So, Melissa wants to know 6 things about me, huh?

Let’s see.

1. I can recite the entire alphabet backwards, just as easily as I can forward. Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T, S, R, Q, P, O, N, M, L, K, J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A. (Although, it turns out, typing it can be tricky!) This is a leftover from long, family drives when I was little and my mother would throw back questions over the seat to keep my sister and me entertained. It’s come in remarkably handy, too, over the years, because it makes alphabetizing things that much easier. Who knew? But, meanwhile, it’s about my only party trick.

2. I was an identical twin. My twin and I were due, in fact, on December 29th, but we arrived seven weeks early in 1966, back when premature-baby care was still new, and my twin didn’t make it. Actually, I was a complete surprise to everyone–no one knew my mother was having twins. The doctor could only hear one heartbeat and there were no ultrasounds, so until I, the second one born, actually showed my face, they had no idea I was coming. I’ve always rather liked the idea that I was TRULY a surprise baby … not too many people can keep that kind of secret from their moms for that long!

3. Most of my hobbies are ones which were shaped by my childhood reading. Louisa May Alcott would be so proud of me. I read. I sew. I bake. I knit. I spin. I cook. I quilt. I embroider. I clean. I write. She so extolled the virtues of being a lady, and knowing how to keep house, that the lessons stuck … making me one of the very few people I know who’s been baking bread since well before the “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes” wave took off.

4. I look like my dog and love that. I mean, seriously. First, he’s gorgeous, with chocolate-brown curls that match mine. (My curls are natural, though the color gets a little chemical help these days.) But, second, we were so obviously meant for each other. My name, as you know, is Boyken, and Chappy is a Boykin Spaniel. It’s a breed most people haven’t heard of, and is the State Dog of South Carolina, where the breed originated. (Bred by a man named Whit Boykin.) So, I have a dog who not only has my name (more or less), but so clearly is meant to be my little boy, because we look alike, too. You can’t argue with fate, you know? (Oh, and credit to my friend Liz for this picture, taken in her living room a couple years ago.)

5. This may not be a surprise, but Martha’s Vineyard is one of my very favorite places in the world. My grandmother grew up there, my mother spent all her summers growing up there. My dog’s name is Chappaquiddick. We call our house “Martha’s Vineyard South” because it’s got so many odds and ends and knicknacks and decorations from the island. And it inspired one of my favorite ghost stories. The house that my great-grandmother lived and died in is now a restaurant, and the one and only time Mom and I ate there, we sat outside on the patio on a beautiful, still May night … and our candle wouldn’t stay lit. The waitress kept relighting it. She tried giving us other, well-behaved candles from other tables. She watched us to see if we were blowing it out ourselves. But, no. As still as the air was, OUR candle–and no other–kept going out. The only explanation we can come up with is that it was “The Grandmothers” making mischief, making sure we knew that they knew we were there at great-grandma’s house. Especially when you consider that, an hour or so later, after supper, when we walked back past the restaurant, the candle on our table was lit and steady. (Not to mention the only known “photo” of me and my twin.)

6. I just love gray flannel.There’s something about the natural, gray wool that I love–though I think I owe some of that to JRR Tolkien and other fantasy authors (like Susan Dexter.) In fact,  I wore a gray, wool cloak during my college years, whenever it got cold. I have to say, really, that this is the warmest winter garment I’ve ever had. Because your arms and hands are under the cloak, the body warmth helps keep them warm, and for walking across a cold campus on a frosty day, well . . . really warm. I carried my books in a messenger bag at the time, too (decades before my time) . . . even though carrying backpacks casually slung over one shoulder was THE way to carry school supplies at the time .  Anyway, the cloak kept my bag of books from getting wet, too. And on warmer days, it was easy to toss one or both sides back over my shoulder. I loved this cloak. About the only thing it wasn’t good for was shoveling snow or cleaning off my car . . . I’m remarkably proud of the fact that this has held up so well. I made it myself, and it still looks good … it’s even machine washable AND  has a hood. I pull it out about once a winter these days, for old time’s sake.

So … do you have a library? I mean, shelves in your own home, filled with books?

