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Not All Highly Intelligent People Are Arrogant Pricks

April 24, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

Someone made a rather plaintive comment in this Google+ conversation, and it’s been stuck in my mind ever since: “So, again, what is the point of being smart if it does nothing for you? If you really are so smart, why can’t you get what you want?”

There are so many myths floating around about being smart and what that might mean. Even defining “smart” is full of pitfalls. I realized when I tackled the subject of intelligence a few weeks ago that it was a bit taboo, but I didn’t realize the full extent of it until I was reading other people’s reactions. So of course I had to write a follow-up.

A Few Intelligence Myths Exploded:

1. What is the point of being smart? There is no intrinsic point. It is not something you choose for yourself, just as you can’t choose to be naturally athletic or flexible or have perfect pitch (although I keep hearing rumors there are ways to train this) or be gifted with languages. There are things you can do to take advantage of any of these things (hard work and training), but not everyone will choose to use these skills or have the opportunities to do so. In the same vein, recent studies suggest it is quite possible to train yourself to be smarter if you are interested in doing so.

2. Smart people can get what they want. Ha! I wish. I don’t know if any studies have been done on this subject, but I haven’t read anything about how smart people are so much more happy than less smart people. Plus, what if a smart person wants something that requires additional skills besides just being smart (and most accomplishments do require additional skills)? And what if said smart person doesn’t have the right additional skills and fails (for whatever reason) to develop them? Or what if the smart person in question is on track to get what she wants and then is deterred by any of a host of reasons, including ill health (either hers or a loved one’s), economic realities, or her background? Or what if the smart person does get what she wants and it just doesn’t look like the societal norm?

3. Smart people look down on those who they perceive as less smart. First off, I mentioned before that many genius-level people (and perhaps particularly women) suffer from impostor syndrome, meaning they don’t believe they are as smart as they are. Secondly, I also mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect  and the false consensus effect back in March: the idea that people who are above average (including having above average intelligence) tend to assume everyone is just the same as they are unless presented with quite explicit proof to the contrary, thereby often underestimating their own intelligence. How all these people who don’t even realize how intelligent they really are can be looking down on everyone else is beyond me.

Secondly, even if they do realize they are intelligent, that still doesn’t mean they feel superior. Sure, there are a few people who do, but just because you are smart does not mean you are automatically arrogant and non-appreciative of other people’s abilities. Which leads me to my next point…

4. A specific kind of intelligence is more important than anything else. Um, no. There are many kinds of intelligence, and basic IQ test-measured smarts are no more useful than a host of other mental attributes. These include emotional intelligence, charisma, experience, wisdom, empathy and insight, kindness, courage, determination, a strong work ethic, and leadership skills. For example, if a very intelligent person wants to complete a difficult project but is not willing to work hard to do so, they probably won’t do as well as someone who isn’t quite as intelligent but is willing to work her ass off. Ultimately what matters about our lives is what we choose to do with them, not whatever set of attributes we start out with. Intelligent people who realize the truth of this aren’t likely to be very arrogant at all.

Any other intelligence myths you can think of? (Besides the whole “women aren’t as intelligent” thing we already talked about.) I’d love to hear from you.

Posted in Life, Social Media | Tagged , , | 13 Comments »

Novel Rough Draft Complete!

April 19, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

I am happy to report that a week ago today, I finished the rough draft of my latest novel, The Academy of Forgetting. It clocks in at a little less than 77,000 words, which is ideal for a YA novel with a speculative element, and gives me a little breathing room in both directions as far as final length is concerned.

Some of you may remember that I started this novel as part of Theodora Goss’s YA Novel Challenge last summer. I wrote the outline, banged my head against the beginning, and stopped after having written 10,000 words. In retrospect, I believe I wasn’t ready to write the book: my skills weren’t quite at the right level, my concept of the setting and main character weren’t clear enough in my own mind, and some of my ideas regarding the plotting of the beginning of the book needed to be rethought.

This photo makes me want to read my own book by candlelight. Or really just any book.

I started again this January. I threw out the 10,000 words. I kept most of the outline but made some key alterations. I began writing in first person past tense instead of first person present tense, and I conceived of a narrative structure that was very exciting to me. I had some different ideas about the tone I wanted to start with as well. With all these changes, the novel began to form itself in my mind in a new way. And three months later, I have a complete first draft. I am so relieved to have finished!

