Working authors: read this.
On querying, and Twitter as a medium for conducting business. Yes and yes and yes some more. Read it twice if you have to.
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
*Sputtering Speechlessness*
I *GET* that this is hardly a serious assessment of my job. But it DOES represent what all too many people expect is its worth.
There are an AWFUL lot of us admins in the world, doing what you need to have done and guarding the gates to the things and people you need the most. Thinking of us as the irrelevancies the picture dismisses us as being is dead-sure certain to get in your way at some point or another along the way to your goals. This includes business (you won't get to the boss if you don't respect the admin) ... and PUBLISHING, too, by the way, writers. You do realize: admins read your work too. They might even be your first-line to "this goes on the desk" (or "stays in the inbox").
There are an AWFUL lot of us admins in the world, doing what you need to have done and guarding the gates to the things and people you need the most. Thinking of us as the irrelevancies the picture dismisses us as being is dead-sure certain to get in your way at some point or another along the way to your goals. This includes business (you won't get to the boss if you don't respect the admin) ... and PUBLISHING, too, by the way, writers. You do realize: admins read your work too. They might even be your first-line to "this goes on the desk" (or "stays in the inbox").
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Trust Fall
Any good theater geek can tell you about the title of this post - it's one of those exercises we used to use (and which appears from time to time on your lesser sitcoms, for HILARIOUS effect) to foster the ensemble spirit.
If the truth were told, I can't actually remember our ever in fact using this exercise. It's possible we did; my theater days are FAR enough behind me, at over twenty years now, I am no reliable witness as to what might have gone on, or what we did on our own time to foster our own actor-osity. But the exercise does *exist* at least, and it does kind of make a point.
I've come up against the interesting fact that, in life, trust isn't always a two way street. This of course is obvious stuff - the very essence of storytelling would be destroyed if human beings treated with one another equally in such things. BUT the point on which this particular issue is interesting to me, and interesting today, is that it isn't always a matter of some betrayal.
Mr. X and I have known each other now for nine years. For the past six or seven, he has been one of my trusted readers. It isn't because of our relationship - at least not its emotional component - but because of that brain of his I like so much. He does represent a likely member of my audience, but he is also a remarkably good DISPASSIONATE reader. This isn't to say he has no bias - his opinion of me, and of my writing, tends to be on the very high side generally - but it does allow him to consider my work in itself, even though he likes it. He's been probably the best reviewer of my pacing and of my POV (as a woman writing first-person male, I do very very well, but he has helped me tighten that and just occasionally given the go-ahead on certain aspects of narration), and been a fundamental part of The Ax and the Vase since the beginning. He's also been tireless in taking each piece as it came - including the entire manuscript, once I had a draft - and responsive in the best possible sense of criticism.
X too, of course, is a bit of a writer. More often than not, this is an informal thing - but recently, it came up that he's got a regular, public gig ("and I helped!"). At his inaugural piece, he felt his voice wasn't dead-on, and I suggested he have a reader. This is something I have done for many years in many contexts. I've been a proofreader, editor, copy editor, and composer for everything from a book-length financial services guide to death and taxes to every newsletter for every job I've ever held, to PowerPoints, letters, proposal documents, team-building-rah-rah-blah-blah, and the resumes and individuals' professional documents of all kinds. I can read for tone, for grammar, for length, for layman-accessibility, and for organization - and any combination or isolated aspect of these and beyond. This has been a part of my career for almost as long as my career, and I've done it both personally and professionally all the way along. It's no small part of my success, and of my visibility to executives who matter. And it's 100% calculated, too.
So it's no accident that at every job I have, I become to go-to grammarian, and eventually the de facto house author, for *whatever* needs doing.
BUT.
This work doesn't necessarily translate into the personal realm. Which brings us back to X and his own writing.
***
An awful lot of serious writers have a very, VERY hard time sharing their work at all. Some of us feel we are good enough, we don't "really" need to. Some feel we're not good enough, so showing our work is a painful experience. But those who most want to get PUBLISHED, particularly in the traditional (agent/publisher/actual books-on-shelves products) sense, sooner or later force ourselves to find good readers.
