Lisa Hendrix

Over at Murderati, JT Ellison continues her series, A Virtual Montparnasse, with a long, thoughtful post on the pleasures and perils of the Internet for writers—a common topic on writers’ blogs these days, and for good reason. Not only do we let ourselves be distracted by obsessively following the trail of some bit of research into the digital hinterlands, like Ahab tracking the whale, but we use it to just plain procrastinate. Can’t write?  Update your MySpace page. Still can’t write? Hit Get Mail, answer each message, then hit it again a dozen times before you pop on over to Facebook to check those updates.

I read JTs missive with sympathy, but also with a bit of private glee, for though I am one of the worst offenders of this type, I have found the solution. I have found Freedom. Then I read far enough and learned she’d found it, too—or at least the concept. Damn. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write about it, too:

Freedom is a shareware program developed by Fred Stutzman, a PhD student at University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. This Apple-only program (yet another reason to give up your PC) disables your wireless and ethernet networking for a given time period.  In other words, you launch Freedom, tell it how much time you want in minutes (up to 360, i.e., 6 hours), and it locks out all your internet access, mail, etc., for that time period. No will power needed.

Here’s what Fred says:

Freedom is an exploration of least-effort computing (in which computational affordances are disabled for task focusing) and spatial reclamation (in which our computers resist encroachments of connectivity). 

That’s his PhD-speak version.   Here’s the English translation:

Freedom is an application that disables wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to three hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.

Freedom enforces freedom; a reboot is the only circumvention of the Freedom time limit you specify. The hassle of rebooting means you’re less likely to cheat, and you’ll be more productive. Not rebooting is why we bought Apple computers in the first place. When first getting used to Freedom, I suggest using the software for short periods of time.

That’s right.  The only way around Freedom is to completely reboot.

I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I can tell you, it WORKS.  There’s no denying, it’s a little disconcerting to turn over your computer to this thing for the first time—kind of an Aack! It’s eating my baby’s brain feeling. Do what Fred says and start small, with just, say 30 minutes, and learn you can trust it to give your computer back when its done (it does, really). I recommend you check to make sure nothing that needs the Airport or ethernet is running before you launch Freedom (e.g., make sure Time Machine isn’t in the middle of a backup—in fact, turn TM off for the time being, just remember to turn it back on afterward).  And do be aware that you’ll see the spinning wheel of death as it shuts down your access, but that all you have to do is click on an app or open window and it will go away.  Just trust it and make the leap.  Once you do…Wow!

Think about it: six hours of no temptation. Six hours. It’s pretty damned wonderful.

What are your ways of avoiding/eliminating/killing procrastination in its digital form?

Someone on a writers’ loop I belong to recently celebrated finishing a non-fiction contract project. This is one she’d been grinding away at for a long time, and she referred to it as an ”albatross.” She was looking forward to a new contract, similar but with a different subject matter that she views as more interesting. Most of all, though, she was looking forward to not having the dead weight of the albatross around her neck, to having the time and the energy to work on her own personal project.

I could totally understand. Once upon a time, I turned down a second interview on a technical writer position because after the first interview I had worried that spending all day writing manuals for utility company billing and location software (can anything possibly be more boring?) would make me hate writing.  I wasn’t published yet, but I knew I wanted to be. And I wanted to love getting there.

So even though it would have made me a ton of money (oh, lordy, I just totaled up how much I would have made in the intervening years…), I told them ‘thank you very much but a second interview would be a waste of your time and mine.’  They were shocked. Shocked! And I was sick to my stomach for days. Fortunately, I had the support of my husband, but it was still a really scary thing to do—I’m definitely a bird in the hand type, and this was choosing the one in the bush, which proceeded to fly off for another five years or so.  But during that five years, the writing was fun.  And it has stayed fun, even with deadlines and rewrites and long gaps between sales.

I often wish I had the fortitude to do both the fun and the not-fun writing, and I surely admire those who manage it. But I knew I wasn’t, and I did what I had to do.  I have since taken other jobs to help make ends meet, but I made sure none of them had anything to do with writing (except for a short-term job grading high-school English papers—now that was enlightening, in a grim sort of way).  They were all things that, even if they left me physically tired, left me with a desire to write and a brain with which to do it.

That’s what it’s about: protecting the writing.  I was dead serious about it, and if you want to write, you need to be serious about it, too.  Honor not just your skill and the muse, but your desire to write.  It’s a delicate thing, and it needs nourishing. Whether it’s  finding some way to keep body and soul together that isn’t a soul-sucking brain drain, or simply carving out a little time of your own, do whatever you need to do to make it possible, and preferably fun, for you to write.

