For as long as I can remember, I have been desperately concerned with my level of metacognitive skill. It was the reason I gave the first story I ever wrote for public consumption to my best friend to critique, I was seven and I remember vividly the relief that I had a chance to fix it before I read it to the prep class (the grade before grade 1, in Australia.) Metacognition is the ability to assess one’s own skill level and, of course, I didn’t know the word until my university philosophy of mind studies, but my greatest fear has always been not failure to achieve perfection but to have thought that what I had done was objectively good and then to discover that it wasn’t.

Whether a child, probably too young even to have metacognitive ability, should be worrying about such things is a valid question for another, more private, forum, but it has driven a life-long love of theory and research, if only to do as much as I can to make sure I don’t find myself in that situation. It’s what drives me to believe that editing and story analysis classes are more important for a writer than any “Express yourselves, dahlings!” creative writing classes. It’s also lead to a morbid curiosity about how on earth people have the confidence to, for example, audition for So You Think You Can Dance despite having no ability whatsoever. Aren’t they embarrassed? And how can they not know how bad they are?

The same questions come to mind when I read an terribly flawed piece of writing.* When I have been asked to give feedback (professionally or no) I have to try to work out why the writer hasn’t noticed these flaws so that I can work out the best way to approach giving my feedback in the hope that it will be taken as constructively as it is meant. I have found, again and again, that the level of confidence the writer has is an excellent gauge, invariably, those whose pieces need the most work are most shocked that any work is required and genuinely seem to have believed they had produced a masterpiece.

I have discussed this many times with Superman and he recently pointed me to a 1999 report which shed some interesting light on the subject and backs up the, now old-fashioned, belief that anyone who believes themselves to be the best at anything is unlikely to be even close to the best.

The Report: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”**

In their 1999 report, Kruger and Dunning outlined four studies they had undertaken which were inspired by previous studies which showed a correlation between level of confidence and lack of ability. Kruger and Dunning devised experiments in which they asked people to take tests in the areas of logical reasoning, humor and English grammar, then asked them to estimate both: what their specific test score had been and; which percentile their test results fell into (i.e., where their test result would fall in comparison to others’.) The aim was to find the subjects’ actual skill level in an area, and then see if they were aware of what their skill level actually was.

Their findings were unambiguous: the less skill you have, the more grossly you overestimate your ability and, perhaps more instructively, it seems only those with above average skill underestimate their skill. Thus, if you want to make an assumption about a person’s skill from their attitude, the best thing to do is to watch out for humility, not confidence!

“But, but, but!” I hear all the management-book-steeped would-be-Donald-Trumps of the world shriek, “That’s loser talk. Confidence is the most important thing! If you don’t think you’re the best, who will?”

This is an attitude that, as far as I can tell, began to seep into the world in the 80’s, as advertising men, salesmen and generic ‘business’ men began to make enormous amounts of money, and people started looking to them as icons of success. Suddenly, everyone was reading management and wealth-building books written by these ‘guru’s, and this requirement for uber-self-confidence was being applied in interview rooms across all sorts of industries. Quiet confidence and humility became associated with ‘losers’ – who just didn’t want it enough, or were cursed with low self-esteem - a condition which was to be treated like a highly contagious disease.

I’m not denying the existence of, or problems associated with low self-esteem. It may surprise some people who have met me, because I usually speak with confidence, but I’ve been close to crippled by low self-esteem for much of my life. When I speak up, it is with confidence, but that’s because I only speak up if I have done copious research, practice and, especially if it involved public speaking, throwing up, in private.  I understand completely that a certain level of confidence is required just to step into any arena of experience, some more than others, but beyond the minimum level of confidence required for the particular task at hand confidence is, as the studies demonstrate, more of an indication of lack of skill than of competence.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that projection of confidence is essential in marketing, or sales, or any profession which requires one to convince others to willingly do what you want them to do. I also understand the philosophy that any interview is a sales pitch of yourself. It is not true, however, that every job is a sales job and anyone who conducts interviews for non-sales positions and makes their decisions based on who sold themselves most confidently really can’t complain when that applicant turns out not to have the skill they’d hoped (or has even lied on their resume!) Such interviewers are as responsible for the bad hire as they would be if they’d ordered a disappointing piece of exercise equipment skillfully advertised in the wee hours of the morning.