I had good readers in X and in Beloved Ex (hah - of all combinations) and a few others, but at last year's Conference, the Sarcastic Broads got together and, as much of a loner as I prefer to be, and as hard as it is for me to accept outside critique, I knew a good thing when I saw it, and have reaped the benefits many times over. It's good for me, and good for all of us Broads, I think.
And so I suggested to E, if he's worried about losing his unique self-expression, he needs a reader.
The obvious nomination in this category, and I made it with caveats, was myself - and we had the discussion yesterday. In the end, I think we tenatively decided to go for it - but the fact is, in really looking at it ... I realized that the reader relationship isn't always necessarily bilaterally beneficial.
It may owe to the nature of what he writes about, for which I really am *not* the demographic, but even though we may make it work, this is a dynamic I have said there's no-harm/no-foul if it doesn't work for him.
Funny how what looks analog in simple description, might not work out in parallel in practical experience. And why, and how that is okay.
I would be LOST without X as a reader. He's caught me every time I've done the authorial trust-fall.
Isn't it funny he might not be best served with me, though ... Life's just not as tidy as a theater exercise.
The moral of the story is that simpatico is a jewel when you find it. Find your Sarcastic Broads - or your X - or whomever serves your writing the BEST ... and keep an open mind as to who that may be. Take the trust-fall.
They can be surprising, pleasurable relationships when you find them. I am very much blessed in my readers!
If the truth were told, I can't actually remember our ever in fact using this exercise. It's possible we did; my theater days are FAR enough behind me, at over twenty years now, I am no reliable witness as to what might have gone on, or what we did on our own time to foster our own actor-osity. But the exercise does *exist* at least, and it does kind of make a point.
I've come up against the interesting fact that, in life, trust isn't always a two way street. This of course is obvious stuff - the very essence of storytelling would be destroyed if human beings treated with one another equally in such things. BUT the point on which this particular issue is interesting to me, and interesting today, is that it isn't always a matter of some betrayal.
Mr. X and I have known each other now for nine years. For the past six or seven, he has been one of my trusted readers. It isn't because of our relationship - at least not its emotional component - but because of that brain of his I like so much. He does represent a likely member of my audience, but he is also a remarkably good DISPASSIONATE reader. This isn't to say he has no bias - his opinion of me, and of my writing, tends to be on the very high side generally - but it does allow him to consider my work in itself, even though he likes it. He's been probably the best reviewer of my pacing and of my POV (as a woman writing first-person male, I do very very well, but he has helped me tighten that and just occasionally given the go-ahead on certain aspects of narration), and been a fundamental part of The Ax and the Vase since the beginning. He's also been tireless in taking each piece as it came - including the entire manuscript, once I had a draft - and responsive in the best possible sense of criticism.
X too, of course, is a bit of a writer. More often than not, this is an informal thing - but recently, it came up that he's got a regular, public gig ("and I helped!"). At his inaugural piece, he felt his voice wasn't dead-on, and I suggested he have a reader. This is something I have done for many years in many contexts. I've been a proofreader, editor, copy editor, and composer for everything from a book-length financial services guide to death and taxes to every newsletter for every job I've ever held, to PowerPoints, letters, proposal documents, team-building-rah-rah-blah-blah, and the resumes and individuals' professional documents of all kinds. I can read for tone, for grammar, for length, for layman-accessibility, and for organization - and any combination or isolated aspect of these and beyond. This has been a part of my career for almost as long as my career, and I've done it both personally and professionally all the way along. It's no small part of my success, and of my visibility to executives who matter. And it's 100% calculated, too.
So it's no accident that at every job I have, I become to go-to grammarian, and eventually the de facto house author, for *whatever* needs doing.
BUT.
This work doesn't necessarily translate into the personal realm. Which brings us back to X and his own writing.
***
An awful lot of serious writers have a very, VERY hard time sharing their work at all. Some of us feel we are good enough, we don't "really" need to. Some feel we're not good enough, so showing our work is a painful experience. But those who most want to get PUBLISHED, particularly in the traditional (agent/publisher/actual books-on-shelves products) sense, sooner or later force ourselves to find good readers.
