Graceless Under Pressure

Oy, what a week. Deadline upon deadline. Challenge after challenge. Confrontation and exhortations.

And through it all, did I maintain my composure? Keep my cool? Roll with it, baby?

Um, no.

I ranted. I raved. I bitched and moaned. Enough with keeping it all in. I let it all out. (Well, not all. But to my shocked and surprised cohorts, it must have sure seemed that way.)

Frankly, I am sick and tired of bottling everything up...

Of taking one for the team...

Of being a trooper, a good egg, a team player.

It's not good for my health, my heart, my creativity, my mind.

But I'm looking at the crazy-windy weather we're experiecing today as blowing away all that negative crud, breezing in new energy, wild ideas and upbeat moods.

Convergence

John Hodgman. Moleskine. Writing. Procrastination. The New Yorker.

All right here.

Words I Like

1. Kodachrome
2. Estuary
3. Vermillion
4. Sanctuary
5. Fortitude
6. Exacerbate
7. Elan
8. Silverado
9. Sublime
10. Surprise

Progress: Incremental

I guess it doesn't count for my own list if it's Mr. Spandrel who successfully grows the tomatoes.

With no vacations on the horizon, and a lack of area volcanoes, I'm not sure how feasible #54 is right now. (And heck, even #58, 69 and 70 are looking like 2009 at the earliest.)

On the plus side, specifically #37, I have been making more sandwiches, including last week's killer grilled cheese with asiago, havarti, tomato, basil, a drizzle of honey, all fried up to golden perfection.*

As for #46, I'm reasonably certain we've added 7 more recipes to our collection, mostly focusing on asparagus, zucchini and spinach.

With my new job, #39 is definitely advancing. I'm all about using my strengths, these days. Although I should also add weight training to the list, because my physical strength seems to be sapped (or maybe that's from the heat?).

And yes, I did do #74, although sadly, I don't have a photo of said gift. So you'll just have to take my word for it.

*Disclosure: I heard of this combo on Oprah, as she talked about her friend Gayle's obsession with sandwiches.

You Never Know, Until You Ask

Back when I was in college, I had aspirations of working in the magazine industry.

How that was going to happen - I was a Philadelphia-area kid, with no aspirations of moving to New York - was anybody's guess.

But as a journalism major, one of our classes focused on production.

Our big assignment that semester was to produce a proposal for a new magazine. I modeled mine as a cross between People magazine and what was then Life.

My magazine, named Faces for the close-up photographs that would compose each issue, was to be an in-depth look at celebrities, popular culture influencers and other luminaries. It would feature artsy, black-and-white photographs of each article's subject. There were departments involved in each issue - involving what, I can't recall.

It was a flawed proposal, but still, it was mine. And I believed in it at the time.

As part of our research, the professor encouraged us to read about the history of various magazines' development, and if we could, interview a professional to get their take.

This was back in the 80s, before the Internet. So there was lots of reading and scrutinizing of microfiche in dark, musty corners of libraries.

Being a writer, I felt I could gain a foothold on the content aspects of my vision for my magazine. But because the visual aspect was something I was less adept at, I decided to interview a few people who knew what they were talking about.

But how?

At the time, I was an avid reader of Glamour and Rolling Stone magazines. The two could not be more dissimilar in terms of their design, or focus. But they were among the publications that inspired me to become a writer in the first place.

So, on a whim, I looked through the mastheads. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I called the main office number at Glamour, and asked to speak with a junior designer. I did the same thing at Rolling Stone.

Miraculously, both got back to me.

Even more surprisingly, each referred me to their bosses. To them, I explained about my project, the research I was doing, and my intention to speak with a professional who could provide some insights.

And art directors at both publications agreed to meet with me - simply because I'd asked!

It was a week before spring break, and I managed to find one day where I could coordinate both appointments.

Rolling Stone was in the morning, and I remember speaking with a woman with short, dark hair and straight-across bangs, who gave me all kinds of insights into photography and art direction and taking risks and establishing a visual voice.