Shoot the damned albatross–and then make sure you toss it overboard instead of turning it into a necklace. You can borrow my cross-bow.

It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day and  I’m practicing the pirate lingo I learned at the Official ITLAP Website, including the pick-up lines for Lady Pirates (my personal favorite: That’s quite a cutlass ye got thar, what ye need is a good scabbard!)

If you don’t have time to learn Pirate, try their English to Pirate translator.

To the left, the original Lady Pirate, Anne Bonney.

P.S. — Vikings are pirates, too, you know.  So I suppose “Pass the lutefisk” is also Pirate Lingo…

Michael Palin, that is…

Via Red State Rebels

Raisin Brahms!

Enjoy!

via Boing-Boing

Sometimes, people say things in a way that make me laugh or cry. Things that make my heart sing. Things that I would like to have said myself, or that I have said, but not nearly so well.

Toni McGee Causey did all that and more this morning over at Murderati. Go read.

I’m immersed in the bliss of a deadline.  Where will you find your joy today?

The RWA National Conference ended Saturday evening with the presentation of the Rita and Golden Heart awards, and people are bugging me about why I haven’t posted a conference wrap up yet.  Well, I’m driving up the coast on the amazing and amazingly slow Highway 1 with my darling daughter, riding horses on some beaches and combing others and generally letting the world pass by while we have fun and eat junk food. I found WiFi tonight and turned on the computer with good intentions, but you know what?  Y’all can just wait.

Did you know that the low hanging, large, reddish moon that would be called a Harvest Moon in late September/Early October is called a Strawberry Moon when it happens near the solstice? 

The summer solstice was yesterday, June 20, at 7:59 PM EDT, so I thought I’d do a quick roundup of  ways some folks mark this longest day of the year.

Traditional

Flowers: Gathering nine different types of flowers and placing them under your pillow on the solstice is supposed to make you dream of the person you will marry. Nine is a number sacred to the old Nordic and Saxon gods (which is why there are nine Vikings in my crew of Immortal Warriors.)

Weddings: Druids celebrated the summer solstice as a marriage of heaven and earth, which is why June is the month for weddings

Bonfires.  In Cornwall in the old days, every peak and hall glowed with light on Midsummer Eve as the fires begged the sun not to retreat into winters darkness.

Spirals:  Ancient solar dances would spiral in to the center and back out again, representing the path of the sun.

Herbs: Practioners of herbal magic believe that herbs gathered at the solstice are imbued with extra potency.

Stones: Tracking the sun was immensely important to early people, so they knew when to plant and harvest and when to honor their gods—so important that they would spend years building what amounted to giant stone calendars. Stonehenge is the most famous of these, but Machu Pichu, New Grange, the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, and dozens of other stone sites around the world served the same function.

Modern

Parades: Seattle’s Fremont District (The Center of the Universe) holds a fair and a wild parade to celebrate the solstice and the amazing energy of the neighborhood. 

Nativity of St. John the Baptist:  This Christianized version of the solstice marks the birth of this important saint (unlike most feast days, which celebrate the martyrdom of the saint).  Particularly important in northern and eastern Europe and the celtic countries (where the solstice was also key), it is one of the most solemn of Catholic holy days, even celebrated when it falls on a Sunday (also not typical for a saint’s day).

Picnics and Bonfires: In Denmark and other countries, Midsummer is marked by spending much of the day outside, ending with a nice bonfire on the beach.

Stones: In the tradition of the great ancient builders, my husband recently put the item “Stonehenge” on the whiteboard that his team uses to keep track of projects at work.  Yesterday, he assembled his personal mini-Stonehenge kit (carefully aligned, of course) and crossed the item off the list. No one noticed. Sigh.

He intends to do it again in December anyway.

How do you celebrate Midsummer?

First, there is water on Mars. (Link to Wired article with nice image showing ice chunks subliming.)

Second, the Smithsonian now has their photograph collection up on Flickr Commons, with all photos hi-res and tagged as “No known copyright restrictions.” (Link)

Things like this give me hope. 

My friend and one-time critique partner, R. Scott Shanks, Jr., has been having some frustrations getting his website up and running, so he decided to post to his blog, instead.  Click the link. Read. Enjoy. Remember that he wrote the following in a timespan of approximately 17 minutes, and know that he is a far better writer than I—than almost anyone—and some agent should make a fortune off him when he finishes his book. 

( In an effort to distance myself from my ire, I pulled out the Majency Oracle and asked Shannon for a number. She quoth: 72, so that was the card I selected as a writing prompt. Thus: )