Author: Ian

2020 Update: How Often Do I Check My Email?

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Back in the early days of this blog I wrote about my problems checking email too often during the day.  At the time, too much email checking was leading to all kinds of distractions while I dealt with the little replies and messages coming at me from all directions.  To solve this problem I set a strict limit: I’d check my email two, maybe three times a day, at set times of the day, and absolutely no more.

This worked pretty well for a while until I got a new office Day Job that left me with all kinds of slow time during the day…so I started pulling out my phone and checking email during work lulls hoping for some stimulation.  As you might expect, this led me to be more scatterbrained, less productive, and ultimately more tired during the day—which you can read all about in my second e-mail checking update.

The downfalls of too much email checking are numerous, Continue reading »

Sometimes I Have Adventures in Japan – Series 10

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A lot of towns in Japan have mascots (my town’s are a pair of anthropomorphic firefly squid), and the police force in Toyama prefecture has one too.  Tateyama-kun is a literal mountain in a police uniform, so named after the area’s most sacred and important peak.

It’s been a little while since my last Japan Adventures post, and if you’re just joining in, I occasionally share random assortments of pics I take in Japan.  Most of them are from weekend excursions and longer vacations, but this month I’m featuring odd signage and items I’ve stumbled across on Japanese streets and store shelves.  Enjoy! Continue reading »

Sometimes I Procrastinate by Doing Something Productive

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I’ve been really busy for the last, I don’t know, seven or so years, and I’ve been trying to pin down why.  I’ve identified a few different factors that lead to my constant scrambling, which, in no particular order, are…

  1. Wasting time on social media/texting/phone checking when I should be getting shit done
  2. Taking on too many projects
  3. Keeping my schedule intentionally full so I can harness the extra energy that comes from being productive

Number 1 is clearly terrible and I’m actively trying to eradicate any lingering control that social media and my phone have over my time, while Number 2 is a mixed blessing, since more projects = more opportunities.  Number 3, though, can be pretty beneficial, since I feel better and more productive when I’m busy instead of bored. Continue reading »

Working on New Stuff Always Gets Me Excited: Miranda Reeder of Minyan/Harlevin Visual Novels

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Miranda Reeder writes and draws visual novels (kind of like graphic novels, except you play them on the computer) under the name Minyan and the label Harlevin, where she has over 1,400 followers on Itch.io.  Her VNs include Arena Circus, The Pretenders Guild, Mnemonic Devices, and Lilith Hall, and her current project with Fablesoft Studios, Twisted: A Dark Fairytale, raised over $2,300 on Kickstarter in October 2019.

I first met Miranda in Toyama, Japan, where she spent three years in the JET program teaching English.  After leaving Japan she returned to Ohio to pursue a master’s in Japanese translation at Kent State University, and over winter break we talked via Skype about staying motivated, balancing creativity with Day Job work, and sharing her passion with her family. Continue reading »

How Concert Merch Tables Taught Me About Self-Promotion

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I was sixteen when I went to my first concert.  It was a four-person jam band called Uncle Sammy whose two albums I’d been listening to nonstop on CD, and I jumped at the chance to see them live.  The show was at Milly’s bar in Manchester, New Hampshire, and my friend had to email the owner asking special permission to get in because we weren’t 21 yet.  We had to make a bunch of promises not to drink, but we did get some good nachos.

Uncle Sammy was a local band out of Massachusetts who played at bars and smaller shows around New England and at the time had put out two live albums on indie labels.  To us, though, they may as well have been a huge platinum-selling group. Continue reading »

Why Don’t You Just Self-Publish Your Novels????

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You have no idea how often I get asked this.

The question usually comes up when I’m talking about my writing, how I’ve written two novels already, how I tried for kind of a long time to get my first one published without any luck, queried a bunch of agents about my second one, and am now more actively looking at small presses as a better outlet (entry to come about this one, promise!).

Unfortunately, explaining all this makes it seem like I’m facing a long, hopeless struggle rife with setbacks and failure from which I’ll never emerge victorious.  At this point, the person I’m talking to will respond (or, more likely, interrupt) with a well-meaning question/suggestion that seems like the perfect solution to my problem:

“Have you thought about self-publishing?”

The short answer is Yes, But Not Right Now.  The long answer is more complicated… Continue reading »

Using Your Day Job as a Cover Story

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Think about the last time you were at a social gathering with people you didn’t know.  Think about the last time one of them approached you, or you approached them—and whether the person was older or younger than you, whether they were more established, whether they were an imposing authority figure like a boss, or whether they were a cute guy/girl you were interested in.

