Some Annotated Reading October 31

In the three weeks since my last Annotated Reading post, I started and stopped 3 books (all in one week), read one, and am now reading two. I have a number of interests I want to read about and need to
create some kind of organized plan to do so. During the time I was reading Raw Dog, I focused on reading about food. Because Raw Dog is about hot dogs, which is food.

Food Reading

Falling for Chai--Crafting Comfort in Every Sip by Verde Curated Lifestyle at Tastyble. I am only a tea dabbler, but this article made me want to be more. So I bought some chai tea bags. That's about as much as I can expect of myself.

Ruth Reichl: "The delicious revolution" was a distraction from America's food crisis by Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. I do just enough food reading to have heard of Ruth Reichl. She sounds amazing in this article. In some far away, disorganized way, I will read more about/by her.

"Cooking saved my life more than once": Chef Einat Admony on her culinary memoir "Taste of Love" by Michael La Corte at Salon. This woman gets a lot more out of cooking than I do.

Don't feel like cooking? Caroline Chambers' new cookbook has you covered" by Joy Saha at Salon. This article has inspired discussion at our house and with some guests over the beginning, which discusses why "this generation" doesn't know how to cook. So far, I haven't met anyone who was taught to cook by their mother, though we cook.

Anxious About Baking? This Is a Great Way to Get Started by Dim Nikov at Tastyble. Speaking of learning to cook, this sounds like a good way to get kids started on baking bread.

Mother's Ruin by Tiffany Hawk at The Smart Set. This is about gin, which is no more about food than the tea article I linked to above. It also includes history, which is a good way to grab me. 

Humor Reading

A Victorian Time Traveler Meets Your Puggle  by Rebecca Turkewitz at The Belladonna Comedy. Not sure if this link will work for you, but this is funny.

Real Adult Horror Isn't That Someone is Coming: It's That No One Is Coming by Kate Brennan at MuddyUm. With pictures.

Next Door Reacts to the Rapture by Jay Martel in The New Yorker. You don't have a prayer of reading this. 

Parent-Teacher Conference by Karen Chee in The New Yorker. Nor this.

Fake Pandemic Introvert vs. Real Pandemic Introvert by Dahlia Garrin Ramirez. 

Time Management Tuesday: Specifically Planning What You're Going To Do

It is still ADHD Awareness Month, but instead of reading widely on the subject, I am still focused on J. Russell Ramsay's article Why the ADHD Brain Prioritizes the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude. (Maybe I'm a little hyperfocused?) Today I'm interested in the second part of the article, about improving prioritization skills.

First off, CBT is cognitive behavioral training, which Ramsay simply describes as a type of brain training. So, we've got that out of the way.

The first suggestion Ramsay makes was the one that I found particularly meaningful. He called it "Attach manual, step-by-step descriptions to must-do tasks."  I think this just means specifically break down tasks.

This concept jumped out at me, because just a few days before I read this article, I happened to have a week when I only had an hour here or there to write. One evening I decided I wouldn't just write the next day, I would work on Dinner at Shirley Farr's House. And I wouldn't just work on Shirley Farr, I would begin by moving a section of the piece about my family to the beginning of the essay, instead of beginning with Shirley Farr. I wanted this memoir to be related to my writing about eating. Plus, it was a memoir. It should be about a personal experience involving Shirley Farr, not about Shirley Farr. I suspect someone could write a book about her, but it won't be me.

Knowing what I was specifically going to do before I sat down to work was hugely helpful. It was as if I didn't have to start the job, it was already started. What's more, being able to get that kind of start made it easier to continue. 

Maybe We Could Think in Terms of Goals and Objectives

Okay, that one example of how I had broken down a writing task should not convince anyone that attaching a step-by-step description to writing is a best practice for that job. Because one is not a statistically significant number. But think of a "must-do task" as a goal and the "step-by-step descriptions" as objectives. Now we're talking about something we have experience with.

"Writing tomorrow" is big and overwhelming. Also, morning is a lot of time. Surely, I can use some of that to see what's trending on X and go to Facebook, not just to look at my wall but to check a bunch of my groups to see if something has happened that I've missed. (I belong to many, many Facebook groups.) 

But those of us who are accustomed to working with goals and objectives can see that "writing tomorrow" is the must-do goal we need to do. Of course, we need to assign step-by-step objectives to that goal. 

What am I going to write tomorrow?

• I'm going to work on Project C
• I'm going to start with looking at yesterday's work
• I'm going to work on the section related to _________
• I'm going to create a voice
• I'm going to maintain the voice
• I'm going to shorten the part about__________ 

The point being that if we apply objectives or step-by-step descriptions to "going to write tomorrow," when we sit down to work, we know exactly what we have to, and are going to, do. Yes, that makes work easier. You know what else it does? It gets rid of the anxiety about what we're going to do. What a relief.

A Good Time to Mention Bullet Journals?

