THE JERSEY EXILE

Reflections

2012-02-05T08:49:00.000-05:00

I took a picture of the sky reflected in Gloucester Harbor last week...

(Thanks again to Good Morning Gloucester for posting my pic!)

While supplies last!

2012-02-04T14:32:00.004-05:00

Inspired by the positive experience of other ebook writers, I've decided to enroll Confessions of a Gourmand, or How to Cook a Dragon in Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing Select program-- in return for offering my novel exclusively on Amazon for three months, I get to promote it as a free download for five days.

Confessions will be available for free at the Kindle store starting today until February 8th. Please give it a try! If you enjoy the book, I humbly ask that you tell a friend or leave a review on Amazon. Many thanks in advance...

(And thanks to Joey C. at Good Morning Gloucester for plugging the book!)

Bibliophile

2012-02-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

Amid the backdrop of interstellar war, a librarian at the edge of the galaxy must make a decision which will determine the course of the rest of his life. "Bibliophile" is a 11,000-word short story and the first installment in a series of library-themed science fiction called L is for Librarian. It's available for sale now in the following formats:

Amazon Kindle Edition
Nook Edition
Smashwords Edition

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you do like it, please consider leaving a review!

Volume 2 of L is for Librarian is tentatively titled "Heist," and should be available by the end of February.

Make It Happen 2012: January Recap

2012-02-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

So the first month of 2012 has already come and gone. What do I have to show for it?

1. I've lost over 20 pounds, thanks to Weight Watchers Online and a renewed commitment to walking in the morning and getting out of the house and into the outdoors on the weekends. Not only do all of my clothes fit better, but I'm no longer plagued by sleep apnea at night, which means that these days I'm actually waking up feeling well-rested. Aside from the other obvious health benefits, a good night's sleep is probably the greatest side-effect of my weight loss thus far. I am also cooking a great deal more than I had been in 2011, not just for myself and my wife but for my daughter, who is becoming increasingly adventurous with her PKU vegetarian diet and is demanding more and more variety at the dinner table.

2. I spent some quality time with the business end of my writing- not only did I enter my novel The Librarian's Tale into the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, but I am also selling a new short story (both online and with a print edition coming soon!) and have recently completed a revised and expanded edition of my first novel Confessions of a Gourmand. More about both of these things soon! Next up on the writing front is editing, polishing, and releasing the Varonian Nights saga on the new platform my best friend and I have set up as a fantasy portal.

3. Speaking of my writing, I have been actively working on a new short story as well as several new blog posts about the Harvard Library reorganization. Before Make It Happen 2012, I'm not sure I would have felt as confident in posting my own thoughts and opinions about what's going on here at the World's Greatest University, but I believe this crisis for all of its challenges has promoted a great deal of introspection throughout our organization as well as the rest of the library world, so I'm glad I was able to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

Not bad for 31 days. Here's to keeping up the momentum in February and beyond!

We didn't start the fire

2012-01-30T12:16:00.001-05:00

I've been doing a lot of ruminating since "The Great Librarian Massacre" the week before last (kudos to someone at Daily Kos for picking up the story even if they completely missed the fact that my post title was meant to be a tongue in cheek homage to Bob Darnton's seminal history treatise The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History), especially concerning the role that social media-- mainly Twitter-- played in the dissemination of information that day. After a spirited conversation with a colleague I began to worry that our tweeting had only thrown gasoline on the fire, or even worse, had actually sparked the blaze in the first place. For wasn't it true that the whole brouhaha begin when someone claimed on Twitter that we'd all been effectively fired? Had we Harvard library folk not been livetweeting the Town Hall Meetings on the #hlth hashtag, it would not have been nearly as easy for the conversation to spin out of control amid a concerned global audience of librarians, higher ed trend watchers, and both boosters and detractors of the World's Greatest University. Or so the reasoning goes.