During the Glamour meeting in the afternoon, I met with the publication's art director, who told me how photo shoots are concepted, styled, and shot. By way of example, he talked about an article about the perfect hamburger, and how the bun should be something more grand than the standard puff of white flour you get at the supermarket... that it should be glossy and seeded and the lettuce a more exotic variety than the usual pale, whitish iceberg because bright-green leaves would photograph better.

A few months later, I opened the magazine to see an article featuring just such a photograph, and I relished the behind-the-scenes information.

Each art director was focused on how the visual manifestation of their magazines' brands came through in every image that appeared in the magazine.

The photographs that appeared in Glamour would never look like Vogue's, the art director said. Each had a visual language they used to bring the editor's vision to life each month in a way that reinforced their brand.

So often, I worry about what people will say if I ask for something, but I try often to snap out of that way of thinking. What's the worst that can happen? They say no, and that's it.

I've had amazing things happen, simply because I've asked. When I look back, I realize that it's incredible what I've learned. What I've experienced. Conversations whose meaning and insight have stayed with me for half a lifetime.

If there's one thing I can say on this Independence Day, it's this: Go for it! Ask for what you want. Great things are bound to happen for you when you do.

Not What I Ordered

It escapes me how prosciutto can be so often misspelled, in Italian restaurants, no less.

If I had a dollar for every typo I've found in a restaurant menu - well, I could hire a personal chef.

While it may not be your strength, communicating your offerings with the respect your customers deserve by composing a menu that is correct is simply part of the job as a chef or restaurateur.

Sometimes, when perusing a particularly badly edited menu, I find myself more distracted by the errors than the foams and reductions that should be catching my eye, instead.

It's heartening to know that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Vindicated!

Finally, someone has engaged in serious study on the subject of multi-tasking and its ineffectiveness.

All week, I've seen articles by Maggie Jackson, referring to her book, Distracted.

The office of the millennium is rampant with distractions. From colleagues' discussions through cheesy burlap cubicle walls that offer no sound buffer whatsoever, to loud arguments in the hallways, to impromptu brainstorming sessions between collaborating colleagues.

I'm not saying that offices should be silent. That people should squirrel themselves away in their cubicles, never to be heard from until lunchtime. And I'm really not in support of more interruption-oriented tools that purport to do the opposite. (A "whisper" is just as annoying as an IM, in my opinion.)

What I take issue with is how it's been said that all of this open-space office design is not just about cramming more people into less space than a traditional office with a door would allow (and to that, I say: ha!).

But the spin is that cubicles and open-space office interiors exist to foster collaboration.

Now, I'm all about collaboration. I applaud it.

However, I don't think collaboration can be fostered by the space.

It's about the people and their ideas, not the walls or lack thereof.

Collaboration is simply bound to happen spontaneously, when two people are chatting about a problem. And sometimes trying something out - evaluating it on screen, and fixing it on the fly, and whooping in celebratory appreciation of an intractable problem solved. That's how innovation happens.

I get that.

But I don't get that people disrespect the fact that you're obviously working, typing away, trying to get something done, and just walk right into a cubicle and interrupt without asking permission.

It's simple common courtesy. Office Etiquette 101.

Studies have shown that interruptions cause workers to take 30 more minutes to get back to the task at hand. I get interrupted on average at least 20 times a day - so what does that say about my schedule?

No wonder it seems like our to-do lists are only growing, never getting shorter...

There simply aren't enough hours in the day.

Creative Accounting

While I was growing up, stressing over one of life's little problems, my Mom was always there with a hug as I cried on her shoulder.

As a child, I think I was a mystery to her - and heck, I bet I'm just as enigmatic as an adult. But she always listens to me, if somewhat incredulously, over the things I worry about, live through, deal with.

So many times, after hearing me spill my guts, and offering advice, she'll ask incredulously, "Where did you come from?"

I mean, she knew the mechanics, of course. She was simply marveling at how different I was from her and my father.

