Don’t get me wrong: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is delicious–nobody’s saying it isn’t. It’s also ridiculously unhealthy and will kill you if you eat enough of it, but I’m sure that when Mssrs. Cohen and Greenfield started their ice cream shop up, killing people was the furthest thing from their minds. I even believe that the company is, or at least has been, a beacon of responsible corporate citizenship–honestly I haven’t looked at it in great detail since the Unilever takeover a decade or so ago, so I’m not sure whether that’s still the plan or if it’s just the brand strategy.

But notwithstanding delicious ice cream and the good will of the founders, I have always hated the slogan Ben & Jerry’s uses sometimes: “If It’s Not Fun, Why Do It?”

Here’s why:

• Because the kids need to eat
• Because long-term happiness is more important than short-term pleasure
• Because you’ll be glad you did, even though it was difficult at the time
• Because you have a cavity
• Because tequila isn’t good for dogs
• Because it will clear the air
• Because you promised
• Because if you do it enough, it will really pay off
• Because it will help you do fun stuff in the future
• Because they can use your help
• Because the cat box isn’t going to clean itself
• Because integrity is more important (and more satisfying) than fun

I could go on like this all day, but they’re telling me it’s time for my meds. Let me just mention, though, that I’m very much in favor of making things you’ve decided to do fun–it’s practically essential. I’m just not in favor of deciding what’s worth doing based on whether or not it seems easy and pleasant. There’s more to life, right?

I just read an interesting post by J. Daniel Sawyer that goes into some detail about clauses that are showing up in publishing contracts. I think he may be overstating the case a little bit when he talks about the kind of trouble a trap like he describes can cause, but I’m not a lawyer either, and for all I know, it may be worse.

The short version is this: be very, very careful (and if possible bring a lawyer) when signing any publishing contract that talks broadly about electronic rights or about future formats. I have a friend (who is an intellectual property lawyer) I’d like to ask about this, so here’s hoping for a substantive post on the issue coming up. In the mean time, I highly recommend reading J. Daniel’s post:
Principles of Contracts: Everybody Knows Peggy Lee (or should)

Photo by Profound Whatever

Fellow Codexian Amy Sundberg is taking to heart Codexian Ferret Steinmetz’s advice in his post on winning at blogging (referenced in my own recent post “Hurrah for the Comment King!“) to go more to the center with your blogging personality: if you’re always conciliatory, be less nice; if you’re always angry, get a grip (my paraphrase).

Says Amy,

I don’t even know who you all are, but that doesn’t matter; I just de facto want you to like me. Which I hope you can see can be a bit crazy-making. I enjoy smoothing things over, keeping things calm, following the rules, being reasonable and fair-minded, and not stirring up the pot.

In her post “The Backbone Project: Help Me Become Less Wishy-Washy“, she lays out her plan for tackling the task of learning to be more obnoxious, and she invites others to help her, participate, and try the same thing, saying

If you are also a people pleaser and a blogger, you can make your own commitment of writing x number of non-conciliatory posts. I will cheer you on, and we can provide moral support for each other!

Anyone want to give her a hand? Or maybe want to put a little fire into your own posts? If you join in, be sure to link your post(s) in comments, below.

Think of the most serene, compassionate, happy-looking person in the world. What does that person look like? A movie star, someone who’s climbed to the top of the fame ladder? I’m guessing not. A powerful politician? Absolutely not. A toddler with adoring parents? Maybe, but check again in five minutes and the answer is probably no. A bride on her wedding day? Not so serene, usually. An incredibly successful entrepreneur? Smug, maybe: I’m not so sure about serene or compassionate.

How about the Dalai Lama–or virtually any other highly accomplished Buddhist monk?

Serene? Check. Compassionate? Double check. Happy looking? Those lines didn’t come from years of yelling at the cat to get off the furniture, for damn sure. Check out the images that come up if we search Google for pictures of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: except for a couple of expressions of attentive interest, it’s a complete smilefest. (Scroll down to the bottom to see the screen shot: I didn’t want to put the picture at the top and prime you to choose the answer I’d thought of.)