I had good readers in X and in Beloved Ex (hah - of all combinations) and a few others, but at last year's Conference, the Sarcastic Broads got together and, as much of a loner as I prefer to be, and as hard as it is for me to accept outside critique, I knew a good thing when I saw it, and have reaped the benefits many times over. It's good for me, and good for all of us Broads, I think.
And so I suggested to E, if he's worried about losing his unique self-expression, he needs a reader.
The obvious nomination in this category, and I made it with caveats, was myself - and we had the discussion yesterday. In the end, I think we tenatively decided to go for it - but the fact is, in really looking at it ... I realized that the reader relationship isn't always necessarily bilaterally beneficial.
It may owe to the nature of what he writes about, for which I really am *not* the demographic, but even though we may make it work, this is a dynamic I have said there's no-harm/no-foul if it doesn't work for him.
Funny how what looks analog in simple description, might not work out in parallel in practical experience. And why, and how that is okay.
I would be LOST without X as a reader. He's caught me every time I've done the authorial trust-fall.
Isn't it funny he might not be best served with me, though ... Life's just not as tidy as a theater exercise.
The moral of the story is that simpatico is a jewel when you find it. Find your Sarcastic Broads - or your X - or whomever serves your writing the BEST ... and keep an open mind as to who that may be. Take the trust-fall.
They can be surprising, pleasurable relationships when you find them. I am very much blessed in my readers!
Friday, September 2, 2011
So It Shall Be Written
We expect of others what we know of ourselves.
I know this isn't a particularly deep, nor new thing to say. Sometimes, though, it's just *particularly* true.
I know this isn't a particularly deep, nor new thing to say. Sometimes, though, it's just *particularly* true.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
"You Should Write" ...
Every writer hears it, and I suspect every writer with a blog probably writes about it - yet it makes it no less frustrating, that the situation is a bit of a cliche'.
I've certainly had the conversation more than once - but it was the iteration a week or two ago which seems to be sticking with me and prompting me to write.
"You should write something lighthearted."
The purveyor of this particular advice is someone who's known me long - but understands me little; and who, frankly, doesn't try to. It is what it is - and it isn't the point of this post. Not entirely.
"You should write something lighthearted."
What this means, coming from this source, is, "You don't really know what you're doing; please allow me to 'help' you by pointing you in the direction of something that might actually sell. Also something I would prefer to read, and to tell people about, as I know the author."
I did give the explanation that, having completed one novel, and having been selling it for a year and a half now, it really isn't a "just like that" proposition - to go shifting gears and genres, and (ya know) to WRITE AN ENTIRE NEW NOVEL to suit her advice. I did not explain about the seven years I have been educating myself about the industry, about the fact that it *takes* this long to shill a book ... about the minor little detail, that an author must write out of inspiration, not out of (wrongheaded) ideas of the market.
*Sigh*
I'm close enough with this advisor that there persists a sense of duty, on her part, that there will come a time it will be an inevitability she'll "have to" read my book. This cannot be an appealing prospect. This is exactly why I have spent all the time since I started the writing telling friends, family, coworkers, even casual acquaintances who are so generous as to ask about the progress: there is no obligation to read my book. I wouldn't make my family read it; in most likelihood, I wouldn't *let* my nieces read it (before a certain level of manturity - and interest - anyway); I wish my friends didn't all say "Oh, I can't wait to read it" when I know it may not be to their real taste.
I know my audience(s). The market for The Ax and the Vase is not a parallel match for the population of my everyday life. Even some of those people who have been most encouraging - and, unbeknownst to them, helpful to my work - aren't folks I would think would care for the subject. "George Clooney" - an executive at the last mainstream financial firm I worked for (who, amusingly, called *me* "Angelina Jolie"; and who asked me every single time I saw him "how that novel is going") gave immeasurable practical support; and I would be amazed, just these few years later, if he even remembered that I exist on this planet.
