Someone needs to share this with the great Jameson swiller over at scienceblogs.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Immediate Unsubscribe.
Agent blog on my feed. Has been fairly unremarkable read thus far, but it's all for the good, because I'm here to learn. Then agent posts typical agent-type rant (common on a lot of these blogs, though I wish I could rant to my "clients" on a blog about what not to do when interacting with me as I go about doing my job) to the effect of not enjoying receiving queries for books with misogynistic themes or plots. Certainly fair enough. Maybe someone might want to buy those kinds of books were they published (though this is debatable), but certainly no one is obligated to represent them.
But as a side note, agent says she does not want to talk about feminism with anyone unless they are "a woman of color and/or can quote Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Gayatri Spivak...".
Um, sure. Just like I refuse to talk about science with anyone unless they're a white guy (after all, aren't most scientists white guys?) and/or can quote Francis Collins, Stephen Hawking, and Theodosius Dobzhansky (all white guys). Or discuss music with people unless they're from Seattle and/or can quote Eddie Vedder, Layne Staley, and Chris Cornell. Or discuss living in Washington D.C. unless they were born in the USA, know what Congressional Committees have jurisdiction over the Department of Justice (on both the Senate and House sides), and can give me directions to the nearest Metro stop.
I could go on, but I'll just say: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Way to ruin a good point.
Well, it's up to agent to set such ridiculous rules. It's their blog. All I can do is unsubscribe from it. Which I did.
But as a side note, agent says she does not want to talk about feminism with anyone unless they are "a woman of color and/or can quote Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Gayatri Spivak...".
Um, sure. Just like I refuse to talk about science with anyone unless they're a white guy (after all, aren't most scientists white guys?) and/or can quote Francis Collins, Stephen Hawking, and Theodosius Dobzhansky (all white guys). Or discuss music with people unless they're from Seattle and/or can quote Eddie Vedder, Layne Staley, and Chris Cornell. Or discuss living in Washington D.C. unless they were born in the USA, know what Congressional Committees have jurisdiction over the Department of Justice (on both the Senate and House sides), and can give me directions to the nearest Metro stop.
I could go on, but I'll just say: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Way to ruin a good point.
Well, it's up to agent to set such ridiculous rules. It's their blog. All I can do is unsubscribe from it. Which I did.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Terrible Commute Home, But...
Stuck on the platform at Metro Center at 5:30, the next train was supposed to come in one minute but took more like six. I stood as the platform filled and knew the next train would be ridiculous and wondered when I'm just going to run out of steam facing this every day and decide it's time to move west.
When the next train does finally come, even though it is packed, I have been on the platform for nearly 20 minutes and - figuring I can't trust what it says about the next train - I load on with everyone else as best I can.
I'm packed in next to a toddler in a stroller. The people outside the train keep pushing, seeing the open space and not wanting to wait for another indeterminate period (even though most will get off the train at Gallery Place - why not just walk?), but I stand my ground (and where can I go, anyway?). People start yelling: "There's a stroller!" but no one wants to be left on the platform, because who knows when the next train will be? I don't worry too much (though I know I will have to get off at Gallery Place, even though it's not my stop). Middle-aged ladies can't push me too hard. I try to be gentle in response.
The doors finally close. The toddler looks up, horrified, at the packed adults hovering all around him, and cries out for a minute.
When he stops - thinking about my day, my commute home, my questions in general about what I've decided to do with my life - I loudly reply: "I agree."
A dozen people around us start laughing.
Often, I'm uneasy about human sociality. But what can I do? I'm part of this, whether I like it or not.
And so, for just a few moments, I feel OK.
When the next train does finally come, even though it is packed, I have been on the platform for nearly 20 minutes and - figuring I can't trust what it says about the next train - I load on with everyone else as best I can.
I'm packed in next to a toddler in a stroller. The people outside the train keep pushing, seeing the open space and not wanting to wait for another indeterminate period (even though most will get off the train at Gallery Place - why not just walk?), but I stand my ground (and where can I go, anyway?). People start yelling: "There's a stroller!" but no one wants to be left on the platform, because who knows when the next train will be? I don't worry too much (though I know I will have to get off at Gallery Place, even though it's not my stop). Middle-aged ladies can't push me too hard. I try to be gentle in response.
The doors finally close. The toddler looks up, horrified, at the packed adults hovering all around him, and cries out for a minute.
When he stops - thinking about my day, my commute home, my questions in general about what I've decided to do with my life - I loudly reply: "I agree."
A dozen people around us start laughing.
Often, I'm uneasy about human sociality. But what can I do? I'm part of this, whether I like it or not.
And so, for just a few moments, I feel OK.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
An Odd Consilience
I want to revisit the article from the New York Times that I posted last week for the purpose of looking at the comments. You've read before how I feel about the quality of online "discussions" in many places (scienceblogs being my favorite exemplar of a place where the people are supposedly smart but the discussions utterly insipid), and comments on newspaper articles tend to be even worse: just look at the Washington Post. But comments on this one were good - very good - capturing a lot of nuance not apparent in the original article and providing lots of food for thought and discussion (full disclosure: I only read about the first 250 or so comments - there are 300 now). On the other hand, they also capture a lot of projection on the part of commenters...but then again, this is the sort of topic where virtually everyone (me
definitely included) projects, and the article purports to move beyond the realm of the subjective by showing some hard data.
I'm actually less interested in evaluating the recommendations in the article than I am the comments. Several "schools of thought" emerged from the comments, some of which can be brushed off as uninteresting while others were very interesting. I want to run through these schools of thought and then highlight a couple of individual comments that I thought were especially noteworthy. So let's move in rough order from least to most interesting:
1. The Neanderthals: and of course there were a few. "God tells me I must break my child's spirit and force them to cheerfully obey my every whim" and the like. Very few of these, though you certainly have to feel sorry for their kids, who will both hate their parents and hate themselves.
2. So what CAN I do??: "They tell me I can't spank, they tell me I can't yell, now they tell me I can't do time-outs. OMFG, what can I as a parent do to quiet my screaming toddler? Has the author of this piece ever spent an hour with a three year old??" Yes, parents are powerless. Yawn.
3. We can't have kids running wild!: This one starts getting interesting, because they have a point. We've all seen kids who are completely out of control in public places, and the parents do nothing to stop them. Then of course we occasionally hear about wildly inappropriate responses to such things. What's especially interesting about the case I linked to is: a) nothing would have happened had it been the parent slapping the two year old, and on a very different note: b) the perpetrator of this crime, who really comes across as a monster, might have earned a bit of understanding had he decided to slap the mother instead. But this type of comment really just highlights the underlying tension rather than resolving it.
4. The kids are fine!: "Would everyone just take it easy - parents are imperfect, but guess what, most of us turned out just fine. Why, look at my kids!" I have to disagree. Strenuously. Not about "your" kids (though who is to say they are fine? did you ask them? could they tell you honestly? do they even know themselves?), but in general. I'll get into this in more detail later. But we know very little about what sort of upbringing makes people happy and productive as adults. It no doubt varies tremendously and has a not inconsiderable genetic component as well as the environmental component. But why this would be an uninteresting problem not worthy of study eludes me. A lot of improving society, of unlocking human potential, would come through a better understanding of just precisely this.
5. Of course I love my children unconditionally, but...: This one was very common and is the most interesting for a number of reasons. First, it highlights this tension between needing to produce human beings who can function in society and producing obedient "well-trained" drones who are productive and successful and miserable. Second, "of course" I love my children unconditionally begs the question of what unconditional love is. It also begs the question of whether the children perceive that love as unconditional (which is actually more important than whether the parent intends it so).
I don't think "unconditional love" is a term we should throw around lightly, even when we are talking about someone's children. Again, it's worth reading the comments because there's a lot of good discussion about this there, and about separating one's feelings for the person from feelings about their actions. Many parents said they would occasionally say to their (misbehaving) children: "I love you but I don't like you right now" (which, as several commenters pointed out, is a terrible and confusing way to try to make what is essentially a noble point). A few would instead use the (much better, in my opinion): "I love you but I don't like your behavior right now."
Finally, I was thinking about this and I have to admit some puzzlement over even the concept of "unconditional love." Maybe it is just biological, instinctual in some cases? But as sentient beings, to what degree can you actually separate who a person is from what they do? It may be different for children and their parents than for any other relationship: the parents knew and loved the children when they were just infants, just balls of cuteness who "were" without "doing" anything but sleeping and crying and eating and pooping. But when you think about the qualities that make us human, and that make us love other humans, it's the things that come later. My wife loves me for who I am, I know, but how would she know who I am if it wasn't for the things I do? Or if I "was" one thing but devoted all my actions to deceiving the world by "doing" another set of things?
We are deep into squishy territory here, and the hypothetical that keeps popping into my mind is: "Would you still love your child if...?" And it'd have to be really bad to be viable. "Would you still love your child if he deliberately killed someone else, maybe another of your children?" Something like that.