Does happiness work the same way for everyone?
But then again, what does that prove? This is the Dalai Lama, for the love of Pete. It’s his job to be serene and compassionate. That guy doesn’t have to argue on the phone with his wireless provider. That guy doesn’t have a neighbor who mows the lawn every Sunday morning at 6:15. That guy has never been jilted by someone he was pity-dating (to the best of my knowledge).

Although, OK, he did have his country stolen from him, is exposed to the profound suffering of millions daily, and is never allowed to have sex at all, ever. Still, his approach to happiness probably has to be a lot different than our approach to happiness, right?

Happiness in four bullet points
I was thinking about this just a short while ago, after a conversation with my wireless provider (I bet you thought that was a hypothetical example, huh?) in which I was informed that while yes, the equipment I just purchased from them does not work, and yes, it’s their fault and yes, I’ll have to exchange it, and yes, the whole reason I had to buy it in the first place is that their coverage at my home is unusably bad, that no, they would not give me a new one before they receive the old one: in the mean time I would just have to suffer without it.

There’s the key word: “suffer.” The central lesson Buddhism has for us about happiness (even for people who, like me, don’t consider themselves Buddhists) is contained in something called “The Four Noble Truths.” The millennia-old Four Noble Truths are surprisingly in tune with psychological research from the past couple of decades, and they go a little something like this:

1. Suffering exists
2. Suffering arises from attachment to desires
3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases
4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

For the moment, let’s not worry about the Eightfold Path: that’s a discussion for another day, although the short version of it is what my girlfriend reminds me of (patiently) time and time again: the more that the things you do are in harmony with each other and with you, the happier you’ll be.

How to suffer: a practical example
The thing I want to latch onto here is the whole suffering and attachment deal. Let’s use the example of the wireless company: Why is it frustrating and annoying to me that they aren’t helping solve my problem now, when I want it solved–frustrating enough that I literally went directly from their store to the bakery across the way with the idea of possibly having a really unhealthy lunch revolving around pastry? (Note: I did get a handle on things after a minute or two and went on to have a lunch of roasted chicken, black beans, and salad.)

The reason it was annoying is that I cared. My self-talk was subtly but inescapably guiding me toward misery by dwelling on what the wireless company–OK, I’ll go ahead and say that it’s AT&T–“should” do, what I “deserved” to have, how “unfair” it was that the device I’d pay for didn’t work, and how I “needed” an immediate solution. Note the words in quotes: they’re all indicators (in this case) of broken ideas, our primary mechanism for making ourselves miserable and the focus of a number of highly successful cognitive therapies (see “All About Broken Ideas and Idea Repair“).

As long as I cared whether or not AT&T did what I wanted, I would be unhappy. The moment I ceased to care–became unattached from–that concern, it would no longer bother me.

How not to suffer
Again I’m not talking theoretically: I let that concern go, and I immediately felt better. Of course, the problem with bad habits–even when they’re very general habits like making ourselves unhappy when things don’t go our way–is that we’ve grown specialized neural connections to keep them going, so releasing that concern generally just means that I’ll stop worrying about it right at that moment, but that it will come back as soon as I’m reminded of the original problem at a time when I’m not concentrating on being unattached.

Fortunately, I then have the option of not caring again. It turns into a long-term battle: my habits kick in to make me act in ways that will cause me to be unhappy, then I exert conscious effort to free myself and become happy again … and round and round we go. Yet this cycle weakens the habit over time, because the more we think or act a certain way, the more robust our mental wiring for that approach becomes, while the more disruptive we are to a behavior, the more that behavior weakens. This is how habits are made and destroyed.

When next we talk about this …
There’s a lot more to talk about here, especially the idea that caring less is a good thing (which on a gut level has always given me trouble) and about when caring more is important (because there are times when caring is indispensable)–but I’ll leave those subjects for other posts, so that this one can remain a fairly readable length. I had wanted to cram more into this post, but with a little effort, I’ve stopped caring whether I do that or not.

