After checking my email and prioritizing replies, mornings typically involve a tour through internet-land, with brief stops at Google+ or Twitter or LinkedIn. Yes, OR. Each fills a well-defined need, and not very well, I would say. Filtering through the data is a time-suck and the current solutions to this, personalized search results, can’t read my mind or predict what I want. Sometimes even I can’t!

To minimize lost time on needless internet things and to maximize the life balance I seek in my career and my life, where time is precious and writing, reading, editing, and research dominates my day (as does fulfilling the need for daily daily sunshine and in-person face-time), I have begun to regulate my social network internet use based on a five-day work week. This means I might peek at all three, but only one on any given day gets to suck me in.

This morning was Google+ time, with a little bit of uncircling due to a spontaneous Add Circle moment weeks ago, when over a hundred users I didn’t know became part of my Google+ network.  As a result, in an effort to open my network, I lost time blocking and muting a lot of posts and people. To make Google+ relevant and even enjoyable, I need to be selfish (versus obsequious) and carefully curate my circle members. To that effect, just because someone adds me or is already in my circle can no longer be reason enough to join or remain in my network.

Yes, I am advocating you go against the tide of expanding your network to selecting each new person based on very personal and particular goals. Being an early adopter of social networks (hello MySpace) and choosing to skip the Facebook fervour, I learned an important lesson about time management and social networks: more of the former, less of the latter because there is always going to be more content, but not more time. Less is more, even if this mantra goes against general opinion.

Popular opinion is to keep all doors open because you just never know, you know? Uncircling, unfollowing, these acts are problematic in that others may perceive it as an act of personal war, if the uncircled or unfollowed is a tad sensitive. So be it. We all want to be friendly, nice, and fair, but at what cost?

As a writer, an editor, a person who needs to frequently prospect for new work opportunities or readers, this move seems risky. Will I lose potential future readers because there was that one person long ago who I uncircled, not knowing they could influence my career at a critical point? Will I narrow my prospects and damage my career?

I doubt it. This kind of worry or thinking is symptomatic of a particular disease, one that touches many in all kinds of careers. It’s fear: of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, offending the wrong person. It’s also a forgetting, that no one can please everyone so it’s a waste of time to try (unless your job description calls for it; I’ve decided mine doesn’t).

Writers, as we know, can be a particularly neurotic bunch, susceptible to incredible insecurities. For that reason, writers need to learn how to accept that others’ feelings and perceptions cannot be controlled. They can’t. We are each free agents living in a world of diverse ideas, tastes, and knowledge. Accepting this is a fundamental, preparatory lesson for dealing with unavoidable rejection when soliciting agents or publishers and then the sometimes harsh criticism that can follow public exposure without feeling as if the soul has shattered. Writers, however and to their detriment, often imagine that writing is precisely about controlling a reader’s experience. Depends on your personal philosophy about what writing is meant to do. I like to think the good writers look to open up readers’ experiences by inviting them into a newly created world of ideas and stories.

In writing, and in social networking, you can’t please everyone, so go uncircle and unfollow, and write with all your heart about the things you believe in without believing others will or must get it as you do.

There was a certain creative freedom that resulted when I decided to trust my instincts and do what I needed regardless of popular or expert opinion. I didn’t even realize how I was slipping into the mode of popular thinking that is often the internet (popular gets conflated with expert), subjecting myself to its norms without too much thought, because my thinking was rundown by information overload.

I think it’s come to a point where everyone needs an individual personal mission statement for how technology is included in one’s life. I’m formulating mine to accommodate frequency and quality of use, because increased quality of content means the time I use is more efficient. Quality can mean many things. For example,  I’ll uncircle you if you lack civility or humility when commenting, because I value civil discourse and people who recognize errors and can take feedback without going immediately on the defensive. I’ll also uncircle you if the content proves over time to be recycled and repetitive.

With a beginning strategy to manage internet-land time, I am less distracted, better informed, and less stressed about writing. And, now that I am streamlining my circles, the possibility of finding wonderful content during my Google+ time is increasing. This morning I was thrilled to discover a pertinent infographic, on strategies for sparking writing ideas:

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

Thank you for enjoying Creating Time and Sparking Writing Ideas.