It appears that it's been five years since I've mentioned bullet journals here. The official bullet journal website defines bullet journals as a "mindfulness practice designed as a productivity system." I love that. It is so what I want to be me. However, I found the original bullet journal method way too complex for me. I modified the system to meet my needs and continue to do so. Why, I just added a new section to my journal a couple of weeks ago.

I get a lot done with a bullet journal. Though, of course, never as much as I want to. Also, sometimes in order to get a long-standing task done, I have to put it in my bullet journal. But that's okay!

An example of how my simplistic bullet journal works.

Week of Oct. 27th Work Section  (I may add more during the week):

• Submit scifi story
• Submit reprint story
• Plan next writing projects (I could have got more detailed with this, as in "check started work on laptop" and "check journal.") / 
• Humor/Raw Dog post
• TMT post (that's this one) 
• Register for workshop
• Update website.

Week of Oct. 27th Food Section (I will probably add more during the week. Also, this is usually cooking related.):

• gf cider doughnuts
• gf cider biscuits

Each week has additional sections for other aspects of my life. Strike throughs mean a task is done. A slash means I've started it.

My point here is that I think that if you work with some kind of bullet journal system, it seems as if what you're doing is, indeed, attaching "manual, step-by-step descriptions to must-do tasks," as Ramsay describes in his ADDitude article. So you may not be surprised to hear that a few years ago, while doing some reading about bullet journals, I learned that Ryder Carroll, who created the bullet journal system, has ADHD. 

ADDITION: I mentioned a few weeks ago that we have a family member who has recently been diagnosed with ADHD. This is a child I'm talking about. So today I thought I'd take a look see if there's anything about bullet journals/journaling for kids. I'm having a hard time finding something that isn't focused on the idea of "journals" and not "productivity," let alone "mindfulness designed as a productivity system." My gut feeling is these kids don't need to keep records of what they have done or their creativity and personalities. They need help focusing on what they need to do and getting things done. Which is what the original bullet journal is about.

I will keep looking!

A Litfest At An Orchard

For months now, central Connecticut has been awash with group appearances by writers. Many, especially those with children's writers, have been at traditional writer sites like libraries. But then I've been seeing groups doing signings and sales at bars, vineyards, breweries, and other places we don't usually expect to be able to buy a signed copy of a book. However, they are places where people go. Where there are people, there are readers. Those are opportunities for writers, especially self-published writers who don't often see their books in bookstores, to meet and greet and make sales. 

Yesterday I hit a small literary signing held at Dondero Orchards in South Glastonbury, a spot I'd never been to even though it's within a half hour of me. It definitely draws a crowd on Sunday mornings, as you can see, since I thought a picture of the parking lot would be appropriate. 

The first writer I met there was Gerald Augustine, author of Vietnam Beyond.  Before he headed out to Vietnam back in the 60s, his mother told him to take pictures. So he goes off to 'nam with his camera and sends back in excess, I believe he said, of 200 hundred pictures. His book is heavily illustrated. 

My second writer was Sarah Branson the author of the Pirates of New Earth series.  There are adult books in this series, as well as children's books. All set in the same world. I like that idea very much. I have set books in the same towns, but they never made it into print.

Anna James is a contemporary romance writer who was there with her books published by Harlequin, as well as an arc for a book coming out soon.

I met P. Jo Anne Burgh last year after she promoted one of her appearances at a porchfest near me on a Facebook group we both belong to. Her first two books are contemporary romance with a Christmas connection. Check out what she has to say on the subject of book fairs, festivals, and holiday markets. And more of her thoughts on the subject. She's been around these things.

Heidi Rocha is an author and pediatric dental hygienist who writes the Sparkly Smiles Series, books and workbooks on dental hygiene for kids. She did one of the story times yesterday and had kids buzzing around her table while I was talking with her.  

Rick Collins writes a series of mysteries about a New England police chief, and I'm sorry that I was getting to the end of my time at this event and didn't stop to talk to him. 

The same is true of Jack Matthews, the author of  Arte Perdida. Rick and Jack were at the end of the loop of authors I was making my way around, and my conversation, of which we all know I have very little, was petering out. Jack took that picture of Heidi and me. Great picture of me, Jack. I don't usually turn out that well.

I had a lovely hour or so, went home with a couple of books, some postcards and a business card, and material for a blog post. Also, the orchard site left me with a desire to make gluten free cider doughnuts. Which I did.

Getting Serious About Humor: I'm Done With Wurst For A Long Time

The Thurber Prize folks have announced their semi-finalists for this year's, yes, Thurber Prize for American Humor. It turns out that I've already read one of them, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, which I liked, and admired, a great deal. Now I've read another one, Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus. The book combines two of my interests...humor and eating nonprestige food. I've been a little bit obsessed with it.

Raw dog. An expression with a number of meanings, related to some of kind of risk. Doing something unprepared. I didn't look it up until after I finished reading the book (actually, just now), and now I'm thinking the title...Wow. This could be profound. 

