I imagine I'm going to have sometime in my lifetime. Totally forgotten about this thing. It was still in the bag. On the desk. Under some other stuff.

The U.F.O. Hunter's Handbook . I bought this on-line a while back because in a section called 10 Essential UFO Books, the authors include My Life Among the Aliens. I think that was a very legitimate reason for buying the book, but what am I supposed to do with it now? I could put it up in the attic with whatever Aliens materials I have stored up there for my offspring to dispose of after they dispose of me, but that would mean going up to the attic and finding the correct box. And who has time for that?

Though if I did go up in the attic and find the correct box, I could also put the Teaching Genre: Science Fiction unit up there. I bought it several years ago because it, too, mentions My Life Among the Aliens. It's been on the floor near the office door for a couple of years, so it would be handy just in case I left the office and was going directly to the attic.

The American Boy Visits the Orient by Sydney Greenbie, published in 1946. This is on loan from the co-worker of a family member. I was going to read it as research for an old-time boys' adventure story. I've had it since last summer. I've decided to just return it.

Two books on off-color French phrases. There's a perfectly logical reason for me owning them, but it's boring.

Some more receipts to apply to last year's taxes.

Sometimes when I clean things I find money--rolled up dollar bills, even a five or, very rarely, something bigger. But that's usually in pockets of last season's clothes or in beach bags or backpacks or things like that. I shouldn't get my hopes up about finding much cash on this desk.

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This is so like me. In so many ways.

In 2006 I was reading Louise Doughty's Telegraph column, A Novel in a Year. Each week she was writing a column on some aspect of writing a book. I was using various suggestions to help generate material for The Durand Cousins. But, as so often happens to me, I fell behind in my reading. At the beginning of 2007, I could no longer find the columns at The Telegraph site. I assumed that was because Doughty was turning the columns into a book.

Then this afternoon I found the columns back at The Telegraph site. How marvelous, right? Well, yeah, except now I'd like to find time to finish reading them.

Now I can't find her columns for A Writer's Year, which she wrote in 2007. I hadn't finished reading those, either.

Falling behind, losing things, finding them much later, losing something else... Really, I think I deserve some kind of award for ever getting anything done.

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When people consult a dictionary, they expect to find entries defining individual words, compounds made up of two or more words, and common multi-word phrases. But what about when a frequently occurring phrase or compound is used as a blueprint for generating new concoctions, with some parts kept constant and other parts swapped out? Last week I discussed some simple two-word “templates” that allow for creative choices in filling one slot, such as ___ chic, inner ___, and ___ rage. In such cases, lexicographers can make a note of a particularly productive usage in the entry for the word that is kept constant (like chic, inner, or rage). Things get a little more complicated when we consider longer phrases that follow a similar pattern of substitution. Traditional dictionary entries aren’t always well-equipped to describe this type of “phrase-hacking.” But one thing becomes quite obvious when looking at a large corpus of online texts (whether it’s the Oxford English Corpus or the rough-and-ready corpus of webpages indexed by Google or another search engine): writers are fiddling with phrasal templates all the time, revivifying expressions that may have become too formulaic or hackneyed. Of course, there’s always a lurking danger that the constant modification of a cliché may itself ultimately become a cliché!
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Erin McKean, who is OUP’s chief consulting editor for American dictionaries when she’s not busy being “America’s lexicographical sweetheart,” filled in this past Sunday for a vacationing William Safire, devoting the New York Times Magazine’s “On Language” column to a subject that should be familiar to readers of this column: the Oxford English Corpus and the fascinating things that it tells us about our changing language. (more…)

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Karen Coombs talks about a reaction she had a while back to a comment on her blog where she was considering her commitment to the Texas Library Association. I think for many busy librarians the question of how much to participate in how many professional associations is one that we have to continually revisit. There is also the related question of how long you need to try at something before you decide it’s not working and moving on to trying something else.

After I cycled off ALA Council, I decided that I wanted to step back some and spend sometime reacquainting with my local library association in Vermont, so I didn’t renew my ALA membership. I joined VLA at the conference — where I gave two talks, or I gave half of two talks — which meant that my annual fee will only pay for seven months of membership (all memberships expire on 31dec. That said, membership is cheap). I didn’t feel obligated to join since I’m not technically a librarian for my job but I felt it would be a good idea. Before I officially joined, I was still receiving the newsletter and I was on the mailing list, so I’m not sure what joining technically gets me except the ability to be elected to an office which is not something I’m seriously considering at this point. I joined a committee — the advocacy committee — but had a difficult time making the meetings that were scheduled a few weeks in advance all over the state. Most meetings at VLA seem to happen in person. My speciality is, as you know, online communications and tools so a lot of what I had to offer the committee — custom RSS feeds and news filters, custom email addresses, web site updates, blog creation, “email your legislature”, setting up little websites — were all sort of outside the range of what we were considering and no one on the committee had access to the VLA website to make changes to it. I did manage to get the Library Value Calculator up on the website, but it involved a few days of work just getting that to happen and when it was announced on the list, my name wasn’t mentioned. This is a world I am getting used to.

Meredith has written a little bit about our experiences working with VLA. Unlike in a giant organization like TLA, I know most of the members of VLA either personally or by sight. It’s a tiny state. Membership is up from the high 200’s to about 400 now which is pretty exciting. I had a great time at the conference and I introduced myself personally to the incoming president who I heard had some bold new ideas for getting the word out about the importance of libraries (making the newsletter not a perk for members only, ditching the print newsletter in favor of a digital one, using email and blogs for communicating, more online communication and tools etc). What I told her, which is true, was that I’m not blessed in the tact department but if there is a computer or technological problem that needs fixing, I’m one of the more capable library people in the state to do it. The VLA conference allowed me to meet a few more people in the state who are also capable and techie and I have a slow but inexorable plan to Make Things Work Well. I’ll check back in next year and let you know how it’s gone.

ala, associations, chic, karencoombs, vla

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