Even though I am a firm proponent of Living Out Loud and one of those annoying Information Should Be Free kind of evangelists, I'm not averse to a little soul-searching about the disruptive nature of new technologies. From the so-called Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Twitter has been blamed for facilitating revolution across the globe, so it's not all that surprising that social media is providing a voice during a period of radical transformation here at the Harvard Library. As these things tend to happen, our perfect "social media shitstorm" started out innocently enough, and use of the #hlth was even encouraged by library administrators as a mechanism by which the Town Hall proceedings could be shared with colleagues who could not attend one of the three meetings (the 9am meeting was also livestreamed online on a publicly accessible website). Was this an example of misunderstanding the viral reach of Twitter, or did the Powers That Be simply believe that the content of their meetings was not nearly as controversial as it turned out to be?

I would argue that it was a little of both. Although I was not personally in attendance at last week's community meeting with our Executive Director and Senior Associate Provost-- the first meeting between administrators and staff since the Town Hall Meetings-- having spoken to people who were there and reading the tweets of those who covered the event, it's clear that there is still a disconnect between perceptions and reality between library staff and the highest echelons about just how much of a disaster the January 19th meetings were. Many of my colleagues who went expected some token fence-mending only to be disappointed, so it will be very interesting to see if there are any PR course corrections during the run-up to the next set of Town Hall Meetings in February, especially now that the HUCTW has weighed in about not having been notified in advance of the key points in the Transition Team's presentation and labor activists have already picketed the exterior of Harvard Library administrators' offices.

As far as Twitter itself is concerned, certainly nothing that Harvard has done via social media channels to date would have prepared administrators either for the speed at which information about the Town Hall Meetings traveled or the vehemence of the response from the library world and beyond. But that is not an excuse for not being prepared at least for the possibility that such a viral event might occur and engaging the backchannel with reliable information once all Hell had indeed broken loose. And yet the Harvard Library Twitter account was idle throughout the entire day, and moreover continues to be silent (its last tweet was on December 7th of last year). Ironically, those of us who were livetweeting the meetings quickly found ourselves scrambling to combat the rampant misinformation that others were spreading in the absence of any official Twitter presence!

It is my understanding that the library administration is currently reexamining its communications policies from the ground up, which is welcome news, but even the best-formulated policy will never adequately address the messy turbulence of social media. Nor would we be in a better situation if those of us who had been livetweeting the Town Hall Meetings had not shared information and our outrage on #hlth. Word would still have broken out among the library community, only it would have been even more riddled with rumors and falsehoods than the Twitter stream itself. An open communications channel may invite those with an ax to grind and other anonymous online agents provocateur, but I believe that transparency will always carry the day on its own merits. Despite the initial fear and subsequent controversy, look at the myriad discussions that have been inspired by our Town Hall Meetings.

I have always argued quite passionately with my colleagues that whether or not the Harvard Library regards the rest of the library world when it thinks, plans, or acts, the rest of the world is always watching us. The events of the past few weeks have vindicated my belief, and suggest that librarians and library staff everywhere consider themselves stakeholders in our Library Transition-- a humbling, terrifying, wonderful thought. I still believe that we are capable of transforming our great but centuries-old library system into a model research library for the 21st century and beyond, but this requires engagement and a willingness to lead from our administration as much as it demands patience, enthusiasm, and optimism from the rest of us.

Make It Happen 2012: Day 29

2012-01-30T00:28:00.001-05:00

One of the things that I resolved to do as part of Make It Happen 2012 was to pay closer attention to the business side of my writing. While I always seem able to find the time to eke out a few words here and there on a new project, when it comes to editing, polishing, submitting, or self-publishing my works online I tend to procrastinate like there's no tomorrow. Today however I took advantage of a lazy Sunday afternoon to finally get my entry for this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest ready for submission. Although I had entered the 2010 competition (with my fantasy novel Confessions of a Gourmand (/shamelessplug)) and actually made it to the second round, for various reasons I ended up missing the deadline for last year's contest and regretted it terribly for not having given it another try.