I've read a number of Thurber Prize finalists over the last couple of years, and I'm sure that I've mentioned here before that I find them witty, certainly, but not hugely, wildly funny. I guess this makes a lot of sense, because, as I probably have also mentioned before, I have actually read James Thurber, and, you know, he wasn't hugely, wildly funny. I like the Thurber Prize finalists I've read, which I can't say for a lot of prize books (I'm thinking of you, Booker Prize, which I now avoid). But I don't understand how funny you have to be to be a humor prize winner.

Jamie Loftus is a comedian, writer, and podcaster, and she has a distinctive sense of humor. Raw Dog definitely is a contender for the prize. But the book is a lot. Reading it was an experience.

Superficially, it is about Loftus's hot dog summer, traveling across the U.S. with a boyfriend, a dog, and, I think, a cat in rental cars as she samples hot dogs in various regions of the country. I no longer eat traditional hot dogs, because I avoid smoked meat. But I do eat the occasional bratwurst. When I started reading this book, I went into the freezer where I had a leftover grilled wurst. I heated that puppy up and found a gluten free roll to sort of wrap around it and ate it naked. By the time I was in a grocery store sometime later, while still reading Raw Dog, I just shot by the wurst counter. No, we are not doing that for some time to come. I'm done with dogs for a while.

Loftus went to so many hot dog stands, shops, and wagons and ate so very many hot dogs. This woman ate so much chili on those dogs. And described all those chilis in so much detail. I think that if chili was available, she ate it. And the onions! Good heavens! And relish. Evidently, she'll eat any kind of relish. My digestive system is fragile, and I could feel it failing just reading about what Jamie Loftus ate. It was too much for her digestive system sometimes, too. I know, because she writes about it.

Here's the thing, though, this book isn't just a food and travel story that should be one of those TV shows my husband watches. No, there is a great deal of social commentary here. Real commentary. In a New Yorker article about Loftus, Cat Zhang says that her first job out of college was at the Boston Globe (she was fired) but that she "retains a reporter's allegiance to fact." What she has to say in Raw Dog about things like how the meat industry treats both animals and human workers, gentrification, the pandemic, and Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile drivers (no joke, they've got some worries) come across as serious and well thought out. And then she gets back to the freaking chili! 

A little digression: Loftus comes from Brockton, Massachusetts where my aunt Esther has lived all my life. I've been to cousin weddings there and a funeral. Honest to God, I had no idea about the city's reputation until another family member went to college in Waltham and tipped me off. Brockton seemed fine to us Gauthiers.

Anyway, I'm feeling about the Thurber Prize the way other people feel about the Oscars and Emmys. I hope one of the two books I've read wins.

The Story Behind The Story: Some Feminist Humor

Karolina Kaboompics on Pexels

 I am in the midst of a socializing week, which just requires so much of me. Draining. But I can jump in here to tell you that I had still another humor piece published this past Tuesday at Slackjaw. If you are a woman, particularly a woman of a certain age, you've heard that many women object to be calling "ma'am," and you probably know why. If you aren't a woman of a certain age or if you are a man, perhaps What Do You Mean You Hate Being Called "Ma'am?" will be enlightening.

Now many Medium writers publish there every day. I've often seen articles there explaining how various writers write articles in just three hours and either immediately publish them themselves or find a Medium publication to do it. I did, I think, three drafts of the "Ma'am" humor piece and submitted it to two non-Medium sites where it was rejected. Slackjaw suggested some edits before accepting it, which I had no objection to. Working with Alex at Slackjaw makes me feel as if I'm working in a comedy writers' room, which I enjoy.

I will say that the first draft that was rejected elsewhere came off as much more of a humorous argumentative essay with material about old white guys who run the patriarchy wanting women to believe we need to keep them and all their buddies in a constant state of arousal and women accepting that about themselves, thus leading them to believe the word "ma'am" is an indication of having aged out of desirability instead of an indication that a woman has achieved personal power. Yeah, there was, perhaps, some strident feminism in that. When it was rejected, I needed to edit it down in order to submit it elsewhere, which led me to strengthening the narrative voice and focusing, focusing, focusing.

What's Coming Next?

This was the third piece of writing I've submitted and had accepted for publication in less than a month.  However, they were all started last summer, except for Dinner at Shirley Farr's, which was started 20 years ago. I hope to get a few more pieces written, submitted, and published by the end of the year, but I have nothing actually started right now.

We'll see what next week brings.

Once Again, Bringing Books To Readers

Pumpkin people, in case you couldn't tell.

It's been a while since I've featured a children's author or a children's book or, I think, any kind of in-person author appearance here. You all know how I love Zoom. But I was at Pumpkintown USA today, which in this part of Connecticut is a big deal. I'm not being sarcastic. We love Pumpkintown in these parts. While I was walking around, I was reminded of a blog post I did around nine years ago, Getting Books Out Into The World, about Connecticut author Sandra Horning, who did a signing at Pumpkintown, as well as two other nontraditional sites, to promote a pumpkin picture book. No sooner did I start thinking about her, then what did I see but another author doing a book signing!