Sure, I have her hands. And picked up many of her mannerisms along the way.

Among the things I'm forever grateful for is this: It's my Mom who taught me to read and write when I was two, setting the stage for my career.

A fellow lefty, she showed me the right way to hold my pencil so I was never vexed by the the left-side spirals in a notebook.

Over the years, I know I must have tested every last nerve in her body as she tried in vain to get me to mimic her Palmer-perfect penmanship earned refined during her years of Catholic school education. When done quickly, letting words pour out onto the page, a sheet full of my own writing resembles a ransom note more than lines written by the same person.

Little did she know, she'd created a monster.

As a toddler, I'd come downstairs - every morning for a month - toting a pretend schoolbag, declaring I was on my way to school.

So she threw up her hands and found me a preschool. Which was one of the most creative places I'd ever had the pleasure to spend time in my entire life.

That's another theme with my Mom, too - tapping into creativity. She used to sew a lot, obsessed with tactile textiles and beautiful patterns. These days, she quilts, making color schemes and poring over detailed designs at shows.

I get my obsession over materials from her. With her, it's fabrics for quilting. With me, it's beads and pieces of silver that catch the light.

So thank you, Mom, for all the creative support to do my own thing. Even when it seems unthinkable.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

(And if you're a Mom, Happy Mother's Day to you, too!)

Give the Gift of Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri captured my heart this summer with her writing.

During sweltering commutes into the city, while waiting for the train in the hot sun, I clung to every word of The Namesake (still haven't seen the movie) followed closely by Interpreter of Maladies.

She's a writer whose every word contributes to the formation of a character, the person's life, and their feelings.

For me, on my train rides, she created a window into their worlds that I could stare through for hours. A window that I reluctantly shut each time my stop was announced.

If you're looking for a last-minute gift, pick up one of her books and take it home for someone. You just might find that you'll keep it as a gift to yourself.

This is the Reason Writers Write, and Don't Produce

Alec Baldwin hits the nail on the head when he says the Writers' Guild strikers are terrible negotiators.

I knew there was a reason I liked Alec Baldwin, aside from his ability to make entertainment out of chewing up the scenery and spitting it out into a teensy pile of oaky splinters on 30 Rock.

Actually, what makes 30 Rock great, nay, what inspires Baldwin's prowess in mimicking probably every achingly clueless network head he's ever run across, is, at heart, the writing.

It's the writing that makes great shows. Period.

And writers need to stop thinking about themselves as a commodity, or risk being nickel-and-dimed to death, and start conducting business as purveyors of content whose work has a value far greater than any hourly rate or 4-cents-per-DVD charge.

But as Alec Baldwin points out, writers are terrible negotiators; that's how they get into the writing business.

As kids, they try selling lemonade, but realize they liked penning the sign more than setting prices and selling product.

They put off selling hoagies for their high school marching band trip long enough that the only way to get the trip to Orlando paid for is to pen a very serious note that their parents can post in their coffee room, imploring colleagues to buy a soggy fundraiser sandwich.

Maybe they even failed macroeconomics in college.

They simply don't have the negotiating gene. Or if they do, it's greatly surpassed by their writing and creativity genes.

(The proportions are roughly equivalent to those that Seinfeld, showing George the hefty head of iceberg that represents the amount of the Costanza brain devoted to thinking about sex, compares with the little lettuce scrap that accounts for all other thought activity. It's like that.)

Don't fool yourselves, Network muckity-mucks: the content available for free over the Internet in the form of blogs and YouTube videos doesn't hold a candle to a well-crafted comedy show.

That takes skill in the form of a roomful of talented writers, masterfully led toward a goal by a head writer, who gently coaxes or cajoles or teases or mocks or simply supports their efforts at spinning 22 minutes of golden delight out of straw.

My suggestion is for Networks to give over a substantial portion of revenue to the writers. Yes, revenue. Heck, open your wallets and give the writers whatever they want.

Because no matter how ridiculous you think the writers' demands are, it will still be next to nothing to you. You'll still make your kajillions.

