writing

The Fine Art of Putting It Off

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All writers procrastinate. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a big liar or writing to avoid some even more onerous chore. It’s OK, really. I had a teacher in grad school—it was this guy; you may have heard of him. Good teacher, good writer. Anyway, he suggested that for many of us procrastination is part of our method and we need to accept that and work with it instead of struggling to overcome it.

Sorry, were you looking for advice on how to break the habit? Yeah, no, not here. I understand there’s a group that meets in the Methodist church basement up on the hill every Thursday. You could try there. They won’t be able to help you, either, but they do serve donuts. For those of you who have embraced your inner slacker, I have a few suggestions to make living with the condition a bit less painful. Pulling all-nighters is OK in college, but past age 40 the aftermath is really unpleasant, especially if you have kids who still expect you to feed them and walk them to school.

    1. Make a list. Don’t bother dividing it up into days because the Monday stuff is just going to slide on into Tuesday, and then you have to rearrange everything.
    2. Put everything on the list, including items such as “eat lunch” and “walk the dog” that you have to do. Include a few things that you don’t strictly speaking have to do, but you know you’re going to do anyway, like “hit the nearest coffee shop for caffeine and sugar” and “watch CinemaSins on YouTube.” That way, you won’t feel demoralized at the end of the day when your list isn’t any shorter than it was at the beginning.
    3. Take the big ugly jobs, like “write first draft of novel” and break them into slightly more manageable tasks, like “create outline” or “revise Chapter 2.” Sometimes you have to break it down to “write one goddamn paragraph.”
    4. Know your limits. If you’ve been writing on deadline for awhile, you have a feel for how long any job is going to take, and you know precisely when you have to get started thinking about how long you can put this thing off. Personally, I prefer tight deadlines these days because it saves me some trouble. Having too much time between beginning a project and hitting the Send button on the final revision is just inviting disaster. Anything can happen. It’s so tempting to push yourself, to say, “I did one just like this in four weeks; I can get started in D minus three and a half this time.” I won’t say don’t do it because we’re all functioning procrastinators here, but slack in small increments, my friends.
    5. Get a support network. No, not those donut-eating losers in the church basement; find some real friends, either online or flesh and blood, who maybe also work from home editing books or writing books or building custom birdcages out of recycled scrap metal. That way, they will sympathize when you email them to suggest a recon mission to the beach or the last remaining used bookstore in town but will be too busy with their own deadlines to actually take you up on it.
    6. Get curious. I have a report on impingement mortality and entrainment for seawater intakes to edit. What is that exactly? What does “fecundity hindcast” mean? No idea, but I sort of want to find out. That’s how I got into this writing and editing gig, to learn new things, and I suspect that’s why you’re here, too.
    7. So get back to work. You took a break. Breaks are good. Thanks for reading! But I got a deadline to catch.

feminism writing

Yes, It Does Matter—Choose Your Words Wisely

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Here’s a term I hate right now: “mommy.” As in mommy cards, mommy porn, mommy aerobics. Two people I’m very fond of call me mommy and I’m not offended, but everybody who uses it as a dismissive and therefore degrading shorthand for “woman of childbearing age”—yeah, I’m talking to you.

Let’s focus on mommy porn because it’s making a ton of noise and money. Porn has been around forever. From naughty postcards to VHS to streaming video, porn has been a driving force in entertainment technology. If you enjoy it and have a clear understanding of the difference between the fantasy you’re consuming and the reality of actual interpersonal relationships, great! Knock yourself out. Its value as art or cultural barometer is entirely subjective and ultimately irrelevant. What is relevant is that 1) recently a subgenre of erotic fiction has been selling ridiculous amounts of books, and 2) journalists and critics have coined a term to reduce the genre and its consumers, to make them safer, less important, and sort of cute in an embarrassing way, like baby drool. What’s wrong with erotica? Or, if you’re put off by the literary implications, just call it porn. Or even women’s porn. Personally, I like the term “smut.”

In earlier times, when society ladies went to visit one another and found their desired hostess not at home, they left a card with the butler so the lady in question would know who had stopped by. Calling cards were elegant and let every woman know exactly where in the social hierarchy she fit. Mommy cards are like business cards that only contain personal contact information. Women hand them out at parks and toddler enrichment classes to organize “playdates” (another term that bugs the crap out of me). Are there daddy cards? No, dads simply text or call one another so they have a name and number saved on their phone, and then they go home and watch daddy porn, also known as porn.

