Defining academic productivity

At the end of Saturday’s post, I said that I would discuss productivity in a future post. I decided to write a short post about academic productivity today.

I found a useful definition of productivity at the following website, at least in terms of how it can be measured: http://www.investorwords.com/3876/productivity.html

‘The amount of output per unit of input (labor, equipment, and capital). There are many different ways of measuring productivity. For example, in a factory productivity might be measured based on the number of hours it takes to produce a good, while in the service sector productivity might be measured based on the revenue generated by an employee divided by his/her salary.’

Another definition comes from the Merriam Webster online dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/productive:

‘yielding results, benefits, or profits’.

There are difficulties in applying the first definition in its entirety to an academic researcher, because it is very difficult to directly measure a researcher’s economic productivity. The number of publications and grant funding (money given to the research organization where the academic works) are the standard ways of measuring an researcher’s productivity. A good number of publications often leads to more grant funding. And more grant funding in turn draws in more students. But all of this depends on the hierarchical level of the academic. It stands to reason that a staff scientist without a research group (students) cannot be as ‘productive’ as a professor with a large group of students around him or her. Can they even be compared? Yet they often are, especially when it comes to the numbers of publications produced. This is unfair, because in principle a large research group can produce many more publications than one scientist alone. Whether that is in fact true is another discussion. In any case, not all researchers get grants, which doesn’t mean that they are necessarily bad researchers. It simply means that they didn’t get funded this time around. But is that acceptable to the business administrators who control the research institutes and who insist on measuring productivity on an annual basis?

Most other research activities--e.g. advising, teaching, designing experiments, having meetings with students, and writing--don’t generate revenue. If a researcher/advisor spends several hours per week helping one graduate student who is clueless about how to proceed with his or her research article and data interpretation, how do we measure productivity in this situation? The advisor has invested time, energy and intellectual focus in these activities--meeting, advising, and discussing. What is the tangible product? Over time, the product may be (emphasis on the may) an article or two from a student. Or perhaps not, as this can depend on the whim of the involved student as to whether he or she will write those articles. There is no guarantee of a publishable article for all the hard work invested in the student. If graduate students aren’t productive and won't write articles, it can reflect poorly on the advisor because there will be no papers to publish unless the adviser ends up writing them himself. A lack of articles can lead to not getting grants. Published papers are proof that an academic is productive; proof that an academic has done his or her job, which is to do science and to train graduate students how to do science, as well as to write/help to write the articles resulting from research activity. But how many published articles are enough, and how many are too few? Is it quantity or quality that counts?

And what should be done about the academic researchers whose graduate students leave research for the greener pastures of the business world without finishing their PhD degrees? Who don’t stick around despite the huge investment of the researchers’ time and money for lab consumables, conferences and travel? Is this the fault of these researchers? Was it a waste of time and money to train them? The point is that these graduate students got valuable research training before leaving academia. It has to be accepted that whatever they do with that training afterwards is their business. If they leave the research world, well, then they leave it. No one can stop them from doing so. So here’s the rub. Should academic researchers’ productivity be measured by how many of the trained students go on to become academics themselves? If that is the case, it will take years before productivity can be assessed correctly.

The second definition talks about yielding results, benefits or profits. Research activities such as doing lab work, generating data, reading, advising, teaching and writing articles do yield results, but not necessarily profits, unless ideas are patentable, leading to collaborations with big business, e.g. pharmaceutical firms that can produce a profitable drug to treat a specific illness. But getting a patent approved can take many years. So it’s difficult for me to understand the emphasis on increasing academic productivity. I'm not sure what this really means. Again I ask, who will define this adequately, and will it be fair? It strikes me as rather naïve on the part of business administrators to not even make an attempt to understand the complexities of the academic research world, and yet this is the current situation—administrators who have no real idea of what academics do, yet who insist that academics increase their productivity so that the organizations for which they work can get their 'money’s worth' out of them. 

A super-duper uber work world

“One hundred academics at the University of Sydney, Australia, have this week been told they will lose their jobs for not publishing frequently enough. The move is part of wider cost-cutting plans designed to pay for new buildings and refurbishment to the university.”