Now think about the things you talked about: where you were from, your hobbies, some observation about the gathering.  There’s a lot you might have talked about, but there’s one imposing question that comes up over and over in this situation, and it’s one that’s caused an insane amount of stress for me as well as for other creative people:

What do you do? Continue reading »

I’m Not Using Amazon This Christmas—Here’s Why (and How!)

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‘Tis the season to be incredibly freakin’ busy.

December’s always been a hectic time for me.  I tend to start a lot of projects in the fall that are still on my plate at the end of the year, plus I always have a lot of friends to see, and two years ago I got stuck with a ridiculous amount of holiday overtime.  On top of all that, there’s a pretty important holiday in there somewhere.

Ever since I was a kid, Christmas has mattered—a lot.  My family and I still do big gift exchanges, even when I’m away (I call in via Skype on Christmas morning) and during the holidays I also reach out to friends I don’t see that often, which means writing Christmas cards, mailing gifts, and a plethora of holiday texts.  I don’t mind working hard to create special holiday moments for the people I care about, but this tends to take a lot of energy—and when it comes down to the wire, I’m always looking for ways to make December easier. Continue reading »

I Edited (Another) Writing Anthology!

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So here’s another cool project I was involved in.

As some of you may remember, last year I spearheaded and edited an anthology of short stories, essays, and poems for the Concord branch of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project in my home state.  After we decided as a group to assemble a writing collection, I asked people for submissions, worked with the individual writers to polish their work, and assembled the manuscript, which Gary Devore finalized and reformatted for eReaders and paperback copies.

The anthology was fun and super-rewarding to work on, and the group was so happy with how it came out that we decided to do another one. Continue reading »

A Quick Thought: Day Jobs as a Way of Engaging With the World

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When I read or watch or listen to things, I always keep an eye out for insights into the creative life—the kind of life I write about on this blog, and the one I most want to forge for myself. Last week I read an old interview with the novelist Hanya Yanagihara in conversation with Alexis Cheung in the Oct./Nov. 2017 issue of The Believer, and while the whole interview provided excellent food for thought, I found myself most drawn to Yanagihara’s thoughts on why she still keeps her day job as editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine:

Writing is essentially interior work, and many writers are interior personalities.  If I didn’t have a job, I know I’d spend virtually all my time indoors, never speaking to anyone.  Having a job forces you out of the world of your work, and into the one where you get to observe people: how they speak and move and think.  Yes, you can imagine all this, but as a fiction writer, you can never observe enough the rhythms of how humans move through the world, how they possess their own bodies, how they say and don’t say things.

Continue reading »

Here’s What I’m Working on RIGHT Now (Fall 2019 Edition)

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It helps me a lot to sit down and write about my current projects and creative goals (as opposed to just thinking about them), as well as what kind of progress I’m making toward them. This is a lot more helpful than keeping them in my head, where they swim around in the nebulous stormcloud that is my creative work life so I can’t see them with the proper perspective.

I try to be honest about my progress and setbacks on this blog because I don’t want to fall into a trap of pretending that I’m doing a kick-ass job if that’s not really the case. Pretending you’re doing better than you are is pretty unhelpful because 1) It alienates you from other people you can’t be open with, and 2) It hinders you from actually improving the way you organize your time because you’re living out a kind of fantasy where everything’s going just peachy.

Anyway, enough with the intro: here’s what I’m working on RIGHT NOW: Continue reading »

Sometimes I Have Adventures in Japan – Series 9

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As many of you know, I love board games with a passion that far outweighs my skill at playing them, though sadly the board game craze hasn’t taken off in Japan like it has in the States. In the toy section at a bigger department store I found this Japanese version of Settlers of Catan with alternate cover art (the three Japanese characters in the title literally spell Katan), plus Japanese versions of Pandemic and Azul you can see on the left. I love the random black dude playing with the Japanese family in the lower right.

If you’re just joining in, Sometimes I Have Adventures in Japan is a monthly series where I post random pics from Japan (many of which are also on my Instagram) with commentary.  It’s easy to forget sometimes that I live in a cool foreign country with lots of amazing things to see, so I try to keep my eyes open and camera ready rather than staying in my apartment working ;-) Continue reading »