So I read Emily Gould’s essay on what her novel cost her on the Daily Dot.  (Unfortunately, they removed the post, but you can read it here.)  I stuck with it until the end, even though I considered jumping ship when she started cataloging her cat’s health woes.  She’s a talented writer and an engaging one, but I can’t say that I was emotionally invested in the cat.  Still, I’m glad I made it to the end even though it’s a really really really long piece.

Which is noteworthy because we seem to live in an age where writing pieces are getting shorter and shorter.  Magazine articles are getting shorter, blog posts are getting shorter, and some people don’t even use up all 140 characters on Twitter.  Soon we’ll be reduced to just throwing up single letters.  Or numbers.  We’ll assign all of our most common thoughts a number and there will be a posted key that people can use in order to understand our brief, brief updates.

The length of Gould’s piece (and perhaps it’s because it also rambled) makes me think that maybe I find shorter pieces more enjoyable.  Something longer than Twitter but shorter than 5000+ words.  Here’s a tangential question: where do you fall on the happy reading length continuum?  Do you prefer long novels that are broken up into two or three page scenes?  The brevity of Twitter?  Blog posts or magazine articles that go on for many pages but hold your interest due to the subject matter?  Long chapters with no page breaks?

Anyway Emily Gould outlines the true cost of writing.  Mostly she covers the financial cost of writing.  If you’re writing full-time, you’re not earning money another way.  If you’re spending hours online building your platform, then you’re not doing other work that comes with a clear-cut paycheck.  But she talks about the other cost of spending a lot of time online:

It was miraculous, I wanted to shout into the wind, how much space opened up in your brain when you stopped filling it with a steady stream of other people’s thoughts!

Twitter and Tumblr and even email—anything that rewards constant vigilance and creates repetitive cycles of need based on intermittent reinforcement—were the bitterest foes of the sustained concentration that’s necessary to making worthwhile art!

In other words, reading this blog post or writing your own is keeping you from writing your Great American Novel. (Or, if you’re not in the US, your Great Wherever-You-Are Novel.)  Yet we read other people’s work (such as Gould’s essay) in order to be challenged or inspired.  We go online to engage with people because we’re human beings who long for connection.  And we spend hours “building our platform” because if we don’t, we have no chance of selling that Great American Novel.  Gone are the days when the vast majority of writers had no Internet presence and only a select few were online.  It’s now the inverse.  The vast majority of writers spend time online, and it’s the select few who still publish easily but have no Internet presence.

But it begs the question: why do we treat online time differently from how we treat paper time?  Meaning, if space opens up in your brain when you stop reading other people’s thoughts, why are writers encouraged to read books?  Why do MFA programs have required literature credits?  Why don’t we encourage every writer out there to dump books in the same way that writers encourage other writers to go offline?

I don’t think that I’m more plugged in than I am distracted by books.  I was the kid who carried a book around on the playground during elementary school.  I always have a book tucked into my purse.  I mean, I wouldn’t dream of even going to the grocery store without a book.  (What if the car broke down and I needed to wait for AAA?  Wouldn’t I want something to read?)  I spend about an equal amount of time being distracted by online writing — mostly blog posts but also Twitter and Facebook — as I do offline writing such as magazines and books.

And I don’t consider that time wasted.  I don’t consider book reading OR blog reading time wasted.

A case in point: I took the time to read Gould’s essay and it inspired me to write this post.  It made me look at how much time I’m reading other people’s words vs. putting down my own.  Let’s be frank; I certainly put enough words into the world.  What is my word consumption obligation?  Sort of like carbon offsets protect the world from our environmental impact, what should we take in order to balance the scales with our idea impact?

It’s hubris to think that OUR words are more important than someone else’s words.  That if we read their words and don’t take time to write down our words, that it’s detrimental, even on a personal level.  I think the world will still be as groovy if I only read and don’t write.  And even when I’m attempting to write because that’s my job and I need to turn in writing, it doesn’t really hurt the process to read a little.  If anything, those breaks from putting down my own words help them to come faster when I do sit down to write.

To consider answering emails or responding to a Tweet a waste of time is to consider human connection a waste of time.  It’s nice when we have enough face-to-face connections to have our needs satiated, but I think online connections certainly count towards that daily ration of human contact.

I cringe when I read writers telling people to connect less.  If anything, to be able to write, to observe humanity, to comment on the state of our humanness, we need to connect more.