This article appeared on the Nature News Blog this past Thursday (http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/02/university-of-sydney-sackings-trigger-academic-backlash.html) and I have to say that it was one of the wilder things I’ve read this week--as in bizarre or very odd news. But I have a feeling this is shades of things to come globally. The university was quite blatant about its motives. They want to fire academics they deem to be non-productive in order to use the money saved to refurbish the university. If it wasn’t for the fact that this story was true, I would think it was an April Fools’ Day joke.

So we’re back to the good old question that is being fired more and more at academics and scientists these days. How can you be more productive? How can you rake in money for your universities? Can you patent your ideas and your inventions? If not, why not? How can you make your research patentable? How can the universities get huge returns on their investments (their academics)? My question is—how do you define productivity for a research scientist or for an academic in general? And who gets to define productivity? Administrators? Accountants? Other academics? Research directors and deans? What is poor productivity and what is optimal productivity? The University of Sydney defines optimal productivity as ‘at least four “research outputs” over the past three years’, and informed its non-productive academics (not just scientists) that their positions were being terminated because they hadn’t published this amount of articles. It’s a bit daunting to hear about a university doing this. Why? Because it is all part of the larger global trend to make everything more productive, without defining what productive means in the first place for each respective profession. I’m waiting for the powers-that-be to start on children and babies next. How can schoolchildren and babies be made productive? How can they earn money for the schools and child care centers they attend? And what about mothering? There is no real money involved in doing it, so isn’t this a non-productive job? But I digress.

I have to say that I am glad that I am closer to leaving the work world behind rather than to starting off in it. I know I have a good number of years to go before I can take early retirement, but I won’t mind leaving behind a work world that is focused solely on money and how to make more of it. There will never be enough money. Man’s nature is greedy. He will always want more. Enough is never enough. It’s boring really. I’ve written about the different management philosophies that have taken over the business world. They’re all about productivity, cost-effectiveness, and control of employees. The joy of working is disappearing. I want to say it is disappearing slowly, but it’s not. For some professions it is happening at a rapid rate. If every profession becomes like a factory, what good will that be to society? Couldn’t society get to a point where non-vocational learning and knowledge will be deemed useless and a waste of time and money? Where the study of art, literature, and music for the pure sake of learning will be considered a waste of time? Where turning out well-rounded individuals who appreciate beautiful things for their beauty and spiritual worth and not for their economic worth alone will be considered treasonous? We are fast becoming a work world comprised of super-duper uber organizers, controllers, bureaucrats, administrators, money-pushers and money-makers. These are the only types of jobs that seem to matter. I look ahead and I see a sterile world--an organized, cost-effective world, yes, but not necessarily a productive one. At least not how I define productive. And that will be the theme of a future post.   

A fascination with reflections

Just thought I'd share a few photos from the past few months with you today--Reflection photos. I am fascinated by how images and light are reflected in our surroundings, be they water, ice, smooth walls, windows, or glass generally. Some of these are from the late summer and some from the current winter. Enjoy.

The man in the puddle

Reflections in the ice

Double vision

Reflections and empty shelves

The life around us, reflected in a glass

From the minds of children

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten ran an article about The Monster Engine in its weekend magazine of February 17th. I'm posting the link to The Monster Engine website so you can see what Dave Devries, who started it, does, as well as his amazing artwork based on the drawings of children. And not just any drawings, but drawings of what scares them. Some of them scared me! Check it out.

http://www.themonsterengine.com/

He also has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheMonsterEngine.DaveDeVries

Smart phones, not-so-smart people

Today’s Aftenposten newspaper ran an article about the use of smart phones here in Norway. According to the article, 57% of Norwegians over the age of 16 have a smart phone, 93% of all Norwegians have internet access, and nearly three million Norwegians use Facebook (TNS Gallup statistics). But the article didn’t focus on the usage statistics; it focused on the growing addiction of smart phone owners to their phones. One of the managers at the National Theater was interviewed, and she meant that the addiction was becoming a problem for the theater because the users were looking at their phones throughout performances and disturbing the people around them because the light from the phone is so bright. I quote her (translated from Norwegian): ‘We have had nights where so many people in the audience have had their phones on during the performance that it could have been New Year's Eve’. I call this the height of rudeness.