Are you seeing the pattern? The set {mommy X} includes stuff that regular people don’t care about or need, like calling cards to micromanage their kids’ social lives, five-passenger vehicles, wussy fitness classes, high-waisted jeans, or books about sex with vampires. The set {regular people} is equal to the sets {useful members of society} and {people who like good stuff} and excludes {mommies}. Labeling erotic books and movies targeted to women as mommy porn is insulting both to mothers and people who aren’t mothers but enjoy that particular form of entertainment. It’s also likely to confuse the heck out of a certain type of fetish enthusiast. And, no, this isn’t intended (entirely) as a feminist screed but an example of how a word, even a loving one, can become a blunt instrument when used thoughtlessly. Think about your words, and write with courage and precision. The attention-grabbing choice isn’t always the most effective one.

writing

Notes from the Field, May 2013 Edition

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My original plan was to collate all the common errors I see in my work and post them in categories, but my innate idleness makes that proposition unworkable. Instead, I’m going to put them up as I run across them, and you can use the cool tag function to find them if you’re interested.

Dash away! dash away! dash away all!

This — is an em dash. It got its name from being the width of an “m” back in the days when type characters were little bits of metal that someone actually set in a line. Its function is to separate—with emphasis—two or three elements of a sentence. In regular text there is no space before or after it. When I say emphasis, I mean a lot of it, more than simple commas, like this, or even parentheses (for stuff that could just as well be left out) can provide. In formal writing, a semi-colon, to denote a change in the flow of a sentence or join two sentences together, or a colon, to precede a list, is preferred.

An em dash can break a sentence in half or in thirds. If you are using two em dashes, the third part of the sentence takes up where the first part left off. If you feel you need more than two em dashes in a sentence, or even in the same paragraph, and your name is Emily Dickinson, please carry on and then get back to that house that seemed a swelling of the ground. Everyone else, knock it off.

This – is an en dash. It has the same etymological history as the em dash. In everyday writing, it combines two words into an adjective that modifies something else so you can avoid the dreaded multiply hyphenated adjectival phrase. Some examples are “Nobel prize–winning author” and “North Carolina–Virginia border.”

In technical writing, an en dash is used in a range in tabular form or between parentheses (15–30 ppm). In regular text, use “from 15 to 30 ppm” instead; do not combine these into “from 15–30 ppm” or “between 15–30 ppm”—use one or the other (see what I did there?).

Its other common use is to denote a relationship between two words, often one that could be written as “Thing 1 to Thing 2″ or “Thing 1 versus Thing 2.” Examples are “dose–response relationship,” “carbon–oxygen bond,” and “cost–benefit analysis.” An en dash is also used to combine two names when they modify a concept, such as “Fischer–Tropsch effect.”

Comments? Questions? Completely impossible combinations you double-dog-dare me (those are hyphens, by the way) to set right? Bring ’em on. I own the ACS Style Guide, and I know no fear.

science writing

Holmgren’s 12 Principles of Permaculture and How They Apply to Writing

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David Holmgren developed his 12 principles to assist architects, engineers, environmentalists, farmers, and anyone else involved in creating a sustainable habitat. In honor of Earth Day, I have found a further use for them.

1. Observe and interact.

To write truthfully, you need to pay attention to what’s around you. Even the wildest fantasies are inspired by what’s going on right here and now. Want to write realistic dialogue? Listen and talk to people.

2. Catch and store energy.

Take notes; you never know what will spark your next idea. Open yourself to inspiration in common and uncommon places.

3. Obtain a yield.

Keep your day job until your writing pays. To take this in another direction, does your creative work sustain you in other ways? If not, reconsider how you are spending your energy.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback.

“No one understands my brilliance!” Possibly. You can either be brilliant all on your own or listen to and consider suggestions, especially if more than one of your readers give you the same critique.

5. Use and value renewable resources and services.

Write what you know; work with what you have. You know which projects are likely to pay you back for the time invested.

6. Produce no waste.

Focus your ideas and nurture those that are likely to bear fruit. Obviously not everything you write is going to see publication or even a second draft, but if you suspect you might be frittering away your time, you’re probably right.

7. Design from patterns to details.

Develop your outline or plot first, using a pattern that makes sense to you and is at least somewhat familiar to your audience. Add the small touches, the trees in your forest, as you go.

8. Integrate rather than segregate.

You can apply this to your associates, your jobs, and your writing projects. It’s a far more efficient use of creative and emotional energy.

9. Use small and slow solutions.

Remember that story about the patient tortoise and the arrogant rabbit? Incremental change is easier to implement and monitor than a drastic, reactionary rewrite.

10. Use and value diversity.

Eggs, meet multiple baskets. Try a new method if you’re stuck. Seek out different critics.

11. Use edges and value the marginal.

My favorite one! Watch the interstices in any system or population; really interesting stuff happens there and often goes unnoticed. Got a rough edge in your story? Instead of trimming it off, examine it closely. It may be your new center.