Of course, a study like this isn’t going to instantly change the prevailing culture but I thought it worth sharing with my small audience of, mostly, writers hoping to be published who are wrestling with their own levels of confidence, or perhaps should be

*Note: Any discussion of ability brings with it the jinx that there will be numerous grammatical and spelling errors in the very piece discussing it. I’d like to point out that metacognition is the issue here and I’m fully aware that this blog post won’t be perfect, unwilling as I am to spend more time than it takes to jot down the thoughts and get my creative juices flowing for my fiction writing!

** “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”, Justin Kruger and David Dunning Department of Psychology Cornell University, © 1999 by the American Psychological Association For personal use only--not for distribution December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Social Media cannot or should not be used for promoting a product, of course it can. I have no issue with someone I have followed or befriended posting about their current project on their account so that I’m aware of it and can opt-in in some way, nor do I have an issue with someone I have directly corresponded with sending me a private message asking me to give them a little support in their project before they go wide with it – that’s the good, effective way to use Social Media for PR. What I do have a problem with is the number of messages I have been getting, supposedly ‘tailored’ to me, or not, from accounts clearly set up purely for PR, which show very little genuine interest in either me or the platform they want to exploit.

So, fwiw, here’s my advice to anyone wanting to use Social Media for promotional purposes:

Any time you send an unsolicited message about a product directly to someone on any of these social media, you are not being an uber cool company that is down with what the kids are doing these days – you are TELEMARKETING. Not only are you telemarketing, but you are calling during a dinner party. Imagine being at that dining table when the call comes through. Now imagine the talk about you and your product afterwards – it’s not going to be good is it?

If you want to use Social Media to promote something, you have to actually BE social – be ready to put in the time or it will all be for naught. Tweet or post about something other than just your own products, something which will be interesting to your target audience so that they will engage with you and wonder what you or your product is all about. Getting a good word of mouth campaign going used to be a real coup in the PR world, because it was subtle, if sometimes vulgar, work. Social Media is all about word of mouth, so you need to put as much creativity into encouraging those conversations as you did pre-social media – the size of these vast networks you wish to exploit make it a more delicate process, not a shortcut.

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

"I have a thing for second hand bookshops which specialize mostly in non-fiction or old textbooks (there’s something brash and low self-esteem about second hand fiction, their titles somehow always seem to have turned into huge, slutty pink-foil letters!) The good ones have the musty-sweet scent of old paper and have no cafe, and no music, just floor to ceiling books with conveniently placed ladders.

My two favourite stores in Melbourne (Australia) were Dr. Syntax in Commercial Rd, South Yarra and what is now boringly called the Queenscliff branch of “Barwon Booksellers” in the old bluestone Wesleyan church in the main street of Queenscliff. I say “were’ because one lunchtime – god, a decade ago? – I headed down to Dr. Syntax to finally purchase the complete John Donne in pretty blue leather and the 1930s textbook on Australian Aboriginals and two other texts from the 50s, that I’d had my eye on for some time (I love old anthropology textbooks as a sometimes eye-opening, often hysterical history of the ignorance and arrogance of the ruling elite) to find it had gone out of business.  I was devastated, and felt fairly guilty for not having just bought the books in the previous weeks (my $120 surely would have kept them going!)

Some weeks later, on holiday in Queenscliff (a beach town around the bay from Melbourne) I wandered into the ex-church-bookshop and was browsing when I spotted a familiar little book with pretty blue leather binding. I snatched it up and, sure enough, it was my Donne – with the Dr. Syntax price still in pencil in the front flap!
I raced to the counter and breathlessly asked if they’d purchased the Syntax stock – they had! I found all four books that day and left with the odd feeling that I’d discovered that some lost friends had found themselves a good home."