The advances in computer and phone technology just during the past ten years have been pretty amazing. I understand the fascination with all things new; I also understand how important it is to keep up with the pace of modern technologies. If you don’t, you’ll end up lost and exiled to the outskirts of modern society. I do feel sorry sometimes for elderly people who haven’t kept up or who haven’t had the chance to keep up—who may feel overwhelmed and confused and who wish the world was still as it was thirty or even twenty years ago. But it’s not. I want to keep up and I have kept up. We are fast approaching a world where most ordinary things we do will happen online—from banking to shopping to trip reservations as well as a myriad of other things. It is already that way to a large extent. I don’t have a problem with any of this. I love banking online, for example. We have two laptop computers at home, I just bought an iPad2, we bought a big flat screen TV a few years ago, and I own a top-quality digital SLR camera that I use quite often. I don’t own a smart phone, however, and am not sure I will buy one now that I have the iPad.

However, as much as I use and love all the new gadgets available, I also know when to put them aside for the most part. I know I am not addicted to any of my gadgets, although I can overdo it a bit at times with snapping photos. I do on occasion use a lot of time on my laptop; especially during the evenings when I use it to pursue my writing and photo projects. What I can’t understand is the point of being on Facebook for hours at a time or of sending hundreds of text messages or emails. So I can’t really relate to the addiction problem. I can go to the movies, the opera, the theater, or out to a restaurant and leave my cell phone at home. It has happened. I don’t miss it. I usually have it with me, but when I am together with others, it’s off or silenced, ditto for being in a theater. I don’t need to be constantly conversing with other people, on buses, trains, boats or planes. I don’t walk behind other people and make them nervous by chatting on phones they don’t see. When that happens to me I feel like I am being followed by crazy people talking to themselves. I don’t need to check my emails constantly, so I don’t need to be online constantly. I write this blog but I don’t need to check it constantly either. And as time goes on, I know that I will organize the free time I treasure even more optimally than I manage to now. That will be because I don’t want to spend all my free time writing on a computer or connected to some gadget, updating the world constantly about where I am, what I am doing, or who I am together with. That is because I value my private time and my private life. There are many things that no one else except those closest to me will be privy to. That’s the way I want it.

I find it sad, apropos this newspaper article, that so many people are living online rather than experiencing the ‘now’. The now is all we have. Think of what they’re missing. I would rather be together in person with a friend and enjoying an evening talking and relaxing, without having to check my phone every ten minutes. It’s rude to do that—that’s the way I grew up. I can hear my mother’s voice in my head saying something to that effect. I have seen enough people sitting together at a restaurant table, and each of them was texting messages to friends or family that were not there with them, ignoring the others at the table. More rudeness. I attend professional meetings that are constantly interrupted by emails and phone calls. It is difficult to pick up the thread and to go forward with the meetings after four or five of these kinds of interruptions. I’ve been to lectures where many in the audience are using their laptops and smart phones to check their emails and/or to edit their own lectures or reports. It’s become a brave, new, rude, socially-unintelligent world, despite all the gadgets that can socially connect us and which should be used intelligently. I would always choose the personal connection over the gadget or social media connection. I appreciate what the latter have made possible for me, the ex-pat who lives across the pond from her country of birth, in terms of keeping in touch with family and friends, but give me the in-person experience of being together with them any day.  

Home office day

I love my one day a week when I can work at home. ‘Hjemmekontor’ as it’s called in Norwegian—literally, ‘home office’. Home office day. Has a nice ring to it. I usually work at home on Wednesdays these days. All I know is that it seems to be a lot more common now than it was ten years ago. I started working at home around eight years ago; I was one of the first employees at my hospital to take advantage of the opportunity. I get so much work done at home. I am disciplined and structured enough to make it work; I know people who are not and who shudder at the very idea of working at home. I love it because I am not distracted by telephones, knocks on my door, or other interruptions that make up the daily life of the workplace. And I am not complaining about those interruptions—they are part and parcel of the work world. But if I want to think, write or be creative, home is the place I need to be.