I was just reading this essay from the NY Times about weeding out books from a personal library, and it got me thinking.

Where books are concerned, there’s no question. I am a hoarder.

Almost every book that has come into my hands since high school is still here, in my collection. Three thousand, thirty-three books, in all. (Of which, for the record, I’ve read all but 31. Because yes, I keep all my books organized in an Excel database … doesn’t everyone?)

I can also tell you exactly how many I’ve gotten rid of over the years. 134. Because, yes, I track that, too.

Laura Miller says, in her article,

When you’re young and still constructing an identity, the physical emblems of your inner life appear more essential, and if you’re single, your bookshelves provide a way of advertising your discernment to potential mates.

I found that interesting–I don’t think of my library as a way of “advertising” myself, but it is very much a reflection of who I am. When I’m interested in something, I buy books. And even when I’ve moved on to other things … the books remain, both as reference and road signs, a flag marking that I Was Here.

Which also means that getting rid of books is like getting rid of part of my history … and who wants to do that? I sometimes wonder if, somehow, cleaning out my library would be a way of starting fresh? Like moving to a new town, or getting rid of all the old momentos from an ex … But what happens when you decide later that you wish you had kept them?

Of course, it’s true–space can be an issue. Little by little, I’ve taken over three closets in our house, as well as several walls, with bookcases. There is obviously a certain point where there simply is no more space. Or you suddenly ARE moving to a new town and you’ve got to cut down on weight. (Because, never forget, several thousand books are heavy.)

My philosophy is that you can’t have too many books, just too little space.

The other quote I really liked in this article?

I have turned out to be less rational about this than I thought, and have made my library into a charm against mortality. As long as I have a few unread books beckoning to me from across the room, I tell myself I can always find a little more time.

So true, so true… Or am I the only one who worries that, when she dies, she’s never going to know how the books she’s currently reading will end? I’m not a defeatist, dark kind of person, but sometimes I rush breathlessly to the end of a story just so that I can know what happens. (And I drove extra, extra carefully to the bookstore the morning the seventh Harry Potter book came out. I would have been tormented forever if I hadn’t had a chance to find out how that series ended.)

What about you? Do you hoard your books? Or do you just keep the jewels and easily, happily, pass on the dross so that your collection is as clean, pure, and magnificent as is possible? Which books would you absolutely NOT give up?

Have you heard about the Middle Zone Musings Blogapalooza?

He wants to know:

Now, looking back at your archives, you’ll choose one post from every month you’ve been blogging in the year 2008.

So how do you choose? Well, the question you have to ask yourself is, what was the most amazing, moving, profound, surprising, insane, whacky, or whatever thing you learned in the month of March? How about July? Anything in October?

Use any criteria you like – your most commented, your most profound, your cat’s favorite – hey, whatever, y’all; it’s up to you!

Doesn’t that sound fun?

What posts did I pick for my entry?

• January: Weakness is Strength (Sometimes)
• February: Knowledge TO Power
• March: Handwriting: The Personal Touch
• April: Confusing Travel Terminology
• May: Simplicity
• June: Dress Up Your Casual Wear Writing
• July: How to be Convincing
• August: Baby Talk
• September: Let’s Review Reviews!
• October: Poverty of Thought
• November: Ooh! Shiny!
• December: Mental Radar

So … you had your schedule all worked out. Your plans laid, your priorities clear …

And then you get dumped on. Just like a snow storm came barrelling along to disrupt your well laid plans.

The roads are bad, slippery, messy, treacherous.

Suddenly, what was going smoothly and according to plan is skewing all over the place, skidding entirely out of control. You’re going in directions you hadn’t expected and have no control over it.

There’s shoveling. Lots of shoveling. Time-consuming shoveling!

Sometimes the only thing you can do when you get buried under mountains of paper, email, questions, research, and so on is to grab a shovel and start digging.

Take a snow day, and stay home where it’s warm and cozy.

When you’re hit with a blizzard of work, it’s tempting to just curl up and nest until the whole thing is over. Make some cocoa, and snuggle up on the couch with a blanket. Because, sometimes, an enforced rest isn’t a bad idea. If you’ve been working extra hard, having a reason to slow down doesn’t always hurt.