Granted, I did not grow up in the healthiest of homes when it came to understanding love. I was told that I loved certain people and just figured I had to obey regardless of how I actually felt. So I never really understood what "love" in that sense was. I would say I loved my brothers sometimes, for instance, to avoid getting in trouble (it rarely worked). Or tell my dad I loved him when he was in one of his fits of fury (that, I still believe, would just backfire on me, for reasons I don't care to speculate about right now). But with that out there, it's hard for me to even know how I would feel if I was told as a child that I was loved for who I was and not what I did. I don't think I would believe it...but maybe I would start to, if it was truly shown.
I was thinking about it on the train the other day. What if [Very Important Politician] was my grandfather? They'd give me their time, attention, advice, money. And I would get to know them. But as a stranger I get nothing. What's the difference between me and their grandchild? Yes, of course: genetics, fitness. It makes perfect evolutionary sense. But what if I were adopted? Adopted by their children? Then truly there is no difference - not at first, and not ever from that evolutionary point of view. Can you just wake up one morning and consciously decide to love somebody unconditionally?
Anyway, I don't think this is a point to be tossed aside with an "of course."
Besides these categories, many many of the comments focused on the "time-out", which strikes me as an incredibly tame disciplinary tool but which the article says may cause "deep anxiety" in children because it equates to "withdrawal of love and affection." Many of the commenters thought this was nuts. To me it seems like it all comes down to the way you do it (this is true in general). You can put a kid in a time-out in a way that makes them feel as though you most definitely have withdrawn your love. My parents never used time-outs on us, but when my dad got mad I could just feel the contempt radiating off him. That was much worse than being hit - it was never about the physical pain or the fear of it. It was the anger and the contempt and sometimes the nonsensicality (maybe not a word?) of the whole thing, or the huge disconnect between what he was saying and what was (and what he knew, must have known) to be true about me. I've thought long and hard about it and "contempt" is really the right word. He didn't have all that much love, so far as I can tell, to withdraw in the first place. But you could do discipline in a much different way.
Well, I am running out of steam and haven't even gotten to the "consilience" from the title of the post (or circled back on "the kids are fine"). So I will have to continue this in another post, where I will go through some of the most interesting individual comments in the thread and then try to wrap it up. Let me finish this post with a final thought: it seems to be that one key take-home message is that discipline should be about the child and not about the parent. "Because I said so" is almost never an instructive answer. This may be easier said than done, but certainly seems like an admirable general principle to strive to uphold.
definitely included) projects, and the article purports to move beyond the realm of the subjective by showing some hard data.
I'm actually less interested in evaluating the recommendations in the article than I am the comments. Several "schools of thought" emerged from the comments, some of which can be brushed off as uninteresting while others were very interesting. I want to run through these schools of thought and then highlight a couple of individual comments that I thought were especially noteworthy. So let's move in rough order from least to most interesting:
1. The Neanderthals: and of course there were a few. "God tells me I must break my child's spirit and force them to cheerfully obey my every whim" and the like. Very few of these, though you certainly have to feel sorry for their kids, who will both hate their parents and hate themselves.
2. So what CAN I do??: "They tell me I can't spank, they tell me I can't yell, now they tell me I can't do time-outs. OMFG, what can I as a parent do to quiet my screaming toddler? Has the author of this piece ever spent an hour with a three year old??" Yes, parents are powerless. Yawn.
3. We can't have kids running wild!: This one starts getting interesting, because they have a point. We've all seen kids who are completely out of control in public places, and the parents do nothing to stop them. Then of course we occasionally hear about wildly inappropriate responses to such things. What's especially interesting about the case I linked to is: a) nothing would have happened had it been the parent slapping the two year old, and on a very different note: b) the perpetrator of this crime, who really comes across as a monster, might have earned a bit of understanding had he decided to slap the mother instead. But this type of comment really just highlights the underlying tension rather than resolving it.
4. The kids are fine!: "Would everyone just take it easy - parents are imperfect, but guess what, most of us turned out just fine. Why, look at my kids!" I have to disagree. Strenuously. Not about "your" kids (though who is to say they are fine? did you ask them? could they tell you honestly? do they even know themselves?), but in general. I'll get into this in more detail later. But we know very little about what sort of upbringing makes people happy and productive as adults. It no doubt varies tremendously and has a not inconsiderable genetic component as well as the environmental component. But why this would be an uninteresting problem not worthy of study eludes me. A lot of improving society, of unlocking human potential, would come through a better understanding of just precisely this.
5. Of course I love my children unconditionally, but...: This one was very common and is the most interesting for a number of reasons. First, it highlights this tension between needing to produce human beings who can function in society and producing obedient "well-trained" drones who are productive and successful and miserable. Second, "of course" I love my children unconditionally begs the question of what unconditional love is. It also begs the question of whether the children perceive that love as unconditional (which is actually more important than whether the parent intends it so).
I don't think "unconditional love" is a term we should throw around lightly, even when we are talking about someone's children. Again, it's worth reading the comments because there's a lot of good discussion about this there, and about separating one's feelings for the person from feelings about their actions. Many parents said they would occasionally say to their (misbehaving) children: "I love you but I don't like you right now" (which, as several commenters pointed out, is a terrible and confusing way to try to make what is essentially a noble point). A few would instead use the (much better, in my opinion): "I love you but I don't like your behavior right now."
Finally, I was thinking about this and I have to admit some puzzlement over even the concept of "unconditional love." Maybe it is just biological, instinctual in some cases? But as sentient beings, to what degree can you actually separate who a person is from what they do? It may be different for children and their parents than for any other relationship: the parents knew and loved the children when they were just infants, just balls of cuteness who "were" without "doing" anything but sleeping and crying and eating and pooping. But when you think about the qualities that make us human, and that make us love other humans, it's the things that come later. My wife loves me for who I am, I know, but how would she know who I am if it wasn't for the things I do? Or if I "was" one thing but devoted all my actions to deceiving the world by "doing" another set of things?
We are deep into squishy territory here, and the hypothetical that keeps popping into my mind is: "Would you still love your child if...?" And it'd have to be really bad to be viable. "Would you still love your child if he deliberately killed someone else, maybe another of your children?" Something like that.
Granted, I did not grow up in the healthiest of homes when it came to understanding love. I was told that I loved certain people and just figured I had to obey regardless of how I actually felt. So I never really understood what "love" in that sense was. I would say I loved my brothers sometimes, for instance, to avoid getting in trouble (it rarely worked). Or tell my dad I loved him when he was in one of his fits of fury (that, I still believe, would just backfire on me, for reasons I don't care to speculate about right now). But with that out there, it's hard for me to even know how I would feel if I was told as a child that I was loved for who I was and not what I did. I don't think I would believe it...but maybe I would start to, if it was truly shown.
I was thinking about it on the train the other day. What if [Very Important Politician] was my grandfather? They'd give me their time, attention, advice, money. And I would get to know them. But as a stranger I get nothing. What's the difference between me and their grandchild? Yes, of course: genetics, fitness. It makes perfect evolutionary sense. But what if I were adopted? Adopted by their children? Then truly there is no difference - not at first, and not ever from that evolutionary point of view. Can you just wake up one morning and consciously decide to love somebody unconditionally?
Anyway, I don't think this is a point to be tossed aside with an "of course."
Besides these categories, many many of the comments focused on the "time-out", which strikes me as an incredibly tame disciplinary tool but which the article says may cause "deep anxiety" in children because it equates to "withdrawal of love and affection." Many of the commenters thought this was nuts. To me it seems like it all comes down to the way you do it (this is true in general). You can put a kid in a time-out in a way that makes them feel as though you most definitely have withdrawn your love. My parents never used time-outs on us, but when my dad got mad I could just feel the contempt radiating off him. That was much worse than being hit - it was never about the physical pain or the fear of it. It was the anger and the contempt and sometimes the nonsensicality (maybe not a word?) of the whole thing, or the huge disconnect between what he was saying and what was (and what he knew, must have known) to be true about me. I've thought long and hard about it and "contempt" is really the right word. He didn't have all that much love, so far as I can tell, to withdraw in the first place. But you could do discipline in a much different way.
Well, I am running out of steam and haven't even gotten to the "consilience" from the title of the post (or circled back on "the kids are fine"). So I will have to continue this in another post, where I will go through some of the most interesting individual comments in the thread and then try to wrap it up. Let me finish this post with a final thought: it seems to be that one key take-home message is that discipline should be about the child and not about the parent. "Because I said so" is almost never an instructive answer. This may be easier said than done, but certainly seems like an admirable general principle to strive to uphold.
Severing My Last Ties To Academia
When I got my first job here in D.C., one thing I wanted to ensure was that I was not cut entirely loose from academia. I thought about trying to secure an affiliation with my postdoctoral institution, even though I hated them, but one of my mentors had the excellent idea that I should try to get an affiliation with an academic institution here in D.C. (and one more prestigious than my postdoctoral institution, too).
There was a department chair at a local institution who'd spent a semester as a visiting scholar in my grad school department - I'd interacted with him a little and, even though we didn't work on similar stuff, we got along and he seemed like a good contact. It was also helpful that several former grad students from my department and other "conference buddies" of mine were in his department as postdocs and temporary researchers. So I approached him and managed to secure an affiliation.