Peggy Schaedler, author, not pumpkin person

Author Peggy Schaedler was there supporting a series of books she's written about characters based on Pumpkintown characters. She's doing a number of weekend appearances there. Now, given that her books involve Pumpkintown it makes a great deal of sense that she should be making appearances there. Nonetheless, years ago you wouldn't have seen someone like her at a place like this, just as you wouldn't have seen someone like Sandra Horning there. They would have been at a bookstore or library.

Times have changed.

In large part, this is due to self-publishing. There are far more books being self-published than bookstores can absorb, the main reason why few self-published books are featured there. All writers, but particularly those who self-publish, are becoming more and more creative and working harder and harder to find ways to take their books to readers, since readers can't come to their books in bookstores 

Last year, for instance, I saw author Jo Ann Burgh at a porchfest. Many thanks to her. She promoted her appearance at a Facebook group I belong to, which brought me to the porchfest. Turns out, I love porchfests. Really, many thanks. I went back this year.

I am now a member of another Facebook group, Connecticut Authors and Their Readers Meeting Place, where I see authors posting about appearances at bars, vineyards, and breweries, among other places. These are often group appearances, meaning someone has not only approached these places about bringing their books in, but done some administrative work so a number of authors could come in. One Connecticut author who posts there and has had quite a bit of attention for her first book and has written a second says the bulk of her sales are made through these kinds of appearances.

These people, like Peggy Schaedler, are spending enormous amounts of time on marketing in a very real boots on the ground way.  Best wishes to all of them. But as I told Peggy today when I met her at Pumpkintown, I just don't want to work this hard. Yes, I am a little bit ashamed. But not enough to make the effort she and all these people are making. 

Friday Done List

Next week won't be as productive as this week, but Zen tells me not to think about that. Stay in this week...just as long as I can. In fact, this is being posted on Saturday. That's how long I stayed in this week.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Dinner at Shirley Farr's House was published at The Memoirist, I think on Tuesday evening.
• I received a rejection on a humor piece.
• I resubmitted the humor piece elsewhere.
• I worked with the editor of the humor site, and the new piece will be accepted as soon as I resubmit it with changes.
• I registered for a OCWW workshop, but went biking yesterday instead of Zooming the workshop. I have the link to the recording and a week to use it.

Goal 3. Community Building, Marketing, and Branding

• Promoted Dinner at Shirley Farr's House.
• Did a blog post about Dinner at Shirley Farr's House. Will try to promote that this evening.
• Got an idea from another Medium writer relating to creating pinned Medium posts of boosted articles. So I did that.
• Saw another Medium writer suggest creating indexes of Medium work and pinning them to our Medium home page. So I'm working on that.

Another Story Behind A Story

Farr House as it still looked when I ate dinner there.

The Memoirist, a Medium publication that is new to me, just published my memoir Eating at Shirley
Farr's House in which I write about very much enjoying a restaurant in a mansion I later learned was once owned by someone who might not have been happy about me being there.

Once again, there is an interesting story beyond the story in the story.

In the Beginning

This memoir began as an essay for the one graduate course I took more than twenty years ago, an essay writing course at the University of Connecticut taught by Sam Pickering. Now, Pickering is the author of a few books of essays, but you can't find much about him on-line. Given the little I know of him from that class, I am not surprised. He did not seem to be an Internet-embracing kind of guy. At that point, none of the historical material was in the essay. The essay was about a local rube (me) who managed to get into a wealthy person's house by way of the restaurant someone had opened in it after her death, enjoy the place, and then it became even more of a wealthy person's place, ruining my bliss.

The History Involved

To make a long story short(er), the history involved in this story relates to the eugenics movement in the early twentieth century. There were eugenics fans all over the U.S, and the world, since some draw a line between American eugenics and the Nazis. You don't need to know much to think, Gee whiz, don't these things sound kind of similar? The Nazi connection may be why I never heard of eugenics while I was in high school or college, where I was a history minor. Even though I was in Vermont, which definitely was definitely up to its neck in eugenics. Who wants to have been involved with something with possible Holocaust connections?

What Does Eugenics Have to Do with Me Eating Sticky Buns in a Mansion Turned Restaurant?

Well, it turns out the Shirley Farr of My Dinner at Shirley Farr's was active in Vermont's eugenics movement. How active, you ask? Go ahead, ask. She funded what was known as the Vermont Eugenics Survey for eleven years. She spent between fifty and sixty thousand dollars on it back in the nineteen twenties and thirties when fifty to sixty thousand dollars was real money. 

