Punctuality is. . .

. . .the politeness of princes.*

And something that eludes me when it comes to birthday presents.

This Thursday, I am thankful for nieces and nephews who seem to forgive me even though I never get their birthday presents to them on time.

Honestly, I really don’t know why that is. I must have some deep psychological block, because I am very organized and prompt about other things. It’s not like I forget their birthdays. Often, I think of the birthday a month in advance. I think, Oh! Look! Nephew A’s birthday is next month. I wonder what he would like? Then I do absolutely nothing about it.

As the impending anniversary of Nephew A’s nativity impends a little closer, I think, Golly! Nephew A! I’ve got to get him a present. I think of possibilities. I ponder toys and books and–I don’t know–drum sets (because you never actually have to forgive your siblings for hogging the sofa during The Mary Tyler Moore Show). And I do absolutely nothing about it.

About a week out, I think, I absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt must get that present off to Nephew A.

And. . .I do absolutely nothing about it.

At a certain point, short of FedEx or other overnight delivery options, it’s just too late. It’s not going to get there on time.

At that point, it turns into a phone call. An I’m-sorry-but-your-birthday-present-is-going-to-be-late-please-don’t-hate-me phone call. (And maybe that’s the point? An excuse to talk to those long-distance, too busy with the Wii or the iPod or the iPad or the television kids?)

I don’t know.

I’ll try to do better, although I’ve been saying that for years.

Meantime, I’m really thankful they don’t hate me.

* Louis XVIII

The secret of all victory…

…lies in the organization of the non-obvious.

I’m not quite sure what Marcus Aurelius meant by that. It sounds good, though, don’t you think? I may wonder about that on some future Wondering Wednesday, but today is Thankful Thursday. And so. . .

I am thankful today that technology has provided us with so many ways to help us organize the obvious and the non-obvious. Maybe too many, but that’s a separate issue.

I have a lot of To Do lists. And I keep looking for the perfect tool to manage them. So, right now, a big item on my To Do lists is to merge them all into one master list. I haven’t quite accomplished that yet, because each of the tools I use has different strengths, and picking one has been difficult.

It probably doesn’t matter which one I pick. I really just need to choose one and use it with obsessive-compulsion. I’ll work on that.

In the meantime, I thought you might want to take a look at some of the candidates and see if there’s anything here that would work for you.

The most recent find is Remember the Milk–an online To Do list that will email you reminders of tasks. I haven’t done much experimentation with it, but it looks straightforward and relatively easy. You have to sign up for a free account, however, and your list resides on their server. I’m not quite sure I like that. Just how private will it be?

On the other hand, I can carry a list in my pocket on a PDA or a smartphone. I have to say that I don’t much care for the Task List in my Blackberry. The one in my Palm Pilot is/was much more versatile. Easier to view, to sort, to print, to reschedule tasks and to categorize them. Plus, the Palm reminder alarms are more insistent than the Blackberry, and they stay on the screen. The Blackberry lacks most of that functionality. It will activate a brief alarm, but if you’re not near it at the time, the notification will have disappeared. The next time you pick it up, you’ll have no idea. It makes the Blackberry task list nearly worthless.

An organization tool that is a lot of fun–and takes significant disk space and memory to run–is The Personal Brain. You can link all kinds of documents and ideas and websites together in multiple configurations. This makes it possible to organize your tasks and thoughts in more than one way. You can look at things according to project or according to which things you can accomplish at your computer or according to almost any other hierarchy you want to take the time to try. On the downside, I haven’t figured out how to print lists of any kind, it’s a bit time-consuming to set it up, and it does take a lot of hardware resources to run smoothly. But it’s fun to see everything you’ve entered float around as you rearrange the connections, and it’s kind of cool to say “Let me just check my Brain.”

Another free program that I’ve found to be useful is Stickies. It’s like having electronic sticky post-it type notes. I used to list a lot of items in a sticky until my friend Carole mentioned that she creates one sticky per task so the notes are all over the monitor. It’s very satisfying to close them as the tasks are completed. The link above is for the PC version, but I’m fairly sure there’s something similar for Mac users.