Well, I'm back this year with a new entry-- another fantasy novel called The Librarian's Tale. However I fare this time, I will be sure to release the book as a Kindle edition, just as I did with Confessions, but in the meanwhile wish me luck!

(I've also been working on something else today, but I'm saving that announcement for tomorrow for reasons which I hope will become obvious. Let's call it the best kind of procrastination...)

20 pounds!

2012-01-29T11:20:00.002-05:00

'Nuff said.

Make It Happen: Day 22

2012-01-22T16:07:00.000-05:00

As of this morning, I've managed to lose 18.3 pounds since starting my diet earlier this month. This was Week Three using Weight Watchers, and I have to say that my appetite has decreased significantly compared to the first two weeks of dieting. I mentioned this before, but it's almost disconcerting not to be hungry all the time, or to finish a meal and (amazingly enough) feel full, so much so that I was convinced that I was not going to have lot any weight this week when I got on the Wii Balance Board. But lo and behold, the plan appears to be working. I'm looking forward to crossing the 20-pound mark, and perhaps reaching my 10% goal of 27 pounds in the next couple of weeks. As impatient as I am to lose all this weight, I'm mindful of the fact that the goal is not just to shed the pounds but actually keep them off this time.

Slowly but surely, I'll get there...

The Great Librarian Massacre (and Other Episodes in Harvard Cultural History)*

2012-01-20T09:56:00.005-05:00

If you are a librarian and you have access to the Internet, then you've probably already heard that Harvard fired all of its library staff yesterday.

Well, sort of. By which I mean: not really. Which is to say that no one was fired at all, in fact.

Nevertheless I have to say that we Harvard library folk were by and large blindsided when we went to one of three "Town Hall Meetings" yesterday for an update about the Library Transition, as many of us had been cautioned not to expect any substantive news until at least next month. Imagine our surprise then when after a few brief introductory remarks our Senior Associate Provost and Executive Director began outlining some of key points of what's being called the "Implementation Phase" of what's now been a three-year reorganization.

I was in attendance and livetweeting at the first of the three meetings, but I can confirm through other colleagues who Tweeted from the second and third showings that even though we have not been fired or laid off, that the following things were announced:

1. Pending approval of the Implementation Plan by Harvard's President, an overall reduction in library staff is guaranteed- of the jobs that remain, "There will certainly be new roles, requiring new skills" (direct quote)

2. Next month library staff will be informed by local library directors or HR whether or not their jobs as considered to be "local" or part of "shared services"

3. The final disposition of local library staff is a matter for the deans and their respective school budgets

4. Library staff falling into the category of Shared Services will either be assigned to new positions or required to apply for them anew in some informal or formal capacity, with preference going to existing Harvard Library staff

5. The Harvard Library will be offering some kind of voluntary ~~retirement~~ staff reduction incentive,~~but has not ruled out~~ as well as involuntary ~~retirement~~ staff reductions to meet its strategic goals (edited x2)

6. All library staff have been encouraged but not required to create and submit an Employee Profile, which is meant to highlight one's individual strengths and accomplishments and "inject oneself into the process" (direct quote)

Colleagues, please feel free to correct me if I misreported any of the above!

Anything else at this point is mere speculation. Seeing that President Faust has yet even to approve the Library Transition's plan, even what I've reported above is by no means carved in stone yet. So be careful what you read on the Internet...

That being said, I don't think I'm the only librarian at Harvard who feels that however well-intentioned yesterday's Town Hall Meetings were envisioned to be, the overall effect has been the exact opposite of whatever our Library Transition team was hoping to achieve. The most frustrating aspect by far of the meetings was the lack of concrete answers to any of the natural follow-up questions one would anticipate given the situation. While I understand that what's coming down the pike next month is potentially so big that they felt they needed this meeting to try and prepare us for it, but the manner in which they did it only served to ratchet up the level of anxiety among the attendees.