The affiliation worked like this: I got a title, a mailbox and an ID. Some other things were offered - a part of an office, an e-mail address - but I never got them through a combination of institutional bureaucracy and my own lack of time (I was working on Capitol Hill). Still, I went over there to visit a couple of times and everyone was super nice, especially compared to the shitheads who were almost everywhere at my postdoctoral institution. I'd intended to get more involved, but time constraints that year proved insurmountable. They didn't ask anything of me, but I also didn't take anything besides the affiliation...and anyway, it's not like I was on the payroll. I had a couple of papers still in the (very slow) publication pipeline, and I used that affiliation when the papers eventually came out (so, in a sense, they did get something from me).
The years have passed quickly: nearly four years now. I've changed jobs a couple of times (and long ago basically gave up on a return to academia under all but the most exceptional circumstances), most of my friends are no longer in that department, the chair is no longer chair (though he's still on staff), and I don't know a lot of the other staff. My affiliation is coming up for renewal. I'm still busy but not so crazy as I was when I worked on the Hill, and I thought this might be a good time to go over and try to renew my ties and make new connections.
But my sponsor, the former chair, beat me to it. He e-mailed last week to say they were trying to cut the number of affiliations, and - were I actively collaborating with someone else in the department - that person should push for my renewal. If not, there wouldn't be a renewal.
He wasn't telling me I hadn't done my job, because I didn't have a job with them, just an affiliation. No one was being blamed. It just was that I wasn't collaborating or really tied to them at all. And it is true - I could have done much more to build relationships over there. As I told my former sponsor, with only 24 hours in a day, it is hard to keep one foot in the science world and one foot in the policy world. And there was a time, about my second year in D.C., where I deliberately chose to clear my schedule and not take on new obligations - such as spending more time over there - so that I could begin the groundwork for writing my novel. Well, my novel is done, but my choice had a consequence.
Having said all that, I must admit it still hurt a little to get his e-mail cutting me loose. It's hard for me to understand how such affiliations cost them anything: I took up neither time nor space nor money. The few papers I published with that affiliation were solid, and in legitimate journals. And I would think having connections with a wider range of scholars would be good for them (just as I perceive it's good for me).
Look, I don't want to take anything away from what they did for me when I first got here, or count myself blameless for not keeping in touch. I'd still like to collaborate if the right thing comes up (and the door is certainly open for that - my former sponsor made it clear).
But I just have to say: academia sure knows how to make me feel like crap, even so long after I (mostly) left it.
There was a department chair at a local institution who'd spent a semester as a visiting scholar in my grad school department - I'd interacted with him a little and, even though we didn't work on similar stuff, we got along and he seemed like a good contact. It was also helpful that several former grad students from my department and other "conference buddies" of mine were in his department as postdocs and temporary researchers. So I approached him and managed to secure an affiliation.
The affiliation worked like this: I got a title, a mailbox and an ID. Some other things were offered - a part of an office, an e-mail address - but I never got them through a combination of institutional bureaucracy and my own lack of time (I was working on Capitol Hill). Still, I went over there to visit a couple of times and everyone was super nice, especially compared to the shitheads who were almost everywhere at my postdoctoral institution. I'd intended to get more involved, but time constraints that year proved insurmountable. They didn't ask anything of me, but I also didn't take anything besides the affiliation...and anyway, it's not like I was on the payroll. I had a couple of papers still in the (very slow) publication pipeline, and I used that affiliation when the papers eventually came out (so, in a sense, they did get something from me).
The years have passed quickly: nearly four years now. I've changed jobs a couple of times (and long ago basically gave up on a return to academia under all but the most exceptional circumstances), most of my friends are no longer in that department, the chair is no longer chair (though he's still on staff), and I don't know a lot of the other staff. My affiliation is coming up for renewal. I'm still busy but not so crazy as I was when I worked on the Hill, and I thought this might be a good time to go over and try to renew my ties and make new connections.
But my sponsor, the former chair, beat me to it. He e-mailed last week to say they were trying to cut the number of affiliations, and - were I actively collaborating with someone else in the department - that person should push for my renewal. If not, there wouldn't be a renewal.
He wasn't telling me I hadn't done my job, because I didn't have a job with them, just an affiliation. No one was being blamed. It just was that I wasn't collaborating or really tied to them at all. And it is true - I could have done much more to build relationships over there. As I told my former sponsor, with only 24 hours in a day, it is hard to keep one foot in the science world and one foot in the policy world. And there was a time, about my second year in D.C., where I deliberately chose to clear my schedule and not take on new obligations - such as spending more time over there - so that I could begin the groundwork for writing my novel. Well, my novel is done, but my choice had a consequence.
Having said all that, I must admit it still hurt a little to get his e-mail cutting me loose. It's hard for me to understand how such affiliations cost them anything: I took up neither time nor space nor money. The few papers I published with that affiliation were solid, and in legitimate journals. And I would think having connections with a wider range of scholars would be good for them (just as I perceive it's good for me).
Look, I don't want to take anything away from what they did for me when I first got here, or count myself blameless for not keeping in touch. I'd still like to collaborate if the right thing comes up (and the door is certainly open for that - my former sponsor made it clear).
But I just have to say: academia sure knows how to make me feel like crap, even so long after I (mostly) left it.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Are You Thinking Of Sending A Check To That Couple You Know Who Just Got Married?
Great. But DON'T MAKE IT OUT TO BOTH OF THEM!!! Just pick one of them.
If you make the check out to "Mr. and Mrs." or whatever, then - unless they immediately open a joint account, which might not be #1 on their priorities list, you realize - you've just made it way more difficult for them to cash your check.
They've got enough on their plates without having to loan each other their IDs for the day (or find a time when they can both go to the bank together) just to get your $$$ into their accounts.
Your gift is appreciated...but please, think for a moment of the practicalities.
If you make the check out to "Mr. and Mrs." or whatever, then - unless they immediately open a joint account, which might not be #1 on their priorities list, you realize - you've just made it way more difficult for them to cash your check.
They've got enough on their plates without having to loan each other their IDs for the day (or find a time when they can both go to the bank together) just to get your $$$ into their accounts.
Your gift is appreciated...but please, think for a moment of the practicalities.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
"Is Obedience Worth The Possible Long-Term Psychological Harm?"
Must-read from the New York Times:
`It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.'
...
`Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional affection with their own children.'
...
`What these and other studies tell us, if we’re able to hear the news, is that praising children for doing something right isn’t a meaningful alternative to pulling back or punishing when they do something wrong. Both are examples of conditional parenting, and both are counterproductive.'
...
`...unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.'
`It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.'
...
`Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional affection with their own children.'
...
`What these and other studies tell us, if we’re able to hear the news, is that praising children for doing something right isn’t a meaningful alternative to pulling back or punishing when they do something wrong. Both are examples of conditional parenting, and both are counterproductive.'
...
`...unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.'
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Getting Close
You know what? I think one more session and I will be through with incorporating my second beta reader's comments into my manuscript. After that? One more read-through and then it is go-time!
Time to make that query letter as close to perfect as I can manage, and then send in the first batch.
I may have mentioned in previous posts that I actually queried for one of the novels I wrote in high school. It was way back before the internet, and I went to the public library and did the best I could with the hard copy of the Literary Marketplace. I decided to query editors directly, rather than agents. I am trying to recall why I made this (no doubt extremely poor) decision, but I cannot. Maybe, at the time, agents seemed like just another barrier. (Now, of course, my understanding is quite different, though there are a few small presses on my list that invite queries directly from writers, and I may approach them and see what happens...but I probably won't go to them first.) My novel was definitely in the fantasy genre, so I hit up publishing houses that specialize in fantasy. No bites, of course, though one editor actually sent my submission back with a detailed critique...that by itself is pretty amazing (I'm not sure I realized how amazing back then, since the answer was still no).
Well, there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then, obviously. I don't know what's going to happen this time, but I'm not going to make stupid strategic mistakes (or, maybe more precisely, I've done the homework to minimize the likelihood of that happening). In high school, I had the sense to move right along to my next big project even while trying to publish the first one, and that was one thing I did right and that I am going to try to do this time as well.
I was telling my wife before that as I read over the parts of my manuscript that I think are the strongest, a little voice inside my head is already wondering if I can do it again. Um, a little premature much?!
Tomorrow starts a long busy week (the first of four between now and Columbus Day), so I'm going to have to be good about managing my time if I want to make steady progress on everything and maintain some of the momentum I came out of my vacation/wedding with. One effective strategy at work, I've noticed, is to come in with a clear idea of what needs to get done and set immediately to knocking a couple of things out. The truth is that I run out of steam during the course of the day, and unless there are immediately looming deadlines I'm less likely to be able to plow through stuff at 4 pm than I am at 10 am. So to come in and get right to work, instead of checking e-mails, my feed, the newspapers, etc. (except for a quick check to make sure there are no emergencies) works pretty well. It also gives me a feeling of productivity and accomplishment for the rest of the day, which can sometimes spur me on to do even more. The flip side is that when I need a break or run out of steam on work-work, I should probably have a list of small manageable tasks related to this project that I can try to get through, instead of wasting time on the internet. I have to be flexible because my workload often seems beyond my control, but I've been at my job for just about a year now and I should feel secure. I get my work done, I do a good job.