This novel is definitely the most complicated of the three I’ve completed to date. It’s a psychological thriller with a vastly unreliable narrator that plays around with memory, so it had to be quite twisty and involved by its nature. I really don’t think I could have written it pre-Taos Toolbox, which is a testament to the excellent teaching of Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress.

So what happens next? Revise, revise, revise. I’m going to do my own pass first, addressing all the notes I took while writing it, replacing brackets with actual decisions, and adding a soupcon of description along the way (I tend to go too light on description). At the same time I’ll be writing my own scene and chapter summaries for future reference. Then I’ll send it to my amazing friend Daniel, who is the ultimate plot whisperer. And I’ll revise it again. And then I’ll send it to more amazing writer friends. And I’ll revise it again. At some point I’ll write a query letter (which, if I do it well enough, will be somewhat similar to the copy on the back of a book) and a synopsis (which I really detest doing). The whole process will take several months.

But this week, I’m resting and enjoying the feeling of satisfaction that accompanies typing the words “The End.”

Posted in Science fiction and fantasy, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments »

I Want to Rule the World

April 17, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

Okay, no, not really. What I really want to do is talk about ambition and different definitions of success.

I talk a lot about priorities, and ultimately our priorities hinge on our own personal definitions of success. In order to set priorities that work for you, you have to know what you want. Sometimes this directive becomes more complicated than it sounds.

We have ideas imbedded by our culture as to what constitutes success, and there are different degrees of success as well. Money, power, recognition, advancement, and a stable career are all possibilities we recognize and mark as successful. In the personal realm, success is often associated with being a spouse, a parent, and a homeowner.

Of course, we can hit our own personal mark of success without ever having a lot of money, or a lot of power in the business world, or the same steady job for twenty-five years. Success is subjective. Our definitions of it change over time. And yet, we are often influenced by the cultural ethos of what success means.

Dr. Horrible has his own unique definition of success...

Ambition gets all twisted up in these definitions as well. When we are going for what we want, pursuing our own success, then we are being ambitious, but we often limit our thinking about ambition to apply only to career-related goals.

For me, success has never been so much about money as it has been about being able to spend my time on things I find valuable and fulfilling. This is why I have, in the past, chosen time to do what I choose over more money. Some of the things I find valuable and fulfilling involve the outside world: teaching, for example, and helping people. Some creative endeavors might or might not reach the outside world. And some things I find of real inherent value even though they are just for me.

We as a culture also tend to buy into the idea that success will cause happiness. Sometimes this works out; when we figure out what will actually make us happy and prioritize accordingly, happiness and success can come hand in hand. But sometimes we assume success will bring us happiness without figuring out what would make us happy in the first place, only to suffer a rude awakening and realize we’re caught in a cycle of always wanting more: if only I had a bigger house, if only I made senior VP, if only I made #1 on the NYT bestseller list. Finding happiness within achievement without getting trapped in what we haven’t yet achieved can be an uneasy balance.

There are no right answers here; we have to make individual decisions about what’s important and how to define success for ourselves. We have to discover what it is that brings us happiness and personal satisfaction. And if the answer doesn’t meet the cultural norm, then we have to decide what we care about more: following the marked, tried-and-true road map to find success in other people’s eyes or venturing off the beaten path and making our own way. Either choice comes with its own difficulties.

What does success mean to you? Do you consider yourself to be ambitious?

 

 

Posted in Life, Society | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments »

A Highly Intelligent Woman Speaks Out

April 12, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

On Tuesday I read a blog post in which a female blogger made a list of people in her acquaintance she’d put in charge of governing society if she was a monarch. All the people on her list were male. When called on this fact in the comments, she mentioned one woman she knew who she felt was “awesome,” but then proceeded to say she’d listed people she knew who were “wicked smart” and that offhand, she couldn’t think of any other women she’d put in that category.

Typing that just now makes me want to yell and scream and possibly hurt my foot by kicking something unexpectedly hard.

As a woman who is “wicked smart,” let me explain something to those of you who haven’t thought about such things. High-IQ women often do not present in the same way as high-IQ men. That doesn’t mean they’re not just as smart; they just behave differently, in ways that are not typically identified with high intelligence.

For starters, smart women often work very hard to fit in. We blend. We spend a lot of time listening to other people talk. We don’t always put ourselves forward, even when we have expertise or insight about a certain topic. We are not as likely to offer or even form opinions, since we are supposed to be nice and agreeable. We are not as likely to argue. We deliberately choose topics of conversation that don’t show off our intelligence, partly because being an intelligent woman is somewhat fraught in our society and partly because if we want to have a real conversation instead of expound, it often works better to choose a topic in which intelligence doesn’t matter as much. We do much of this unconsciously because it tends to get us better social results, ie people like us more.