I work at home the way I do at my workplace, from 9am until noon with a break for lunch, and then the rest of the day until around 5pm. Today I did some food shopping at lunchtime, and on my way upstairs to our apartment with my two grocery bags, I ran into two other people who live in our building. They were also working at home. It struck me that more people may end up working from home in the next ten years than will be working in a formal workplace. And wouldn’t that be ok? I would welcome it. With computers, smart phones, fax machines, webcams and pagers, aren’t we well-connected to our workplaces? Aren’t we sufficiently connected? We are on an honor system, yes, that’s true. If we say we will be at home to those who work for us, we have to honor our promise. I want to honor it, because I want my co-workers to know that I am available to help them whenever they need me during work hours. After hours is another story. After hours—those are my hours, and they are ‘do not disturb unless it is a crisis’ hours.

There are a lot of advantages to working at home. There is no formal dress code; pajamas are quite ok, as are tattered jeans. Makeup is unimportant. Additionally I can take a five-minute break from time to time to find my camera to take photos of the pigeons who sit outside my kitchen window—my camera is in the next room a few feet away. If I was at work, I would miss those shots because I don’t carry my camera with me to work. Perhaps I should start to do so. In any case, I cannot come up with one disadvantage to working at home, unless of course one brings up the loss of social contact. But being a scientist, I am alone a good portion of my day anyway, so I don’t normally experience an overabundance of daily social interaction at work. And I’m fine with that. I know others who would miss having their daily group around them, and who would not enjoy being at home. I also look at working at home as preparation for retirement. And since I’ve been doing this for eight years, I am used to it and I know I'll be fine the day I no longer have a formal workplace to go to. 

A poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning for Valentine's Day

Sonnets from the Portuguese - 43

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Photography blogs I like

As many of you know, I am a hobby photographer, and I have a photography blog where I try to post photos on a daily basis (http://oftheangelsdesigns.wordpress.com/). I have connected with a number of different photo bloggers, and all I can say is that I am amazed by and in awe of the talent out there in the world. There are so many creative people who take some gorgeous photos, and it is pretty terrific that so many people are sharing their views of the world. I thought I would share some of those blogs with you today. I am sure you will like them.

http://design6studio.wordpress.com/
http://sugarblast.com/
http://sillymonkeyphoto.com/
http://tau0.wordpress.com/
http://h2obyjoanna.wordpress.com/
http://burntembers.wordpress.com/
http://photobotos.com/
http://photonatureblog.com/

Sharing happiness and being happy for others

The death of Whitney Houston, like Amy Winehouse before her, is always a wake-up call to pay attention to the lives we have, right now, today. Today is all we have. Instead of wishing our lives away, hoping for better times in the future, or worrying too much about the past, we are reminded that it is best to focus on today. These are just two of many enormously-talented people in the world who achieved fame, years of fame, and for all their fame, did not seem to find the happiness they were seeking. Their lives sunk into the hell that is drug abuse; their personal pain and negative experiences are poignant reminders that fame and wealth will not necessarily bring happiness. I read somewhere that Whitney’s husband was jealous of her professional fame, and that this led to psychological and physical abuse on his part. If he managed to drag her down rather than her pulling him up, how sad is that. Is professional jealousy a common thing in marriage and relationships? I don’t know. Sometimes I am tempted to answer yes, especially the more fame and wealth one partner achieves compared to the other. Fame and wealth may be good to have; we may experience them as rewards for a job well-done. They may make life easier, but they cannot buy happiness or guarantee it. And that must be the bitter rub. With all the money in the world, one cannot buy the love of another, not if it is real love one is out after. And one cannot buy happiness.