All this is to say ... that I have less concern to fight the extraneous "you should write" dynamic, than to alleviate the sense of obligation those who know me develop, regarding the novel - which leads them to wish they could be obligated to something more palatable than my brand of historical fiction. Publishers don't froth over an author's intimate fanbase. They want general readership. And Ax can provide that. I just happen to be one of those weirdos who do not, apparently, hang out exclusively with my audience.
My plans on that have more to do with a marketing circuit. Cultivating all my University connections, to come talk at various schools and read and/or sign, when the time comes. Hitting up my business owner friends, offering nights with the author. Massaging corporate communications types up and down my resume', and bookstore upon bookstore upon every bookstore that will have me. Friendly enough.
But not to the point ... of giving me "you should write" advice ...
Heh.
I've certainly had the conversation more than once - but it was the iteration a week or two ago which seems to be sticking with me and prompting me to write.
"You should write something lighthearted."
The purveyor of this particular advice is someone who's known me long - but understands me little; and who, frankly, doesn't try to. It is what it is - and it isn't the point of this post. Not entirely.
"You should write something lighthearted."
What this means, coming from this source, is, "You don't really know what you're doing; please allow me to 'help' you by pointing you in the direction of something that might actually sell. Also something I would prefer to read, and to tell people about, as I know the author."
I did give the explanation that, having completed one novel, and having been selling it for a year and a half now, it really isn't a "just like that" proposition - to go shifting gears and genres, and (ya know) to WRITE AN ENTIRE NEW NOVEL to suit her advice. I did not explain about the seven years I have been educating myself about the industry, about the fact that it *takes* this long to shill a book ... about the minor little detail, that an author must write out of inspiration, not out of (wrongheaded) ideas of the market.
*Sigh*
I'm close enough with this advisor that there persists a sense of duty, on her part, that there will come a time it will be an inevitability she'll "have to" read my book. This cannot be an appealing prospect. This is exactly why I have spent all the time since I started the writing telling friends, family, coworkers, even casual acquaintances who are so generous as to ask about the progress: there is no obligation to read my book. I wouldn't make my family read it; in most likelihood, I wouldn't *let* my nieces read it (before a certain level of manturity - and interest - anyway); I wish my friends didn't all say "Oh, I can't wait to read it" when I know it may not be to their real taste.
I know my audience(s). The market for The Ax and the Vase is not a parallel match for the population of my everyday life. Even some of those people who have been most encouraging - and, unbeknownst to them, helpful to my work - aren't folks I would think would care for the subject. "George Clooney" - an executive at the last mainstream financial firm I worked for (who, amusingly, called *me* "Angelina Jolie"; and who asked me every single time I saw him "how that novel is going") gave immeasurable practical support; and I would be amazed, just these few years later, if he even remembered that I exist on this planet.
All this is to say ... that I have less concern to fight the extraneous "you should write" dynamic, than to alleviate the sense of obligation those who know me develop, regarding the novel - which leads them to wish they could be obligated to something more palatable than my brand of historical fiction. Publishers don't froth over an author's intimate fanbase. They want general readership. And Ax can provide that. I just happen to be one of those weirdos who do not, apparently, hang out exclusively with my audience.
My plans on that have more to do with a marketing circuit. Cultivating all my University connections, to come talk at various schools and read and/or sign, when the time comes. Hitting up my business owner friends, offering nights with the author. Massaging corporate communications types up and down my resume', and bookstore upon bookstore upon every bookstore that will have me. Friendly enough.
But not to the point ... of giving me "you should write" advice ...
Heh.
Monday, July 25, 2011
How Much Do I Love My President Right Now?
Yeah, the speech he is giving even as I type is pretty stellar and all that.
But he just asked why hedge fund managers should pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. WOO for him ditching that "Administrative Assistant" bullshit. (Additionally: good question. Let's get a *decent* answer.)
And also, you know - for growing a functional pair, and publicly making the most salient point of our day.