Silo image by Timothy K Hamilton

On Codex we’re having a discussion about what makes blogs work (and what that even means). Since there are some very good bloggers in the group (take Maya Lassiter and Kelly Barnhill, for example), it’s an eye-opening read. Two of the most useful pieces of wisdom for me that have come up so far are the twin reminders of letting yourself shine through (“letting your freak flag fly,” as my girlfriend/partner/inamorata Janine puts it) and offering humor and entertainment in your posts. People have been trying to tell me these things for a long time, but I keep protesting “No, I have to be serious because I’m writing this post on neurotransmitters.” (As if neurotransmitters weren’t fun. Try tossing back a cocktail of dopamine and oxytocin some time and just try to tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself!)

But the award for “most excellently useful new-to-me revelations” goes to Codexian Ferrett Steinmetz, whose post “The Compleat Guide To LiveJournal Stardom And Fame, Part II” covers all kinds of really, really handy insights about effective blogging and effectively engaging your readers–and does so in a profoundly entertaining, freak-flagerific way. It even starts with a jaunty little poem.

While Ferrett’s post is written about LiveJournal specifically, almost every point he makes applies to citizens of WordPress, Blogger.com, and every other blogging system.

Ironically, I’m using very few of his suggestions in this post, but I have a suspicion they’ll begin cropping up here and there any post now.

Photo by epSos.de

The mainstay New Age advice “Be here now,” is great sometimes. It’s essential for things like meditation, children’s birthday parties, May in Vermont, not letting your relatives freak you out, and dying well.

In other cases, “here and now” is overrated. Here are some suggested situations in which it’s best not to be here now:

* Figuring out where you left your keys
* Writing a novel
* Anything involving dentistry or proctology
* Using credit cards (which are more safely used while imagining your future financial state in vivid detail)
* Playing chess
* Working on your dissertation on a gorgeous Spring day when the birds are singing and [fill in outdoor activity of your choice] is calling
* Crossing the street (it’s best to think ten or fifteen seconds ahead for this)
* When now is depressing and thinking about what you can achieve in the future is inspiring
* Walking through any place where you have happy memories
* Cleaning the cat box

I’m just sayin’.

Photo by cogdogblog

Today’s article is a guest post from Former Wall Street Journal and Fortune writer Erik Calonius, whose book Ten Steps Ahead: What Separates Successful Business Visionaries from the Rest of Us you’ll hear more about here in the near future. You might also be interested in reading his post on Jonathan Field’s blog, “What Lucky People Do Different,” which I recommended here about a month back. You can find out more about Erik at his Web site, Calonius.com.

I saw a lot of wisdom in Randall Munroe’s XKCD cartoon strip (May 16 post)—the one where Marie Curie is telling Nobel Prize wanna-bes, “You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.”

In our instant gratification society, too many people just want to be great. They don’t want to take the long, often-lonely journey to get there. They want to be a movie star, not an actor; an American Idol, not a singer; the next blockbuster novelist (interviewed on Oprah), not a writer.

These frothy ambitions are not restricted to the arts. I recently had dinner with two senior research scientists from Bell Labs. Bell Labs, you may remember, is the research lab that produced the transistor, the laser, the UNIX operating system. Among its many notable scientists, seven of them went on to win Nobel Prizes. So did these senior researchers (that I had lunch with) want to be great, too, with their pictures placed prominently on the walls at Bell Labs? Of course. Who wouldn’t?

People have always wanted to be great (that’s why Alexander wasn’t called Alexander the Mediocre). Truth be told, even Marie Curie wanted to be great. Proof of this: As soon as she discovered radium she reported her findings to the scientific community. She did it the next day. She wanted to be great, too!

Wanting to be great is only human, but it has become a runaway addiction in our modern society. It’s the result of living in a country where there are few ceilings, I suppose, where some people really do go from subsistence to the stratosphere overnight.

So it’s important, as Madame Curie (and cartoonist Randall Munroe) reminds us, “You don’t become great by being great. You become great by wanting to do something. And then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.”

There’s another element to greatness, however. It’s luck. Countless millions of people have worked hard and selflessly at tasks. And yet they have died in obscurity, at least as far as the newspapers and histories are concerned.

Why? Nassim Taleb, in his wonderful book, The Black Swan, explains it well: “The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera, just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.”