My primary concern right now, however, is not for my own neck but that of my support staff, who have worked in this office for an average of ten years or more each. After having endured the departure of two coworkers- one in 2010, the other last Fall- and taking on their workloads to ensure that our services to our patrons and other libraries remained unaffected, they are now frightened that even in a shop cut to the bone there is no guarantee that they'll be kept on in the new University-wide shared services. ~~I have heard that the HUCTW has been working with the Library Transition team~~, and that the union has assured workers that changes such as the ones currently being proposed must be done through "union-management consultation," but that hasn't prevented a gallows-like pall from settling over my office nonetheless.

{EDIT: In a letter to its members, the HUCTW confirmed that it had not in fact been alerted about potential layoffs by Harvard Library administrators, nor had it been informed about the need for library staff to fill out Employee Profiles and possibly re-apply for changed positions within the new University Library structure. Needless to say, this is extremely disappointing news, and I hope that from this point forward the union is appropriately consulted in good faith about any changes on the table.)

So while a lot of what's been said on the Internet has bordered on hysteria, I hope you'll at least forgive those of us Twittering from the epicenter of yesterday's announcements for our gut reactions to the endgame of a very long and painful reorganization process. For a more objective take on the whole brouhaha, Chris Bourg- aka The Feral Librarian- an associate librarian at Stanford University, did some serious yeoman's work in teasing fact from fiction during yesterday's social media shitstorm. I highly recommend her blog post as the best third-party observer to what's going on here in the Harvard Library.

The tl;dr? We're not dead quite yet, though this feels an awful lot like we're walking the Green Mile (or would that be the Crimson Mile?). I promise to keep all y'all informed as to how events proceed, but in the meantime I hope our leadership takes a good hard look at how poorly the day went yesterday and plans accordingly for what will no doubt be even more charged and contentious Town Hall Meetings next month if/when the Library Transition plan is approved. I still cling to a shred of optimism that we can use this reorganization to create something special, but right now I'm feeling like I'm living one Office Space cliche after another.

* Apologies to Robert Darnton, who, ironically enough, was Director of the Harvard University Libraries until last year and who continues to serve on the Library Transition board.

Make It Happen: Day 18

2012-01-18T09:54:00.000-05:00

This post intentionally left blank in support of those protesting SOPA/PIPA and internet censorship.

LEARN MORE HERE!

5%

2012-01-15T20:01:00.000-05:00

So today's weigh-in put me just half a pound under 260, which means I've managed to lose almost fifteen pounds on my diet thus far. That's 5% of my starting weight! I know I still have a long way to go, but I'm going to enjoy this milestone nevertheless...

Make It Happen 2012: Day 12 and 13

2012-01-13T16:20:00.001-05:00

I love to teach.

What surprises me most about this realization is how many times I seem to have to make it. This past week I've been rediscovering the joys of getting in front of a group of people and sharing what I know, as our ILL shop is offering what we've billed as a series of "Open Training" sessions on various topics in resource sharing. At first we were simply thinking about doing some cross-training in the office, but then my boss said why not open it up to the rest of the Harvard ILL community at large?

Which, as it turns out, was a great idea. After two successful sessions this week- one in a lecture format, the other a hands-on workshop- not only is everyone already excited for next week's offerings, but they're already asking that we make this an ongoing thing. I would be thrilled to do some instruction on a regular basis, as I've really enjoyed being back in a classroom setting, but it also makes me think that I need to find a way to make teaching a more integral component of my job as I move forward.

In a former life I used to teach adult education, introducing students to the wonders of Ancient, Homeric, and New Testament Greek at a nonprofit cultural institution. Although the hours were nothing short of insane between my day job and my epic commute back to the North Shore every evening, I always left the classroom feeling exhilarated. Of course it always helps to have a self-selecting lot of motivated students who are taking a class not because they have to but because they genuinely want to know more about a given subject, but even when the going was tough I relished in helping get a struggling student out of the weeds and into a better understanding of the language.

I must say that this is something I miss dearly. While my job has its instructional opportunities and librarianship as a whole is chock full of teachable moments, I'm keenly aware of the fact that I have certain academic itches which aren't being scratched. Does this mean going back to school? I've been kicking around the idea of going for a Ph.D. in library science. Maybe this is a sign that I should stop dithering and do it already...