Get it the hell done, O Wealthy Lawyer-Politicians. The rest of us are heartily sick of the bloody brinksmanship. NOBODY'S little "endowments" (all entendres intended) are going to look good if this plays out. So quit lying about your measurements and each other's. You guys have a ****ing job to do.
Do it.
But he just asked why hedge fund managers should pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. WOO for him ditching that "Administrative Assistant" bullshit. (Additionally: good question. Let's get a *decent* answer.)
And also, you know - for growing a functional pair, and publicly making the most salient point of our day.
Get it the hell done, O Wealthy Lawyer-Politicians. The rest of us are heartily sick of the bloody brinksmanship. NOBODY'S little "endowments" (all entendres intended) are going to look good if this plays out. So quit lying about your measurements and each other's. You guys have a ****ing job to do.
Do it.
Monday, January 24, 2011
I Don't See London, But Guess What I Do See?
More readers from France than even stateside, by a margin of over 200%.
I love seeing the French landing here, even if they are bots, because I have gained THAT much of an affinity for the place, writing about their first king.
If my fifteen-year-old self only knew. In our house, "French" was a dirty word, and not because of the kiss, and NOT because of my folks. My brother and I were the anti-francophiles; surrounded by pink and green preppy girls (a large number of them named for that color green) who thought the adjective determined the Nth degree of romantic, and who thought the nation itself proceeded from the eighteenth century cartoon-like, fully formed in quisine and cigarette-hazed languid accents, defining a refinement they could scarcely even have named as such, having learned the admiration more by funnel action of the crowd than through any individual experience (... or interest). So we hated what they loved. To fully entrench the rule, it had its exception - the French marines; perhaps itself a conceit chosen less from depth of education than some known factoid or other and b*tchin' footwear or something.
If I had known then my first novel would CENTER on this center of my adoptive reverse-snobbery, I would certainly have been pretty torn. Torn asunder at the idea I really would write a book someday ... but about something I was so faux-passionately against.
It would have been worse than the knowledge that my future self would come to own a cat. (And then three.)
***
Yet, in its way, my lacking the years-deep background in adoration - er, or even deep respect, ahem - in fact served me to be a clean slate in coming to my subject. In this reverse-decision, if in nothing else, it's impossible to deny that subjects choose authors, not the other way around.
In the early days of my writing, I actually feinted a tiny bit from looking too French-loving. I would joke, "if you go back far enough, the French are German" - which isn't strictly speaking true, but which research did make at least a defensible statement to make (if not a purely nice one, born as it was out of franc-ambivalent defensiveness and denial).
But the deeper I got into my own reading (I have no honest gauge for any extent to which my WRITING has effect here), the deeper my subject's homeland and heritage got into me. The homeland he *created*. The heritage of nation which was his patrimony, and the heritage of name which lives now around the world, and has been on the throne of his country more than twenty times. And which caused me to write my book.
My people come from Europe in its many stripes, mostly the UK and Germany, but my family's name, at least so the story goes, was born in the Channel Islands, of a Norman and his love. Norman territory is so close to the seat in which my King made his start, I as a dork and a woman and a writer hear some kind of *thrum* in the juxtaposition. I don't need to count myself part of Clovis' line (it is enough joy to know one of my best friends can clearly do so), but I like the idea nonetheless - that, even if not in blood, some part of me extracts from that place that spawned my first book.
The king's name helped make what I am. I count my work a service, hoping I can claim some ghost of the same in return.
***
So hello, France. I love to see you visit.
I love seeing the French landing here, even if they are bots, because I have gained THAT much of an affinity for the place, writing about their first king.
If my fifteen-year-old self only knew. In our house, "French" was a dirty word, and not because of the kiss, and NOT because of my folks. My brother and I were the anti-francophiles; surrounded by pink and green preppy girls (a large number of them named for that color green) who thought the adjective determined the Nth degree of romantic, and who thought the nation itself proceeded from the eighteenth century cartoon-like, fully formed in quisine and cigarette-hazed languid accents, defining a refinement they could scarcely even have named as such, having learned the admiration more by funnel action of the crowd than through any individual experience (... or interest). So we hated what they loved. To fully entrench the rule, it had its exception - the French marines; perhaps itself a conceit chosen less from depth of education than some known factoid or other and b*tchin' footwear or something.