Life has been mildly nutty the last few weeks. Between receiving an SMS from my sweetheart announcing the death of his grandmother during one of his business trips in January and weeks of my slowly losing energy and suspecting an ear infection which resulted in running to a primary care physician who prescribed antibiotics, I have temporarily lost that creative spark. It’ll return, but it’s being trumped by more pressing matters that scream for attention.

Luckily, the ear infection was not an ear infection. An ear-throat-nose specialist who diplomatically defended all primary care physicians as well-meaning but inept, lacking the kind of analytical abilities they shouldn’t lack, confirmed that I needlessly took a course of antibiotics. Apparently, according to my ENT, if you put an idea into a primary care physicians mind (e.g. ouch, my ear hurts, is it an infection), then, with a mix of tunnel-vision and questionable analytical skills, they are off and running, determined to find the thing you think you have, and when unclear, defaulting to that thing. A stunning reminder that second opinions are worth the extra cost.

It was a virus. A persistent flu or cold bug, powered by a series of life stressors, with strange symptoms I’ve never experienced before. For weeks, my concentration was good only for Ally McBeal re-runs. Finally, I can actually (almost) form coherent thoughts and get back to my All Things Publishing research.

I am looking for ways to bring alive my desire to enable others to publish by positioning my editorial and marketing skills in this digital format world. An article on the Digital South provoked excitement and a great deal of brainstorming. Dynamism, Localization Typify the Developing “Digital South” discusses the latest digital publishing developments from countries in the southern hemispheres. It makes clear that the borders for writers are melting, in many ways.

For example, I can now imagine that we no longer need to translate materials from English into another language if the reading device includes an app that allows the reader to hover over words and access a definition for whatever they don’t understand. When learning German, I enjoyed this feature in a web site. It provided an aid when I needed it and didn’t interrupt the reading process as much as will pulling out a dictionary or going to a translation web site.

ESL audiences, those with a desire to read in English as a way to improve their language, but also learn about the topics that excite them, is an huge, untapped market, one that writers when writing in English often don’t think about. What if editors with a sensitivity to ESL readers could help writers polish their manuscripts without dumbing down the topic or language, making the reading accessible and enjoyable the fluent and not?

There will always be need for translation, and I’m all for it. I don’t want to live in a monolingual world. Being multilingual is a cultural wealth I value. Yet, the point is that writers need readers, and the Digital South audience is huge.

How is my fiction manuscript going, you wonder? Revision #2 is on my To Do list. The last few weeks were a write-off.

And apologies to those of you who visit my site through an iPhone or iPod. I posted a question on the wordpress.org boards to solve the video aspect ratio problem that occurs when using an iPhone in portrait mode (tilting it to landscape mode displays videos as they should be displayed). Not a single reply. The loveliness of free CMS and little desire or time to read the code and figure it out myself.

Thank you for enjoying Publishing for Digital South ESL Readers?.

How about something hot, something cool, and something to warm the heart?

1. The power of poetry to inspire and liberate: And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

She once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

2. The shivery joy of these tasty British “Agents of Cool”

Pop culture theatrics and sweetly satirical ice cream? Excuse me while I browse for direct flights from SFO to Heathrow just for a taste at The Icecreamists. Get a lick of their philosophy:

A lot of ice cream hasn’t seen a cow in its life. Some of the ice cream you buy in America is crap – it’s vegetable fat. Then you get the Ben & Jerry’s and the Häagen-Dazs, which are higher in fat, higher in sugar, full of just really bad, unpleasant stuff. It tastes fine but a lot of it is just sugar and sugar and sugar. We’re trying to create more balanced, more adult ice cream, so we use things like Angostura Bitters and balsamic vinegar, all sorts of weird stuff just to balance out the flavours. So there’s a real subtlety to it. A lot of love and thought go into the recipes. We’re about the smoothness, the purity and the richness of the ice cream. It’s freshly made every day at our shop on Maiden Lane.

Image and quote from Icecreamists Blog, Interview with Matt O’Connor.

3. Reading the glaciers with Lia Purpura

How is that that something cool, like glaciers, can warm the heart?

