A Year of Reading

I wanted to pause in my lessons from my time away from the blogosphere to present to you some lessons a woman learned in her year of reading. My favorite from the post, both as a writer and a reader:

I believe that in my year of reading my brain has become more robust and energized, and life all around me is better. The writer of a great book gives us, the readers, a new tank of oxygen, allowing us to dive again and again into life. Great good comes from reading great books.

May we all be able to write and read good books.

Confession is Good for the Soul

Okay, so on Saturday, after my big breakthrough on my papers, I seemed to be barred from proceeding much of anywhere on them by, well, disinclination. Or something. So until 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night, I was rather less productive than I wanted to be.

I hate that--sheesh, if I had known that ahead of time, I could have driven somewhere with a forest and taken a 6-hour hike or something. Which would have been supremely productive on such a beautiful day in the lower 80s F.

Oh well. I did pull myself together well enough at 11 p.m. to write up a close-to-1000 word outline of my ideas for paper #2 before writing up a review sheet for my students and crashing at 2 a.m.

What all this means is that I have a lot to do this week, and must not have more of such lapses. I hope and pray that I don't have them, and that everything gets done.

"We Regret" Blah Blah Blah

Well, I'm glad I didn't stay up until 1:30 to get my email. Furthermore, I'm glad I wasn't holding my breath about advancing--that would have hurt.

I won't say that I wouldn't have liked to move on, but that would just have been a gift. This way, nothing is "stolen" from me, I just get to go on working on the manuscript when I get a chance (I've had some delightful ideas about it lately, about adding another point of view) and send it elsewhere when I get the chance.

I'm getting better at this whole submission thing, I think. I think my PhD work has toughened me up to this a bit. When one gets used to giving papers and presentations and such for other people's evaluations on a regular basis, one doesn't take the fact that one of those submissions didn't advance in a competition as seriously. Especially when it was submitted on a whim at the last minute and one didn't have a chance to edit it, just flung it into the wind to see if it would come back.

Welcome back, little manuscriptlet. We'll try again when you seem ready to fly again.

10:32 a.m. update

Hm, I looked at my letter again, and compared it with the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award procedures. It looks like my little entry, while it didn't make it to the quarterfinals, survived the second round winnowing from 10,000 entries down to 2,000, as the email says there will be two reviews of my first three chapters waiting for me, which wouldn't have happened had it not made it through the first cut.

So, while it didn't make it into the top 500, it was judged to be in the top 20% of entries for the contest. Good job, little manuscriptlet!

On the Advantages of Having Other Things...

Okay, so if someone asked a crowd of people, "who would like some time to write full-time for at least awhile?" I may well have one of the first hands up. I look forward forward forward to my dissertation year--I mean, sure, I'll likely be teaching a class or two along with the dissertation, but I will be pretty close to writing full-time at that point, which I know from my MA thesis year will be exactly my cup of tea.

So don't think that I'm not looking forward to that, at all. Or super-excited about how crazy my life has been lately.

BUT when one has several pieces submitted to various venues (including the Amazon Novel Breakthrough Contest) and one's waiting to hear back, it doesn't hurt to have a few other things on your mind to keep you from neuroticizing about it. Perspective is a beautiful thing, and having a lot to do does keep those submissions in focus.

Now if I can only remember this feeling if and when I'm able to be writing full-time... Of course, if the dissertation year is anything like the MA thesis year, the forced look ahead at what's next in life will serve that counterpoint quite nicely. I actually found the writing of the thesis the delightful part of the year. Deciding what to do next with my life was the hard part. I hope, however, that if I'm ever a full-time writer for a longer stretch that I'm given the grace to keep things in perspective.

That's all for now. Back to that mile-high stack of things to do...

Ashes to...Top 3 Student?

So yesterday I got this delightful email declaring one of the conference papers I'm giving at the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in May has been awarded the status of one of the Top 3 Student Papers for the Mass Communication division. (One that I'd revised and sent off during that NaWriMo experiment last November.)