If I had known then my first novel would CENTER on this center of my adoptive reverse-snobbery, I would certainly have been pretty torn. Torn asunder at the idea I really would write a book someday ... but about something I was so faux-passionately against.
It would have been worse than the knowledge that my future self would come to own a cat. (And then three.)
***
Yet, in its way, my lacking the years-deep background in adoration - er, or even deep respect, ahem - in fact served me to be a clean slate in coming to my subject. In this reverse-decision, if in nothing else, it's impossible to deny that subjects choose authors, not the other way around.
In the early days of my writing, I actually feinted a tiny bit from looking too French-loving. I would joke, "if you go back far enough, the French are German" - which isn't strictly speaking true, but which research did make at least a defensible statement to make (if not a purely nice one, born as it was out of franc-ambivalent defensiveness and denial).
But the deeper I got into my own reading (I have no honest gauge for any extent to which my WRITING has effect here), the deeper my subject's homeland and heritage got into me. The homeland he *created*. The heritage of nation which was his patrimony, and the heritage of name which lives now around the world, and has been on the throne of his country more than twenty times. And which caused me to write my book.
My people come from Europe in its many stripes, mostly the UK and Germany, but my family's name, at least so the story goes, was born in the Channel Islands, of a Norman and his love. Norman territory is so close to the seat in which my King made his start, I as a dork and a woman and a writer hear some kind of *thrum* in the juxtaposition. I don't need to count myself part of Clovis' line (it is enough joy to know one of my best friends can clearly do so), but I like the idea nonetheless - that, even if not in blood, some part of me extracts from that place that spawned my first book.
The king's name helped make what I am. I count my work a service, hoping I can claim some ghost of the same in return.
***
So hello, France. I love to see you visit.
Monday, January 17, 2011
American Vitriol
I can't add to the mountains of words about the shooting in Tucson last weekend. But I would ask one thing:
Why is it the republicans and Tea Partiers think it is smart to respond to calls for civility with anger, outrage, and offense? HOW is it they think that is okay?
Deliver me from discourse, if this is its shape and nature.
I'm not precisely a government employee, but I do consider myself a public servant, and I for one wouldn't mind seeing the hatred and bloodlust for my kind ABATE. Good lord, people. Simmer the hell down.
Why is it the republicans and Tea Partiers think it is smart to respond to calls for civility with anger, outrage, and offense? HOW is it they think that is okay?
Deliver me from discourse, if this is its shape and nature.
I'm not precisely a government employee, but I do consider myself a public servant, and I for one wouldn't mind seeing the hatred and bloodlust for my kind ABATE. Good lord, people. Simmer the hell down.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Acceptance At Work
I realized today I have become accustomed to being a little trodden-across in my work life. It's an interesting thing, because I was handed a tray to carry by someone with no right to determine my workload, and I was a little apologetic (let us say "tactful") in pressing the shyest question about this to my manager.
With the economy as it is, and as confident a woman as I am - I am still a new kid at a very large establishment. I learned from my last employer that questioning was not allowed (for secretaries), and that additions would be given to my job both without warning, and certainly without pay.
(What is most interesting about that is any sort of *initiative* or attempt to provide value-added service on my own was greeted with pearl-clutching horror; but that is a whinge for absolutely no other time and beside the point here. Mostly.)
I learned that from one day to the next, not only would I have multiple managers in the first place, but several others were also going to be allowed to call upon me.
Boys and girls: this is one of the reasons a multiple-manager operating structure is to be avoided, if at all possible. It never works very well, the politics become deeply tedious, and sooner or later, the thought occurs to higher-ups, "if she can support two, she can support three more a little in addition ... but not for additional pay of course."
Aherem.
I have always loathed multiple manager setups, since the time I worked for three guys, one of whom backed out on his WRITTEN promise to provide bonuses, with the other two, and the PRESIDENT OF THE FIRM had to step in and pay me one because all of them ended up collapsing on the thing when one decided to be tight-fisted.