Make It Happen 2012: Day 11

2012-01-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on losing weight:

1. I seem to lose weight in my feet first- who knew I had so much foot fat?

2. 10 days on my diet and I haven't had so much as a spark of heartburn.

3. Losing even a token amount of weight (at this point 10+ pounds) means my sleep apnea problems go away as well.

4. Shit, I'm going to need smaller pants... ASAP!

5. I know that the point of a successful diet is not to feel hungry all the time, but whenever I do manage to feel sated on my daily allotment of points bestowed unto me by the Weight Watchers Gods, I immediately become worried that I'm doing it wrong and I won't have lost any weight by the next weekly weigh-in. Does anyone else experience this when dieting as well?

6. The Cabot Creamery seems to have entered into some kind of pact with the Devil to make their 75% Reduced Fat Cheddar taste like real cheese. You guys are a lifesaver!

7. If I can get my weight under 250 pounds, I'm so doing this.

Make It Happen 2012: Day 10

2012-01-11T00:07:00.002-05:00

"I'm going to ask you for a favor, but just so you know I'm not expecting you to say yes."

These are my favorite moments as a librarian, when I get to snatch a Yes out of the jaws of No. I love being the person who can make things happen, though I wonder what it says about a workplace when people expect to be disappointed by their colleagues.

Are we too busy? Too siloed? Too worried about setting the bar of expectations too high?

I don't know, but I've never been comfortable with letting people down- especially when I've been given explicit permission to do so.

Make It Happen: Day 9 (Belated)

2012-01-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it is not within your power to Make It Happen. While I do not for one enjoy being subject to forces which are completely beyond my capacity to affect, it can nevertheless be liberating to realize as much. Right now my future here at the Big Library depends on decisions being made on levels several layers above my own pay grade as Harvard decides which direction it wants to go in revamping its centuries-old library system. Until the new marching orders come down from on high, the best I can do is make sure that my humble ILL shop is in order so that when we *do* know what's what we can hit the ground running.

I suppose that this, too, is a form of Making It Happen, albeit in a very Zen mode...

It's a mystery!

2012-01-10T07:25:00.001-05:00

Suspicious white powder at Gloucester Station this morning- anyone know what this is?

Make It Happen 2012: Day 8

2012-01-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

This morning was my first weekly check-in for the new diet: according to my Nintendo Wii and the hyper-judgmental Wii Fit balance board, I weighed in at 263.7 pounds. That means I've already lost about ten pounds since starting with Weight Watchers online last week!

Just another 64 pounds to my goal...

Make It Happen 2012: Day 6 and 7

2012-01-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, so nothing really happened on Day 6. But given the week I'd had up to that point, perhaps a down day was inevitable. Four-day workweeks are always a struggle, but four-day workweeks following a week and half of vacation? It's almost a miracle in and of itself that any of us got to 5pm this Friday.

Day 7 was all about making new habits. Although my wife, daughter, and I were all in dire need of a down day, we made sure we got out and exercised nevertheless while the beautiful weather held, taking a walk and clambering all over the rocks of Stage Fort Park. I also decided to cook a vegetarian dinner, making some gazpacho and grilling some eggplant. Although I don't think my wife and I will ever be able to give up eating meat and seafood entirely, it's nice to prepare a meal that Andriana can share with us from start to finish- she even helped make the gazpacho! For the evening's entertainment we turned off the T.V. and played Ticket to Ride, which turned out to be a lot more fun than reruns on Nickelodeon.

Make It Happen 2012: Day 5

2012-01-05T22:18:00.000-05:00

Professional development is always a tricky prospect, because to a very large extent the opportunities are defined more by external factors than internal motivation. That being said, even during these times of declining library budgets I've been able to attend a few more conferences than I otherwise would have been allowed to go to by presenting instead of simply attending. My presentation about international interlibrary loan at the IDS Conference in Oswego, New York in the Summer of 2010 garnered a couple of additional invitations from impressed attendees, and I was just informed that my joint proposal with a colleague to present about our electronic document delivery service (aka Scan & Deliver) was accepted for the 2012 ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach.