This survey studied a number of generations of families someone had identified as having issues a society didn't want to encourage, issues eugenicists believed were genetic and could be stopped  immediately if these people weren't allowed to reproduce. A number of these families happened to be poor, happened to be Abenakis, or happened to be French Canadian. 

Because, you know, nothing goes wrong in white anglo saxon Protestant families. Absolutely nothing.

Now, I didn't learn anything about the eugenics movement and Shirley Farr until I decided to look her up on-line either while I was writing the original essay or thereafter. And even then, it took a while for me, a second-generation American on my father's French-Canadian side to go, "Wait. Gail. Isn't it odd you were eating dinner in that woman's house? And you took your kids there?"

Still More to the Story!!!

So that was going on in my head, off and on, over the last twenty years. But I did nothing with it because I had books to write that wouldn't sell and humor writing to get started on.

Then earlier this year I decided to start cleaning my massive professional files. My plan was to save anything I thought I could still do something with and toss the rest. I didn't get far, because I found some undergraduate writing that I used for a humor piece and this graduate material about Shirley Farr.

And the rest was doing research to get specific info on Farr, revising to create a little bit of a braided format, and finding an appropriate illustration.

Now I'm done.

The University of Vermont has a great deal of information about the eugenics movement in Vermont. A great deal. So much. 

  

Time Management Tuesday: Procrastibaking Is A Thing And Can Illustrate Attractive Aspects Of Procrastination

I'd seen the term procrastibaking a few times over the last couple of years but just thought it was a joke. Until a week ago Sunday. It sure looks real to me, and I also think it illustrates the four differences between procrastivity/productive procrastination and more demanding tasks described by J. Russell Ramsay in Why the ADHD Brain Chooses the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude.

First Off, Procrastibaking

Articles on procrastibaking, like The Joys of 'Procrastibaking' to Avoid Real Work by Christina Ianzinto at AARP tend to treat it benignly. The AARP article was about a new cookbook, so, yeah, I can see that. In this case, procrastibaking is portrayed as a stress reliever. While Why Work When You Can Procrastinate by Julia Moskin at WRAL News includes some material from psychology professor Tim Pychyl on how procrastination, itself, is "one of the few situations in which people consistently make choices that are demonstrably bad, " over all the tone for procrastibaking is cheery.

Since I've mentioned Tim Pychyl's name, I'm just going to remind everyone that in his book The Procrastinator's Digest A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, he says that procrastination has a specific definition within psychology. True procrastination "is the voluntary delay of an intended action despite the knowledge that this delay may harm the individual in terms of the task performance or even just how the individual feels about the task or him or herself. Procrastination is a needless voluntary delay."

So I guess procrastibaking is that with brownies.

My Personal Procrastibaking Case Study

What was supposed to happen on Sunday, October 6:

I had two tasks planned that would improve my upcoming work week.

•  I was going to fold and take care of my clean clothes in the laundry room. I was going to do some of the ironing that has been waiting down there since last winter. We're talking only my clothes. Over the last few years, I've turned into that person who lives out of the clean clothes hamper, which is odd because I wasn't that person when I was washing, drying, folding, and taking care of laundry for four people. But that's neither here nor there. I was going to get my clean clothes dealt with so I wouldn't have to spend time dealing with it on days when I wanted to work.
• I was also going to do some research to support a minor part of an essay I've been rewriting. That would make the writing of that essay during the week go so much faster, because not only would the research be done, it would have been simmering in my brain for a while, which is always a good thing.

What really happened on Sunday, October 6:

I realized I had ten eggs that were going to expire on Monday, October 7. Even though I knew I could be loosie-goosie with expiration dates for eggs, I spent the afternoon of Sunday, October 6 baking

• rosemary sea salt bread
• drop biscuits
• and hermit bars

I bake gluten free, and gluten free baking sucks up eggs. I had only three left at the end of the day. I used them for lunch the next day, in case you're concerned. 

All the time I was doing this, I knew I was proving the point Ramsay makes in his ADDitude article, but I did it anyway. Mainly for this blog post. But still.

What Does My Procrastibaking Experience Illustrate?

J. Russell Ramsay says there are four differences between the small, unimportant tasks ADHD brains (and I'm going to argue other brains, too) select over more critical ones they put off. I ticked every one of them off with my work choice that Sunday.

1. Manual focus, meaning the tasks selected are often physical rather than mentally demanding. Certainly, baking was less mentally demanding than research. There's a lot of material on what I was writing about, and I don't find it terribly well organized. I was not running toward that task with open arms. 
2. Familiar script, meaning something you've done before and will find easier to do. I have been baking for a looong time. Additionally, two of the three things I made I've made a number of times. Sure, I know how to fold and iron clothes. But obviously I don't do it anywhere near as often.
3. Time frame, meaning a definite and predictable time frame. Recipes are all about time. How long was it going to take me to iron those clothes and find the little bit I needed in that research? I didn't know. 
4. Task progress, meaning a clear beginning, middle, and end. Again, what clearer beginning, middle, and end can you ask for than a recipe? I didn't expect to finish the ironing, even if I'd started it. Also, in this particular case I had the end date with the eggs expiring the next day. It was not at all difficult to convince myself that I was working on a deadline.