Le. Sigh.
So no small joy in my current job is that, while I am core to the team, and we HAVE multiple managers I support, my actual reporting structure is clearly to the top banana, and there is no question that my provision of work for EVERYONE in my group leaves him still and unquestionably at the top of my priority list, every day, no dibs-calling on my time he can't trump.
I love the way I work on special projects with the manager who calls me Tenacious D. I enjoy working with the guy in the midwest, with the local officer, and sitting back and watching as my whole group, nationwide, comes to understand - and act on - the fact that I am to be depended on for certain functions. They seem to like having someone to turn to, and I at almost-six-months-in am reveling in the ways this educates me, entrenches me (frankly), and begins, bit by bit, to make a difference for everybody. An explicit part of my role is to be a core unifier, and this is coming to be, just a little faster and deeper as time moves me more "in" my job.
***
And so.
When someone outside my team, whom I've begun a new relationship with through providing regular deliverables he compiles, turned to the admin he thought was there to support his team - and she turns out to be offloading her administrative duties in favor of more project management, or analysis, or whatever-it-is she thinks is more "worthwhile" than administrative work - they both turned to me. I took on a small to-do, and then, innocuously, the guy's boss emailed me to ask if I could help out administratively.
I didn't argue my way out, but I did consider the senior level of my boss, and emailed him a quick FYI.
Then the admin-who-isn't-doing-admin-work-anymore emailed two of the senior admins explaining to them that my name needed to be put next to other-manager's as his assistant.
Ahm.
"Yeah: no" was the gist of the diplomatic email I sent right back, explaining that unless and until my actual manager says I need to be given a new job alongside my own, I'm not interested in formalizing my support of someone who in fact told me he has an admin actually.
(To which I say: what is it she does ... ? Maybe I missed that bit.)
Anyway, so another quick FYI to my boss, accompanied with "I don't mean to create politics where there are none" but the clear understanding I defer to him, not just anyone with a tray to hand off, no matter how lightly laden it might be for a minute.
I got an actual thank you from one of the seniors, who felt I had expressed a very proper expectation, that MY boss decides my job - not an admin who doesn't want to be an admin, and who isn't even a part of my group, and assigning to me people not part of my boss's.
***
There isn't a good coda here, other than my ruminations about my newfound (since the last/cr*ppy job) willingness to get myself handed-off on. It brings to mind an interesting train of thought about the last GOOD job I held, which so often I actually find myself thinking of more than the one more recently held - the one I keep passively-aggressively half writing out of my work history, in conversation and in my consideration. The last good job provides a very interesting view of me as a worker, indeed.
With the economy as it is, and as confident a woman as I am - I am still a new kid at a very large establishment. I learned from my last employer that questioning was not allowed (for secretaries), and that additions would be given to my job both without warning, and certainly without pay.
(What is most interesting about that is any sort of *initiative* or attempt to provide value-added service on my own was greeted with pearl-clutching horror; but that is a whinge for absolutely no other time and beside the point here. Mostly.)
I learned that from one day to the next, not only would I have multiple managers in the first place, but several others were also going to be allowed to call upon me.
Boys and girls: this is one of the reasons a multiple-manager operating structure is to be avoided, if at all possible. It never works very well, the politics become deeply tedious, and sooner or later, the thought occurs to higher-ups, "if she can support two, she can support three more a little in addition ... but not for additional pay of course."
Aherem.
I have always loathed multiple manager setups, since the time I worked for three guys, one of whom backed out on his WRITTEN promise to provide bonuses, with the other two, and the PRESIDENT OF THE FIRM had to step in and pay me one because all of them ended up collapsing on the thing when one decided to be tight-fisted.
Le. Sigh.
So no small joy in my current job is that, while I am core to the team, and we HAVE multiple managers I support, my actual reporting structure is clearly to the top banana, and there is no question that my provision of work for EVERYONE in my group leaves him still and unquestionably at the top of my priority list, every day, no dibs-calling on my time he can't trump.