Why give them what they want? Simple.

They will simply never be tough enough negotiators to gouge you, Networks. They're writers. And you need them more desperately than you'll ever know.

Because without the writing, you simply don't have television.

Learn More Words, Do More Good

This is for anyone who wants to gauge and improve their vocabulary, and do some good in the world at the same time.

Check out Free Rice and test the quality of your palaver. It's the first addictive humanitarian effort I've ever run across.

Because the more time you spend matching words with definitions, the more advertisers' funds go to donating rice to the needy, according to the site.

Give it a try!

A Novel Idea

In my line of work, I spend a great deal of time writing. In some cases, it's about a topic that interests me, but often it's about something I have to write about. An assignment.

So when an activity appears, in the form of NaNoWriMo, that literally gives me permission to take up part of my 24-hour day fleshing out that novel idea you've been kicking around for oh, 10 years, there's a thrill ("Wow, I can really do this!").

At least, until the day of reckoning. And that day was today, November 1.

I've had a number of ideas for a novel over the years. None of which seem particularly difficult to bring to life. Yet when I sat down to write, stage fright set in.

For those not acquainted with NaNoWriMo, if you opt in for the encouraging emails designed to egg you on throughout the novel-writing process, you begin receiving them today, the start of the project.

The first message was from Tom Robbins, one of those authors who, like Kurt Vonnegut, transported me as a bored high schooler to communities overflowing with colorful characters, some of whose idiosyncracies I recognized in relatives, coworkers, or teachers and even friends. The back stories of these characters made me appreciate the idiosyncracies in my real-world acquaintances all the more.

Among the hints Mr. Robbins provided in his message to his fellow writers was this:

"You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what's going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it."

That last sentence did it. It gave me the shot of courage I needed to just dive in and write the 1,750 words I wrote today.

Double Whammy!

Putting my money where my mouth is, like many other writers this month I will be participating in both NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo.

For those of you who don't like clicking links, that means that for the month of November, I am committed to making daily progress on a novel and a new blog post every day. Weekends included.

There, I've said it. Done. And done.

So now that I'm committed... here we go.

In lieu of posting my NaNoWriMo installments, I'll find some way to provide a daily progress report with a twist.

And of course in taking part in NaBloPoMo, you'll see at least one new post every day. Trust me, this won't just be a calendar exercise.

October 2007 marked the birth of my blog, so I consider November its gawky adolescence, marked by wacky ideas, experimentation, and growth spurts. (Minus the braces and crushing insecurity.)

For all of you who are participating in either event, I wish you 30 days of inspiration!

My Cures for Writer's Block

For many writers, despite the best of intentions, sometimes the words fail to flow.

You know what it's like. After 30 minutes of what you think has been solid work, you realize that every other sentence includes the word "great" or "unique" or (for marketing types) "paradigm." Ugh. All of those weak, say-nothing adjectives and nouns just rolling around like tumbleweeds with no destination.

Maybe your novel isn't going anywhere (reminder: NaNoWriMo is just around the corner!). Or you're writing an important speech for work - the one that will make or break your chances at a promotion. Or there's a proposal due in 24 hours and it looks like the only way you'll make it is to spend the next 12 hours in a hyper-caffeinated buzzland.

Whatever your situation, sometimes it helps to gain a little perspective. So here are 10 of my jump-starts for breaking through the brain lock.

1. Free-write a page. The only rule is there are no rules. Write about anything that is taking up space in your mind – your ideas, scraps of outlines, your worries, your fears. Whatever. Even the absence of thought can be described. Get in the zone and just fill that page. Go ahead, you can do it. And then see what happens next.

2. Change your venue. Staring at the same four walls can render your mind positively numb. If you're on a real tight deadline, just change your perspective - physically. Been working for hours in your office? Move your stuff to the dining room. Take over that little corner of the hallway. Or just swivel your chair around and reposition yourself so you're staring at something different.