It was a surreal moment--here I was, sitting in a classroom a few minutes before the beginning of a grad class in which we were to discuss a cognitive view of how metaphors work. I was tired from the cold or allergies I've been fighting and mildly aware of the cross-shaped smudge of ashes on my forehead from the noon service I'd been to. I was feeling a bit ashes-like, particularly since I was trying to resist the delicious-looking chocolate cookies a lovely friend (who hadn't been aware I'd decided to give up chocolate for Lent) had just handed me.

And then I checked my email on my laptop, and there was this email telling me that I'd won this award, and I won't lie to you: I felt a bit less ashes-like for the moment. After all, beyond the fact that this would be seen to be a bit of a big deal in my discipline, it was encouraging that I was on the right track with my dissertation, since this was the first paper I'd sent anywhere outlining some preliminary thoughts in that direction.

So I was happy. And don't get me wrong--I still am. But on reflection I realize (the cold/allergies have been helping with this) that I am no less ashes than I was before. Sure, it's a cool thing and all, and I'm pleased that people like the paper, but I'm considering the award in the nature of a really cool gift rather than as something I somehow earned. (As Eliot says in Four Quartets, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.")

Which in turn creates the delightfully convoluted metaphor of me being a bundle of really excited ashes sitting under the Christmas tree (in February, no less) unwrapping this gift of this certificate I'll be handed in a few months.

It may be convoluted, but it feels just right.

Day 3: Just Imagine Little Schem-y Tent-y Fingers...

Okay, so I have to admit it feels a bit like cheating, this being able to ride the wave of the NaNoWriMo energy AND also have deadlines to add fuel to the fire. But the thing is, I think I needed both to finish the Herculean task of the weekend. And the thing is, the sort of speed-writing they do at NaNoWriMo is the sort I'm going to have to do academically next fall during my preliminary exams, so it's a really good thing for me that I'm combining the two right now in my NaWriMo experiment.

At any rate, my weekend was rather sleep-shorted and my Sunday wasn't QUITE as restful as my Sundays usually are, but I did get at least a bit of rest on Sunday, and the ICA conference paper submission deadlines somehow got met--the first abstract sent out on Saturday, which was the deadline for that one, and then the other two papers tonight by 11 p.m. Eastern time (the last one literally slipped in under the wire with seconds to spare).

It's good for me, this re-development of a willingness to do the best I can in the space I have to allot to a project before its deadline, then to fling it into (virtual) space to see what the response is. I was thinking about this the other day, that I used to do this all the time with writing in the business world and was mostly fine with the process, though I wished I had more time to polish.

Although it's good to have more time to polish things and take more time for revision, there's also a merit in the kinds of speed-writing and speed-submitting exercises such an environment provides you with, and so I'm thankful that my academic life is teaching me to take on that challenge, and that my NaWriMo challenge is helping me to also mix in other more creative genres into that goal. Hopefully, once I've gotten in the habit of speed-writing and speedishly-revising and speedishly-submitting in a variety of genres, I'll learn to be more skillful at varying my speeds in a variety of forms whenever needed.

Oh, and what I'm REALLY hoping is that my NaWriMo exercise is reasonable enough that, unlike so many people's experiences of NaNoWriMo, it's sustainable--if this works as well as I hope it does, I'm hoping to make every month a NaWriMo month.

Anyway, I do have this week's catapult magazine article yet to revise one more time and send out for good measure before I sleep, so I'd better get back to it.

Before I go, though, here are the numbers for future reference, after what's been officially day 3 of NaWriMo:

NaWriMo new word count: 4759 (as of 11:00 p.m. EST Nov. 3)

NaWriMo page revision count: 49 (equivalent of 4900 new wds w/in Deborah's scoring system)

NaWriMo submission count: 3 (1 conference paper abstract, 2 conference papers)

Once this catapult article gets out, those counts will go up even a bit more...ah, this NaWriMo thing is going beautifully so far. I love it when a plan comes together.

The Power of Syntax...

As a girl who spent a good chunk of my summer transcribing, I noticed something reading a CNN blog article just now.

See, ever since I had the experience of transcribing speech just as it's been said, I've realized how much we, on a daily basis, smooth out what others say in our heads. If you've been transcribing for awhile, you begin to notice that the inevitable fillers in newscaster's talk gets left out of the closed-captioning, for instance.

