Shaved Meats, Piled High: March 2018
Freedom's Just Another Name . . .
When I tottered onto the Internet on shaky baby legs in the summer of 2001, I began with a complaint: I wanted people to stop calling me disciplined. I don't remember why it bothered me so much and I think there was a touch of humblebrag to the whole enterprise, although humblebrag was not a term widely in use back then. All I know is that wanted people to stop calling me that.
But I was always proud of my output, the result of fairly good work habits. I wrote seven books while working full-time; since leaving my job in November 2001, I have produced another 16 books. For the most part, I've been able to write a book a year, although I've been slowing down a little. I don't think it's a result of old age or motherhood. (Yes, I had the brainstorm to combine the two.) I decided a few years ago to get my diva card punched and now indulge in one high-strung behavior: I work on one book at a time through the copy-edits because I want only one book in my head at a time. This leads to inevitably fallow weeks but I've decided they are part of my -- cue self-important music -- PROCESS.
As the Internet changed around me, producing more and more distractions, I felt I did a good job at shutting out the noise when it was time to work. And I did. I set daily quotas for myself, in terms of words and time. Obviously, I was meeting them. But on my scheduled breaks, when I allowed myself to check Twitter, Facebook and email, I was increasingly manic, running among the three sites like a pellet-seeking rat. Laugh at my jokes! Give me good gossip! Bring me good news!
Still, I thought programs such as Freedom, which would limit my access to those sites, were for people without, yes, discipline. I wasn't an addict. I could take it or leave it. To prove this to myself, I began stripping down my phone, removing most applications. I need Lyft and Zipcar because I don't own a car anymore, but I don't need Facebook or Twitter. And I would get rid of email if my daughter's school didn't use it to communicate last-minute information. A week after dumbing down my smartphone, I felt glorious. Oh, sure, I still pulled it from my pocket when bored, but now I put it right back in.
So I decided to try Freedom. I've blocked Facebook, Twitter and email from my laptop 8-noon every day. It's going great. My work is going better and I'm just a generally happy person. I would never forsake social media; it's a lifeline for stay-at-home workers. But I needed much less than I thought.
I've long told other writers not to Google themselves. My working thesis is that you're not going to miss any good news. And you might not even miss the bad news. The important thing, I think, is to notice who brings you what. I had a friend who steadfastly ignored every positive review and interview for more than a decade. But she was always there for me when I was slagged in a major publication.
(An aside: She hasn't had any reason to get in touch with me since Sunburn was published, but then -- she's not a friend anymore. Interestingly, that was her choice, not mine.)
Two nights ago, after putting my daughter to bed, I came downstairs and saw that my iPad was lit up with tweets. The first was from Harlan Coben, the kind of friend who likes to share good news. Stephen King had tweeted and Facebooked about my novel.
The next hour was filled with gratifying likes and favorites and "oh wows" from friends and readers and reader-friends. The next morning, it would have been tempting to try to extend my victory lap. But my session was set, no Internet 8-noon. I went to work.
Go figure, I got a lot done.
READ/READING: Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado; Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott; That Kind of Mother, Rumaan Alam. (Her Body, which was nominated for the National Book Award, doesn't need my endorsement, but I strongly urge everyone to read Machado's divine story on the numbingly cumulative effect of the sexual violence in Law & Order: SVU in "Especially Heinous).
REREADING: The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood, Julie Salamon. Come for the incisive reporting about how a big-budget studio film was made in the late 1980s, stay for the rampant misogyny, which includes a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright's pride in a scene in which a woman photocopies her labia.
ME, ME, ME: See "Stephen King, above." You can also check out a sampling of Sunburn's reviews and blurbs here. And, finally, I was honored to be part of Lit Hub's new spinoff site, CrimeReads; I wrote about James Cain.
Laura Lippman
March 2018