I’m all for minimizing our personal distractions, but I worry when people talk about unplugging as a panacea.  Because within the advice is judgment: that what we read online is of lesser worth.  While we may enjoy paper publications that have gone through an editor more than personal blogs or vice versa (in the same way that some people prefer restaurant meals over those prepared by a home chef), I would hate to write off one as having more worth than the others.  Sometimes words are just words, and the ideas they express are more important than the way they’re packaged.  But that’s just me.  I find a lot of diamond-in-the-rough blog posts, and I also find a lot of needed-a-better-editor novels.

And vice versa.

We weren’t emotionally done with the Olympics (yes, at least two of us in this house cried when the Sochi bear released that tear), but luckily, we get another go with the Paralympics starting this Friday.  Sadly, they are not providing the best coverage of events on television (the Web is a different story), and a lot of the television time is in the middle of the night.  Gee, thanks, since, you know, I’m often thinking that the kids and I need to spend more time watching television at 2 am.

We’ll be DVRing the events and watching them during primetime hours the next day.  Hopefully you’ll be cheering our team along with me.

All times are ET, and unless noted, the station is NBCSN.

Day 1: March 7

• 11 am: Opening Ceremony

Day 2: March 8

• 1 am: Alpine Skiing

Day 3: March 9

• 1 am: Cross-Country Skiing

Day 4: March 10

• 2 am: Alpine Skiing (Super G)

Day 5: March 11

• 2 am: Biathlon
• 3 pm: Sled Hockey — US vs. Russia

Day 6: March 12

• 1:30 am: Wheelchair Curling — US vs. China

Day 7: March 13

• 5 am: Sled Hockey
• Noon: Sled Hockey

Day 8: March 14

• 3 am: Snowboarding

Day 9: March 15

• 3:30 am: Cross-Country Skiing
• 1 pm: Sled Hockey (NBC)
• 6:30 pm: Wheelchair Curling

Day 10: March 16

• 4:30 am: Alpine Skiing
• 3:30 pm: Closing Ceremony

I never thought I would say this, but I may be done with winter.  Like full of winter.  Consumed too much winter and now feeling an uncomfortable strain along my waistline.

We are on our tenth snow day.  It may be more than that, actually.  I wasn’t really keeping track in the beginning, when I was gleefully shrieking that we had off from school… again.  You may have noticed that I am a huge fan of breaks.  Not such a fan of waking up a certain time every day.  So at first I was excited for each snow day.  I made hot chocolate and we read books.  We baked and watched movies.  We crooned at the guinea pig.  All was well.

But now, on our second snow day this week, I feel a little shaky.  I haven’t had a full work week since Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving ended and I’ve either had a snow day or a sick child cutting into my work schedule.  The same amount of work still needs to get done, but there’s no time to do it in.

I told the kids that we need to spend the day being productive because I can feel my mental stamina slipping away from disuse.  I told them that we’re spending two hours working on their supplemental reading packet.  They weren’t thrilled to hear that.  I then followed it up by telling them they needed to have everything finished for the science fair before they had fun.  The Wolvog pointed out that he can’t work on his science fair project since it has become a goat rodeo.  And I told him goat rodeo or not, it needs to get done.  So… wish us luck.

No, really, wish us luck.  Like wish us luck that our brains don’t melt away from hours and hours of Candy Crush.

Maybe that’s just me and not the twins.

And while they do their work, I’m going to do my work.  Really.  And then I’m going to play the non-whore parts of Evita for the ChickieNob as we work on her musical theater education.  And we may even work on cookies for our mishloach manot baskets.  And I’m going to get out of my pyjamas today and shower.  Please check in tomorrow to make sure I’m not curled up on the floor in a little ball, sobbing because I don’t understand how schedules work anymore.

Because it is highly possible that I will end up there, sniffling into a damp spot of carpet.  This snow day may be the end of me.

Can you believe I’m saying that?  Things must be dire.

I get annoyed when I get a notification of a new Twitter follower, and I click over to see that they have already unfollowed me — even though there hasn’t been a new tweet to bore or offend them. In other words, they could see my stream, decided to follow me, and when I didn’t follow them back quickly enough, they unfollowed.  Which means they never had any interest in what I had to say.  They just wanted me to follow them back.  And that is the worst reason to follow someone on Twitter since… you know… you’ll have to read their blatherings even if they do follow you.

Sometimes social media doesn’t feel very social at all.