So where was Madame Curie’s stroke of luck? In her case it was being turned down by the University of Krakow where she was to study magnetism, and meeting her husband Pierre Curie.  Her luck continued when Pierre showed her a quirky device called an electrometer. Her husband and his brother had invented it 15 years earlier to measure electric current, and had essentially put away in the closet. Curie pulled it out, and using it, discovered that uranium caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. No one had done that before.

Now you may say that those are circumstances rather than luck. But in many cases they are one and the same.  Orville Wright would not have invented the first workable airplane without Wilbur; Walt Disney would have been penning cartoons in Kansas City if not for his brother Roy, who encourage Walt to come to LA, and then kept Walt from running the business into bankruptcy; Steve Jobs, of course, wouldn’t have been able to start Apple had he not chanced upon Steve Wozniak as a kid.

But luck is more than the creation of dynamic duos. I’ve been working lately on a book about electricity, and what is surprising (dare I say shocking) is that as you look at the work of the pioneers–William Gilbert, Alessandro Volta, Luigi Galvani, Hans Christian Oerstad, Andre Marie Ampere, George Simon Ohm, Michael Faraday, Heinrich Hertz, and on up to the present day, nearly every advance has been a matter of luck. Yes, of course, hard work. But luck, too.

Take the basic element of the electronic world, the transistor. The Bell Labs semiconductor group of Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley (all of whom would win Nobel Prizes) thought the key to the transistor was in the extraction of an extremely pure slab of silicon, from which thin slices could be cut.

But it was only after a lab technician incorrectly cut a slab, so that a thin layer of impure silicon spread across the top, that their oscilloscopes leapt with a surge of electrons. Suddenly they got it—Eureka!—they needed this slice of impure silicon to make the rest of it work. Had the technician not made a mistake, they wouldn’t have realized it. Another group of scientists may have created the transistor first. Then that group would have been great. They would have had their pictures posted prominently on the walls—and the team of Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley would have been consigned to the dustbins of history.

So luck is the lightning bolt that creates greatness. It’s true of writers as well. Please remember that when Melville finished writing Moby Dick (and talk about sweat equity) he was rewarded in his lifetime with sales of about 3,000 copies. Or how about O. Henry? Went to his grave broke. Even F. Scott Fitzgerald found tepid reviews and no sales for The Great Gatsby. In their cases, they had to be dead before the lightning bolt struck. And, of course, there are countless other authors for whom the lightning bolt never struck at all. If you’ve been working away at a new book lately, this may be a bit of depressing news

But the upside of this is that since greatness is largely out of your control, you can relax. Just get on with your writing, for your writing’s sake. And keep at it, for goodness sake. “What I’ve learned, above all,” says scientist Leonard Mlodinow, “is to keep marching forward—because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at-bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.”

Who knows–you may be next on luck’s gravy train. And don’t think you’re not good enough. As Taleb notes, “Luck is far more egalitarian than even intelligence. If people were rewarded strictly according to their abilities, things would still be unfair—people don’t chose their abilities. Randomness has the beneficial effect of reshuffling society’s cards, knocking down the big guy.”  So take heart.

The idea of willpower is certainly appealing: I imagine how I want to be; compare that to how I am; plot a course between the two; and somehow have the strength to follow it.

Since virtually everyone (I’m tempted to say “everyone,” but since I haven’t been introduced to everyone I’m thinking that would be presumptuous) has problems with willpower sometimes, I suspect that we can all agree that the idea of a reservoir of strength is neither very attractive or very useful. After all, if willpower is just something we have or don’t, then clearly all of us (or at least, everyone I know) doesn’t have enough. If, on the other hand, it has to do with actions we can easily take, then we’re in luck: we can have more of it. As you can guess, I don’t think much of the “reservoir” theory.

As to actions, most willpower seems to come from two kinds of those: focusing attention and making good choices easier.

Focus
There are any number of ways to use focus to make progress: we can envision goals (see “Motivation through visualization: the power of daydreams“), create feedback loops (see “How Feedback Loops Maintain Self-Motivation“), pay attention to the attractive aspects of things we want to do or unattractive aspects of things we want to avoid (see “Tools for Immediate Motivation: Attraction and Distraction“), moderate our moods through tools like meditation (see “Strengthen Willpower Through Meditation“) and idea repair (see “All About Broken Ideas and Idea Repair“), schedule, note on task lists, or mentally picture ourselves doing behaviors that will help us.