However, in the world of public speaking, there are expectations for a more polished syntax (sans fillers). And with our current president, people started noticing exact syntax. And I find it fascinating that this CNN blog entry, in reporting Governor Palin's exact words and word order, gives us transcript form rather than reporting the gist of what was said rather than smoothing it out, as reporters have so often done in the past.

Question: are our political reporters increasingly moving to the modern fiction model of "show, don't tell"? There is certainly an emphasis lately on non-verbals as well, in the debate coverage...Are these moves natural ones, highlighting the re-ascendancy of oral and visual culture? Or does it take the oral out of context, since we so often correct for the oral internally, emphasizing syntactical moves that look wrong in print (where we're not used to transcript style, as anyone who has tried to go back and re-read their IM conversations could testify) and therefore doing injustice to the person whose words were included? A little bit of both, perhaps?

Inquiring minds want to know...

On Publication, Fame, and Conversation

I wonder if for some of us, it's not just "we read to know we're not alone," but also "we write to know we are not alone," and more so now that mass-mediated forms are enabling more and more feedback.

Are some of us who grew up reading for that "a-ha" moment in which someone was able to express something about humanity we ourselves were unable to express now writing in hopes that someone will say back to us that they found the same experience in our writing?

Is that why we (or at least some of us) write? And with the spread of mass/interpersonal communication spaces, are we hoping for that sooner, and on everything we write? Is that part of the vulnerability factor, and part of the shift in expectations? But as things get more interpersonal, the audience size gets closer to interpersonal too, on average--are we still thirsting for mass reach in a mass/interpersonal world? Is this unreasonable, or is this part of the deal of trying to be a successful writer? Or do we just want to get people talking, not necessarily all directed toward us?

What does this desire for publication and success (whatever that is) amount to, anyway? Is it a desire to be talked about and remembered, or to be cool, or is it a desire to converse and bring people together, or what? All of those things? None? Others? How much impact is enough impact in a world that at least says it aims for democracy in communication, where the average blog has, I heard the other day, one visitor? (Talk about your "fit audience but few.")

On a lighter note, Kevin Alexander's written a delightfully tongue-in-cheek article on how to write a quick literary masterpiece, for those yearning for a wide audience and impact. And there's a more serious but delightfully opinionated (nearly cranky, but in a good way) post over at Good Letters on the importance of considering a word's etymology when considering its use.

On a related note, I wonder if the mass/interpersonal convergence thing is why reality shows and celeb gossip are at the points they've gotten to--seeing the "behind-the-scenes," more "personal" world of people on TV helps us feel like we're closer to having an interpersonal connection to them.

I wonder...what do you think?

Mass Media Meets the Interpersonal

So in the Communication field, two key areas of study (which are often viewed as separate areas) are mass communication and interpersonal communication. These areas are generally considered to be separate in this way: mass media is one-way communication (such as TV, radio, and traditional journalism), whereas interpersonal communication typically covers conversations and other two-way communication forms.

The thing is, I believe that mass media always had an interpersonal dimension to it, and vice versa, but I've been realizing more and more lately that emerging technology forms are causing mass-mediated communication to take on more of the expectations of interpersonal communication, and vice versa, as new genres evolve that meld the two (blogs are one example). More and more, the creators of previously one-way communication (such as book authors) are not only expected to go on book tours to meet their fans, they're also expected to have blogs and respond to comments. And so on.

The thing is, I've been noticing that this trend has encouraged me to become more and more aware of the bizarre dynamics that are created as the expectations of these two kinds of communication collide more and more with blogs, social networking sites, and other emerging communication forms.

Looking forward to seeing how these dynamics evolve, particularly as it impacts me both as a communication researcher and as a communicator. I've certainly had to catch myself readjusting my expectations lately, to make them more reasonable both of myself and others, as these convergences (threaten to?) affect my communication patterns in both new and old forms.

I'm pretty sure my expectations are also influenced by my being a graduate student, in which role much interactive discussion is expected of me as part of my coursework and professionalization, so I'm curious whether anyone else notices this? Do you have any experiences with this you'd like to share? (Don't feel overwhelming need to post if you're busy, but hey, if you want to participate, I'd love to hear from you.)