I need to focus, and sometimes a break helps me focus. In an ideal world I'd also take time to meditate (maybe 10 minutes a day - surely I can spare that) and go down and use our building's little gym every so often (which I don't do), especially if I know things are coming up that will stop me from going to the gym here at home. It's definitely helpful to have a list of what I want to accomplish for the day, and it might be beneficial for me to add some personal things to that list too. Work takes priority of course (when I'm at work), but I can probably work some of these other things in if I have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish.
Time to make that query letter as close to perfect as I can manage, and then send in the first batch.
I may have mentioned in previous posts that I actually queried for one of the novels I wrote in high school. It was way back before the internet, and I went to the public library and did the best I could with the hard copy of the Literary Marketplace. I decided to query editors directly, rather than agents. I am trying to recall why I made this (no doubt extremely poor) decision, but I cannot. Maybe, at the time, agents seemed like just another barrier. (Now, of course, my understanding is quite different, though there are a few small presses on my list that invite queries directly from writers, and I may approach them and see what happens...but I probably won't go to them first.) My novel was definitely in the fantasy genre, so I hit up publishing houses that specialize in fantasy. No bites, of course, though one editor actually sent my submission back with a detailed critique...that by itself is pretty amazing (I'm not sure I realized how amazing back then, since the answer was still no).
Well, there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then, obviously. I don't know what's going to happen this time, but I'm not going to make stupid strategic mistakes (or, maybe more precisely, I've done the homework to minimize the likelihood of that happening). In high school, I had the sense to move right along to my next big project even while trying to publish the first one, and that was one thing I did right and that I am going to try to do this time as well.
I was telling my wife before that as I read over the parts of my manuscript that I think are the strongest, a little voice inside my head is already wondering if I can do it again. Um, a little premature much?!
Tomorrow starts a long busy week (the first of four between now and Columbus Day), so I'm going to have to be good about managing my time if I want to make steady progress on everything and maintain some of the momentum I came out of my vacation/wedding with. One effective strategy at work, I've noticed, is to come in with a clear idea of what needs to get done and set immediately to knocking a couple of things out. The truth is that I run out of steam during the course of the day, and unless there are immediately looming deadlines I'm less likely to be able to plow through stuff at 4 pm than I am at 10 am. So to come in and get right to work, instead of checking e-mails, my feed, the newspapers, etc. (except for a quick check to make sure there are no emergencies) works pretty well. It also gives me a feeling of productivity and accomplishment for the rest of the day, which can sometimes spur me on to do even more. The flip side is that when I need a break or run out of steam on work-work, I should probably have a list of small manageable tasks related to this project that I can try to get through, instead of wasting time on the internet. I have to be flexible because my workload often seems beyond my control, but I've been at my job for just about a year now and I should feel secure. I get my work done, I do a good job.
I need to focus, and sometimes a break helps me focus. In an ideal world I'd also take time to meditate (maybe 10 minutes a day - surely I can spare that) and go down and use our building's little gym every so often (which I don't do), especially if I know things are coming up that will stop me from going to the gym here at home. It's definitely helpful to have a list of what I want to accomplish for the day, and it might be beneficial for me to add some personal things to that list too. Work takes priority of course (when I'm at work), but I can probably work some of these other things in if I have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Books
I've done a lot of reading this year, having just completed my 26th book of the year. (Last year, by contrast, I read 29 for the whole year.) Only eight of those 26 have been nonfiction, and fiction tends to read faster. Case in point: The Dictators, by Richard Overy, which I just finished, is a book I've been slogging through (with many breaks to read other things) over the past four or five months (in my favor, though, it is 650 dense pages long). It was well-written, enlightening, and very interesting, and I'd recommend it to people with an interest in the subject (though it probably shouldn't be the first book you read on either Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, especially if you are interested in the personalities of the dictators and the members of their inner circles). I went slow because it was overwhelming, not because it was boring (though its comprehensiveness wasn't always a strength for me as an interested layperson - there is only so much I want to know about the comparative armaments production or agricultural output of the two systems through the 1930s).
This reminds me, though, that while I've been doing lots of reading this year, I basically couldn't do worse on posting reviews. And as I've experienced in the past, once I let too much time elapse after finishing a book, it becomes much more difficult to produce a worthwhile review. And for whatever reason, my inclination to post reviews has been extremely low. I'm not sure why...it's not like I don't have opinions or thoughts about what I'm reading. In fact, I've read a lot of fiction this year and feel like I'm much better able to be critical and evaluate the writing than I used to be. It's not so much saying "I like this" or "I don't like that" as being able to put your finger on precisely what it is and then articulate it. And it might be style, or characters, or plot, or exposition, or some combination.
Part of it is probably that my wife and I have been reading a lot of things in common this year. One of us buys books and the both of us go crazy. Sure, there's stuff only she wants to read (and I wouldn't hold my breath for her to be interested in tackling The Dictators), but we've read a fair amount of common and we've been having more and more conversations about them that somewhat negate my need to come on here and write down my thoughts. We had a whole series of discussions about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for example (we both thought it was way overrated, but at least it was complex enough to facilitate those discussions).
Just the other day we were talking about The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, a novel by a young Ethiopian-American author (Dinaw Mengestu) that I found just browsing at Barnes & Noble one day. For a variety of reasons, including that it takes place in D.C., I was interested to read it and did so last month. My wife just finished it herself. We certainly don't always agree on literature, but in this case we both thought that while it was well-written, it was too spare, as though it had been "workshopped to death" (not surprising given the author's age and educational background) and basically lacked a plot. He comes really close to some interesting, very thorny and complex issues, but he just kind of skirts around the margin. I'd check out his next book (when it comes out), but I hope next time he won't be so constrained and he'll take some chances, put some meat on the book's bones.
In his introduction to the Best American Short Stories volume that he edited, Stephen King wrote that looked for stories that hit him "full-bore, like a big hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while..." That's what I like, too (though not if it comes at the expense of realistic characters or a believable storyline). The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears reminded me a lot of Poet and Dancer by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, which I read a few years ago: the story was perfect (too perfect, not a single extra minor character or line of dialogue that didn't feed directly into the very spare narrative). Like I said, workshopped to death. Writers and readers who like to focus on "craft" would be drawn to this type of work, but it's not very appealing to me.
If you look at my reading this year, you'll also see I've been on a bit of a World War II kick (European theater). I go through these phases - back in grad school I spent a year or two fairly obsessed with first century Rome. Then reading Solzhenitsyn got me interested in Stalinist Russia. I think what set me off this year was reading Albert Speer's memoirs. (His story, at the time, sounded kind of reasonable, though - perhaps not surprisingly - the more I read this year the less credible he became.) Then I read Primo Levi, and how could I stop after that?
(Here is a digression: how did I get through so many years of Hebrew school growing up without ever hearing of Primo Levi? Then again, I'd never heard of the Warsaw Uprising or anything about the Jewish resistance. We read Night, we read The Diary of Anne Frank - and it is a miscalculation to expect kids to understand the power of that work - we saw nasty pictures of the camps after liberation, and then we moved on. Jews always portrayed as weak, willing victims getting on those trains to their deaths: that's what I got in Hebrew School. Then I would go to real school and get picked on for being Jewish. And at home my Christian father was bullying and controlling while my Jewish mother was passive and timid. Is it any wonder I started to feel a little bit of disgust...at all the old folks at my synagogue but then at myself too? And who was supposed to help me resolve this? End digression.)
What's kind of neat this year is that I've been able to mix the non-fiction with some fiction. We all know about how literature (and authors) fared under Stalin, but who ever hears about literature under the Nazis? It was fortuitous that several of Hans Fallada's books were reissued this year. Then I read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, a work of fiction that reinforced everything I'd read about Soviet communism and really helped me understand its true essence better. Since hulu.com has stopped posting any movies that hold even the slightest interest for me, when I want to kill some time watching something, I've found myself spending more and more time looking at the videos posted by 20thcenturywar on youtube. You could spend days and days watching all the stuff that guy's posted - I love it.
Why the draw? Of course there is some morbid fascination, and then there is also the idea that this was the pivotal struggle of the 20th century, that if things had turned out differently, humanity would have gone down a different path forever. At another level, there is simply no comparison in terms of human drama. I am not saying that this is a good thing, but it is true. It's almost as though everything in our lives today - even the big things, the wonderful or terrible things - simply pale by comparison. It is truly overwhelming, and almost never in a good way.
I want to come back to this, I want to explore it further in other posts. I want to do it at three levels: the level of the individual (especially I want to say something about the Alice Miller book over on my list), the level of society (since Overy and Koestler and others certainly convinced me that both Nazism and communism are essentially superorganismic ideologies - think ants and bees - but they both require superhumanizing and subhumanizing others), and then a more anthropological level beyond humanity. That all probably makes little sense, but that's why I want to come back to it later.