Women in general are also not encouraged to be as ambitious as men. We get more flak about being ambitious. People patronize us and tell us we have delusions of grandeur. In many professional arenas, we have to adopt masculine behaviors in order to realize our ambitions, not to mention deal with sexism. We also have to do better than men at the same positions in order to be recognized. And then people will minimize our accomplishments and say catty things about our appearances and personalities. Not to mention, women who want to have kids know they’ll end up with more of the work involved, even if they have full-time careers as well. So high-IQ men are often very “successful;” they might be wealthy or have a fast-track career or a top-notch reputation in academia. High-IQ women don’t always have any of these things because we either chose not to follow ambition in the classic sense or because we felt we should not.

Finally, our society privileges the sciences over the humanities and the arts, and factual knowledge over both raw intelligence (which is more about speed and ability to learn, understand, and synthesize) and emotional/social intelligence. And yet, women are less likely to go into the sciences, less likely to offer up their knowledge in conversation, and more likely to be encouraged to focus on emotional intelligence. And for those of us who have focused  on synthesis as opposed to factual memorization, our talents are often entirely overlooked.

The secret land of intelligent women?

My husband and I are a great example of this. By both our assessments, we are more or less equally intelligent. He has a PhD in physics, an important job at Google, and impressive amounts of knowledge on a variety of intellectual subjects. I’ve spent most my time pursuing music and writing and focusing on personal growth and interpersonal issues. It is not uncommon for people to tell me my husband is one of the most intelligent people they’ve ever met. No one ever tells him the same thing about me. He presents himself very differently in social situations, has many of the expected achievements, and studied string theory instead of music, so this doesn’t come as a big surprise.

I didn’t want to talk about this subject because we as a society seem to have a deep discomfort with intelligent women, and talking about it leaves an opening to be personally attacked or categorized as stuck up. I can hear it now: “She’s not as intelligent as she thinks she is, and her husband is just playing up to her big ego.” Admitting to intelligence, at least here in the United States, is not the best way for a woman to gain friends and influence people. And ironically, gifted people tend to be more sensitive, more likely to be perfectionists, and more likely to hold themselves to impossibly high standards…all while suffering from impostor syndrome. But I’m so tired of the misconceptions that abound, and I don’t hear enough women speaking out on this subject, so I felt I had to say something.

There are plenty of very smart women in the world. You might just not realize who they are. So the next time you are listing off smart people you know, think again and consider whether you can add some women to your list.

Posted in Life, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , | 73 Comments »

Privacy, Social Shifts, and the Internet

April 10, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

Our notions of privacy are currently changing due to technology, and it’s an interesting time if you enjoy watching social trends. For example, head on over to Nathan Bransford’s blog and read his fascinating essay “Divorce in the Internet Era.” He gives us an intimate peek into how the experience of divorce has been changed by social media.

It’s not just divorce that has been affected. Social media has also transformed our ideas of social connection, of friendship, of the purpose and maintenance of strong ties vs. weak ties (ie acquaintances and people we met that one time–when was that?–and in a flash of enthusiasm connected on social media). It has affected how we do business, how we try to connect with a more specific audience, how we can succeed at marketing, and how we can fail. It has spawned the 1000 true fans theory.

And now with the announcement of Google Goggles (known officially as Project Glass), we see another potential radical social change: a world in which our goggles tell us everyone’s names and pertinent information when we meet. A world in which remembering names is less important. A world in which I can make notes for instant reference the next time we meet: “possible kindred spirit” or “didn’t bother to ask me a single question during a thirty-minute conversation” or “really likes discussing neuroscience but becomes enraged at the suggestion that humans don’t have free will.”

My own personal ideas of privacy have changed along with the times. Every time I post on the Internet, whether that be here on the blog or on the myriad of services I am encouraged to use, I try to remember to run a little filter check. If the whole world knows I said this, would I be okay with that? If the answer is yes, I’m good to go. And every time I remember to run this check (which probably isn’t 100% of the time because no one is perfect), I develop and refine my ideas about my own privacy, about what I’m willing to share as public information vs. what I wish to remain private. In a certain way, our society is shifting back to a village mentality, that there are certain things that everyone simply knows about everyone else. And anything we want to keep to ourselves, well, we have to really work at it…and some facts, as Nathan Bransford found, are impossible to keep under wraps.