I love the way I work on special projects with the manager who calls me Tenacious D. I enjoy working with the guy in the midwest, with the local officer, and sitting back and watching as my whole group, nationwide, comes to understand - and act on - the fact that I am to be depended on for certain functions. They seem to like having someone to turn to, and I at almost-six-months-in am reveling in the ways this educates me, entrenches me (frankly), and begins, bit by bit, to make a difference for everybody. An explicit part of my role is to be a core unifier, and this is coming to be, just a little faster and deeper as time moves me more "in" my job.
***
And so.
When someone outside my team, whom I've begun a new relationship with through providing regular deliverables he compiles, turned to the admin he thought was there to support his team - and she turns out to be offloading her administrative duties in favor of more project management, or analysis, or whatever-it-is she thinks is more "worthwhile" than administrative work - they both turned to me. I took on a small to-do, and then, innocuously, the guy's boss emailed me to ask if I could help out administratively.
I didn't argue my way out, but I did consider the senior level of my boss, and emailed him a quick FYI.
Then the admin-who-isn't-doing-admin-work-anymore emailed two of the senior admins explaining to them that my name needed to be put next to other-manager's as his assistant.
Ahm.
"Yeah: no" was the gist of the diplomatic email I sent right back, explaining that unless and until my actual manager says I need to be given a new job alongside my own, I'm not interested in formalizing my support of someone who in fact told me he has an admin actually.
(To which I say: what is it she does ... ? Maybe I missed that bit.)
Anyway, so another quick FYI to my boss, accompanied with "I don't mean to create politics where there are none" but the clear understanding I defer to him, not just anyone with a tray to hand off, no matter how lightly laden it might be for a minute.
I got an actual thank you from one of the seniors, who felt I had expressed a very proper expectation, that MY boss decides my job - not an admin who doesn't want to be an admin, and who isn't even a part of my group, and assigning to me people not part of my boss's.
***
There isn't a good coda here, other than my ruminations about my newfound (since the last/cr*ppy job) willingness to get myself handed-off on. It brings to mind an interesting train of thought about the last GOOD job I held, which so often I actually find myself thinking of more than the one more recently held - the one I keep passively-aggressively half writing out of my work history, in conversation and in my consideration. The last good job provides a very interesting view of me as a worker, indeed.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The Line
So I'm thinking that a line got crossed at work today.
I'm a woman of prodigious noise, but (like most of my kind, frankly) at my core, that stems from timidity more than confidence. When it comes to really fundamental points, unfortunately, I'm the sort who'll go out of my way NOT to be heard, sometimes.
But ... when someone steps out of ambiguity, past perhaps-creepy, and into the outright baffling in their offerings of attention, you have to begin to think: when am I going to have to say something about this?
Because I have a feeling there's going to be a when - and I am not so frail I'm likely to sit mute very long.
I'm not so dainty I can't survive inappropriateness without my calm perfectly intact. The point is that: I don't *have* to survive it, and my tolerating it does no favors to those more dainty than I.
Just because I am made of stern stuff doesn't mean I can't be offended. It doesn't require raving lunacy for someone to be out of line.
Then again ... sometimes, even small moments are ravingly lunatic, at that.
*Sigh*
People.
I'm a woman of prodigious noise, but (like most of my kind, frankly) at my core, that stems from timidity more than confidence. When it comes to really fundamental points, unfortunately, I'm the sort who'll go out of my way NOT to be heard, sometimes.
But ... when someone steps out of ambiguity, past perhaps-creepy, and into the outright baffling in their offerings of attention, you have to begin to think: when am I going to have to say something about this?
Because I have a feeling there's going to be a when - and I am not so frail I'm likely to sit mute very long.
I'm not so dainty I can't survive inappropriateness without my calm perfectly intact. The point is that: I don't *have* to survive it, and my tolerating it does no favors to those more dainty than I.
Just because I am made of stern stuff doesn't mean I can't be offended. It doesn't require raving lunacy for someone to be out of line.
Then again ... sometimes, even small moments are ravingly lunatic, at that.
*Sigh*
People.
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