*******

I am constantly annoyed when there are two lines of cars, and they are supposed to alternate to combine into one line.  But rather than wait for ONE MORE CAR to go ahead so we continue the pattern, a car tries to dart forward from the same line, throwing off the rhythm.  And it only puts them ONE CAR LENGTH forward.  Being a dick to save minutes of time, sure.  But being a dick to save exactly three seconds while you potentially cause an accident and force everyone else to slam on their brakes?

For what amounts to one car length worth of driving time?

That pisses me off.

*******

Facebook invites are the bane of my existence.  Every few months, I remember they exist and I go into Facebook to discover that I’ve been invited to a dozen events, some of which I would have liked to attend.  I know Facebook invites are easy.  I know they work for some people.  But despite my notifications box being checked, I do not see Facebook event invites unless I go into Facebook events.  Therefore, I rarely find out about them before it’s too late.

I’m totally down with the electronic invitation.  While I still love to receive a paper invitation because it goes up on the board in the kitchen, I can understand why people choose the environmentally-friendly evite.  But please, we’ve gone from the ultra personal (paper) to the personal (evite to your inbox) to the totally impersonal (Facebook).  I need things to come directly to me if people want me to see it; not to languish somewhere on my Facebook page.  And I’ll be honest, even if I were to ever time it properly and see the invite on Facebook before the event, I doubt I’d RSVP on there.  I don’t need my Facebook friends to see what I’m doing that day.  I don’t need Facebook to know what I’m attending.  I would really like my attendance at events to be between myself, the host, and maybe the other guests.

Those are my pet peeves.  What are yours?

I am often accused by the twins of having a tricksie glint.  Mostly because I am constantly teasing them.

A day or two before Josh’s birthday, I was sitting with the Wolvog and mused aloud, “we should have cake for breakfast.”

“Really?” the Wolvog asked since cake for breakfast isn’t really my style.  Not because I don’t believe in junk food for breakfast but because it is so difficult for me to get up in the morning that pulling my shit together and actually consuming breakfast is a highly unlikely act.  “Are you tricking me?  Are you just trying to get me excited?”

“No, serious.  Let’s make a cake and surprise Daddy in the morning.”

In order to test whether or not I was telling the truth, the Wolvog mentioned it immediately to his sister.  He believes the ChickieNob is better at discerning whether or not I have the “tricksie glint” and is therefore called in like a human lie detector when exciting things develop.  She stared at me for a long time and then finally informed him that I did indeed plan to make a cake and surprise Josh.

“How are you going to pull this off?” she asked.

“I’m going to pull it off by being obvious about it.  And in being obvious about it, it will confound him.”

So I first made Josh PURCHASE THE INGREDIENTS FOR HIS OWN CAKE.  “Why do you need heavy cream?” he asked me, obviously suspicious.

I rolled my eyes, “Stupid fudge recipe I still need to try out for Purim.”

See — he thought I was making him a cake, but then I clearly wasn’t making him a cake, BUT I WAS MAKING HIM A CAKE.

Tricksie.

Then I waited until everyone left for work and school, and I quickly made the cake in the morning.  I then made the icing, and got the whole thing put together by 2 o’clock.  Now here was the tricky part: how to hide said cake in a small house.  If I used the cake saver, Josh might notice that it wasn’t in its usual spot.  If I didn’t use the cake saver, I risked having something hit the icing.  Plus, I’m not leaving out an uncovered cake for hours.  Not this anal girl.

So like a freakin’ Macgyver, I used the bread baking bowl to rig up a bell jar-like contraption.  And then I hid the covered cake in the Wolvog’s closet.

I washed and dried all the equipment, putting it away as if it had never been used.  I made a batch of fudge to explain why the heavy cream had been opened. (Note to Josh: there is no heavy cream in fudge.)  But I took it even further than that.  The ChickieNob pointed out that he might smell the scent of cake in the house.  So I made chili to cover up the scent of the cake, since our chili recipe uses chocolate in the spice base and that could account for the faint scent of chocolate still hanging in the air.

And then, to top it off, when Josh got home that night, I asked him to take down the cake saver and put the fudge inside JUST SO HE COULD SEE THAT CAKE SAVER WAS EMPTY.

I may not be the brightest girl in the world.  But I fucking have a tricksie glint.

Happy birthday, Josh.  I totally got you: with the cake, in marriage, and in understanding a boy like you.  I love you.