What Can We Take From All This?

For one thing, beware of procrastibaking! It is not benign and cheerful! If you're truly procrastibaking, it means you're not doing something more important. What is it and how are you going to address it?

For another, when you see yourself choosing to do something that doesn't address an important task waiting for you, ask yourself if you're choosing the lesser "work" because it's less mentally demanding, familiar, has a predictable time frame, and has a definite beginning, middle, and end.  A positive answer to any of those could convince you to take another course of action.

If you're wondering if I ever took care of the clothes and did the research I needed to do, the answer is no to the clothes and yes to the research. I could have taken a few minutes this past Sunday to do some work in the laundry room, but now I have a lot of apples to use up. I made an apple upside down cake instead. 

The Weekend Writer: How NOT To Personalize A Query Letter

There are countless numbers of articles out in the world on how to do countless numbers of things related to writing. Personally, I have become selective about which ones I read, because there really aren't countless numbers of ways to do things. But How Not To Personalize A Query Letter by Tiffany Hawk did catch my eye because of the NOT in the title.

Essentially what she's saying is don't personalize your letter in an illogical way that's not connected to a professional connection. For instance, sometime in the last year or two I submitted to an agent who has an apple orchard. It was all I could do not to say in my cover letter that I love apple orchards. I hope I didn't say that.

Also, don't do any of these things.

Hawk also has a 6-step strategy for finding literary agents that I think is very good. 

Friday Done List

This was probably my most normal work week in quite some time. I'm feeling both stimulated, because work stimulates work in my experience, and overwhelmed by all the stimulation.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I received a humor rejection on October 3rd, spent time this week on an extensive revision, and submitted it elsewhere this morning.
• I wrote the new material for an essay revision.
• I finally went through Off Campus Writers' Workshop's offerings for the year to decide what I want to take. I'm not done yet, because I like to check out the workshop leaders. There are a lot of workshops I'm interested in and that helps screen. I often struggle reading very academic writers' and some literary writers' work. My theory is that I probably will struggle with workshops they run, too, so if I have to cut down on workshops, that's a place to start.
• This morning I heard about a flash fiction contest and considered entering it for a while. The entrance fee is larger than I usually like to pay, since contests with entrance fees are really gambling, right? But I made more money this month on Medium than I expected to, and I could submit two pieces of flash, which I just happened to have. But then while looking at files, I realized that I had submitted one of them somewhere else several months ago and haven't heard back yet so that story isn't eligible and did I want to submit just one story for that price? And I spent too much time on that this morning.
• Spent a little time making sure I'm up-to-date documenting what I've sent where. If you read the preceding bulleted point, you know why.
• Decided I need to create a reading schedule. Don't know when that will happen.

Goal 3. Community Building, Marketing, and Branding

• Did a Time Management Tuesday post this week and have plans for several more.
• Did a number of blog posts this week and have plans for several more.
• Promoted a couple of those blog posts.
• Hope to get some blog posts started this weekend
• Finished up still another website update with Computer Guy.

Some Annotated Reading October 10

Books (From my Kindle app) 

System Collapse by Martha Wells. The seventh in the Murderbot series. I love Murderbot. I must say it was off its game in this book. By that I do not mean there was something wrong with the writing. No, I mean Murderbot was struggling. If I had read this closer to the sixth book that probably would have been more meaningful for me. But Murderbot is Murderbot. It is meaningful just as it is. 

Skinny by Donna Cooner. This is very much a YA Cinderella tale about Ever (happily ever after) Davis, a high school sophomore who weighs 302 pounds at the beginning of our story. Her father is alive, unlike Cinderella's, her stepmother is a lovely person, she has a stepsister who wants to be her friend, a male friend named Rat (don't mice figure into the Cinderella story?), and a couple of fairy godmother figures. One of them is a very disturbing inner voice Ever has named Skinny. I wonder if Skinny was unhealthily disturbing. I found this book far more readable than some other books about teens with weight issues. The fairy tale connection made it less of a traditional problem story. Things turn out very well for Ever, as they should, since this is a fairy tale. However, they turn out very well for her because she loses weight, gets a makeover, and buys expensive clothes. When she conforms to society's teen girl norm, all good things come her way. Also, I question whether she could have dealt with Skinny on her own, without professional help. Nonetheless, this was an engaging read that didn't drag. 

Short Form

The Art of Taking It Slow by Anna Wiener in The New Yorker. Sadly these slow biking people are nowhere near slow enough for me.

The Unrivaled Omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth II by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker. I enjoy reading about royal families, because their lives are like living novels. Maybe they are reality shows. I don't know, because I don't watch those. Rebecca Mead wrote My Life in Middlemarch, which is on my iPad. I have some interest in Middlemarch.

