Hey, Tech World: Don't Forget the Human Touch

"RSS is dead. Blogs are dead. The web is dead.

Good."

Seth Godin, "Bring Me Stuff That's Dead, Please."


If you're a teacher or a writer feeling a bit behind on the ever-spinning hamster wheel of technology, you're not alone. Thank goodness for marketing innovator Seth Godin's insight that the "drive-by technorati"--those who would tell us the tech we're using is "so yesterday"--shouldn't rule our lives.

Writers are harassed with reminders to tweet, post, network, friend, blog, vlog...I'm sure I'm missing the latest verb our tech revolution has created. Teachers are told they're not only the reason for failing schools but they should get hip to the latest tech without any funds. I just taught a workshop at the NCAGT conference reminding teachers to avoid "tech for tech's sake" even as I shared predictions that half of all high school courses will be taught online in less than a decade. As I shared various ways Duke University Talent Identification Program helps students learn online, whether independent study or with instructors, I also said we shouldn't rush the Web if face-to-face teaching serves us best.

"Face-to-face"? "Real-time" and "synchronous" teaching? There was a time when teaching lacked such adjectives. We assumed of course that experience would be live, together, and very human.

As a writer, I love blogs. I love the innovation of e-readers. I love that we can create trailers and fan fiction and other platforms for readers and authors to engage. But my daily mantra is also, I am enough, I do enough, and where you're at with tech today is JUST FINE.
Are you spending more time grooming and learning tech than you are spending time being with others?

I introduced my workshop by waving my husband's old-school watch dangling from my wrist and telling participants I'm too embarrassed to show them my cell, a fat little 99-cent Kyocera used for emergencies. I said, "I'm not a techie. But, let me tell you how we should work, think, and behave should we go online..."

Soon we'll all be online, all the time. Where else are we headed? Phones in our ears, smartphones in our palms, everything connected. If that's so, then the essential questions are, How human are we in midst of these machines? Are we still laying hands on one another to greet? Are we still making eye contact and smiling?

In my novel ST. MICHAEL, PRAY FOR US, Wendy Redbird Dancing is a teen who hates what she calls this "useless Age of Noughts." She watches her peers in the high school halls and comments, "Everyone's ogling phones, caressing tiny keyboards, heads bent forward into screens. Never cut from electrical umbilicals..." Meanwhile, she's plugged into a iPod beneath her hoodie, because she's afraid to deal with other people straight up. She needs the cloak and soundtrack of St. Michael's (Michael Jackson's) music.

For today, how long was I plugged in to tech yet removed? When all I or anyone really wants is to reach out and touch someone? ('80's kids, you can't forget this AT & T commercial.) As Doug Chapel's cartoon says so well, "All this communication and yet we're all so totally separated from one another"...

Long live the human touch.

It's All a Dress Rehearsal

"...we soothe ourselves during these waiting times with assurances about what we’re going to get at the end of it all. We are going to get exactly what we want, right? That’s the part that makes the waiting bearable, isn’t it? Otherwise Lent and Advent are just a big waste of time. Why do all this waiting and practicing and yearning if there’s no prize at the end? We like results in everything from our exercise programs to our business plans to our religious practices."

--Marcia Mount Shoop, "Waiting"

So my novel is in the hands of agents, some of whom have requested partials and fulls, and it's slimmed down to 86,000 words. So my short stories sit in various literary magazine inboxes, and my novel sits in the hands of Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and James Jones First Novel Fellowship judges. I tell myself I'm waiting for their results.

Image found at Oilcrash.com

Then yesterday I reminded myself I wasn't waiting. I'm living. And on that note, this morning I began the sequel to ST. MICHAEL, PRAY FOR US. HOW WENDY REDBIRD DANCING SURVIVED THE DARK AGES OF NOUGHT.

Yes, I did the typically American thing: got myself back to work. Got busy creating again. My husband and I often discuss the healthiness of this approach, my tendency to fabricate brand-new deadlines for myself. I tell him artists fight for creating time, and then agree with him that sometimes life feels like nothing but an endless round of work for different masters, never mind the cleaning that's not getting done while I write. (The tumbleweeds of cat hair are declared victorious.) And how do catch ourselves before that workaholicism devolves into a gross pursuit of the Rusty Old American Dream?

This is how I deal with waiting. I get on with the next project, and I dream more words till something new emerges. I guess you could say I don't like waiting, so I make new work for myself.

Is it because I obsess and grasp after the perfect result--contract, book deal, movie deal? We are at our skinniest, loveliest, most charming when courting a new love, which is why so many people get tangled up in illicit affairs, escapist hobbies, endless deadlines, and any other pastime promising perfect happiness at the end of the road. As if the road has an end.

Of course there's death, but I mean this life road: there is no full stop at which heaven will embrace us and we get that perfect balance of ready cash, loyal friends, svelte body, and riotous fun--or whatever we authors want when we achieve celebrity status.

I loved writing the first pages of the sequel. They'd been in my head a while, and what was wonderful about today's writing was there was no pressure for them to be perfect. I understand from the long road ST. MICHAEL has taken and other novels before that how a manuscript morphs many times till it's shaped just so. Today I saw the excesses, tangents, and questions in my new story right as I wrote them and thought, "No problem; I'll deal with this later on down the road."

That's because I love the journey and for today, for a hour, nothing's mattered but that. I cast not one thought the direction of the prize at the end of the road. Because there is no prize. There's no amount of money, beauty, and fame that can replace the health and wealth of this unsullied moment of creativity.

Wow, I sound like a highly-evolved creature. Who's that talking? That would be Lyn in a costume somewhat askew, not-quite-right stage face, who occasionally forgets key lines this last night of rehearsal. Because it's all a last night before the show, all a dress rehearsal, since we don't know what day the fullest stop of all may come and the show must go on into the spirit realm.

Writing Prompts

-- Are you a process or a product person? A journey or a boon person? What do you most want to be, and why?
-- What frustrates you most about the waiting?
-- Writing needs audience, and if our writing stays underground, authors can suffer. How do you find ways to get an audience now while you're waiting for bigger projects to ferment?
-- How do you balance students' need for audience and their need to learn about the writing process with its many stages? Do teens in particular need more prizes and gratification than long experiences of process? How can we give them enough boons along the road to keep them engaged while teaching them to commit, to delay gratification, and to revise again?
-- How much process has your manuscript experienced? Do you feel in your gut you've shopped it out to agents too early?
-- Read about a few of your favorite authors and find out about their process to getting published. What's the average amount of years? Revisions? What obstacles did these writers use to fuel the next stage of the journey? How did they overcome disappointment, keep eyes on the prize, and not care about the prize too much, all at the same time?