Might this all feed into my next big project? I am thinking not...or if so, only very tangentially. But it is certainly interesting.
This reminds me, though, that while I've been doing lots of reading this year, I basically couldn't do worse on posting reviews. And as I've experienced in the past, once I let too much time elapse after finishing a book, it becomes much more difficult to produce a worthwhile review. And for whatever reason, my inclination to post reviews has been extremely low. I'm not sure why...it's not like I don't have opinions or thoughts about what I'm reading. In fact, I've read a lot of fiction this year and feel like I'm much better able to be critical and evaluate the writing than I used to be. It's not so much saying "I like this" or "I don't like that" as being able to put your finger on precisely what it is and then articulate it. And it might be style, or characters, or plot, or exposition, or some combination.
Part of it is probably that my wife and I have been reading a lot of things in common this year. One of us buys books and the both of us go crazy. Sure, there's stuff only she wants to read (and I wouldn't hold my breath for her to be interested in tackling The Dictators), but we've read a fair amount of common and we've been having more and more conversations about them that somewhat negate my need to come on here and write down my thoughts. We had a whole series of discussions about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for example (we both thought it was way overrated, but at least it was complex enough to facilitate those discussions).
Just the other day we were talking about The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, a novel by a young Ethiopian-American author (Dinaw Mengestu) that I found just browsing at Barnes & Noble one day. For a variety of reasons, including that it takes place in D.C., I was interested to read it and did so last month. My wife just finished it herself. We certainly don't always agree on literature, but in this case we both thought that while it was well-written, it was too spare, as though it had been "workshopped to death" (not surprising given the author's age and educational background) and basically lacked a plot. He comes really close to some interesting, very thorny and complex issues, but he just kind of skirts around the margin. I'd check out his next book (when it comes out), but I hope next time he won't be so constrained and he'll take some chances, put some meat on the book's bones.
In his introduction to the Best American Short Stories volume that he edited, Stephen King wrote that looked for stories that hit him "full-bore, like a big hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while..." That's what I like, too (though not if it comes at the expense of realistic characters or a believable storyline). The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears reminded me a lot of Poet and Dancer by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, which I read a few years ago: the story was perfect (too perfect, not a single extra minor character or line of dialogue that didn't feed directly into the very spare narrative). Like I said, workshopped to death. Writers and readers who like to focus on "craft" would be drawn to this type of work, but it's not very appealing to me.
If you look at my reading this year, you'll also see I've been on a bit of a World War II kick (European theater). I go through these phases - back in grad school I spent a year or two fairly obsessed with first century Rome. Then reading Solzhenitsyn got me interested in Stalinist Russia. I think what set me off this year was reading Albert Speer's memoirs. (His story, at the time, sounded kind of reasonable, though - perhaps not surprisingly - the more I read this year the less credible he became.) Then I read Primo Levi, and how could I stop after that?
(Here is a digression: how did I get through so many years of Hebrew school growing up without ever hearing of Primo Levi? Then again, I'd never heard of the Warsaw Uprising or anything about the Jewish resistance. We read Night, we read The Diary of Anne Frank - and it is a miscalculation to expect kids to understand the power of that work - we saw nasty pictures of the camps after liberation, and then we moved on. Jews always portrayed as weak, willing victims getting on those trains to their deaths: that's what I got in Hebrew School. Then I would go to real school and get picked on for being Jewish. And at home my Christian father was bullying and controlling while my Jewish mother was passive and timid. Is it any wonder I started to feel a little bit of disgust...at all the old folks at my synagogue but then at myself too? And who was supposed to help me resolve this? End digression.)
What's kind of neat this year is that I've been able to mix the non-fiction with some fiction. We all know about how literature (and authors) fared under Stalin, but who ever hears about literature under the Nazis? It was fortuitous that several of Hans Fallada's books were reissued this year. Then I read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, a work of fiction that reinforced everything I'd read about Soviet communism and really helped me understand its true essence better. Since hulu.com has stopped posting any movies that hold even the slightest interest for me, when I want to kill some time watching something, I've found myself spending more and more time looking at the videos posted by 20thcenturywar on youtube. You could spend days and days watching all the stuff that guy's posted - I love it.
Why the draw? Of course there is some morbid fascination, and then there is also the idea that this was the pivotal struggle of the 20th century, that if things had turned out differently, humanity would have gone down a different path forever. At another level, there is simply no comparison in terms of human drama. I am not saying that this is a good thing, but it is true. It's almost as though everything in our lives today - even the big things, the wonderful or terrible things - simply pale by comparison. It is truly overwhelming, and almost never in a good way.
I want to come back to this, I want to explore it further in other posts. I want to do it at three levels: the level of the individual (especially I want to say something about the Alice Miller book over on my list), the level of society (since Overy and Koestler and others certainly convinced me that both Nazism and communism are essentially superorganismic ideologies - think ants and bees - but they both require superhumanizing and subhumanizing others), and then a more anthropological level beyond humanity. That all probably makes little sense, but that's why I want to come back to it later.
Might this all feed into my next big project? I am thinking not...or if so, only very tangentially. But it is certainly interesting.
There Is Almost Nothing I Hate Worse Than A Controlling Bully
I have a very strong negative reaction to such personalities (gee, can you guess why?) even when I encounter them online. And some of the prominent denizens of scienceblogs are nothing but bullies. I learn nothing from them, they lower the discourse in every conversation they take part in, and I only get aggravated when I visit and witness their schoolyard tactics (and I don't participate in "conversations" over there - I am just watching how they treat each other). It's such a turn-off - one of the reasons I have so little inclination to get involved in blogger "communities." These are supposed to be the smart, sophisticated people? Give me a fucking break. I heard better argumentation in my undergrad student government.
I would love to call one or two of them out by name (actually, what I'd really love is to knock out their teeth and feed them their asses on a silver platter - seriously, I would like to meet especially one of them in person and just wail on him until he cries the way he accuses anyone who disagrees with him of doing), but these people absolutely LIVE for flinging shit at one another and I don't want to ruin my blog that way. (Let's just say my days of enjoying Jameson's whiskey are over, OK? In fact, I'd rather bash this prick over the head with a bottle of Jameson's than drink it, and trust me, wasting all that alcohol is not something a guy like me does lightly.) It takes a lot for me to hope that an anonymous blogger gets outed (for obvious reasons), but I would cackle with pure delight if this fucking asshole was outed and had to actually face some people in real life.
So I will be a grownup (someone has to) and try to suppress my unbelievable rage (controlling bullies make me a little crazy like that, you know), count slowly to ten, unsubscribe from a couple of blogs (hadn't learned anything from them anyway, and heck, my days of caring about academic science careers are long over), make a vow to stop visiting, and replace them on my feed with maybe some additional literary blogs.
Or a zen blog with daily meditations, or something. Some people are just [insert profanity-laden invective here: I've got no problem with profanity, but it just gets tedious after a while, and did I mention that I HATE BULLIES?!]. OK, deep breaths, deep breaths....
I would love to call one or two of them out by name (actually, what I'd really love is to knock out their teeth and feed them their asses on a silver platter - seriously, I would like to meet especially one of them in person and just wail on him until he cries the way he accuses anyone who disagrees with him of doing), but these people absolutely LIVE for flinging shit at one another and I don't want to ruin my blog that way. (Let's just say my days of enjoying Jameson's whiskey are over, OK? In fact, I'd rather bash this prick over the head with a bottle of Jameson's than drink it, and trust me, wasting all that alcohol is not something a guy like me does lightly.) It takes a lot for me to hope that an anonymous blogger gets outed (for obvious reasons), but I would cackle with pure delight if this fucking asshole was outed and had to actually face some people in real life.
So I will be a grownup (someone has to) and try to suppress my unbelievable rage (controlling bullies make me a little crazy like that, you know), count slowly to ten, unsubscribe from a couple of blogs (hadn't learned anything from them anyway, and heck, my days of caring about academic science careers are long over), make a vow to stop visiting, and replace them on my feed with maybe some additional literary blogs.
Or a zen blog with daily meditations, or something. Some people are just [insert profanity-laden invective here: I've got no problem with profanity, but it just gets tedious after a while, and did I mention that I HATE BULLIES?!]. OK, deep breaths, deep breaths....
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Stream Of Consciousness
Wifey (!!!) and I were supposed to go to a Nats game tonight with some friends/old co-workers. The group decided to call it off this morning because of the likelihood of rain - it turned into a nice day so that was evidently a mistake...but we tried to take advantage of the evening and went to the gym. We have actually gone five of the last six days, which is pretty fucking awesome if I do say so myself (of course, it's a lot easier when there's a three-day weekend).