Happiness is an elusive thing, and no one has managed to define it satisfactorily (at least for me) to date. It is a very personal experience—for some it may be the experience of family life, for others career success, for others the realization of personal dreams. For some it may be a combination of all these things. For others it may be daily contact with nature and with the animals and birds around us. It is important to acknowledge the happy times in our lives; important to tell others when we are happy. There is too much focus in our world on telling others when we are sad, depressed, upset, or angry; not enough focus on telling others when we are feeling happy, content, joyful or at peace, or when others make us happy. Why this is I cannot say. Perhaps we always want to share the negative. Or perhaps we are afraid to share the positive. Afraid that others will take our happiness from us, or come with a flippant or sarcastic comment concerning our happiness. Sometimes just verbalizing something positive sounds so strange, out-of-place, unnatural. Or perhaps we are afraid that we will hear the standard well-meaning advice that many people tell you—don’t get too wrapped up in your happiness; the bad times will come again. Don’t get too comfortable or don’t be too happy about being happy. As though that was a crime. Others may feel guilty about finding happiness, especially when they know that family and friends have not found it. Why can’t we be happy for others when they find happiness? It is no reflection on our lives if they find happiness. We can choose our responses, and I think it's best to choose to be happy for others and to support them when they are happy. Wouldn’t you want others to be happy for you when it’s your turn? Don’t you love the people who turn to you when you are happy and say—‘I’m so happy for you right now’. It’s freeing, it’s loving, it’s generosity in action. God bless those people. 

The new and improved, spontaneous and creative modern-day workplace

Ran into a former colleague yesterday; he left academia a few years ago and moved into industry. Not necessarily because he wanted to; more because there were no further possibilities for him to get more funding at that time, so when his contract ran out, he had no job. That’s how it works in academia. The nature of academic jobs is transient; if you don’t like this aspect of academia, it is not for you. Most non-tenured academics work contractually for three to four years at a time. But my former colleague was telling me how tough it has become to work and keep your job in the private sector as well. Not easy there either. You must like constant change, and you must adjust quickly. If not, you’ll be left in the dust and possibly without a job if you don’t keep up. There is a lot of instability there too, and you can no longer rely on finding a ‘permanent’ job. The public and private sectors seem to have discovered that the offer of a permanent job to an employee may make that employee complacent and thus non-productive over time. Of course that can happen. But does it always happen? No. What they haven’t factored into the equation is that without some sort of stability, there can be no productivity because there is no time to relax and to produce. If you are always worried about whether your job is to be eliminated or if you will lose your job because your performance is constantly being measured, you cannot produce well. That is my contention at least. My former colleague talked about quarterly performance evaluations. That must be extremely stressful. I think annual performance evaluations are enough.

I’ve talked to many different people who work in the public and private sectors, both here in Norway and in the USA. They all say the same thing—the work world has gotten much harder and tougher. Modern-day workplaces are now new and improved. If you don’t measure up, you’re gone. If you don’t produce, you’re gone. If you’re not creative, you’re gone. If you don’t like constant change, brainstorming, open office landscapes, and teamwork, you’re gone. If you’re a loner type, a non-conforming type, a quiet type, there’s not much room for you these days. You’re expected to conform, to avoid conflict but to be creative, to network, to connect, to work together in a team but to be creative, to be constantly on but to be creative and so on. I don’t know how all of this is possible. I find it difficult to draw a direct connecting line between creativity and productivity. A creative idea needs time to take root, to blossom, to grow. It cannot be pulled out by its roots before its time. It cannot be harvested before its time. This means that there is a time lag between the birth of an idea and the birth of the product that may come from that idea. What if it takes a year or two? What if it takes five years? Is that allowed these days? All I know is that scientific research cannot and does not work like this. It’s hard to measure our productivity as scientists except to look at our publication records. And even those can be misleading. You may have one good article published during the past three years in a very good journal, and that article took several years to create. Or you may have several average-quality articles published in average-quality journals that took the same amount of years to create. If management only looks at the latter, then a scientist will be considered productive. But is this the correct picture? Is it the whole picture? I think not.  

Personally, it would be pure torture for me to have to perform on cue every single time I had a meeting with other team members—to come up with creative ideas on cue, to know just the right thing to say, to have a quip ready, to have advice in spades. I don’t work that way. I don’t tick that way. Heck, there are some meetings where I can sit quietly and just listen to others talk. I leave those meetings and reflect on what’s been said and accomplished. I respect others who can and who do perform on cue; who can ad lib and brainstorm at will. I am not one of them. I never was, even as a child. I am not very spontaneous. I respectfully request that others respect that all people are not the same, and that it will be impossible to create a society of workers who all think alike.