I’m hoping this shift will come with a lessening of certain stigmas and an increased tolerance for difference. I have to hope for this because the alternative is not a world in which I want to live. Perhaps we’re already seeing evidence of this shift: contrast the open statements about President George W. Bush’s past alcoholism and President Obama’s past cocaine use with President Clinton in the ‘90s who felt it was necessary to claim he “didn’t inhale.”

On Twitter, Catherynne Valente said, “The Google Goggles herald the final death of any semblance of public manners and social courtesy. Hope we enjoyed it!” But I wonder if all these changes might eventually lead to a new kind of civility. Will there be certain secrets we allow each other to keep out of sheer politeness? In a world where everyone knows each others’ names, will our sense of community change? Maybe even expand? What kind of courtesy will be possible when we can have a computer keep track of our acquaintances’ interests and news and automatically remind us of them when we’re in conversation? Will intimacy feel like it’s shrinking (the way some people feel social media is causing it to do right now) or will it feel like it’s increasing?

It’s going to be really interesting to find out! The one thing I’m betting on is that we’ll have a bumpy transition as what is possible from technology changes at a different rate from society’s attitudes about privacy and social interaction. What do you think? What about this new world do you look at with dread? What about it sounds like it could be amazing?

Posted in Social Media, Society | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Let’s Kick Self Loathing Where It Hurts

April 5, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

Elizabeth Bear recently wrote an essay in which she stated her intention to try not to self-denigrate herself out loud. You should go read it because it is thought-provoking and also because she references Sondheim in an awesome way, and who doesn’t love that?

That being said, it was a painful essay to read, at least for me. Yes, a great step would be for people to keep those tenacious feelings of self loathing to themselves so they don’t model them for others. Perhaps without the vocalization and implicit validation of those feelings, they will even lessen over time. But I can’t help but see the tragedy that those feelings of self-hatred and self belittlement are so prevalent in the first place.

In the comments section for the post, there is some mention of bragging, and how terrible it would be if one were to accidentally brag. (Okay, that’s not actually what is said, but that’s how it translated in my own head.) I mean, really, didn’t you know the world will END if you brag? Especially if you are a woman. Heaven forbid that you actually appreciate something awesome about yourself and want to share it with others. Heaven forbid that you give yourself a public pat on the back like I did last week. (And yes, I felt fairly uncomfortable about doing that, which was a signal to myself that it was important to do.) Humility is a great trait to embrace, but according to a recent Psychology Today blog post, “humble people are not self-deprecating but rather accurate in how they regard and present themselves.” And that is a big difference indeed.

I see this kind of unproductive behavior all the time. I talked to a friend this weekend who knows she is under charging for her valuable services. This is not the first friend I’ve talked to with this problem. I’ve talked to award-winning writers who are convinced they suck. On Twitter, a friend was talking about her husband, and how he gets a fabulous performance review every time at work, and then within a week or so he’s already back to worrying about how he’s doing. So many of us have so much trouble embracing our strengths and talents and believing in ourselves.

I recently read some blogging advice that said that in every post, you should be revealing all of your own weaknesses and mess-ups and personal disasters because that is what people like to read. And it’s true, there is a certain appealing rawness to that sort of writing, and certainly it’s not always the most helpful or communicative (or honest) to set oneself up as perfect. But aren’t success stories also instructive? Do I really have to focus only on the parts of me I don’t like in order to engage an audience? We as a culture seem to have this idea that we aren’t allowed to acknowledge our own awesomeness. Instead we wallow in insecurity and resentment, and at our low point, we try to tear other people down because we can’t raise ourselves up.

Photo by Kate McCarthy

Well, screw that! I love that Elizabeth Bear shows how this kind of behavior doesn’t just hurt ourselves, it hurts the people for whom we are role models–it is particularly brilliant because it tricks people into healthier behavior by playing on their concern for others. But can we take it a step further? Let’s have this concern for ourselves. Let’s acknowledge when we do something well, or when we come through in a difficult situation, or when we face our fears and do important work anyway. Let’s acknowledge that we are allowed to have something to say, that we are allowed to have opinions, that we are allowed to value our own expertise. Let’s acknowledge that we are worth it.