The array of tools we have to build willpower, actually, is enormous. All these tools that deal with focus, however, come down to the same kinds of things: raising our own awareness about what we want to do and/or putting ourselves in a mindset to be more inclined to do them.

Ease
The other major category of tools for building willpower has to do with making constructive action easier. For example, scheduling time to go running three days a week after work so that there will be no conflicts, setting out running clothes in the morning, getting good running shoes, and having a treadmill to use in bad weather all contribute to making running easier. If I want to make running a habit, then any barrier I remove to running means less effort I have to put in to run, which in turn means that I’ll be able to successfully run more of the time.

Ease often has to do with preparation and planning. Often we’re a lot less likely to tackle things we want to do if we find we don’t have what we need or if we’re having trouble blocking out the time. Preparation and planning get these complications out of the way and lessen the amount of focus and effort needed to stay the course.

Commitment is another way to encourage ease in building habits. By commitment, I mean reconciling ourselves to the consequences of what we need to do, then thinking, talking, and acting accordingly. Some examples: telling people (firmly) when we won’t be available because our goal requires us to be doing something, reminding ourselves that it’s all right to use time or resources in pursuit of a goal, associating with other people who have the same or similar goals, and not letting ourselves foster broken ideas about what we need to do to make progress.

The short question
The short question, then, that helps us align with our own goals, is this: “What can I do to focus better or make things easier?” Even if a particular approach isn’t working out, this kind of question can often point to other approaches that will. Or, as a last resort, you could always come here and start digging into past posts. Reading things here can be used to procrastinate, but if you find anything that helps you as you go forward, you get to chalk it up to “useful research” instead.

Photo by Anirudh Koul

Which is better, between literary and commercial fiction? Maybe we can agree that the answer depends not just on each individual’s tastes but also on the question better for what? Better for getting engrossed and transported? Better for empathizing with people living in tragic circumstances? Better for opening up ambiguous but important life questions?

Not long ago, a reader named Ankush commented on my article “7 Key Self-Motivation Strategies for Writers” with several questions, one of which–how writers can enjoy their work and not feel oppressed by it–I tackled in my recent post “Joy and Misery for Writers.” He opened a different can of worms with this question:

After much struggle, I’m beginning to feel that I’m more of a literary writer than genre writer. I think that genres are inherently repetitive, and the only scope of originality is in literary fiction. But the, perhaps I’m saying this to avoid facing my failures in genre writing (particular horror).

The basic concern here–which should I write, literary or commercial fiction?–is one that has come up for me in recent years too, and has probably (I’m guessing) been a pertinent one for most writers who ever spend time working on commercial/genre fiction.

Separating literary from commercial fiction
To be clear about my terms, by “commercial fiction” or “genre fiction” I mean fiction that tries to appeal to readers who are interested in stories with certain kinds of premises: mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, thrillers, and so on. By literary fiction, then, I mean fiction that asserts that the value in the story will come from the specific situation, quality of the writing, characters, description, etc. rather than anything general about the premise.

However, commercial fiction can have superlative writing, characters, description and so on; and literary fiction can written around a premise that could be categorized as romance (Jane Eyre), science fiction (1984, The Handmaid’s Tale), or another genre. In fact, there’s no hard delineation between the two groups at all, but the way they’re generally distinguished is how they try to appeal to readers and how they are sold. You will find these different kinds of books segregated in many bookstores and libraries, but not on many home bookshelves. For more on the perceived distinctions between commercial and literary, see my 2007 post “The Myth of the Science Fiction Ghetto.”

You can probably tell from the above that I’m not going to agree with Ankush’s point of view that genre fiction is inherently repetitive. You can’t tell me that Ender’s Game or The Golden Compass or Flowers for Algernon were just rehashes of work that had come before (OK, you can tell me–but I really won’t listen). There’s nothing stopping a genre novel from being just as fresh, insightful, revelatory, and subtle as the best literary fiction just because it’s about finding out who killed someone or because it has a spaceship on the cover.