12. Creatively use and respond to change.

Change happens, and fighting it is a waste of your time. Put it to work for you instead of complaining.

I hope these concepts are helpful in your writing endeavors and life in general. Celebrate Earth Day by reusing them and passing them on.

science writing

Applied Poetry, Part One

Updated on

Here’s what I love about technical and scientific work: it brings with it a fantastic and varied vocabulary and creates new associations for common words. What makes writing fresh and exciting? A new voice, a new way of describing something we all can recognize. A new phrase made out of old words. Every discipline has its own specific lexicon, exotic and utilitarian at the same time.

Below is a brief sample of borrowed terms that are entertaining me at the moment. Want to play along? Start reading things outside of your usual choices. Pick up a magazine about astrophysics, knitting, veterinary medicine. See what you can find and steal for use elsewhere. If you find something great, add it in the comments.

Axiom of countable choice: This is “an axiom of set theory [that] states that any countable collection of non-empty sets must have a choice function. Spelled out, this means that if A is a function with domain N (where N denotes the set of natural numbers) and A(n) is a non-empty set for every n ∈ N, then there exists a function f with domain N such that f(n) ∈ A(n) for every n ∈ N.” Straight out of Wikipedia because I can’t explain it any better than that without screwing it up. One thing I can tell you is that it is not inductive, because countable choice is not the same as finite choice.

Chain of custody: This is a form that accompanies field samples on the way to a laboratory for testing. It provides a record to guarantee that the samples were not compromised. I love the idea of a metaphorical chain, a written tale of an item changing hands from creation to disposal. Imagine if every person had one.

Doctrine of signatures: Not a science term anymore, but this was cutting-edge medicine in the Middle Ages. First discussed by Dioscurides in Greece and Galen in Rome and later written about extensively by Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme, the doctrine advances the idea that living things will heal or affect parts of the human body that they resemble. For example, liverwort looks like a liver and is used to clean the blood. Earwigs were believed to make a fine remedy for earache. The idea is that of some divine pharmacist signing everything with its proper function for us, the alleged stewards of creation.

Shadow price of carbon: This reminds me of the Shadow Parliament or Shadow Ministers in the Westminster system of government, which sounds terribly sinister but is really just a form of checks and balances. If it makes you think of the Shadow Proclamation, well, I’m right there with you. The actual definition of the SPC is the long-term environmental cost of using or avoiding the use of a unit of carbon in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly everything has a shadow price: say, for example. you slip out of your office to grab a cup of coffee and miss a call from a client, who then offers a $40,000 job to someone else. The shadow price of coffee just became $40,002.

 

selling your work writing

Under the Gun

Updated on

I am taking a break from some writing with a looming deadline (as one does) to write about writing. Fun fact about me: in addition to providing quality editing services to literary and technical professionals, I also pick up some money ghostwriting, mainly chirpy copy for commercial sites. Eh, it pays the bills. OK, so it doesn’t actually pay the bills; it often goes to Trader Joe’s or Etsy, but small treats are important.

I wish making a buck had been covered as part of my MFA curriculum. I’d love to go back to Columbia and teach a course called “What Writers Really Do for Money” (hint: it’s usually not creating brilliant, award-winning masterpieces). Making extra cash is good, but the greatest benefit of taking on this sort of gig is that it makes you a more efficient writer. You no longer have the luxury of crafting the perfect opening line because that sucker is due in two hours, and you haven’t done the research yet. Nothing clears away the blank screen paralysis like deadline-induced panic. Think you can’t run a four-minute mile? Try it with a lion chasing you.

Of course, beating deadlines with minutes to spare provides an endorphin rush, which leads to pushing the next deadline for the mere thrill of it, but that’s a topic for another day. My point, if I can find it, is that routine, mindless, due by close of business day writing not only keeps a person in Belgian chocolate and artisan-crafted lip balm, it limbers up the mind so you can press on through writer’s block, creative ennui, qi blockage, or whatever else is keeping you from starting, continuing, and finishing projects. Many writers and teachers will tell you “Write every day.” I say, make the exercise count for something and write stuff you get paid for every day.

“How on earth do I do that without contacts or experience?” you may be yelling at your screen right now. You get started here, or someplace like it. You’re welcome.

 

Uncategorized

Hello!

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Welcome to my shiny new website. It was created by the talented and extremely helpful people at Atmosphere Websites. They are writers, too, which just goes to show that nearly every writer also has a day job. Take a look around, and please post any comments or questions, or email me at the address listed under Contact.

I will be using this space to address thorny editorial issues both technical and literary, talk about what makes a good book, and occasionally pontificate, philosophize, or simply ramble on about writing in general. Got a grammar question? Unsure about the rules of using scientific notation in text? Ever wondered what “shadow price of carbon” means? I have answers.