Blog – Page 28 – Sonya Ellen Mann

This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Learning To Be An Editorial Project Manager, Week #1 Recap

Posted on June 13, 2015May 20, 2016 by Sonya Mann

I just finished my first week of full-time work at a “normal” job. Before this Monday I was freelancing, which is very different from being part of an office team. Now I drive to Novato every morning, talk to the same people all day, and figure out new processes that will hopefully become second nature soon… After seven days of doing this, I’m still scared and excited. Also tired and invigorated.

The company is small, so I have a lot of responsibility — meaning a lot of power. Not in the sense that I order other people around, but in the sense that my choices matter. Thankfully my decisions don’t have life-or-death repercussions, but they do affect success or failure. Correctly deployed, my skills and focus can make the business function better. That’s a very cool feeling. Freelancing didn’t feel that way, except pertaining to my own ability to keep writing for money. In this new job, people are counting on me to take care of their projects — both my boss and our clients.

I have so, so much to learn. On Friday the boss treated everyone to dinner at a local restaurant, and he said to me and the other new employee, “You guys had a big download this week.” That’s a good way to put it. The sheer amount of information we were given was overwhelming and at first the content was incomprehensible. Slowly, I’m getting the hang of things.

baby sitting at a big computer — I’m slightly more useful at work than a toddler. But not, like, a lot more useful. Photo by Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería.

I am an editorial project manager. That’s my title. Basically, my job is to bring books into being. Which is awesome! As I said at the interview, “This is a dream job. I didn’t know this job still existed.” I assumed that most of the publishing jobs were gone because there’s so much pressure on the industry now. Luckily, I was wrong!

The company I work for is ORO Editions, which publishes architecture and design books by some damn prestigious authors. (For example: the journal Landscape Architecture Plus, which I’ll be proofreading.) We also have two other imprints, academically focused Applied Research and Design Publishing and popular-interest Goff Books. Some of the subjects our authors address are totally fascinating.

So far, the only downside is that I miss writing. I’ll have to figure out how to keep it in my daily schedule.

freelance writing -- now it's my hobby instead of work — Me on Twitter.

King Of The Road (Podcast Review: Neighbors)

Posted on June 4, 2015May 20, 2016 by Sonya Mann

I claimed that I wasn’t a podcast person, but I was wrong. As it turns out, I enjoy listening! This is a well-timed discovery because I just acquired a commute.

a bunch of people — Illustration by Giovana Milanezi.

Most recently, I played an episode of Neighbors while walking the dog. Neighbors is about connecting “ordinary” people — of course, the hidden point is that each of us is quite special. (Trite but true.) The episode “Purpose” is part of Neighbors’ series of interviews with homeless people, called “Sans Houses”, which producer Tasha Lemley has been conducting since 2006. I was particularly struck by Cowboy, who recited this poem:

“The old man used to speak
of the portraits he’d seek,
now he lives in a room
where they pay by the week.

His saddle’s all tattered;
his pony’s gone lame;
his bones always ache
when the sky feels like rain.

I know his last mountain’s two flights of stairs
and his saddle’s turned into an old rocking chair.”

These words are lyrics drawn from Chris Ledoux’s “There’s Nobody Home On The Range Anymore” (Songbook of the American West, 1991).

After reciting the last couplet, Cowboy said, “I don’t wanna be like that, you know? I don’t wanna lay up in that room and die layin’ up in the bed. You know, I wanna go out in a gunfight or something.” A little later he explains, “I’ve always been active, in whatever I did. If it was wrong or right, I was active doin’ it, let me tell you what!”

I love that line. “If it was wrong or right, I was active doin’ it, let me tell you what!”

Let me tell you what: I’ve only listened to one episode of Neighbors so far, but I deem it worth my aural attention.

I also loved the “Drivers Wanted” episode of Anxious Machine — it made me want to see Mad Max: Fury Road a third time, except that might make my heart explode.

Mitigating Writer’s Block

Posted on June 4, 2015May 20, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Here’s the thing about writer’s block:

First you look at your email inbox. You read all the newsletters and junk. Open a bunch of new tabs. Skim the top two paragraphs of each article and save most of them to Instapaper. Try not to think about the sheer volume of “content” that you process and how you feel about parsing the deluge. Would it be better to slowly peruse just a couple of very important and thoughtful features? Maybe. But keep avoiding that discussion with yourself.

Here’s the thing about writer’s block: You CAN fix it — by waiting or writing. Those are the only ways.

You cannot fix it by watching The Good Wife, or walking the dog, or endlessly scrolling back to the top of Twitter. But you’ll do those things anyway.

You can’t fix it by going to therapy, but you did that too. Maybe it’ll help shift the stuckness behind the scenes (the scenes taking place in your brain).

One way to wait is to make the phone calls you need to make. Send out some emails. Tally up invoices.

One way to write is to type up a blog post about having writer’s block. See what I did there?

writer's block, tapping a pencil — Photo by Rennett Stowe.

Farhad Manjoo Explains How Oblivious We Are To Self-Deception

Posted on May 27, 2015July 24, 2016 by Sonya Mann

“I’ve examined what happens to audiences — that is, we ordinary people — in a world of unprecedented media choice: we begin to select our reality according to our biases, and we interpret evidence (such as photos and videos) and solicit expertise in a way that pleases us.” So writes Farhad Manjoo in his book True Enough, which documents how the internet has eroded the standards for informational accuracy.

Illustration via Twitter.

Using case studies from the news, Manjoo points to selection bias, perception bias, and lack of context as factors influencing the public’s persistent wrongness about some issues, especially politics. He overviews convincing research and explains that if you interpreted things based on first impressions, you would frequently misunderstand complex events. Which is exactly what happens! We listen to an ostensible expert’s credentials, respond to their personal charisma or lack of it, and decide whether to believe them over the other guy based on nothing more than charm.

The problem is, you can’t know what you don’t know. (Thanks, Rumsfeld.) If you’re not an expert in a certain field, you can’t tell who’s a real authority and who is inflating their own importance and credibility.

What’s ironic is that I believe Manjoo’s assessment of this whole situation — not because I’ve independently combed through the documents and consulted other authorities on the topics at hand. I believe him because he writes well, his ideas appeal to common sense, and he’s a columnist for The New York Times. The back of the book carries praise from another journalist and an academic, whose opinions I also did not independently verify.

I find Manjoo’s work compelling for exactly the reasons he cites as being behind many scandals, conspiracies, and other misconceptions.

Self-Referencing To Build Meaning Instead Of SEO

Posted on May 27, 2015August 22, 2016 by Sonya Mann

points on a map, linked together — Photo by Cali4beach.

Ben Thompson’s tech analysis is recursive, which is one of the various reasons to appreciate what he does. Practically speaking, I mean that Thompson constantly references his past work, linking to previous pieces in every new one. He builds new arguments from old ones, or rather extends his past assertions, instead of constructing each article entirely from scratch. Smart approach, whether it’s conscious or not.

information linked together — Illustration by Elco van Staveren.

Thompson’s recursive writing provides a sense of timeline, grounding each new post in a fuller body of work. This gives the reader a sense of ever-mounting value, and provides an intellectual narrative as Thompson’s own positions evolve.

So much of the content on the internet feels random, contextless. Often, standalone pieces don’t actually manage to stand alone. Thompson defies this trend, and convinces drive-by readers to become dedicated subscribers, by tying everything he publishes to everything else he’s published.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).