Humor (Yes, I did read a lot of humor this week)

My Cold is Worse Than Yours, I Can Tell by Sarah James at Slackjaw. This is fantastic. Why isn't it getting thousands of claps? 

Just Because I'm A Death Doula, Doesn't Mean I... by Catherine Durkin Robinson at The Haven. For a humor list to work, it needs a really distinctive hook. Which this humor list has.

I Tried Turning Thirty So You Don't Have To (Honest Review) by Meghana Indurti at The New Yorker. Haven't you seen these titles? "I Did _________ So You Don't Have To?" "My Honest Review?" Sure, it is.  

I Only Offered To Do The Dishes At This Dinner Party So I Could Keep Eating by Chason Gordon at McSweeney's Internet Tendency  Nobody offers to do dishes at a dinner party. Nobody.

My Friend Can Be A Bit Much But He's A Good Guy If You Give Him A Chance by Ashton Winters at McSweeney's Internet Tendency  No, he's not. And that's what makes this funny. Incongruity.

It's Crazy To Think Everyone (Except Me) Is Going To Die Someday by Graeme Carey at Slackjaw Again, why isn't this thing getting thousands of claps at Slackjaw? Is it the word "death" in the title? Because the "death" doula humor piece should get more attention, too. I once used the word "die" in a title on the Medium platform, and, no, that didn't go over well at all. We need to all work on this.

I Am A Lady, And Donald Trump Is My Protector by Devorah Blachor at McSweeney's Internet Tendency. More incongruity humor.

Oh, Yeah. I Had a New Humor Piece Published Two Weeks Ago

Photo by Torsten Dettlaf on Pexels

Here I am, finally promoting Subject Lines I Love to See on My Emails, which was published at Muddy'Um two weeks ago. 

Now, you may ask, what exactly went into writing this, Gail? Isn't it pretty much just a collection of email subject lines that turned up in your inbox? Yes. Except I had to come up with a response to them. And I had to organize them in such a way as to create callbacks, which are a thing in humor writing and which I enjoy as a humor reader. And I had to make the last piece the funniest.

So I did have to do something.

Time Management Tuesday: Reading About ADHD Has Made Me Rethink Productive Procrastination

I haven't been doing much with Time Management Tuesday the last couple of years for two reasons.

1. I see a lot of time management articles on Medium that are clearly written with minimal research and are often rehashes of material others have covered. Not much that's new there. It's a little bit book reportish. This left me with anxiety about producing the same kind of material, which I'd really rather not do.
2. I don't feel I've been doing that great with managing my own time the last few years. Am I being a hypocrite writing about managing time or am I writing about how I deal with a professional problem? I can feel a headache coming on. Seriously. 

But recently I've read a couple of things that caused what we might call an interest flair. I am inspired again! I think I have a few months of time management material here, beginning with ADHD-related material for October, which is ADHD Awareness Month.

Can ADHD Behavioral Approaches Help Others Manage Time?

We recently had a family member diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This was not a surprise, which I suspect is the case in many families. As a result, I am attracted to ADHD articles and definitely noticed the #ADHDawarenessmonth hashtag on Xitter. That led to one thing and another and some reading on ADHD and productivity and time management. Some of which sounded as if it could be helpful for any of us.

First off, the National Institute of Mental Health defines attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as a "developmental disorder marked by persistent symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity that interfere with functioning or development."  The inattention part is of particular interest to writers, because it involves problems "staying on task, paying attention, or being organized."

Staying on task and being organized are hugely important for writers, because of the incredible, some of us might say overwhelming, array of things we need to do to write something, get it published, and market it. Each one of those aspects of the job require a large number of tasks. On top of that, the majority of us are working other jobs and possibly acting as caregivers for family members. So many balls to juggle. So many possible distractions.

How to decide what to do?

Procrastivity

In Why the ADHD Brain Chooses the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude J. Russell Ramsay describes what he calls "procrastivity" in which people with ADHD procrastinate by working, but working at lower-priority activities. So they are doing things, but not making progress on a more important task. 

Productive Procrastination

When I read about procrastivity, I immediately thought of productive procrastination, something I've written about here a few times. I thought it was such a fine idea I republished the original post in 2022. My favorite willpower guru, Kelly McGonigal (She has a new book out! Or, at least, one I haven't heard of!) used the term "productive procrastination" in a Life Hacker piece on how she works and said, "I may have built my career on web searches I've done when I should have been doing something else." In another Life Hacker interview Ira Glass said, "I procrastinate by working." Though he did describe working at low-priority tasks when he should be writing as a bad habit. He wasn't as positive about it as McGonigal was.  

I've been feeling good about productive procrastination, believing that all those things I did while I should have been working on that last book for four years were a good thing. I was doing something. Anything. Now, after Ramsay's description of what goes on when someone with ADHD ends up in less necessary activities, I'm wondering about what I've been doing. 

