Hello friend, 👋🏾
The radio silence in these parts has a very good reason. I’m just back from 10 days in Greece! I had an amazing time visiting Athens, Crete, and Santorini. If you’re looking for photos, check my Instagram here and here.
Coming back from vacation brain is always tough, add in to that a cocktail of jet lag and seasonal allergies, and I’ve just been in a whirlwind of exhaustion and tissues. But, back to real life I must go. And part of that was finally putting out the conversation I had with fantasy author P. Djeli Clark as part of my Imagining Success interview series.
You can check it out below or on my podcast feed. He’s a super accomplished author, who created a definitive plan and stuck to it, and it’s paid off.
I plan to drop a bonus episode this week for podcast fans, since it’s been a minute since I’ve had a personal update. If you want to hear more about Greece and my recent writing, make sure you’re subscribed to the feed.
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📝 Oliver Burkeman on Productivity Debt
Oliver Burkeman, author of the perspective changing book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, is the sober, productivity realist of our time. In a world where people once believed they could have it all or they should “sleep when they’re dead,” Burkeman reminds us that there’s just no way we can get everything done and it’s actually okay.
His recent newsletter article, “What if you're already on top of things?“ gives us additional perspective geared towards gently guiding us to treat ourselves as the mere mortals we are:
…paying off your imaginary productivity debt completely – in other words, working so hard and so efficiently that you no longer feel like you're falling behind – is literally impossible, not just grueling and unpleasant. In the modern world of work, there's no limit to the number of emails you might receive, the demands your boss might make, the ambitions you might have for your career, etcetera – so there’s no reason to believe you’ll ever get to the end of them.
He advocates keeping a “done list” of your daily accomplishments, to balance that to-do list that will never be completed. The goal is to relax and do what we can and, hopefully, enjoy our four thousand weeks just a little bit more.
When speaking to writers, I often get questions along the lines of “How can I get it all done?” Balancing day jobs, partners, kids, aging parents, exercise, laundry, writing? Who has the time? The answer is, you can’t get it all done, at least not at the same time.
Accept that life is cyclical. There will be some periods where you’re going to have to neglect something, whether it’s your health, your writing, or maybe even your family—at least a little.
Guilt will come along with that, and that’s natural. It’s not forever. Balancing it all won’t ever really happen, so I’ve begun focusing on the dance of planned focus. I’ll disappear from my friends, probably not call people back, and have my mother forwarding passive-aggressive articles on why children should call their parents more.
And then the deadline will pass and I’ll re-focus on the things I’ve missed for a while, until I’m deep into another project again. I think this is just how life works. And I don’t really trust people who claim otherwise.
📝 Where do names come from?
From a fictional worldbuilding perspective, names are very powerful. Names of people and places in your world can help set the tone of your story, build cultural connections in a subtle way, and help flesh out history.
This article on the Oxford University Press site “Do American family names make sense?“ is really interesting if you’re into names, where they come from, and what they might say about us.
American family names have a unique diversity, the living evidence of a country founded on colonization, forced transportation (especially of West Africans), and influxes of refugees and economic migrants from across the globe.
In the same way that languages change over time through usage by native speakers, new speakers, as well as mingling with other tongues, and a host of other factors, names shift and morph as well. One example:
John Morton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, had a Finnish grandfather called Martti Marttinen—“Martin Martin’s son”— who moved to Sweden, where his name was Scandinavianized as Mårten Mårtensson, pronounced Mortenson, and then to America, where his surname was shortened to Morton.
Immigrants moving to America from places where surnames either don’t exist or are different end up choosing their own names, much like the newly freed Black citizens after the Civil War who often took “the surname of an admired figure, such as Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, or Washington.”
Others, whether immigrant or indigenous, were assigned names by the government, like the name “Begay,” which was “imposed on Navajos by white officials, who mistook it for a surname.”
I like to say that in another life, I would have been a linguist because I find these kinds of topics endlessly fascinating. But it’s also useful in writing. I haven’t before considered a character who names themselves, or has a name they don’t want forced upon them. What would the world they live in look like? How could this act affect the character or the plot of the story? Lots of food for thought.
📚A Book Club?
I buy a lot of craft books. But lately, I’ve been having trouble actually getting through them. I need some accountability partners, y’all, and thought it would be fun to start a writing craft book club.
If you’re interested, just let me know below. The idea is we’d go through the book, potentially have weekly check-in posts and a monthly online meeting to talk about it.
🚀 Quick Bites
Digital decluttering has been a recurring item on my to-do list for the past few months. Though I always try to have a system for my files and documents, things have gotten out of hand on a number of fronts.
Plus, I’ve been consistently skipping the sessions I put in my calendar, in favor of more time-sensitive activities, however, I attended romance editor Jessica Snyder’s digital decluttering co-working session this past weekend, which was super helpful. (Her newsletter is a great addition to your inbox.)
Some things on my list to organize: Canva files (which I made a good stab at this weekend), Google Drive, my 4 main email accounts 😭, my hard drive.
I’m looking forward to wrangling my Google Drive into submission using this tool I heard about on Jane Friedman’s newsletter: FileRev. It claims to help you remove duplicates and manage your storage. Drive Cleaner is another, completely free option, that looks promising.
🎙️ My Imaginary Friends: Episode 237 - Imagining Success with P. Djèlí Clark
“Imagining Success” is an interview series where I talk to authors who have achieved career milestones that others only dream about and ask them how they got there and where they go from here.
In this interview, I speak with multi-award winner P. Djèlí Clark about the publishing industry, shifting ideas of success, and something all Gen-Xers should know: why reading is fundamental.
Find him online at https://pdjeliclark.com/. His most recent releases is Abeni’s Song.
✨Ink & Magic podcast: Episode 22 - Dark Romance with Skye Warren
Dark romance is more than just the non-consent and power dynamics. Learn why romance superstar Skye Warren insists dark romance is feminist literature, and see if you agree!
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Digital decluttering is getting urgent for me... I'm not ready to upgrade to a new computer but my hard drive is full, I need to delete a few years of Gmail, and it's also time to move a few years of photos off my phone!
Digital decluttering has been on my list for years.... :-)