All of those tools have some value. And, of course, you can always use a pencil and paper or a Word document (outlines can be useful to organize a To Do list in Word). The one tool to which I find myself returning most often is one I can’t really show you. I developed it myself in Microsoft Access, and while it still needs work, it has many of the features I like. It lets me organize by broad categories with increasing granularity through projects and sub-projects down to actual tasks. I can set due dates and priorities and print various lists. It doesn’t buzz at me, though, when something is looming. Someday, I’ll see if I can’t add that to it.

Meanwhile, I think I should probably actually do something instead of spending all my time making lists.

But remind me sometime to talk about the progress bars we set up a few months ago. They were an amazing productivity tool!

***

(Update for the email subscribers: We’re still trying to figure out why the emails aren’t going out every day. I am posting every day, and you should get two links the day after a skipped post. You can always find it on the website if you’re wondering. My continued apologies for the currently inexplicable. I think it’s gremlins.)

Leveraging the technology…

…to multiply your chances

Sometimes we don’t put our work out there because we don’t want to cope with the rejection.

There are two things I’ve learned about that.

One is that if you don’t submit, the answer is definitely “no.”

The second is that it’s easier to take a rejection letter if you know you have other submissions in play. This theatre, publisher, art gallery, gate-keeper-of-choice turned you down. One or more of the others might say, “Yes!” That thought makes it easier to keep submitting when the rejection comes and is the best reason I know to have multiple submissions going at any one time.

Anything that makes it easier to submit is a very good thing.

So, today, I’m thankful for the growing number of theatres that accept electronic submissions.

I know a lot of playwrights who have been wary of sending out digital copies of their work. Maybe some of them still are.

The concern is that a Word document or a PDF is so easily copied. And so easily edited. Some are worried about losing control of their work, and some are worried about outright plagiarism.

All of that could happen, of course.

But let’s be realistic.

With the availability of scanners, what’s to stop determined plagiarists from loosening the little brads of your report cover, taking your script out of it, and digitizing it themselves? Yes, it’s harder. But not that much harder.

You’re not really protecting your work by sticking to hard copy. You’re killing a few more trees, making the submission much more expensive to you (report cover, paper, ink, envelope, postage), and making it more difficult and time-consuming to get it out the door.

Contrast that with what happens when the theatre allows an electronic submission.

You collect your digital files: the script, the bio, the production history, and whatever else this particular theatre wants. (You should have all of this sitting in a folder on your hard drive, ready to go. If not, why not? Don’t have any way to create a PDF? Try CutePDF, a good free solution.)

You make any adjustments necessary to fit the submission guidelines. (Maybe they want a blind copy or a longer or shorter synopsis than the one you usually use.)

You address and compose your email, attach your document, and click “Send.” (If your email program allows it, request a Return Receipt so you know the transmission is received.)

You’re done! It’s a half-hour, at the most, instead of the other way’s half- to two-day process.

And the poor literary manager at the other end can read scripts on her eReader instead of lugging them home in back-breaking bundles.

There’s no contest.

More of my stuff gets out to more places because a lot of the friction has been removed from the process.

When I first began submitting electronically, I was a bit hesitant. Now, I love it when they offer that option.

Celebrating the MotH*

No, I am not a lepidopterist.

Thankful this Thursday for a handy husband, the Man of the House. As annoying as he can be (and all those who have ever been married understand whereof I speak), the cost of renovations over here at Casa Lagarto would have been far greater if not for the MotH’s abilities–and willingness–to pitch in and fix things. Plumbing, light fixtures, drywall, roof leaks–nothing seems beyond him.

The MotH is a retired Broadway stagehand–a member of the illustrious band of brothers and sisters known collectively as IATSE: the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Furthermore, he is a member of Local One, the New York local branch. Rock on!

I’m telling you, these guys and girls are a can-do bunch.

It’s fashionable in certain quarters to complain about the theatre unions, and the stagehands come in for quite a bit of the flack. Any actor who has been scolded for moving a chair knows what I mean.

But they keep the show running, the scenery (and sometimes the actors) flying, the props at hand, the trapdoors opening and closing, and everybody safe.

You like that chandelier in Phantom… , the spectacular skating track set of Starlight Express, the ice skating in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show?

Thank the stagehands.

And now, one of them is spending his retirement working every bit as hard far off the stage as he ever worked on and behind it. And in far weirder conditions.

