Telephonic introversion

If you’re an extreme introvert like me, a phone call isn’t always just a phone call. In fact, getting one can be as stress-inducing as having your door kicked in on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Like many introverts, it took me most of my life to accept who I am. Society can seem packed with extroverted personalities who make us feel like oddballs – often without even meaning to. That's faded over the years. It’s not a rule, but generally the older one gets, the less concerned one is about fitting in – which means a greater willingness to accept yourself for who you are.

The phone is the epic pinnacle of extrovert society. It’s a device that can reach into your home at any time, demanding your attention and most often getting it. Through this channel, friends, casual acquaintances, strangers and even solicitors can enter your social bubble and use up some of your own precious time.

Perhaps for people with extroverted tendencies, a ringing phone is a happy thing. Something that makes one perk up in anticipation. I wouldn’t know. I’m an introvert, and for me it has always sounded more like a dog whistle.

As big a part as the phone is in American society, I can’t wait for it to be dead and buried. It’s the worst of all worlds for an introvert. It’s not just that it can demand one’s attention at any time - a lot of things in our society do that.

No, the phone is far more insidious than that. It forces a person to communicate by voice, in real-time, with all the drawbacks and perils of a direct conversation. But at the same time, it takes away all of the body language and many of the social cues that us introverts need to not make an ass of ourselves in front of others.  

And many people think nothing of picking up the phone and talking for an hour or more. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve collapsed in mental exhaustion on the couch after an hour-long phone call with a more extroverted friend or family member.

I lived through the tail end of the telephone’s golden age and was happy to say goodbye to it. In this day of e-mail and texts, I can conduct 95 percent of my personal and business affairs – the non-face to face interactions – by other means. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 that I use for everything you can imagine - except to call people. My calling plan is secondary at best. The only time I use the ‘phone feature’ is when I have no choice but to call someone – or when someone calls me.

If we’re lucky – and by we, I mean introverts - in a few more years phone calls will be as rare as handwritten letters are today.

Just write

There’s a question that aspiring fiction writers such as myself like to ask successful fiction writers:

“Do you have any advice for me?”

I don’t know what we expect to hear - maybe something like, “Hold your head sideways for better reception from the muse.” But the answers I see are pretty basic.

Stick with it. Don’t get discouraged by rejection. But most of all – sit down and write. 

In the late 1990s I had the pleasure of meeting David Drake at a book signing in Virginia. He was at the time my favorite author, and I still consider him to be the best military sci-fi writer around.  He’s also one of the most prolific in his field.

According to Drake, one of the secrets of his success is that he writes for eight hours a day every day. It doesn’t matter if he’s sick, if he’s got other things to do, or if he doesn’t feel like writing. He sits down and he writes.

In 1997, Pete Abrams began publishing an online comic called SluggyFreelance. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth your time, but be warned – you’ll have to read more than 6,000 of them to catch up because Abrams has been publishing daily … for 17 years.   

In a 2010 interview, Abrams said, “When I started, I knew that most businesses took two to three years to become profitable—I heard that at some point. And when I started the strip, I made it daily and I treated it like it was my profession before it was paying me full-time.”

Abrams has missed a few strips here and there, and he often uses filler on the weekends and holidays. But he’s published a comic almost every day for the past decade and a half.

Drake and Abrams are both top-shelf writers and storytellers. It’s hard to say how much of that comes from honing their craft each and every day, but it’s a good bet that all of the practice has helped. If you do something all the time you’re going to get better at it – and if you neglect something, it’s never going to improve … or even get done at all. 

I’ve been dreaming of being a fiction writer ever since I was in my 20s, but something else has always come up. No regrets here – I wouldn’t be the person I am without the experiences of the past two decades. But now that I am collaborating with my co-author on my first real fiction book, I try to make it a point to remind myself every day how important it is to do the simplest thing possible.

Just sit down and write.

Conjuring Mice

Many years ago – during a time when computers had been around for a while but the Internet was still new, wild and exciting- I was searching for a unique fantasy background for my desktop. There was one background called ‘conjuring mice,’ which showed a purple-clad wizardess summoning rodents outside a church. Perfect.

A few months later, I saw the same art – this time in a Barnes and Noble. Turned out it was the cover to Barbara Hambly’s Stranger at the Wedding, which some early Internet thief had lifted and made into a background jpg. After staring at the image for months, I decided to pick the book up. It became one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels.

That was a long time ago. But last month I saw a Buzzfeed piece called 13 Fantasy Novels That Are Good Despite Their Covers. Number nine on this list was Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. After seeing the cover and having one of my friends rave to me about how good it was, I decided to give it a read.

As it happened, I couldn't put it down.  In fact, all of Monday was a fog because I was up until six in the morning finishing the last three chapters. Reading them took three times as long as normal because the ending was so good each line just had to be read at least twice.  It’s my favorite fantasy writing since Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles (the first book of which is also featured in the Buzzfeed article). In fact, I’ve already pre-ordered the sequel, which is out July 1st.

So two of my favorite fantasy authors, Hambly and Ryan, got on my radar because of cover art - although the context in each case was very different. It just goes to show one can never underestimate the visuals. For an aspiring fantasy author like myself, the lesson is clear – cover art should stand out. People read books for the story, but it's what is on the cover that can grab their attention.

Bonus reading: Here's an interesting though somewhat dated conversation on this very topic.