The following picture was taken in on Sea Shipment Day, 2008, 6 weeks after we arrived in Japan - many of the books pictured were purchased at Doc's

As you will no doubt assume from the fact that it was a year and a half ago and no one has tracked me down to tell me, I never really knew my father. He and my mother married in January 1966 and had me in 1973. Ten months later their marriage was over and I didn’t see him again until I was 15, when my Aunt and Uncle (on my mother’s side) accidentally came across him when they where holidaying up the Queensland Coast. While my mother and I were struggling to survive, at not yet 50 my father had semi-retired to an idyllic stretch of Queensland coast where he ran a caravan park with his brother and his third wife and third child seemed to be holding on to him (he had left his second wife and second child when that child was about 10mths old, too – as far as I know.)

During my consequent visit to this sub-tropical idyll (surreally, via a visit to EXPO ‘88 in Brisbane because my mother thought we could have some FUN on the way???), my father sat me down to ‘discuss’ what had happened between he and my mother. Much more rationally than I had expected, he said that the truth of what happened will always be “somewhere in the middle of everyone’s stories” and said that they had once loved each other very much (something my mother had never said) but that he had tried but couldn’t live with her and that it wasn’t my fault (the exact opposite of what my mother had always said). Then he began to describe what it was like living with her. And it struck me – he KNEW.

You see, all my life my mother told me that she’d never had a temper until I was born. That her rages were caused by a child that had “come out angry.” I never quite understood how that worked, but I knew all my life that her rages were my fault and that was why no one else seemed to know the same woman that I knew: I brought it out in her. I realize, only with clarity now, that I had always either assumed, or maybe hoped, that that was why my father had left me with her – because she hadn’t been a violently angry person around him and he just didn’t KNOW. But he did.

That day back in 1988 he described to me the enormous mood swings, and the ranting which built to violent rages and right then I wanted to ask: “WHY did you leave a ten month old baby in the hands of a woman like that?” But I couldn’t get the words out. At 15, I was still living with her and tied up in the “don’t tell because then everyone will see what a bad/insane girl I’m dealing with and they’ll put you in an institution” that I grew up with, and believed. The only thing I managed to ask was why there had been no child support for all those years – to which the answer was that there had been till I was 2 when my mother apparently flew into a rage on the phone and told him she didn’t want his money anymore. The rage part rang true and, later, my mother admitted to the fight, but said that, at 2yrs old, I had run into the room and hung up the phone right at that moment and she hadn’t been able to get back in touch with him (yeah, I know, that’s when I finally started to realize who the insane one was.) However, even if it was true that my mother had told him not to send any more money, frankly, that was no excuse for never again checking whether I had a roof over my head and food in my belly - I often didn’t. A few months after that, I did try to escape my mother by asking to move in with him and, to his credit I guess, he did say I could come, but the idea was soon nipped in the bud by my mother and some more masterly mind-fucking.

Almost ten years later, in 1997, when I’d been away from my mother for seven years and was starting to recover from an illness which had kept me housebound for several months, I was trying to deal with some of the issues from my childhood and I decided to visit him and finally ask that question. I went up and almost every moment of every day I was there I tried to get the words out, but I left without asking. Now, I’m left with the knowledge that I will never have the chance to ask him why he abandoned me to the care of a woman he knew was unstable and prone to violent rages, but I also finally realize why I never asked:
I knew the answer, but I couldn’t face hearing him say that he just didn’t care.

So, as I read the farewell in the newsletter of the bushwalking society for which it seems he was secretary, as they talk about what a sweet man he was and what a good husband and father he was, I am glad that my half-sister and his third wife got a good father and husband (assuming it’s true) but I find myself desperately sad that I didn’t and, to be honest, not a small part bitter because it seems he never felt any consequences, positive or negative, from having had his eldest daughter, let alone abandoning her. Having me seems to have been like hitting a possum on the road, feeling the bump and moving on (though, it seems from the bushwalking club, that he so loved nature that he probably wouldn’t have just left a possum to die by the side of the road – perhaps I should have been born a cute native animal and he may have cared what happened to me.)

So, I post this on my blog in the hopes of both alleviating that  feeling of impotence that all children of bad parents probably feel when the parent dies without confrontation, and proving to myself that I no longer suffer the disease of secrecy that goes along with an abused childhood, and say publicly: Farewell, Peter, you failed me utterly.

At least now I can stop asking myself that question.