What I've really missed, however, are the ALA Conferences, which have been more or less off the table for a few years due to reduced travel funds. This was a bitter pill for me to swallow at first, especially as I was only just getting my feet wet as a budding library professional with committee work when the hammer came down. Fortunately Boston comes up on the Midwinter circuit frequently enough that I've been able to attend two of the January meetings, but aside from one summer in Anaheim (2008) I haven't been able to attend the Annual Conference since then. Now that my wife is finishing her Masters in Library Science this June, however, I would really like her to experience the full library conference experience- the fact that Annual will be returning to Anaheim this year means that we could even bring our daughter and make a Disneyland vacation of the long weekend while we were at it.

So I put in for the travel funds today, emboldened by the news that due to some recent departures we might actually have enough professional development money to go around. Even if I don't end up getting approved, I suspect that my wife and I will find a way to Make It Happen anyway, because 2012 is shaping up to be that kind of year. Just the same, I'm hoping for good news. And who knows? Maybe ALA will become a regular gig again, and I'll be able to pick up where I'd left off with my committee participation. Now that's optimism!

Make It Happen 2012: Day 4

2012-01-04T23:24:00.001-05:00

A few months ago I wrote a blog post for Speak Out With Your Geek Out in which I described the fantasy world that my best friend and I have been creatively inhabiting on an on-again, off-again basis for more than twenty years. The world of Varo, which had begun as just a dot on a hastily drawn map, grew over time into a living, breathing metropolis of a million souls that became the setting for several Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and the inspiration for three novels and eleven short stories. My friend and I had attempted twice to turn Varo into a published gaming world, but on both occasions real life managed to conspire against us, either pulling us in separate directions as we left college or pushing us towards the increasing responsibilities of career, marriage, and family. Each time was a learning experience but ultimately a disappointment, and after we gave up on the second attempt I don't think either of us ever thought we'd try and give it another go.

Well, guess what? It seems that we're getting the band back together. Not only do my friend and I have our heads screwed on a lot better than during our previous attempts, but after starting a new D&D campaign in the same setting we have way more publishable material than we've ever had before, including lots and lots of homebrewed charts and rules variants to transform any generic fantasy RPG system into the gritty crossbow noir world of Varo. We also have all of the Varonian fiction I've written since the last try, which we intend to draw upon heavily for source material and flavor text (while linking out to purchasable ebook copies of said works), as well as ongoing dispatches and other occasional fiction which will help introduce newcomers to this universe from varying first-person perspectives. My best friend has already been successfully managing his wife's e-commerce site for her knitting efforts, so he's able to leverage his experience there into coding a fitting online portal for our creation.

Here's to hoping, in the spirit of Make It Happen, that the third time's a charm! If anything has changed between our previous efforts and this new attempt, it's that I think we're more realistic about our expectations. While it would be great to make some money, this is more about sharing what we've created with our fellow RPG travelers, as we've discovered that the more we open up this world to others the more we find ourselves inspired in turn. At any rate, I will be sure to post a link to the web portal as soon as we have some content online...

Make It Happen: Day 3

2012-01-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

Not only have I allowed my diet to get the best of me, but I've also let regular exercise take a backseat to other priorities. While I'm still walking from my house to the train station 2-3 times a week, I know I should be doing it daily, and as much as the family enjoys getting out on the weekends for a nice long walk or a hike in the woods, we seem to find an excuse not to do it more often than not. Therefore, I'm resolving to do the following this year:

1. Walk every day- on the days that I drive to work, I will be joining my colleagues for Harvard on the Move and getting my daily walking fix in during my lunch hour.

2. Do one outdoorsy activity every weekend. I'm literally a block and a half away from Ravenswood Park, so there's no good reason not to go for a quick hike.