Another day in the life of a scientist

Long day in the lab yesterday. One of those days that leave you dead-tired, so that when you get home you just want to find the couch, turn the TV on and just do nothing. Got my morning coffee first. Workday started off with me doing a procedure called western blotting—104 cell samples loaded manually (by me) onto four plastic-like gels and pushed through them by electricity. Point of procedure? To separate proteins in the samples according to their molecular weights. Just the sample loading took over an hour. Have to pay attention--very easy to make a mistake and load the wrong sample in the wrong place. Made buffers after that. Found all the accessories needed to complete the procedure. Lunchtime in my office. Knock on my office door. Impromptu visit from the big boss. Shoveled in my salad while talking about my future—lab frock on and thoroughly harried. Thought about that. In my younger days I wouldn’t have eaten a bite while talking to the boss. Would have been too nervous. Now I do. No longer nervous. Getting used to all these conversations. Back in the lab. Two more hours of finishing up this gel procedure. Nice results. A reward for the hard work and long hours. Not always that way. A quick coffee break. Meeting with my student--discussed results. Hers and mine—she does the same procedure to get data so we can discuss what’s happening in her cells. Interesting project. She will get her thesis done. Hope there will be an article out of it. Cannot predict that when you first start the work. Do all this work for several months and suddenly a dead-end. That’s research. Used to disappointments—makes success all the more enjoyable. Scanned in some data, transferred it to the computer, sent it on to my student. Finished up paperwork before heading for home. Bought a grilled chicken, fried up some mushrooms, made broccoli—voila—dinner on my own. Hubby out with his lab group for dinner. TV night for once—not often that happens! The King’s Speech, Game of Thrones, The Way We Were—well-worth the watching time. Monday starts another week, more long days in the lab. Wonder how I did this when I was younger—long long hours in the lab, sometimes twelve per day. Dead-tired a lot of the time. Like being in the lab though. Will probably be doing that till I retire--white frock on, in front of the lab bench, alone. Not a bad way to work given the new workplace propensity for long unsatisfying meetings these days. Would rather be in the lab, all things considered. 

The music of Sherlock

I am really enjoying the BBC series Sherlock, as I wrote the other day in my post The Fascination with Sherlock. Have just seen the third episode from the first season, and am hoping that NRK continues right into the second season, which I believe has only two episodes (the first season had three). I think it is a high-quality production with some really terrific acting and plots, and I hope it continues in that vein. What I didn’t mention in that earlier post is that the music from the series is also top-notch and very catchy—just perfect for the show. 

Here are some links to two of the themes:

Sherlock Opening Theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLlt0cK4uA0&feature=related

Sherlock's Theme by David Arnold and Denis Yeletskikh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECV064U6ygw

Some of my favorite books

As promised in my post about writers from a few days ago--some of my favorite authors and their books:

·         Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure; Tess of the d’Urbervilles; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Far from the Madding Crowd

·         Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady; The Golden Bowl; Washington Square; The Wings of the Dove; The Turn of the Screw

·         Charles Dickens: Great Expectations; A Christmas Carol; A Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield

·         Francois Mauriac: Viper’s Tangle; Therese; The Woman of the Pharisees; The Desert of Love

·         C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters; Mere Christianity; Surprised by Joy; Miracles; The Problem of Pain

·         Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea; Good Morning, Midnight; Smile Please; Quartet

·         John Le Carre: A Perfect Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

·         John Steinbeck: The Winter of Our Discontent; Of Mice and Men; Cannery Row

·         Dorothy Sayers: Whose Body?; Strong Poison; Have His Carcase; Hangman’s Holiday; Gaudy Night; Busman’s Honeymoon

·         Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Life is Elsewhere; Immortality

·         Rollo May: The Meaning of Anxiety; Love and Will; Man’s Search for Himself; The Courage to Create

·         George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner  

·         Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

·         Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

·         Henry David Thoreau: Walden; Civil Disobedience

·         Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles; Something Wicked This Way Comes; Fahrenheit 451; Dandelion Wine; The Illustrated Man

·         Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain; The Terminal Man; Timeline

·         Stanislaw Lem: Solaris

Ideas in the darkness and in the light of day

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.