We also did some nice long walks outside over the weekend. It's actually pretty good around where we live in terms of green space - yet another reason I'm glad I picked this area (basically at random, and certainly not for reasons of green space) when I moved to D.C. The northern edge of Rock Creek Park is just a few blocks away, and in Maryland, Rock Creek Park gives way to a corridor of different county parks and trails that runs for many miles. For a while, a few years ago, I was going out to the same spot on a trail near my apartment each week and taking a picture. I hoped I could capture the transition in the foliage and the landscape over a year that way, then maybe print the pictures and mount them together in some creative way on the wall. Eventually I wound up skipping weeks, and then stopped going altogether. But here, to give you some sense, are the first and last pictures I took:
One thing I tend to do is to underrate the outdoorsy value of this whole part of the country. It's true - it's not like the west. But it is pretty in its own way, and you can get some fresh air, peace, and solitude. And we're pretty lucky to have it so close by. Now that the fall is approaching and the summer (which was really quite mild this year, thank goodness) is ending, the long stretch of tolerable weather begins. (And the fall colors here, though they come late, are really beautiful - fall is much more of a season here than in some of the other places I've lived, where it's really just a messy couple of weeks between summer and winter.) We've been walking most weekends now since before we left for the wedding. I used to walk by myself all the time. It's a great way to get some moderate exercise, some sun and outdoor exposure, and to think or meditate.
I spent a few hours over the weekend beginning to work through the comments from my second beta reader on my novel manuscript. She is not recommending anything totally major: some reorganizations of scenes, word and point-of-view clarifications...it will probably take 2-3 more weeks to get through it and have a final manuscript.
It is nerve-wracking to think that this is all that stands between me and actual submissions (well, this and finalizing a query letter, but as I've mentioned before, I'm already working on that). Of course I could always erect some more barriers (though thinking of them as "barriers" is perhaps unwise) but the only one I can think of is a critique by a writer's group. I have no reason to believe, however, that they would offer any more relevant suggestions than my beta readers have already. Plus, agents aren't just looking at the quality of the story and the writing, they are thinking about the saleability of the manuscript. No writer's group will focus on making the story more saleable. I happen to think this idea is quite saleable, but I of course am completely biased, and can understand and accept that there will be others - including many who know the market far better than me - who will disagree.
The advice is all over the blogs: don't get your hopes up too high. I don't view submitting a query letter the same as buying a lottery ticket - it's more like submitting a resume. If you asked me what I hope to accomplish by getting published (as opposed to what I hope to accomplish just by writing) I would say it is the satisfaction of seeing my work in print, of having others buy and read it, of reading and hearing what they think about it...plus the respect and intellectual cachet that comes with it. I know not to overrate this (or confuse it with celebrity), but it's still important. I strive to be scholarly, and writing a novel can be (and in my case is) somewhat of a scholarly exercise. And, if publishing the first novel greases the skids for publishing subsequent novels, great!
The advice is so common though as to almost be patronizing after a while. No one pulls young students interested in science aside and warns them: "Now, don't think you're going to be the next Einstein. You have to pay your dues. Don't think you're going to be as rich as Craig Venter or as much of an icon as Stephen Hawking or as great a public intellectual as Carl Sagan or Steve Gould." If anything, we put too rosy (and simplistic) a face on it. Most wannabe scientists, once they're past a certain point in their education at least, are more attracted to the thrill of discovery and the nature of academic/scientific life (or their perception of it) than to stardom. Which is kind of a "duh" observation, but I wonder why it's not so for wannabe writers? I knew a couple of people who were admitted into my graduate program who had absolutely the wrong idea of what being a graduate student in science was all about, and who weren't disabused of those ideas within the first few months. Those people did not last long.
Writing's a hobby, but it's something I'd like to do professionally. I'll only do it professionally if it pays the bills, but that doesn't mean I don't think it's hard work or expect it will make me fabulously wealthy. Likewise with science: science used to be the province of the rich, and now one might argue it is becoming that way again. I don't require all too much to support my lifestyle (relative to many Americans, including - I daresay - most of my peers), but I do require a living wage and some sense of security. One reason I left science was that it was not providing me with either of those, and intertwined with (yet somewhat independent from) that I lost my love for the day-to-day (which I came to see more and more was all about writing grants). Were I already wealthy I might still be doing science and just funding my own damn research. (Though were I wealthy right from the get-go I might have stuck with writing, which was my original love long before I became interested in science.)
An agent would hate to hear this, but I'd be content to publish my book and earn $0, maybe even take a loss by paying for some of the marketing out of my pocket (I would not, however, consider self-publishing). Most of the advances I see bloggers talking about are on the order of graduate student stipends - I would not expect a lifestyle change from earning $10,000 or $20,000 (minus commissions and taxes, of course). I would not quit my job to spend a year writing a novel for that amount of money even if a publisher begged me (and I'm sure none ever will). (I'd rather turn that amount down, keep my day job, and write at my own pace.)
I've indulged some fantasies, though: pay me enough to live on and I would seriously consider quitting my job and trying to do this full-time. Give me too much (not that I'm really saying it's too much and I wouldn't take it - ha! - but let's take the lottery ticket example to its extreme) and I might even be LESS likely to give up my day job. (Who knows? But I've often thought that if I were financially secure, not only would I not stop working, but I'd enjoy work much much more because the consequences of fucking up or not pleasing people would be negligible.)
Eh, enough idle musing. The take-home is that I'm not in it for the money. I love writing and plan to continue. But I do want to get published, and that raises what I think will be my final point for this post. Many writer, agent, and editor blogs convey the message that you should try to get published, and should keep trying to get published, not for the money or the fame but because you love writing. Maybe I miss the point of posts such as this, but to me it reflects a bit of a conflation between writing and publishing.
I write because I love writing (and again, a dissection of why is for another time). I don't look at agent or editor or author websites or blogs or compile lists of agents or worry about query letters or chuckle very uncomfortably at Query Shark or wonder whether I am doing an adequate job of "social networking" (and for this last I'm sure I'm not) because I love writing. None of that has a damn thing to do with writing. I do it because I want to get published and all the blogs tell me I have to do it if I want to stand even a chance.
And I'll make the point that every minute I spend polishing a query or reading blogs is a minute I'm not writing, and a reader of this post might retort that this is a trivial point, and I would agree given 24 hours in a day except that I leave my house before 8 am each morning and return well after 6 pm. In the interim I am working at a day job that has no literary merits whatsoever yet can be quite intellectually draining. That and I need to sleep or I can't concentrate on anything. And I need to work out or I will be homicidal. The minutes I have left for my "hobby" are therefore relatively limited, and precious (at least to me). If I just wanted to write and the hell with the world, that's what I'd do.
Well, one more point. I've been through the peer-review process for scientific papers more than a dozen times now. Some of these literary types have no idea how totally savage that can be. Rejection doesn't scare me. Bring it the fuck on! (Just please, don't let me soon run out of agents to submit to.)
We also did some nice long walks outside over the weekend. It's actually pretty good around where we live in terms of green space - yet another reason I'm glad I picked this area (basically at random, and certainly not for reasons of green space) when I moved to D.C. The northern edge of Rock Creek Park is just a few blocks away, and in Maryland, Rock Creek Park gives way to a corridor of different county parks and trails that runs for many miles. For a while, a few years ago, I was going out to the same spot on a trail near my apartment each week and taking a picture. I hoped I could capture the transition in the foliage and the landscape over a year that way, then maybe print the pictures and mount them together in some creative way on the wall. Eventually I wound up skipping weeks, and then stopped going altogether. But here, to give you some sense, are the first and last pictures I took:
One thing I tend to do is to underrate the outdoorsy value of this whole part of the country. It's true - it's not like the west. But it is pretty in its own way, and you can get some fresh air, peace, and solitude. And we're pretty lucky to have it so close by. Now that the fall is approaching and the summer (which was really quite mild this year, thank goodness) is ending, the long stretch of tolerable weather begins. (And the fall colors here, though they come late, are really beautiful - fall is much more of a season here than in some of the other places I've lived, where it's really just a messy couple of weeks between summer and winter.) We've been walking most weekends now since before we left for the wedding. I used to walk by myself all the time. It's a great way to get some moderate exercise, some sun and outdoor exposure, and to think or meditate.
I spent a few hours over the weekend beginning to work through the comments from my second beta reader on my novel manuscript. She is not recommending anything totally major: some reorganizations of scenes, word and point-of-view clarifications...it will probably take 2-3 more weeks to get through it and have a final manuscript.
It is nerve-wracking to think that this is all that stands between me and actual submissions (well, this and finalizing a query letter, but as I've mentioned before, I'm already working on that). Of course I could always erect some more barriers (though thinking of them as "barriers" is perhaps unwise) but the only one I can think of is a critique by a writer's group. I have no reason to believe, however, that they would offer any more relevant suggestions than my beta readers have already. Plus, agents aren't just looking at the quality of the story and the writing, they are thinking about the saleability of the manuscript. No writer's group will focus on making the story more saleable. I happen to think this idea is quite saleable, but I of course am completely biased, and can understand and accept that there will be others - including many who know the market far better than me - who will disagree.
The advice is all over the blogs: don't get your hopes up too high. I don't view submitting a query letter the same as buying a lottery ticket - it's more like submitting a resume. If you asked me what I hope to accomplish by getting published (as opposed to what I hope to accomplish just by writing) I would say it is the satisfaction of seeing my work in print, of having others buy and read it, of reading and hearing what they think about it...plus the respect and intellectual cachet that comes with it. I know not to overrate this (or confuse it with celebrity), but it's still important. I strive to be scholarly, and writing a novel can be (and in my case is) somewhat of a scholarly exercise. And, if publishing the first novel greases the skids for publishing subsequent novels, great!