Oh, and look. A far more recent Life Hack article, Productive Procrastination: Is It Good Or Bad? by Leon Ho, comes down firmly on the bad side. 

What To Do?

The Leon Ho Life Hack article includes time management techniques to avoid productive procrastination. But the J. Russell Ramsay ADDitude article has some fascinating stuff on why the ADHD mind leans toward low-priority tasks over the high-priority ones that could actually be more helpful for them to do. For instance, red flags for any of us might be noticing that we're spending a lot of time on tasks that are less demanding, more familiar, shorter, and with a very clear beginning and end rather than a big job that's waiting for us. Like writing a book. 

What I'm Going To Do

For the rest of October, I'm going to be looking for ADHD connected material that relates to time management and productivity, in recognition of ADHD Awareness Month. Next week I'll have a personal case study in how I spent an afternoon that illustrates some of what Ramsay talks about in his ADDitude article.

I think I should also give some thought to why I embraced productive procrastination in such a big way. Someone I liked did it? It gave me an excuse to get away from harder work? Yeah, I think that's it. Don't need to think about that any longer.

Also, I'm correct. As I said in the beginning of this post, I should be anxious about jumping into writing lightly researched blog posts.

Friday Done List

The big thing I'm done with is travel and celebrating. Yes, vacationing always provides me with some creative ideas, but they get buried under the work involved to get ready to go somewhere and clean up afterward and the work piling up at home.

Don't you just love First World Problems? I know I do. They're the best possible kind.

I did manage to squeeze a little work in over the last few weeks. Oh! And you know what else! I met my Goodreads reading goal for the year. 

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I had another humor piece published last week, though you'd never know it here, because I didn't get around to doing a post about it. Next week.
• I dug around in old emails and discovered I'd received a rejection I didn't know about a while back.
• Got another rejection a few days ago.
• Started revising that last rejection, because the next place I want to submit to wants fewer words.
• Continued work on an eating-ish memoir piece, which is actually a revision of something I wrote twenty years ago. It's going to have a twist now.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to agents. (Has turned into submitting any book length work to anyone.)

• I spent a few days making a synopsis for a book I haven't submitted anywhere in years so I could submit it to an agent open to SCBWI writers during the month of September.
• Made the above submission. Yes! I am calling this doing two things. 

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Added a number of newly published pieces to the website earlier this summer, which I may or may not have mentioned.
• Added another newly published piece to the website today, so that we're not dealing with so many changes at once. Also updated my bio and took out some dead links.
• Read a couple of things that have inspired me to get Time Management Tuesday going again, at least for the next month or so.
• Wrote next Tuesday's Time Management Tuesday post.

Some Annotated Reading October 3

I have just finished a week of birthday observances, all for the same person. Me. That, on top of the two weeks of vacation less than a month ago has left me reeling over all the minor life and work details I need to address. Overwhelmed.

I did keep reading though. I can always keep reading.

Books

I finished a couple more nineteenth century historical mysteries, both in the same series, which is going down hill as series often do.

I've read some more of Best Travel Writing of 2018. That book is so long.

Short Form

Emily is the Quintessential Privileged White American Girl by Martine Nyx in Cinemania. I started watching this show after it had been out for a season or so for the French with English subtitles. I'd already finished Dix Pour Cent (there is no comparison) and hadn't discovered Lupin. Yes, you do have to wonder, What is the attraction with this show? Even if you don't hate it, as many people do, what is there, really, to even hold your attention?

When Good Artists Do Bad Things by Citizen Reader at Books Are Our Superpower. I don’t know that there is ever going to be a way of dealing with the issue of good artists being bad people.

An Impresario of the Landscape by Stephen Heyman at Lapham's Quarterly. This is an introduction to Louis Bromfield, whose home, Malabar Farm, I visited on vacation. It focuses mainly on him as a conservationist. I have so many thoughts about this guy.

This is Why So Many Bars, Restaurants and Coffee Shops Look the Same Across the World by Charlie Brown at Rooted.  It's because social media has flattened taste. I wonder if other types of media do it, too. But the whole concept of "flattening taste" was new to me. 

Humor

Blurbs Beyond Books by Adam Bertocci at Points in Case. This is a fantastic piece for those of us who really dislike blurbs.

I Thought I Would Have Accomplished A Lot More Today And Also By The Time I Was Thirty-five by Alex Baia at The New Yorker. This is hysterical. I started laughing out loud when I got to "Shit. I'm actually forty-one." And then I felt guilty for having laughed at this suffering narrator. And then I laughed some more.

Humor and pain I’m So Lucky I’m an Adult So I Can Do Whatever I Want by Lisa Hides at Frazzled.

"What About the Cat?" Feedback From an Online Writing Workshop by Helen Raica-Klotz at Brevity Blog.  How funny you find this will be determined by how many writers' workshops/critique groups you've been part of.