Or, you can just dive in and play in it.

Sometimes, the rush you get from jumping in and just immersing yourself in your project is more satisfying than giving up. Just accept that you’ve got snow (lots, and lots of snow) and don’t let it stop you. Let it inspire you.

Remember what it’s like to be a kid in the snow.

Now, you can’t compare a pile of work with the glee of a child who gets an unexpected day off from school. But … you love what you do, right? And you love the feeling of success when you’re so, so popular that you’re caught in a blizzard of work, right? So … have fun with the snow!

What do YOU do on a snowy day?

Well, here I came to write you all a post for Monday morning, and instead, spent most of my time chatting on Twitter, checking my email, catching up on forum posts over at Ravelry (a knitting social site, for those of you who don’t know. And, if you do knit and you don’t Ravel? Um, why don’t you?), and browsing through page after page of buttons on Etsy, looking for something to go with my new sweater.

What we have here is the dark, evil side of having the world available at your fingertips at a moment’s notice.

It doesn’t even matter that I’ve cut my Firefox tabs down to just a couple (which was HARD, but the Speed Dial plugin makes it easy to find my most favorite of favorite places very quickly, so that made cutting back much easier).

… So, since I frittered and twittered my time away and didn’t leave myself enough before my eyelids decided to shut down for the night, I’ll ask you:

What is the Moral to this story??

(Oh, and while it’s probably crazy of me to try drumming up more competition, still … have you seen the contest at Julie/Writing Road‘s place?)

Remember when we talked about Focus? And how doing just one thing, rather than jumping between multiple ones, would get things done faster? It sounds good, right? And logical?

Be honest–how many windows do you have open on your computer right now?

I’m guessing there’s a word processor, an email client, and (if you’re anything like me) multiple internet browsers/tabs open, all at the same time, tuned in to different web pages. Maybe a forum, maybe Twitter. Maybe Google Analytics. I fully admit that I spend a lot of my time hopping from one to the next–touch-up my logo in Adobe Illustrator, work on my mailing list in Excel, write a few paragraphs of a blog post, check my email, work on my mailing piece, check Twitter … yet, nothing gets done. As in, completely finished.

Yet … here’s the flip side to that “Focus on One thing” argument … everything is at least getting touched. And the smaller jobs are getting finished altogether. Here’s why.

I hate clutter.

Not just the kind that clogs up your desk, until you can barely see your pen cup and the mouse pad has shrunk to about 3 square inches of real estate. (Though that truly gives me the heebie jeebies.) My father has always had crowded desks like that, but, honestly, I can’t function at all like that. It’s not just the mess of papers and things, either.

I’m talking about the Mental clutter.

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve got 1 or 2 jobs to do, I can focus pretty well (so long as I can resist the pull of Twitter and email and the computer is moving along at a good pace). But when I’ve got 5 or 7 or more jobs all going at once? It doesn’t matter if some are more urgent than others–if they’re sitting there, waiting, they’re ALL taking up mental space and distracting me.

You know that kind of built-in radar that Moms have, so that they can tell when their kids are about to pull down shelves in the next room? Or that lets them know where their kids are on a playground, even if they’re not actually looking at them? Even though they’re not giving their kids their full attention–they might be carrying on a conversation, or knitting a sock, or talking on the cell phone–their child is still on their radar. They’re still paying attention–just not ALL of their attention.

That’s mental clutter.

If I have five jobs sitting on my desk and they’re going to take an hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 10, and 5 to do–I’m going to do the 5 and 10 minute jobs first. Because then they’re DONE, off my desk, and out of my mental-radar zone.

That leaves me just three jobs and it only took me a quarter hour. It’s the difference between supervising a slumber party and providing snacks to your two kids with one best friend. If you then take another quarter hour and do that 15-minute job … in just half an hour you’ve chopped your To Do list by 60% and are down to a “comfortable” two-kid radar level.

It’s true, of course, that you’re left with the two biggest jobs–but here’s the thing. Since they’re the biggest and probably the most complex, they are the jobs you need to concentrate on the most. By getting the piddly ones out of the way, you have fewer distractions.