Push vs. pull
So what am I saying is the real difference between commercial and literary? It’s not arbitrary that they’re sold to different readers with different approaches: there’s a difference in how they’re experienced. My contention is that this difference is about whether it’s the story’s job to pull in the reader or the reader’s job to dig into the story.

The thing about commercial fiction for those of us who enjoy it is that it’s effortless and entertaining to read. You don’t take a break from a good romance or fantasy novel halfway through because of emotional strain or intellectual effort. The tension in the story pulls you in, along with promises of trips to places you want to go, people you’re delighted to watch in action, and scenes of fascinating things unfolding. Commercial fiction can be intellectually and emotionally challenging, but successful commercial fiction uses tension, action, and wonder to keep readers immersed without any special effort on their part.

By contrast, literary fiction at its best seeks to be deep, multi-layered, and open-ended. It offers something that the reader can delve into, consider, argue with, or decide to become immersed in.

In good commercial fiction, it’s the author’s responsibility to pull in the reader. In good literary fiction, it’s the reader’s responsibility to find something of value in the book.

Shedding light on how people look at literary and commercial fiction
I’ll be quick to add that this distinction of the two isn’t cut and dried either. The only absolute way to call something commercial or literary is to look at how it’s sold, and the only use in doing that is knowing how to sell it. But I think looking at the issue as one of whether it’s the author’s or reader’s responsibility to lead the way sheds some useful light on how people view the two types.

A book that sucks the reader in and does everything it can to maintain interest could be accused of being simplistic, formulaic, or of pandering to the reader at the expense of a meaningful story. Some (not all) commercial fiction does pander, after all.

Literary fiction, on the other hand, could be looked on as boring or out of touch. If you start reading the book and it doesn’t grab you by the lapels and drag you into the story the way commercial fiction you enjoy does, you may conclude that the book isn’t well written or has nothing to offer you.

This also helps shed light on what’s going on with literary writers who shun action in their writing or who complain that readers are lazy: commercial fiction readers are expecting the author to come out and meet them, while literary authors are expecting the readers to come inside and look for them. If both stay in that mode, they’ll never meet, and the commercial fiction readers will wander off looking for more outgoing writers, while the literary authors give up on them and settle for the subset of readers who made a special effort. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: no book is for all readers, and readers don’t have to like every kind of book. However, it’s useful to understand.

Which to write?
For writers, each approach has its attractions. Commercial fiction can ensnare more readers because it isn’t limited to those who are willing to put special effort into digging in. Literary fiction can trust that its readers will wait for the good stuff and structure its stories so that they maximize meaning and impact. Ideally your commercial fiction is so rich and rewarding that even readers who are pulled in are inspired to look deeper and think harder, or your literary fiction is so powerful that it draws in readers even if there is no conventional hook.

I’d also like to point out that while the distinction between commercial and literary only seems to have become sharp in the past century or so, there are revered writers of the past who took a more commercial approach, like Dickens, Austen, Twain, and Shakespeare, in addition to the many whose works were more literary, like Dostoevsky, Hugo, Hemingway, and Woolf.

As to writers, in terms of the choice of which to write, I could take up questions of markets, pay rates, respect, and the like, but I’ll ditch that in favor of this question: what do you love to read? If your idea of a good afternoon reading involves something like Les Miserables or The Druggist of Auschwitz, then you probably won’t be satisfied writing romance or fantasy, even if you think that’s all you could write that would sell. My guess is that contrarily, if you reach for books by Lawrence Block or Stephen King or Stephanie Meyer, then forcing yourself to write literary fiction will likely be a joyless and doomed exercise.

Of course, if you read both, you have your pick, or you can go back and forth, or you can shoot for books that are written as genre but sometimes sold as literary, like The Time Traveler’s Wife or Outlander or The Lovely Bones. If you feel comfortable in either world, then it’s probably time for you to consider what kind of career would be most enjoyable for you, picturing yourself at the height of success and working backwards–which is probably a good exercise for anyone, writer or not.

Bookshelf photo by chotda