Sara Ryan

I was contemplating posting the latest variation on the post I always post, which is, of course, something about OMG The Very Serious And Challenging Challenges Of Balancing LibrarianLand and WriterWorld.

And then I thought, geez, speshul snowflake much? What, you have more than a single role in your life? Amazing! So does basically everyone else on the planet. How about instead you write up some strategies that you actually use in order to work effectively (read: not lose your mind) on multiple projects, in multiple roles?

Hence:

I strive, always, for an empty email inbox. This is a pretty common technique for enhancing productivity. Fewer emails=less stress. But because striving, by itself, sadly does not make any actual difference, here are some ways I back up the striving. (Caveat: some of this is Gmail-centric.)

• Folders. Will the project generate multiple messages? I make a folder.
• Labels. I label any and all project-associated messages as soon as I receive them. I don’t file them until after I respond. That way, when I look at my inbox, I get a quick visual sense of what requires my attention. You can set up rules so that any message that comes from a particular address is labeled automatically; I have rules set for my agent, editors, the friends with whom I frequently correspond, and all the groups & discussion lists I’m on.
• Is it from a discussion list or a group? Are the archives online and searchable? Then I delete the messages after I read them.
• Multiple addresses. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. I have a librarian address, I have a writer address. It keeps the boundaries distinct. If someone contacts me at the wrong one, I just forward the message.
• Err on the side of under rather than overcommunicating. I may come off as less supportive online than I’d like to think I am; I don’t often join choruses of congratulations, and I lurk more than I comment.

Social networks: all stripped down. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. But I don’t get email notifications, and I ignore and block relentlessly. I understand that this means I’m not Taking Fullest Advantage Of The Great Networking Opportunities, and I certainly don’t think it’s the One True Way To Manage A Social Network Presence. Minimalism works for me because it takes a lot of dilemmas out of the equation: if I ignore ALL the requests to become a fan of Whatever, then I don’t have to explain (even to myself) why, for instance, I said yes to Friend X Who Made A Fan Page For Their Book but no to Local Nonprofit Y. I do respond to friend requests, and I keep an eye on comments. I prefer not to use Facebook messaging, because it’s a gray area between writer address and librarian address. Again — not the One True Way, just what works for me.

So I’ve talked a lot here about organizing and coping with email and social networks, because for me, that’s where a lot of the logistics of project-and-role-balancing happens. What are your favorite ways to balance, juggle, and perform other circus acts of project management?

Specifically, I’ll be on KBOO’s queer youth show The Other Team tonight from 6-7 pm, talking about queer YA & children’s lit along with the fine folks from Bare Bones Press and Productions and Marcus Ewert, author of 10,000 Dresses. I have never been on the radio before! And yes, you can listen online.

Recently I’ve been exploring, for the first time, some pop and subcultural touchstones of the last couple of decades. It makes me feel a bit like a time traveler. Among other things, I’ve been struck by how much easier it is to create plot obstacles when personal synchronous communication devices aren’t ubiquitous. When your setting is first-world contemporary, you have to work a lot harder to explain why Character In Trouble (Variously Defined) doesn’t just freaking call, text, or IM.

I have recently become a fan of the Grilled Cheese Grill. Its sandwiches are delicious, and the mural on the ceiling of its seating area — a schoolbus — is fantastic. See:

The artists are Eatcho and Jason Graham. I’m particularly impressed by how they blended their styles.

Now for a tiny nap, and then to start Day 2.0, the one where I write fiction and do not get sucked into the Internet.

Still catching up from Boston, black nail polish now very chipped. Have been brooding about tragedies of various scales, also tempests and their associated teapots. Feeling more inclined to shut up than put up, this fragmentary post notwithstanding.

But here are three good things, as a counterweight:

• Tales of the Madman Underground, which I read on the plane coming home, thanks to Sharyn. Craziness and mutual aid. Harshness and humor. Small-town Ohio. I adore this book, and have already quoted from it to my Ohioan mother, specifically this line: “But I’d been raised pure Ohio: the Zeroth Commandment was Thou Shalt Not Be Any Trouble to Anybody Ever.”

• Florence and the Machine. I heard them for the first time today, and I’m listening as I type.

• Writing comics that I know will be drawn by amazingly talented people, and being kind of able to picture how they’ll come to life on the page, but knowing, too, that the aforesaid amazingly talented people will surprise me.