The advice is so common though as to almost be patronizing after a while. No one pulls young students interested in science aside and warns them: "Now, don't think you're going to be the next Einstein. You have to pay your dues. Don't think you're going to be as rich as Craig Venter or as much of an icon as Stephen Hawking or as great a public intellectual as Carl Sagan or Steve Gould." If anything, we put too rosy (and simplistic) a face on it. Most wannabe scientists, once they're past a certain point in their education at least, are more attracted to the thrill of discovery and the nature of academic/scientific life (or their perception of it) than to stardom. Which is kind of a "duh" observation, but I wonder why it's not so for wannabe writers? I knew a couple of people who were admitted into my graduate program who had absolutely the wrong idea of what being a graduate student in science was all about, and who weren't disabused of those ideas within the first few months. Those people did not last long.
Writing's a hobby, but it's something I'd like to do professionally. I'll only do it professionally if it pays the bills, but that doesn't mean I don't think it's hard work or expect it will make me fabulously wealthy. Likewise with science: science used to be the province of the rich, and now one might argue it is becoming that way again. I don't require all too much to support my lifestyle (relative to many Americans, including - I daresay - most of my peers), but I do require a living wage and some sense of security. One reason I left science was that it was not providing me with either of those, and intertwined with (yet somewhat independent from) that I lost my love for the day-to-day (which I came to see more and more was all about writing grants). Were I already wealthy I might still be doing science and just funding my own damn research. (Though were I wealthy right from the get-go I might have stuck with writing, which was my original love long before I became interested in science.)
An agent would hate to hear this, but I'd be content to publish my book and earn $0, maybe even take a loss by paying for some of the marketing out of my pocket (I would not, however, consider self-publishing). Most of the advances I see bloggers talking about are on the order of graduate student stipends - I would not expect a lifestyle change from earning $10,000 or $20,000 (minus commissions and taxes, of course). I would not quit my job to spend a year writing a novel for that amount of money even if a publisher begged me (and I'm sure none ever will). (I'd rather turn that amount down, keep my day job, and write at my own pace.)
I've indulged some fantasies, though: pay me enough to live on and I would seriously consider quitting my job and trying to do this full-time. Give me too much (not that I'm really saying it's too much and I wouldn't take it - ha! - but let's take the lottery ticket example to its extreme) and I might even be LESS likely to give up my day job. (Who knows? But I've often thought that if I were financially secure, not only would I not stop working, but I'd enjoy work much much more because the consequences of fucking up or not pleasing people would be negligible.)
Eh, enough idle musing. The take-home is that I'm not in it for the money. I love writing and plan to continue. But I do want to get published, and that raises what I think will be my final point for this post. Many writer, agent, and editor blogs convey the message that you should try to get published, and should keep trying to get published, not for the money or the fame but because you love writing. Maybe I miss the point of posts such as this, but to me it reflects a bit of a conflation between writing and publishing.
I write because I love writing (and again, a dissection of why is for another time). I don't look at agent or editor or author websites or blogs or compile lists of agents or worry about query letters or chuckle very uncomfortably at Query Shark or wonder whether I am doing an adequate job of "social networking" (and for this last I'm sure I'm not) because I love writing. None of that has a damn thing to do with writing. I do it because I want to get published and all the blogs tell me I have to do it if I want to stand even a chance.
And I'll make the point that every minute I spend polishing a query or reading blogs is a minute I'm not writing, and a reader of this post might retort that this is a trivial point, and I would agree given 24 hours in a day except that I leave my house before 8 am each morning and return well after 6 pm. In the interim I am working at a day job that has no literary merits whatsoever yet can be quite intellectually draining. That and I need to sleep or I can't concentrate on anything. And I need to work out or I will be homicidal. The minutes I have left for my "hobby" are therefore relatively limited, and precious (at least to me). If I just wanted to write and the hell with the world, that's what I'd do.
Well, one more point. I've been through the peer-review process for scientific papers more than a dozen times now. Some of these literary types have no idea how totally savage that can be. Rejection doesn't scare me. Bring it the fuck on! (Just please, don't let me soon run out of agents to submit to.)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Where Have I Been?
I have actually been here, just pretty busy settling back into things. Indeed, I've been pretty productive these past two weeks (which I think is one indication that I really needed the vacation). I fixed up the scientific paper I mentioned a few posts ago, formatted the bibliography, wrote an abstract, had my wife read it for clarity of argument (as I think I made clear in that post, this is not really a technical paper but more of an "essay"), and submitted it to a journal.
This journal, despite having an electronic submissions system, is notoriously slow, and my one previous peer-review interaction with them (back in grad school, with a "real" scientific paper: one of my dissertation chapters, in fact) was negative. I waited six months only to be rejected on the basis of paltry three-line (yes, one of them was literally three lines long) reviews and the editor's own bias against the kind of work I was doing. So all that being said, I am only going back to them now because they have a section that is absolutely perfect for my current paper, which just wouldn't fit in many other journals at all.
I've also been moving ahead with my novel. I've spent some time the last few weekends and now have a list of about 30 agents I think I could query. I started off trying to do it "right"; that is, trying to find agents who had represented books "like" mine (a very small category, as far as I can tell, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad) or where I could cite a specific reason for querying that agent. Needless to say, I spent one afternoon doing it this way and located precisely two agents. So I took a more realistic approach. If the agent: a) is currently accepting queries, b) accepts e-mail queries (when I queried for my novel in high school I lived the world of the SASE, but it is 2009 and if you don't use e-mail you probably can't sell my book to a publisher), c) represents literary/commercial fiction, d) didn't seem like a complete and utter bastard/bitch on their website (yes, this eliminated a few), and d) is not asking for everything and the kitchen sink with the query, then they're on the list. If I got any indication they might be a particularly good fit, I starred them. And I concentrated more (but certainly not exclusively) on junior people, thinking they might be more likely to want to take on a new writer client.
I spent some hours last Sunday working on this, and then was gratified that evening when my beta reader finally sent me her comments on the book. I think it is safe to say that she really enjoyed it, and she said in no uncertain terms she thinks it is about ready to go. That being said, she did have some comments and suggestions for improvement (which of course is what I really wanted, though I think it's awesome she liked it so much) and I'm going to work through those over the next few weeks. After that, and maybe gathering up some more agents, I'm ready to go as soon as I finish polishing my query letter (which I've already been working on). Some bloggers have suggested querying 10 or so agents at a time, and checking progress weekly. Anyway, I'm excited to be so close to actually trying to do this. I think once I am in querying mode then it is time to start writing notes for the next big thing.
Work's been busy - it really has been like taking on a new job (though with many of the same people and some spillover from the old job). Still, it's working on multiple things and has mostly been research, analysis, and writing (as opposed to the parts of the job I don't like: worrying about the media, planning events, managing VIPs, and speculating as to what Senator So-and-So had for breakfast). More to the point, my whole existence no longer revolves around someone else's (ever-changing) schedule, which is liberating. Not that last minute things don't come up, but I don't feel compelled to keep my schedule clear and can be somewhat of an independent operator. I really felt it was difficult to feel much ownership over the last product because he controlled it so much, and in some fairly idiosyncratic ways (not that I think idiosyncratic is bad, it just bore his imprint strongly and mine hardly at all).
I also had an idea for another scientific paper, but for this one I need to find a collaborator. I was telling my wife about it last night, and we were thinking through ways that I could identify likely collaborators with a minimum of pain-and-suffering. I still know lots of people back in my old field of scientific research (and what I need is someone close to but not exactly that), but no one was immediately coming to mind as the right person.
I finished up at the dentist this past Monday, and now am good to go for six months. Been using that toothbrush my brother gave me - I've gotten used to it and I like it a lot. With my health insurance, my five fillings and check-up/x-ray/cleaning cost me about $160. Not exactly breaking the bank to maintain my dental health. And since I had lots of sick-time saved up (since I almost never get sick, though sometimes in past jobs I've used sick time because I'm extremely hung over or just need a mental health day), it was no biggie in that regard either.
My wife got me a ton of books for my birthday - a really great gift but the kind of splurging I'd never do for myself. So now our apartment is even more full of books than it usually is (and it's usually pretty full of books) and we're working out way through them. ("That's a lot of books!" "It sure is!") Instead of getting a cake, she baked some cookies and we bought ice cream and cool-whip at the store. God, I love ice cream and whipped cream (not as much as I love beer, but close) but we never get it. She pointed out this was the first time we'd bought ice cream since we moved into this apartment together (in December of 2007 - we have gotten a couple of ice cream cakes for birthdays, though). So now I'm gaining back the 5-7 pounds I somehow lost before the wedding.