We are pretty much in the same position as we were when I wrote this post from Sydney in Jun 2008 - the packers are coming on Tuesday morning at 9 (four hours after Brigid will be picked up for her trip to Aussie Quarantine) and we are in preparation limbo. Our days are a blur of decision making: Air, Sea or Plane?; Pack ourselves or leave for the packers?; If pack ourselves do we do it now or will we need it before Tuesday?; Do we even TRY to write "Air" and "Sea" in kanji on the stickers we are hoping will indicate to the packers that the various items are to go by air or sea - what if the kanji for "Air" is one stroke off the kanji for "The Depths of Hell"?

In Sydney, on packing day, we had four guys packing up our stuff, with no language barrier, and it was rather like trying to coordinate a locust plague. One guy might see you nearby and so ask you if you want your Grandmother's china treated as fragile while another might see you talking to the first and so, even though he's not TOTALLY sure, just make his own judgement based on your stickers with arrows and big black texta that the stuff IN this chest of drawers is to go by air but the chest of drawers itself is to go by sea - when you share a language, that's going to be right most of the time. Also, in Australia, if something seems just, well, stupid, an Aussie will - as politely as possible - ask you if you really meant that you wanted to ship your entire library by Air. This time, there will be five or six men who won't speak English, and one supervisor who will, but, in my experience with the Japanese so far, none of them will be so rude as to second-guess me even if they do wonder why Oku-sama has clearly written in kanji that she wants the piano sent to the Depths of Hell. Who is he to argue?

Today our goals are to organize which clothes will come with us and which will go by sea and organize the office - the latter seems an Herculean task atm but I am discovering that switching to tunnel vision and tackling a 30cm square area at a time eventually gets you there!

We will have internet till we leave and will leave the computers up till Monday (going by Air, no question) and hopefully at some stage between now and then I will have the time and energy to blog about our lovely, snowy New Year at Atsuta Shrine - but no promises, it may not happen till we are back in Australia and up and running with (what, in Australia, passes for) internet access.

Happy New Year to all!

About a decade ago, I witnessed an Australian cognitive scientist declare with utter conviction that a person's capacity for happiness was genetically pre-determined and then refuse to be drawn into any discussion of environmental factors for the rest of the seminar. When asked if he was happy himself he responded "As happy as I am capable of being" and gave a smug, self-satisfied, lips-only smile - a happiness of sorts, I suppose. In contrast, Nancy Etcoff tells us that cognitive scientists have now discovered that, while they do their share, genes are only about 50% responsible for our level of happiness, the rest is a combination of chasing natural beauty, social activity and other such pleasure inducing experiences while avoiding misery inducing ones and the judicious satisfaction of desires (which may or may not be pleasure or misery inducing themselves).

Contrary to the idea Plato's Socrates gives us, that happiness exists only in as much as we experience the absence of its opposite, our emotional well-being is not a continuum from happy to sad but, rather, a balance of parallel emotional systems. Making ourselves less miserable does not automatically result in a move towards happiness, it acts solely to make us more able to enjoy whatever happiness we find without the chemical fog of depression. Similarly, pursuing what we feel an urgent desire to attain, whether it a material possession, or the love of a person, satisfies only our dopamine-based, "need" system, which is at the heart of addiction; we won't feel as bad as we do when we are yearning for that thing, but getting it will not necessarily raise the happiness level of the equation unless what is gained is something which also gives us pleasure, rather than merely the absence of yearning.

To be truly happy, if I have understood Etcoff correctly, one must address not only misery and it's avoidance but our, separate,  desire system and the pursuit of its satisfaction, while also indulging in experiences that give us pleasure (yet another system again). Like an audio engineer finding the perfect mix, we must adjust all three sliders to find the sweet spot, which is likely to be slightly different for everyone.

As a writer, this insight is exciting; I can see how this will be a tool for tweaking characters: which one of the sliders is the character more influenced by, which does he have the emotional skills to manipulate better?

Etcoff is a great presenter, too. Enjoy!

SHELDON

It must be an emergency; everyone at the university knows that I eat my breakfast at 8 and move my bowels at 8:20

LEONARD

Yes, how did we live before Twitter?