This week, he had even planned to be in a canoe under the dock running a PVC pipe to serve as a conduit for the electrician who is going to clean up the wiring down by the water. At the mercy of tide tables and spiders and the frustratingly hilarious fact that when you hammer something from a canoe, you tend to float off from within striking distance of the nail. (We know this from previous experience. Don’t ask.)

He’d have done it, too, if it had not turned out to be possible to pull up some of the boards.

He’s saved us a lot of money. The house is prettier, safer, and more efficient.

I can hammer a nail myself, and I could probably figure out the other stuff if necessary. I am very glad it isn’t necessary, however.

* MotH: Man of the House

More stuff that’s going well

Thankful Thursdays – # 2

Thursdays are devoted to stuff that’s going well-because there’s a lot more of it than we usually think, and because there’s a theory that putting your attention on the good stuff attracts more of it to you.

Some–okay, most–of you have probably heard of The Secret, the 2006 bestseller purporting to let you in on the secret to getting anything you want. Some people leap wholeheartedly into that kind of thing, and some people start thinking ‘snake-oil salesman’ when they hear about it.

I tend to fall into the middle camp. I haven’t managed to manifest a million dollars yet, but some experiments have yielded interesting results. And one thing that certainly can’t hurt is to pay attention to the good things in your life. If it doesn’t bring more of them to you, it reminds you of the joy of the ones you have.

Ergo.

Thursdays in this blog are devoted to thankfulness.

This Thursday, I am thankful for tech support that works. Specifically, I want to send a shout out to MailChimp. MailChimp is the service I selected to handle my email list for my News Flashes as well as the blog posts. If you received this post via email, it’s thanks to MailChimp.

There were some good reasons I picked them in the beginning. Their base service is free, and the volume limit they offer for that very attractive price is high enough that you can give them a serious test before you have to pay anything. They give you a lot of control over the look of your emails, so you can do that “branding” thing pretty well.

And their support is awesome.

Aside from having extremely clear online instructions and documentation, they’ve got a LiveChat thingy* that actually works. Reps comes on really quickly. They generally grasp the problem right away and have solutions to offer. They are friendly and funny and fast. They never try to pass the buck. You don’t hear “Yeah, see, that’s probably a problem with your website host. We can’t troubleshoot that for you.” (At least, I haven’t yet. I suppose it’s possible that I might run into something that is genuinely outside the scope of their service, but so far, they’ve really tried to solve every problem I’ve had.)

In addition, and this is more of a benefit than you might think, the chat chimes when the rep responds. Unlike many other company’s live chat, you don’t have to sit there watching the window while the rep handles some untold number of other clients. You can do something else in the rare instances that you need to wait for a response, because the chat will chime and let you know the Chimp has chatted. (No offense to the MailChimp tech support staff who are more human than most.) I really love the chiming. It’s a serious selling point for me.

And if you’ve got a question and it’s outside chat hours, they respond to emails within hours.

Their instructions are clear and concise and they fix the problem.

And that chimp is slightly hilarious!

So, today, I am thankful for the menagerie–the MailChimp and the FatCow** are doing me proud.

* ‘ thingy’—a technical term for that which I cannot immediately think of the word
** my website host

The stuff that’s going well!

Thankful Thursdays

On Thursdays, I think it might be good to talk about what’s going well. Since it’s all too easy to focus on problems and challenges.

Today, I am thankful for all the people who have done so much to support and encourage my play. Right now, I am grateful to the latest cast who are working so hard: Julie Lisnet, Katie Toole, Randy Hunt and Arthur Morrison, directed by Marcia Douglas. And Mary (whose last name I cannot remember — oh, no! — but I will find out). Mary is doing a fine job with the stage directions. [Update: Mary’s last name is Clark. Mary Clark!]

Don’t let anybody ever tell you that reading the stage directions is no big deal.

It’s a huge deal!

And, of course, I am grateful to the Penobscot Theatre Company. Artistic Director Bari Newport, Managing Director Marcie Bramucci, and the indefatigable and unfailingly cheerful Jasmine Ireland who is the Director of Education and Outreach and the curator of this Northern Writes New Works Festival.

We’re having a blast here in Bangor!

Elaine Smith Writes