— Agatha Christie

If Agatha Christie said this, then it is not so difficult for budding writers (like myself) to admit the same. I think of all the times when I’m doing housework, and ideas pop into my head, and I make a mental note to write them down before they just flit away into the vast cosmos. I wonder if there is a world somewhere—the world of lost ideas. I wonder if there is a way of entering that world, in order to retrieve some of the ideas that got away. Because they do slip away if you don’t catch them when they first appear. Many of them appear while doing mundane chores. But many of them come vividly to life in the darkness. How many times I lie awake at around 5am and ideas rush into my head, and I ponder each of them, turning them over and over in my mind. Can this work? Can I write about that? How will I develop this or that character? Should I do so? And so on. Some of the ideas don’t pass muster in the light of day. It’s odd what the early morning darkness will do for your creativity. Some of the ideas are wild, fantastical, and completely irrational—but they are exciting to think about because there is an element of dare and bravado to them; that can disappear in the waking light. My mind is somehow braver in the dark, and it is an aspect of me that I don’t understand. This can also be true for finding solutions to problems—personal or otherwise. I come up with such wonderful solutions in the dark—things I’m going to say (and mean), decisions that will be irrevocable--the new me with a tough no-nonsense attitude. I come up with quips and sarcastic retorts to rude people and can plan out my replies to those who like to talk over me when I try and speak. And then the dawn breaks and in the light of day I’m not so tough. I have to struggle to be brave and to remember my promises to myself made in the dark. And it is the same with writing. The ideas are there--hundreds of ideas. I don’t lack for ideas for what to write about. The problem is choosing the one idea I want to focus on. The ideas have probably been there for years, inside of me, waiting for an opening. Sitting down and actually writing about them releases them, expands them, solidifies them and makes them real. But in the darkness they all seem so viable. In the light, they are not. In fact, some of them can seem quite ridiculous.

I try to pay attention to my inner voice, the one that tells me what path is probably best to follow these days. My heart is in accord with this inner voice. So I have often experienced that my inner voice tells me to have several projects going at one time—I work a little on one of them during one week, and then suddenly the following week, my inner voice suggests that I focus on another project. I don’t know if it is like this for other writers. For example, I am currently working on a book of short stories and a science fiction novel, but the book that is ready to go at present is a book of reflections about workplaces and the work world that I’ve been mulling over for the last month or so. Most of the essays and reflections that make up the book were written during the past two years, but it is the actual compilation of these that took some time. How best to present them, which ones should come first--that sort of thing. It all fell into place, and once again I marvel at the creative process. I understand so little of it, but it is so exhilarating to experience. The freedom associated with it is like nothing I have ever experienced before, and once you taste that freedom, you will not trade it away for anything. 

Writers I’d like to interview

This idea came to me during a conversation with my husband this morning on our way to work. And then I started to think about some of my favorite books and their authors. Who would I like to have a really interesting conversation with, and would that necessarily be the result if it was possible? Some of the writers who came to mind (both living and deceased), in no particular order, are as follows: Thomas Hardy, Henry James, John Le Carre, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem, Charles Dickens, Francois Mauriac, CS Lewis, Jean Rhys, Milan Kundera, George Eliot, Rollo May, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Henry David Thoreau, Michael Crichton, and Dorothy Sayers. These are just a few of many; but I think these particular writers had a remarkable influence on me at different times in my life. I’ve read at least one book by each of these authors; in many cases, three or more.

I wonder how it would be to interview them; I certainly have many questions I’d love to ask them. Questions about how they write; the process of writing--do they sit and write each day? Where do they get their inspiration from? When did they know that they had this talent, this ability to put words on paper that ended up being a book, and when did they decide to reveal that talent to the world? I would ask them how it felt to finish their books; especially the first one. How did it feel to read a review of their first book? How did it feel to earn a living by writing, and was/is it possible? Or do you always need to have a backup job in case the writing doesn’t provide a comfortable-enough living? Do they associate with other writers? Do they share their writings with others during the process, or do they wait until the book is finished before they show it to someone else? Are they ever nervous about how their books will be received? How long did it take to write their individual books? Do they re-write and edit constantly? Do they believe in a collective unconscious—a collection of the archetypical personal experiences of many individuals that can be shared with all those who wish to learn from them or utilize them for their creative works? I will include some of these authors’ books in a future post—the ones I call my favorites.