3. Take the family camping this summer. I used to love hiking and backcountry camping, and always assumed that I'd drag my family along for the adventure as well. Maria and I went camping twice one summer before Andriana was born, but we've yet to give it a try as an extended family unit. Well, this year I'm going to Make It Happen!

A pretty good explanation (I hope!)

2012-01-02T23:36:00.000-05:00

Okay, so my last post of 2011 was on October 31. Why so much radio silence?

Although I didn't end up doing NaNoWriMo, I was inspired nevertheless to kickstart my creative writing again. Having just finished reading Michael A. Burstein's excellent sci-fi anthology I Remember the Future, I decided to return to science fiction myself and wrote "Bibliophile," an 11,000-word short story about a librarian at the edge of the galaxy.

I wasn't even a few hundred words into the effort when it suddenly hit me- why not write a whole collection of sci-fi shorts where librarians are the central characters? As an homage to Ray Bradbury, I'm going to name this anthology "L is for Librarian" (after Bradbury's own collections "R is for Rocket" and "S is for Space"). I'm already working on the next installment, and am busy brainstorming the stories after that.

The breakthrough for me on this particular project was that I realized that of the several science fiction short story ideas I had gestating, the common theme which ran through most of them was that they all somehow involved a library or librarian. I know, what are the odds? Even the ones which didn't feature a librarian, however, took on a new creative life once I started to re-imagine them with this new focus. Which just goes to demonstrate the inherent awesomeness of librarianship... I wonder if I manage to post a copy of "Bibliophile" and sell it before ALA Midwinter, would I be eligible for The Great Librarian Write-Out Award?

I promise to share the first story in L is for Librarian in the near future (getting my writing organized and for sale online is a big part of Make It Happen 2012), but in the meantime I thought I'd let you know what was keeping me away from my blog for all of these weeks. I hope you'll agree that it was a worthy cause, but I promise not to keep you in the dark about such matters for so long in the future!

Make It Happen 2012: Day 2

2012-01-02T17:33:00.000-05:00

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that I've struggled with maintaining a healthy weight since childhood. I was a chunky kid, and although I managed to shed my baby fat at some point I found myself gaining weight at an alarming rate after graduating college and getting my first sedentary job as a library assistant- wooing my then-girlfriend (now my wife) with my cooking prowess probably didn't help things much, either! As an adult I've successfully lost weight on two separate occasions: one was with Weight Watchers back around 2000, and another following the South Beach Diet in 2004. Both times I dropped more than fifty pounds, but for one reason or another I ended up putting the weight back on and then some.

Keeping with my New Year's Resolution to Make It Happen in 2012, I've decided to give Weight Watchers another go. I really responded well to tracking my food and activities the last time I tried it, and that was with a hand-rigged spreadsheet on my ancient Ipaq PDA- this time around not only will I have the online resources available to me via my web browser, but Weight Watchers have tracker apps for both iOS and Android devices, so I'll have no excuse not to document every last calorie wherever I go. It also looks like there are ways to incorporate game-like elements like challenges into the online program as well, which would help keep things interesting as I progressed.

My current weight as of this evening is 274 pounds (thanks, Five Guys!). The goal is for me to lose 75 pounds, so that I weigh in just shy of the two hundred mark. I know from past experience that this is by no means an unreasonable goal, so at least I have that going for me at the outset. I just have to make it happen...

Every Sunday I will keep you apprised of my progress. Wish me luck!

Make It Happen 2012: Day 1

2012-01-01T19:02:00.004-05:00

Instead of making a list of various New Year's resolutions that I may or may not stick to, I've resolved that 2012 will be dedicated to one simple yet all-encompassing theme: Make It Happen.

Every day this year I will update the blog with an example of what I've done to challenge my status quo- whether it's putting a short story up for sale on Kindle or jumping in the ocean on New Year's Day. The idea behind Make It Happen is that all of the necessary ingredients for change are at your disposal. It's up to you to take that first plunge and get things started.