And let’s all take a moment to brag and celebrate our own awesomeness. (Oh, the horror!) Leave me a comment and tell me something amazing about you. It can be something small, like the way you rocked your To-Do list yesterday, or it can be something large, like how you raised millions of dollars for charity. Tell me how great you look in that outfit, or how many books you read last year, or the amazing high score you got on your GRE/SAT/whatever test you want. Tell me about the awards you’ve been nominated for (or won!), or the way you totally helped someone out, or how you met one of your goals. The sky is the limit, and the only rule is, you have to brag. About yourself.

I’ll start us off. I sold six stories in my first year of selling anything at all. I am super smart. I have a great smile. I spend most of my time doing things that I love and/or really care about. I read thirty books in the past three months. I am a passionate and dedicated blogger. I am an intellectual bad ass.

Yeesh, that was uncomfortable. And now it’s your turn. Guilt-free bragging! Who’s with me?

I can’t wait to read about how amazing you all are.

Posted in Life, Personal Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 46 Comments »

Social Media is NOT about Sales

April 3, 2012 by Amy Sundberg

Writer Susan Kiernan-Lewis wrote a blog post a couple of months ago entitled “The Great Social Media Flim-Flam.” If you want to see writer frustration with having to deal with social media, go on over and read it, because it’s one of the best examples I’ve seen. If you don’t want to read five hundred words of it, here’s a key excerpt:

“Is it possible that the prevailing belief that having an online platform is essential to a book’s success is wrong? Are we all just the cool kids playing with the latest gadgets and wanting them to be essential and really they’re  irrelevant? Is it really the author’s platform that’s important? Is that why YOU buy a book?

Isn’t it about the damn book?”

Okay, first off, yes, it is about the book. If there isn’t something appealing about your book, it doesn’t matter how much time you spend promoting it. Notice I said “something appealing.” I chose those words carefully. Plenty of books that have a lot of problems do well; some of them even do very, very well. But there has to be something about them that makes people want to read them.

However, a key point I think Ms. Kiernan-Lewis may be missing is that social media presence for writers is not about sales.

Yes, I just said that.

Social media is not about sales. We may want it to be about sales because sales are easy to measure. And what writer doesn’t want sales? I’m not saying social media never causes sales; if you look at the pie graph in that blog article, it claims 23.9 percent of book discovery happens via social media (I combined blogs and social networking sites to get that figure). But that’s only a quarter of the whole pie (at least for now), and probably some of those people are going to get the book from the library or borrow it from a friend.

Social media is about marketing. It’s about building brand awareness (and for writers, your brand is YOU). It’s about weak ties and networking and relationships and being a presence. Marketing is important if you are trying to sell something. The problem is, it’s more nebulous to measure than sales. Sure, you can look at your follower count or your blog traffic or count your likes and retweets and +1s. But when you think about what those numbers really mean, well, it’s hard to say. Higher is better, but beyond that? *silence in the room* Yup, that’s marketing for you.

One network example. (by Marc Smith)

Marketing and social media is also for the long haul, which makes it critical to formulate a strategy that works for you. Otherwise, say hello to burn-out. That’s why I recommend using social media in a way that you enjoy, or at least in a way not completely odious to you. If you’re forcing yourself to do something you hate, whether that be daily blogging or tweeting or posting on the service du jour, then it’s time to rethink your strategy. If you feel frayed around the edges from your social media activities, then maybe you need to pull back a bit, rest, and re-group. The ultimate goal is to find a balance that is sustainable for you (and this balance is going to be a little different for each individual). The way to find this balance is through time and experimentation, and it will change as your life changes. For example, I’ve had to adjust my own strategy the last few months when I’ve been deep in novel head space.

I wish I could tell you social media doesn’t matter for writers, that it’s all some mass delusional idea. But it does make a difference. When someone has heard your name several times, they’re more likely to give your book a second look at the store. They’re more likely to click on over to your book on Amazon and read the summary and some reviews. If it looks interesting, they’re more likely to take a chance and buy it. If they’ve read an interesting essay you’ve written, they’re more likely to talk about you and spread the word. Etc., etc. How social media works and helps you is the subject for an entire series of posts, but if you know anything about network theory, then you have an idea of what I’m talking about.

So the real question when thinking about social media isn’t if it matters. It’s figuring out how you can participate in social media without becoming overwhelmed or wanting to throw your computer across the room. It’s figuring out the best use of your time so you also have enough time to write that next novel. It’s experimenting to integrate social media into your life in a way that works for you.

Posted in Social Media, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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