He looks a little Burning Man-y.

Showing my medieval festival geek roots, I first thought this was a sword; in fact it is a spinal column.

Not intentional art, but what the heck.

I decided it was about time I tried out black nail polish, as I have gone this far in my life without the experience.

Yes, I am going to Boston for the American Library Association Midwinter meeting. Very early in the morning tomorrow. I’ll be in YALSA meetings most of the time while I’m there, but hope to see some fellow BG Literary clients as well.

And you, of course! If we see each other and we have not met in real life, please feel free to say hey regardless.

Additional note: I liked my recent social network hiatus so much that I’m doing it again! For the duration of the conference, I won’t be checking Facebook or Twitter. I know this is contrary to the backchannely spirit of Twitter especially, but I also know my own limits.

I want to maximize my capacity to concentrate on the experiences I’m having, as opposed to constructing performative reactions thereto. This is not intended to diss anyone else’s performative reactions, reportage, bon mots, slices of life, or toast, as the case may be — etc. I enjoy them very much, and will enjoy them again as of 1/20! (Plus, if I have any spare moments at all, I need to work on the graphic novel script. Ack.)

Snag was compelled to nap in the recently-purchased file box. Fortunately he did not choose to mark any receipts as his territory.

My mom likes to tell the story of when she and Dad decided it was time to jettison the couch we’d had my entire life — which was, then, a whole six years, I think. Struck by the beloved object’s approaching tragic fate, I proclaimed: “That orange couch never hurt anybody in its life!”

I will not reveal whether or not that is true of the orange couch featured in Benjamin Parzybok’s Couch. Early on, the book is about three semi-slacker Portland roommates — a disaffected cult-hero programmer, a small-time con man, and a hippie visionary — who need to move a couch. Very shortly thereafter, the couch-moving, and the book, go sideways and unexpected and enchanting.

I’m late to the party on this book, despite living in the same town as Mr. Parzybok, and having fond memories of the first time I sighted one of his Gumball Poetry Machines. Couch came into my life as part of a big Small Beer Press order I put in near the end of 2009, when they were having an important sale. (Incidentally, they are still having the important sale and you should buy some books from them.)

Anyway, back to Couch. I liked this book a whole lot, and fell into the story in a way that’s increasingly rare for me these days due to double-tracking. A few reasons why:

• The narrative voice is smart, thoughtful, and endearing. I especially like the programmer Thom’s conversations with his brain, which he calls brain, and his occasional lapses into actual programming language.
• The characters are self-aware about being part of a quest narrative. Sometimes I find that trope annoying, but in this case it added to my enjoyment.
• Plus ten for starting out in Portland, in a neighborhood with which I am familiar, and even briefly featuring a particular thrift store of which I am fond. (Trivia for Rules for Hearts fans: the auditions for the Theater Borealis production of Midsummer Night’s Dream take place in the same neighborhood.)

Hm. Now that I’m thinking about it, orange couches play significant roles in two cultural products I enthusiastically endorse:

Wonder if my early imprinting has anything to do with it.

Happy 2010, Internet friends.

Here’s something I wrote in my journal ten years ago:

I read a book of Susan Cooper’s essays on writing for children; a book I’m going to have to buy. In thinking about the themes that come up over and over again in the way she talks about writing, I’m wondering what my own themes are, what questions I want to struggle with in my work. What friendship is, what love is, how you tell them apart…Now that I know my first book is getting published, I feel confident about starting to map out a life in writing in a way that I never have before.

Did I? I guess I have, and I am — but it’s hard to recognize when you’re in the middle of it. I’m most aware, always, of what I haven’t yet done, what I feel I should be doing. A bit further on in that old journal, I wrote that I hoped to reduce my hours at the library, so I’d have more time to devote to writing. I knew I’d been thinking about that idea for a while, but it’s slightly disconcerting to realize that “a while” is now a full decade.

Ten years ago my website looked like this:

Of the people whose sites I linked on my “destinations” page (we had links pages before there were blogrolls, kids), I’ve fallen out of touch with five, two have changed gender identity, two have kept the same web domains for the entire 2000s, and five were among those ringing in the new year at my house last night.

I wonder what we’ll all be doing in 2020? (Aside from wincing at the inevitable plethora of references to “2020 vision.”)