I guess the last thing is that my parents came through on their way back home. We just met them for dinner - thank goodness they did not stay over or stay for a few days (they came in the middle of the week). We had to have a conversation with them because of the size of the gift they gave us for the wedding, which was excessive. If that sounds weird, it's just that money is a tense topic in our family (spanning multiple generations, not just my parents and mine but my grandparents and even back before that) and I learned long ago not to accept large sums or get entangled with them financially. (And the irony is that this stems from a childhood where my dad was notoriously stingy and always complaining about money - now they're retired and they're big wheeler-dealers.)
I don't want to belabor it. For me, the crux of the issue was that we had made our desire for no gift or relatively small gift clear again and again, and EVERY SINGLE WEDDING GUEST seems to have understood and respected that except them. Sometimes, when a gift is called for, the desires of the giver and the desires of the recipient may not be the same. I know they meant well by it, but how about listening to your kid and doing what he wants, not what you want, for once? It was really less about the money (which was a lot but given our current level of income probably about what we pull in in about six weeks after taxes) than about that principle. Why does it always have to be about you?
I was kind of stressed out about this because, as Tony Soprano once said, "kids don't confront in my family." But there was no alternative in this case - we had a check and had to do something with it.
Well, they didn't get it. I mean, I don't think they came away pissed off (or even all that surprised), and maybe they were even a little gratified I addressed it so directly (something that was impossible when I was a kid - see Tony Soprano quote above and many many of my previous posts). But they didn't understand the principle - I could tell. I even tried to draw the (excellent) analogy that my dad, a few years ago, announced he no longer wanted gifts for his birthday or Father's Day. He wanted a card, sent to arrive on time, and a call. And I said I have religiously followed those instructions because that's what he, as the recipient of gifts on that day, asked for (even though sometimes it seems a little silly to me, like he has stock in Hallmark, which is ridiculous given his general demeanor). He started stammering out reasons why he'd asked for that arrangement, but that's irrelevant. It's wishes of the giver vs. wishes of the recipient, not what motivated the recipient to ask for whatever he or she asked for. It was actually my mom who put up more of a fight, and I think I know why, but it's too much for right now to get into it.
Eh. Now I guess we'll see if displeasure about this starts trickling back to me through my brothers. I tried to stave that off at the end of the conversation by asking if anything was unsaid, if we were all OK. And they said yes. And I don't plan to mention this conversation to my brothers. But we're just not used to communicating honestly with one another. And my parents, their thinking sometimes...I told my wife a few days before they came that it was a "mind fuck" trying to figure it out. I wish I could, but I can't.
This journal, despite having an electronic submissions system, is notoriously slow, and my one previous peer-review interaction with them (back in grad school, with a "real" scientific paper: one of my dissertation chapters, in fact) was negative. I waited six months only to be rejected on the basis of paltry three-line (yes, one of them was literally three lines long) reviews and the editor's own bias against the kind of work I was doing. So all that being said, I am only going back to them now because they have a section that is absolutely perfect for my current paper, which just wouldn't fit in many other journals at all.
I've also been moving ahead with my novel. I've spent some time the last few weekends and now have a list of about 30 agents I think I could query. I started off trying to do it "right"; that is, trying to find agents who had represented books "like" mine (a very small category, as far as I can tell, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad) or where I could cite a specific reason for querying that agent. Needless to say, I spent one afternoon doing it this way and located precisely two agents. So I took a more realistic approach. If the agent: a) is currently accepting queries, b) accepts e-mail queries (when I queried for my novel in high school I lived the world of the SASE, but it is 2009 and if you don't use e-mail you probably can't sell my book to a publisher), c) represents literary/commercial fiction, d) didn't seem like a complete and utter bastard/bitch on their website (yes, this eliminated a few), and d) is not asking for everything and the kitchen sink with the query, then they're on the list. If I got any indication they might be a particularly good fit, I starred them. And I concentrated more (but certainly not exclusively) on junior people, thinking they might be more likely to want to take on a new writer client.
I spent some hours last Sunday working on this, and then was gratified that evening when my beta reader finally sent me her comments on the book. I think it is safe to say that she really enjoyed it, and she said in no uncertain terms she thinks it is about ready to go. That being said, she did have some comments and suggestions for improvement (which of course is what I really wanted, though I think it's awesome she liked it so much) and I'm going to work through those over the next few weeks. After that, and maybe gathering up some more agents, I'm ready to go as soon as I finish polishing my query letter (which I've already been working on). Some bloggers have suggested querying 10 or so agents at a time, and checking progress weekly. Anyway, I'm excited to be so close to actually trying to do this. I think once I am in querying mode then it is time to start writing notes for the next big thing.
Work's been busy - it really has been like taking on a new job (though with many of the same people and some spillover from the old job). Still, it's working on multiple things and has mostly been research, analysis, and writing (as opposed to the parts of the job I don't like: worrying about the media, planning events, managing VIPs, and speculating as to what Senator So-and-So had for breakfast). More to the point, my whole existence no longer revolves around someone else's (ever-changing) schedule, which is liberating. Not that last minute things don't come up, but I don't feel compelled to keep my schedule clear and can be somewhat of an independent operator. I really felt it was difficult to feel much ownership over the last product because he controlled it so much, and in some fairly idiosyncratic ways (not that I think idiosyncratic is bad, it just bore his imprint strongly and mine hardly at all).
I also had an idea for another scientific paper, but for this one I need to find a collaborator. I was telling my wife about it last night, and we were thinking through ways that I could identify likely collaborators with a minimum of pain-and-suffering. I still know lots of people back in my old field of scientific research (and what I need is someone close to but not exactly that), but no one was immediately coming to mind as the right person.
I finished up at the dentist this past Monday, and now am good to go for six months. Been using that toothbrush my brother gave me - I've gotten used to it and I like it a lot. With my health insurance, my five fillings and check-up/x-ray/cleaning cost me about $160. Not exactly breaking the bank to maintain my dental health. And since I had lots of sick-time saved up (since I almost never get sick, though sometimes in past jobs I've used sick time because I'm extremely hung over or just need a mental health day), it was no biggie in that regard either.
My wife got me a ton of books for my birthday - a really great gift but the kind of splurging I'd never do for myself. So now our apartment is even more full of books than it usually is (and it's usually pretty full of books) and we're working out way through them. ("That's a lot of books!" "It sure is!") Instead of getting a cake, she baked some cookies and we bought ice cream and cool-whip at the store. God, I love ice cream and whipped cream (not as much as I love beer, but close) but we never get it. She pointed out this was the first time we'd bought ice cream since we moved into this apartment together (in December of 2007 - we have gotten a couple of ice cream cakes for birthdays, though). So now I'm gaining back the 5-7 pounds I somehow lost before the wedding.
I guess the last thing is that my parents came through on their way back home. We just met them for dinner - thank goodness they did not stay over or stay for a few days (they came in the middle of the week). We had to have a conversation with them because of the size of the gift they gave us for the wedding, which was excessive. If that sounds weird, it's just that money is a tense topic in our family (spanning multiple generations, not just my parents and mine but my grandparents and even back before that) and I learned long ago not to accept large sums or get entangled with them financially. (And the irony is that this stems from a childhood where my dad was notoriously stingy and always complaining about money - now they're retired and they're big wheeler-dealers.)
I don't want to belabor it. For me, the crux of the issue was that we had made our desire for no gift or relatively small gift clear again and again, and EVERY SINGLE WEDDING GUEST seems to have understood and respected that except them. Sometimes, when a gift is called for, the desires of the giver and the desires of the recipient may not be the same. I know they meant well by it, but how about listening to your kid and doing what he wants, not what you want, for once? It was really less about the money (which was a lot but given our current level of income probably about what we pull in in about six weeks after taxes) than about that principle. Why does it always have to be about you?
I was kind of stressed out about this because, as Tony Soprano once said, "kids don't confront in my family." But there was no alternative in this case - we had a check and had to do something with it.
Well, they didn't get it. I mean, I don't think they came away pissed off (or even all that surprised), and maybe they were even a little gratified I addressed it so directly (something that was impossible when I was a kid - see Tony Soprano quote above and many many of my previous posts). But they didn't understand the principle - I could tell. I even tried to draw the (excellent) analogy that my dad, a few years ago, announced he no longer wanted gifts for his birthday or Father's Day. He wanted a card, sent to arrive on time, and a call. And I said I have religiously followed those instructions because that's what he, as the recipient of gifts on that day, asked for (even though sometimes it seems a little silly to me, like he has stock in Hallmark, which is ridiculous given his general demeanor). He started stammering out reasons why he'd asked for that arrangement, but that's irrelevant. It's wishes of the giver vs. wishes of the recipient, not what motivated the recipient to ask for whatever he or she asked for. It was actually my mom who put up more of a fight, and I think I know why, but it's too much for right now to get into it.
Eh. Now I guess we'll see if displeasure about this starts trickling back to me through my brothers. I tried to stave that off at the end of the conversation by asking if anything was unsaid, if we were all OK. And they said yes. And I don't plan to mention this conversation to my brothers. But we're just not used to communicating honestly with one another. And my parents, their thinking sometimes...I told my wife a few days before they came that it was a "mind fuck" trying to figure it out. I wish I could, but I can't.
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