3. Write something else. Whatever you're working on right now, stop it. Write a letter to a friend. Send an email to your cousin in Iraq. Make a list of home improvements to make this year. Think of a list of 30 meals you can make for dinner over the next month.

4. Read good writing. During the (very) brief time I worked in PR, my boss noted that reading good writers was the best thing one could do to improve one's writing. Whether it's a favorite old master, an article in Fortune or BusinessWeek, or a novella that you treasure, savor the turns of phrase that speak to you and try to dissect what it is that appeals.

5. Go outside. Have you been lulled into a state of suspended animation? You know, that feeling when you've spent 2 hours in front of your computer watching YouTube and reading the news, barely moving when you should be writing? So that your brittle body feels about as flexible as Rodin's The Thinker? Go outside, you giant lump of marble! (OK, technically, cast bronze - but still, not very flexible!) Be one with nature. Feel the sun shine on your face. Look up in the sky. If there are clouds, identify the shapes (Is that Nietsche?). Take in a few deep breaths of fresh air.

6. Get your blood pumping. Do some exercise. Take a 30-minute walk. Do 25 jumping jacks. Lift some weights. The activity will deliver much-needed oxygen to your thought-maker, yielding more creative insights than you ever thought possible. Try it and see. And then replenish with a healthy snack.

7. De-clutter your desk. Has your home office has turned into your home’s Procrastination Zone? You know what I mean... Office supplies you play with. That magazine you just bought. The temptation that is Halo 3. Shoes that you need re-soled? (I guess that's just me.) Realize that clearing your desk is symbolic of clearing your cluttered mind. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But what’s the harm in cleaning your desk?

8. Put someone else's shoes on. Knowing your audience is the most important step when you’re writing. Think about what it's like to be the person who will be reading what you write. What motivates them? How old are they? What's their day like? What are they most likely to read every day? If you're a business writer, think about the business challenges your reader faces day in, day out.

9. Talk it out. Give your best friend a call and ask for 5 minutes of their time. But keep it positive. Instead of complaining about your project and your frustrations with writer’s block, instead try talking about the approach you want to take. Explain to your friend what the project’s all about. Needless to say, try one of your more positive friends (not a Debbie Downer type who will have you doubting your ability to ever pull out of a writerly funk).

10. Take a break. If exercising or snacking doesn't put you in a different frame of mind, shelve the project for a day or two. Or even a few hours. Turn your attentions to another project, ideally one that doesn't involve writing. I've seen that making headway in one area of my life can drastically change my attitude and provide a little inspiration along the way.

Keep in mind that the spark of an idea can come from a totally unrelated activity. What seems like unproductive procrastination can actually be invigorating and renewing, allowing you to tackle whatever word-oriented challenge you were wrestling with. And your writer's block will be a distant memory.

Good luck!

Unleash Your Novel!

Crack those knuckles, plug in that ergo keyboard, sharpen those pencils, click those G2s -- whatever your medium -- November is NaNoWriMo!

When all you need is a kick in the pants to get started, something like this, NaNoWriMo, with legions of followers all dedicated to attempting a similar goal, should be enough incentive.

Don't let that great plot idea get away from you (you know, the one you had during that last bad movie you watched?)... Write it down!

Who knows? You could be looking at a six-figure advance before you know it.

All Systems Go

While I admire this guy's Moleskine-planner hack, my own notebooks (pocket, squared) end up a jumble of scribbles, notes, journal entries, diagrams of earring designs, places to eat, books to read, observations, websites to look up, stuff to accomplish in the next 90 minutes -- a veritable idea heap.

Each time I've tried using my notebook as a planner this rigid and organized, it's degraded into a flurry of random phrases, strikethrough'd tasks, and scribbles through Thursday's header to give Wedneday more space for an out-of-control to-do list.

But I guess you have to work with the system that works for you -- even if it's something as drab yet effective as the hipster PDA. That's why some people's desks feature piles (um...), while others are pristine.

What's the system you use for capturing brilliant ideas or to-dos? Is your system working for you?