Glaciology by Lia Purpura is an essay that won a Pushcart Prize, but don’t read it because it won an award: read it because the images and language are evoke and provoke beautiful introspection. If you’re interested in technique, consider the word “deposition” and its multiple meanings*, the ways Purpura plays with the meanings. Or, don’t. Go with the flow of the ideas, hang from a line or two that makes sense to you. If it doesn’t make sense (the way you might be used to a high school or college essay making rational and argumentative sense), then be happy to know not everything needs to make sense. Sometimes, it’s about expressing a feeling about the human experience, which, I find, eludes most sense. Kind of like when some politicians and CEOs speak.

*I am enjoying Bing these days.

Thank you for enjoying 3 Great Things: Maya, The Icecreamists, Glaciology.

It was an exciting day, mostly because I was filled with an almost boundless energy this morning after weeks of painful, tiring brainmushies (now attributed to an ear infection). Also, there was an eighteen-hour old pile of dough eager to be folded and left to rise for another couple of hours before baking. Life can be this exciting. I promise.

How miraculous is this recipe? Well, the bread looks great, doesn’t it? And I can confirm it tastes wonderful. However, the best part isn’t that it doubled in size while rising. Ten minutes into baking, I received a phone call that resulted in my calculating time and distances, then reluctantly turning off the oven, and running out the door. Half an hour later, I returned, resumed the baking, and hoped for the best.

Interrupting baking is never recommended and the best anyone can expect is disastrous results.

To my delight, tragedy never arose. Instead, when cooled, I enjoyed a couple of slices. Now, just before bed, I’m enjoying one more slice and noticing how ten hours later the crust is more mellow and just-crusty-enough, as it should be, as it is whenever I buy a loaf from artisanal bakeries.

However, this wasn’t the best result of the day. The first revision of my now 292-page novel is now complete. I’ll be leaving it to rest for a bit, allow some objectivity to arise, and then chomp into revision number two. It needs it. Some things simply need a few tries before just the right texture and taste develops.

Thank you for enjoying Oh, bread: Results.

Sitting in a bowl is a pile of dough, and sitting in this chair is a girl typing and hoping for the fourth time in a month that this particular pile will rise up and yield the double-in-size promise suggested in the No-Knead Bread recipe, the breadchild of Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery. I stumbled across the recipe, long ago, at the Chocolate & Zucchini blog and later discovered the recipe was a NY Times sensation.

What’s not to love about bread you can make by simply throwing a few ingredients together, mixing, waiting, folding, waiting, baking, and then waiting to cool just enough for a delicious and warm bite?

While my previous attempts didn’t lead to the dough doubling in size, the results always yielded a crust with a crunch, a chewy crumb, and a subtle scent of dry-roasted hazelnuts. This is a hearty bread with a big heart, one that embraces those who love a nice loaf of artisanal bread. I’ve been using a mix of whole wheat, white, and rye flour. Tomorrow will be our first taste of spelt and white bread.

Yes, tomorrow. That’s the beauty of a recipe calling for a minimum twelve-hour rise time. It works for you while you work on whatever it is you do, and it doesn’t hold a grudge if you leave it because something came up. Once I let the dough rise for nearly 18 hours. Might this be the reason behind the poor doubling performance? No. I attribute that to the drafty flat with forced-air heating that can’t keep the indoor temperature consistent. Or to the not-yet-ideal water-to-flour ratio. Temperature, altitude, climate, type of oven, these play a big role in baking I discovered every time I moved.

I’m no breadmaking expert, but even I can now make a bread that impresses friends and family.

The next time writer’s block hits, I recommend trying the recipe, either using the C&Z or NYTimes methods. Making this bread is a temporary, low-commitment distraction from struggling with a scene or paragraph, and a yummy project that is completed in less than a day. It’s sure to shore up your flagging confidence by providing almost immediate positive critical (and edible!) feedback, and it won’t mess with your deadlines, maybe just your waistline, but you could say the same of this very sedentary career of writing.

Oh, writing.

Off to the hills for a hike. In a few more paragraphs. No. Now.

Thank you for enjoying Oh, bread.