- from The Big Bang Theory, S.2, Ep.23,The Monopolar Expedition.

When even the boys of The Big Bang Theory, champions of all things techie and geeky, appear to use Twitter merely to broadcast the minutiae of daily life, it’s no wonder tweeting is generally considered a frivolous procrastination. When I began tweeting I did so with no idea of what it was except that it was another social networking site which my fellow Japan Bloggers were jumping aboard to promote their blogs. I figured it wouldn’t hurt for me to try it out and see if I could give them a hand here and there. Approximately one year and 2,246 tweets later, I’m completely hooked on Twitter as an information resource which I have tailored to my needs and interests.

How Twitter Works

Because there are no stupid questions: a basic run down.

1) People make observations, ask questions, answer questions and broadcast information in the form of  a tweet - a text message which can be no longer than 140 characters.

2) Those observations, questions and information are seen by anyone who is either mentioned in the tweet (by means of their twitter name with an @ symbol in front of it) or anyone who has chosen to ‘follow’ all of the tweets of the person writing.

3)Repeat 1 & 2 on ridiculously huge, entangled scale.

How Twitter Becomes Useful

When we first begin, invariably we all follow the tweets of friends and family who have told us their Twitter name (I’m Danisidhe btw, nice to tweet you. Sorry.) We send them a tweet telling them we are on and they then follow us. At this stage, it is understandable that people think that this is just another Facebook or mySpace but without snappy (?) layout or pictures and, if you never go beyond friends and family, that’s true and you can use it that way but you’re not using Twitter to its full, wonderful extent.

The real key to Twitter is to give in to the curious cat within and risk one of your nine lives. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Note that when you choose to follow someone, you follow all of their tweets. When someone that you are following sends a message or replies to someone that they are following, you will see that message BUT you won’t know what on earth they are replying to. If your friend’s message catches your interest, click on that other person’s name and you will be taken to their page where you will see their last several tweets (possibly including the tweet to which your friend was replying, depending on the time your friend took to respond.) If the tweets on your friend’s friend’s page are of interest to you, you can choose to follow them, too.

Unless they have locked their account for privacy, in which case you won’t see any of their tweets at all, you can follow someone without getting permission like you need to in Facebook etc. If they see that you are following them and they don’t wish you to, they can block you (just as you can block people) but since Twitter is really a public information stream (so no-one should be twittering something they can’t risk strangers seeing) there is no reason that they should need to do that unless you harass or spam them. Note that following them doesn’t mean that they are following you, nor does it create any kind of social contract requiring them to do so.

And that’s how the tailoring begins.

Through the judicious use of ‘spying’ on people with whom your ‘twitter friends’ are conversing and following those with similar interests, you will soon find your Twitter stream is filled with useful information that you could never have gathered on your own.

It is always worthwhile checking out who is following you because chances are they share your interests and therefore might be worth following but who follows you won’t really matter to you unless you are using twitter as a way to promote something. Promoter tweeters devote their whole twitter-being to writing targeted tweets to attract as many followers as possible but that is only one use of Twitter and one that requires careful execution lest you become so obviously one-eyed that you are boring and people, like me, stop following you.

How I use Twitter

Professional Development & Community

Most of the people I now follow and who follow me are writers, both budding and jobbing, print and screen, and there is quite a community. We share links to articles or posts from writers or publishing industry types on writing craft, tips on getting published, publishing trends, competitions… you get the picture. My RSS readers has blossomed since joining twitter as I add blogs recommended by my fellow writers or the blogs of those who’s tweets always intrigue. We support each other through the use of #tags like #writegoal – wherein we might tweet: “#writegoal today, 2000 words” then, at the end of the day we will tweet: “Woohoo #writegoal met plus 146 words!” and anyone who happens to be looking at the #writegoal search at the time of your report tweet will send you a ‘”woohoo, well done!” tweet. It might sound silly to some but when you’re sitting at a computer alone (as writers tend to be) just knowing you’ve made the public commitment and getting some positive feedback when you’re done can be great.