Speaking of plunges, this is me joining a few hundred hardy Gloucester residents starting 2012 by doing something crazy:

Want to Make It Happen in 2012 as well? Leave a link to your blog in the comments, or post to the #makeithappen hashtag on Twitter.

(Thanks to my friend and fellow librarian JP Porcaro for the inspiration!)

To NaNo or not to NaNo?

2011-10-31T14:52:00.000-05:00

That is the question I ask myself every time this year, ever since National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) made its debut in 1999. Its premise is simple: write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November, a challenge which has attracted more and more participants every year- from just 21 in 1999 to over 200,000 brave souls for NaNoWriMo 2010. I took part in '06 and '09, finishing (or "winning") both times, and heinous as my schedule is this November I'm seriously thinking about making another go of it this year.

Why NaNo? For those who have never written something ambitious as a novel-length work of fiction before, NaNoWriMo is a dare to stop talking about writing that book and just do it already. Many would-be writers get themselves fatally tripped up over whether or not what they have to say is any good, with the result that they endless obsess over every single word they write. With its strict and unforgiving deadline, NaNo takes that kind of self-consciousness out of the equation. In order to write 50,000 words in a month, one must crank out an average of 1,667 words per day, which means if you attempt to stop and edit yourself as you write you will never make it to the finish line.

Just keep writing.

The other brilliant thing about NaNo is that it readily accepts the fact that most of the fifty thousand-plus words that each contestant writes will be crap. Of course it's crap! The point of National Novel Writing Month is not to produce a perfect literary specimen in thirty days or less, it's to produce. Many would-be writers are experts at starting things, but NaNoWriMo challenges you to take an idea and see it through to its conclusion. Yes, it's going to an unholy mess, riddled with plot holes, gaping continuity errors, and more typos than a text message conversation between a couple of teenagers. But it will be finished. And that's an accomplishment to be proud of no matter what you end up doing with your novel.

I get tired of the NaNo haters who come out around this time every year like clockwork to deride the whole event as a gimmick at best or in the worst case an affront to "real" writers, who as they are so quick to point out spend their whole year writing and do not appreciate having the market flooded with NaNo hacks who think that just because they finally wrote that novel that they deserve to have it published.

How to respond to these criticisms? First of all, simply hating on NaNo in general is like giving a person shit for wanting to run a marathon. Both of these things are extremely hard, each in its own way pushing a human being to the absolute limits of their physical or creative endurance, and I honestly cannot think of a reason not to encourage anyone who is brave or foolish enough to attempt either endeavor.

Second, I happen to know a lot of writers-- including published authors-- who participate in NaNoWriMo. Although this event is often negatively portrayed as one extended Amateur Night for literary wannabes, there are many people (such as myself) who have no problem with getting words onto the page but view NaNo as an opportunity to shake things up creatively. To return to the running metaphor, even if you do write or at least try to write during the other eleven months out of the year, National Novel Writing Month is like suddenly running wind sprints for thirty days. Even if you've already won in a previous year, the effort itself can still be exhilarating nevertheless.

And as for the concern that we who NaNo are flooding the fiction market every December 1st, if you look at the broader trends of digitization and self-publishing which are currently causing the publishing industry to implode, I think the literary efforts of each year's NaNoWriMo cohort are merely a drop in a vast ocean of radical change that is only just beginning to redefine our notions of writing and authorship in the 21st century and beyond.

So if you're thinking about participating in National Novel Writing Month, I say go for it. Whether I decide to join you or not this year, be sure that I will be cheering you all along the way next month. One of the best features of NaNoWriMo is the sense of community which it engenders, from the NaNo message boards to the Municipal Liaisons program providing mutual support and encouraging people to gather and write together in public, as well as the lively NaNoWriMo groups on Facebook and the Twitter hashtag. If you choose to NaNo, you are never alone, and many times that feeling that you have a quarter of a million people pulling for you is all you need to muster all those extra adverbs to get you across the 50k mark.

Good luck, all, and remember to just keep writing!