Obviously, this doesn’t help when all the jobs on your desk are roughly equal in size and complexity. Then you need to look at things like deadlines, urgency, how long they’ve been waiting–stuff like that. And then, pick one and work on it.

Because this is not about multi-tasking–it’s about efficiency.

If some of your jobs can be cleared away completely with just a modest effort? I say go for it. Because, I don’t know about you, but when my mental radar looks like an air traffic controller’s worst nightmare, I not only lose focus, I start dithering.

And, really, who wants that?

(Just, um, remember to turn Twitter off before you start. I mean, really, you want to talk about distractions…)

What do you think folks–is this just me? Or do you have this problem, too?

Joanna doesn’t make it easy. She wants me to pick my best post of the year.

Now, I am beyond terrible at picking only one thing whenever anybody asks me to name a favorite–author, song, cookie recipe, spinning fiber, book. About the best I can usually do is narrow it down to a small group. But, just one? There are so many good ones to choose from!

• My tongue-in-cheek look at travel terminology
• My parallels between saving gas and good writing habits
• My exploration of when passive writing is actually the right choice
• My look at how writing ‘what you know’ is actually limiting
• How about my series on Handwriting? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
• My look at simplicity
• Then, my “how-to” about i.e., and e.g. was awfully popular
• I’m still pleased with my post about how to be convincing, too
• Not to mention the discussion about the difference between linguists and grammarians (Part 1, Part 2, and my favorite, Part 3, about what to do when non-writers get upset when you DON’T follow antiquated “rules”)
• My look at how you can only trust your “ear” so far, when judging correct grammar usage
• My review of writing reviews was definitely one of the great ones this year (not to mention being a great tie-in)
• An examination of poverty
• Then, I was pretty pleased with the non-writing-related posts about geneology. Just to explore the terminology between generations in Part 1 and Part 2
• Not to mention the fact that it was fun showing off the Holiday card I designed

But .. which is the BEST?

None of the above. I’ll pick this post, on “Dressing Up Your Casual-Wear Writing” because, like Henry Higgins, I think that sometimes HOW you say something is almost (almost!) more important than what you say–because it’s all about knowing how to talk to your audience.

Remember when I wrote about how, sometimes, words don’t matter so much?

Well, go watch this sweet and meaningful short film (5:55), which is all about EXACTLY why words matter.

Talk about the importance of getting words just right.

In fact, this is exactly the point of why professional writers can truly make a difference.

You tell me–if I got an email that said this:

We are Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited which is the domain name register center in Asia. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “punctualityrules” as their domain name and Internet keyword on Dec 3, 2008. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.

Is that something I should worry about? What does it mean to me, here in the US?

Anyone?

Edited to add: Ah ha! I knew it! This is a scam. (Thanks, Chris.)

Okay, this will be a shock, since I’m all about words and their value and importance.

But, sometimes? Images matter more.

At my day job, my boss said she wanted something different for the company Holiday cards this year, and mentioned a flyer-style card she got last year that had pictures of employees, and how much she loved the idea of a personal touch.

So, I brought in my camera and booted up my Adobe InDesign, and this is what I came up with.

First, I dragged all my coworkers outside into 25-degree weather (thank heaven it was sunny–you can imagine how popular I was that day), to take a picture around the sign. This became the front of the card.

Then, I wandered around the office with my camera, snapping pictures of the various departments. I collected signatures from everyone and scanned them onto the computer. I picked a festive background and…

As you open the card, you see the holiday message and logo, and signatures from all of us, but when you open it further, you see all the candid photos. (Yes, I thought about mixing them all together but it looked too messy.)

Very few words. But still, pretty effective.

As powerful as Words are, there are times when Design is even more important.

Not to mention more fun.

Because, did I have fun putting this together? Oh my, yes. I love doing this kind of thing. I even propped up my camera and took my own picture with my infrared remote–because I solemnly promised my camera-shy co-workers that, since I was taking their pictures, that I would be on the card, too!

Because, that’s the other lesson–being creative is FUN.

What do you think? How’d I do?

Oh, and folks? If you know of anyone who needs a magazine fulfillment company, I can’t recommend Fulco enough. Just sayin’.