Here’s a tweet I received in my stream today from @BookEditorLM:

RT @BookBundlz "The Book Pick" Contest Deadline = 11/16 Enter yr novel, memoir; self-pub ok http://bit.ly/4nUd12 #Authors #Writers #Books”

In that tweet: @BookEditorLM re-tweeted (i.e., copied the original and sent it as her own tweet indicating it with RT) a tweet from @BookBundlz announcing a competition with a link to where you can enter. They also added #tags to the tweet so that any writers who regularly search twitter for any tweets containing those #tags will see it, too. In fact, I saw that tweet because I have a permanent search set up for any tweet containing “#writers” – not because I follow @BookEditorLM (though I do now!).

Now, I’m not actually interested in this particular competition but there are two things I might do with this tweet 1) I can click on @BookBundlz and see if they regularly tweet about competitions and thus might be worth following in case they mention one I am interested in and 2) I can re-tweet it myself so that any writers who follow me will be sure to see it (in case they don’t follow @BookBundlz , @BookEditorLM or any of the #tags.)

I follow #tags by using a desktop (i.e. not in a browser) application called Tweetdeck, which I highly recommend. I set up a search for, for example  #writegoal and Tweetdeck gives me a separate column for it and updates it automatically at whatever interval I tell it to (Twitter traffic permitting.)

Some of the #tags worth following if you are a writer #writers, #writechat (this one has a tweetchat which occurs at 4am Monday morning Japan time, for which I occasionally stay up and is always worth it,) #writegoal. There are heaps of others which I might duck into temporarily if I find out something is happening in it (usually by people adding one of the above #tags to a relevant tweet.) A currently busy one is #nanowrimo for all those participating this year!

Journal/Travel Diary

Those of you who subscribe to my feed will be vaguely familiar with this use because it is the reason you are hit with a “My Week in Tweets” post every Sunday night, Japan time. I’ve never been much of a journal-er because I’ve always felt there is a kind of wallowing, if not dishonesty, in trying to write down what you remember were your thoughts and/or feelings at the time something happened. With Twitter, you can record your observations as they occur (circumstances permitting, of course) and have a real record of what mattered to you enough to Tweet it at the time, rather than what you think is appropriate to record later.

Using a wordpress plugin by the wonderful Alex King called Twitter Tools, all the tweets from the week (that are not direct replies to other tweets) are published as a post on my blog, giving me a permanent record of my tweets. So, though I also have in mind keeping my friends and family in touch with my activities, it is often this that I am thinking of when I take a low quality photo with my phone and send it via email to Tweetphoto, with a comment in the subject line that becomes the tweet (GOD I LOVE Japanese phone internet lol.)

Using Twitter this way is a little different because it is not really about communicating with others and so isn’t something that Twitter is actually made to do, in fact, I don’t think it can be done without also having a blog with a plugin like Twittertools installed (there may be a way to have all your tweets emailed to you but I haven’t checked that out). Of course you also need a decent mobile internet solution, I don’t know how I’ll do it in Australia

Shameless Plug for Friend:

Speaking of travel, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my dear friend @ShaneSakata’s tweetchat using the #tag: #japantravel which occurs for an hour from Midday on Fridays, Tokyo time and is a wonderful resource for anyone planning a trip to or already travelling within Japan. You can find details and/or actually follow the tweetchat without an application like Tweetdeck here

/Plug ends

Keeping in Touch

Obviously I do use Twitter to keep in touch with friends in a similar way that one does on Facebook (which I only recently joined and I admit is mostly updated by clicking the ‘facebook’ button on the application I use to handle Twitter and posting to both services at once.)

Twitter does have a Direct Message function which enables you to send a tweet privately to one person (still 140 chars) and I admit to being more quickly contactable that way than by email these days. I check my email once a day (at best) while I check twitter many times a day (hence I have been known to request a virtual slap from my #writegoal friends if I tweet again within a certain time frame!) In fact a recent trip to Tokyo, to meet up with a friend for a two day feast of cookware and ceramics shops on Kappabashi, was planned entirely via Twitter and I even updated her on my travel status from the Shinkansen when I had web access on my phone but could not call or SMS her.

So, that’s why and how I use Twitter. How do you use it? And if you don’t, will you join ussss?