Greetings, gentle readers! Welcome to the very first installment of Am I the (Literary) Assh*le, a series where I get drunk and answer your burning (anonymous) questions about all things literary. 

When it comes to the writing world, it seems that everyone’s got an opinion. And sometimes we like to revisit those opinions online, usually in a highly cyclical manner—every three months or so, give or take—at a frenzied pace designed to drive people wild (see: are blurbs really necessary, come on we need blurbs, why is there so much sex in everything, why isn’t there more sex in everything, why are the classics so bad, why are the classics so good and why can’t anyone read nowadays, audiobooks aren’t reading, of course audiobooks are reading, why do adults read YA, why are you gatekeeping YA, libraries should do more, libraries are doing all they can they are stretched to the limit have you completely lost it, etc, etc, etc, hallelujah, forever, amen).

Before we dig in, it’s important that I point out the obvious here: generally speaking, I don’t ever know what I’m talking about. But much like everyone on the Lord’s internet, I do have some Opinions! And I definitely have some beers. I think if we combine those two factors, we should get some satisfying results. At the very least, it should hopefully be funny. And laughter’s the best medicine! I learned that from the movie Patch Adams (one time I read the Wikipedia plot synopsis; medical laughter and Robin William’s in a red clown nose are all that I remember).

So lemme crack open a cold one—you feel free to do the same, buddy—and let’s see what we’ve got on the docket for today.

1) AITLA for thinking reading should never ever be a competition? Just read what you want and stop telling us how much you’ve read unless we specifically ask. I care more about whether one person enjoyed the one book they spent all year reading than Sharon who read a billion books this year and doesn’t remember any of them.

First off, congratulations to Sharon! A billion books! I knew you could do it. Total faith.

Second, and more seriously, I think we can all relate to this question—at least a little bit. If you’re reading this advice column, I’m going to assume a few things (I know, “you know what happens when we assume”—but hey, I’ve always been an ass-man): I assume that you’re a reader and I assume that you might be a writer. And as writers, it’s imperative that we read—anything and everything!

The biggest hurdle we face when it comes to books is how goddamn many of them there are in the world. It’s an uphill battle to try and read everything out there, and let’s face it: it’s a battle we’re going to lose. There are simply too many to get to all of them, folks.

But what’s at the heart of your question, I think (unless that’s just the beer talking), is the fact that you feel that people are competing when it comes to how much they’re reading. I think it’s easy for us to feel that way.

Sites like Goodreads (say it three times and she appears like Bloody Mary) impress upon us that reading can feel like mass consumption—more like pounding fast food than enjoying a nice, leisurely meal. But as a big fan of fast food, I think there can be room for both!

We can fly through books or we can sit around with them and take our time. It’s possible when people are posting about how much they’re reading, they’re simply doing it for their own pleasure—and that’s what reading is supposed to be about. Our individual enjoyment. I think we can say a hearty good for you to those people posting and keep on keeping on at our own steady pace. 

Next caller… And next beer!

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2) My question is: when we see writers we admire out at hotel bars, or really anywhere in public, is it okay to approach them? Is it annoying? 

I genuinely love this question because I don’t think there’s one right answer. It’s going to come down to personality and occasion. I think we could put a few ground rules in place, though!

Is the person in question at a private dinner that looks romantic? Are they in the middle of a tense-looking conversation with someone? Are they talking on the phone? Are they walking into a public restroom? In any of these instances, I think you would take your social cue how you would in any other related situation: not today, friend, maybe another time.

On the other hand, is this person at a writing festival? Are they at a big, noisy bar? At a concert? At a big public venue? I’d say it’s probably fine! 

Then there’s that tricky middle ground. Because there are some people, like me, who are natural extroverts and would welcome with open arms the chance to talk to you and hang out. But other people, more introverted people, might not skew in that direction.

I think it’s a wise idea to consider what you might already know about that author. What’s their online situation? Are they a person who interacts with others frequently or do they seem standoffish? Are they bubbly and talkative or do they seem quieter and prefer seclusion? Have they pointedly said they like to be left alone? Then pal, you’ve already got your answer.

Overall, I think that most authors (myself included) would be thrilled to have someone come up and give them the very nice compliment of recognizing them and talking about their work. If you’re feeling iffy, perhaps err on the side of caution—walk up, say a brief hello—and let the other party take it from there.

All this to say: if you ever see me at a bar, please say hello! And let me buy you a drink.

Last call! And last beer!

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3) How many literary nemeses is too many literary nemeses? Is it okay to be creatively motivated by revenge?

Once again, we’ve cycled back. A classic literary argument, just like times gone by. In the good ol’ days of Twitter (RIP to a real one—except most of us are still there, clanking our chains and groaning in the mausoleum), we must have gone through this question at least fifty times. People have valid concerns and arguments for both sides of this debate. 

I’m going to keep my answer simple, though. Have only enough literary nemeses that you can still keep track of them all (or else what’s the point). And if your writing feels better and fresher because it’s motivated by revenge? Then hey, more power to you.

Thanks for hanging out with me, friend. It was a good first day on the job.

And remember to send me your questions! I’ve got a lot more beers left in the fridge.

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Are you worried you’re the literary asshole? Ask Kristen via email at AskKristen@lithub.com, or anonymously here.

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here.

Quite often when I’m considering longer work, my mind inevitably drifts to its shape. It’s hard to describe exactly what I mean by that; it’s not the kind of thing where I could say, hey, this book right here is a parallelogram (a shape that still feels mysterious even as an adult, just a vividly remembered word from using play blocks in elementary school). It’s different. Much harder to pin down. For me, shape occasionally looks like story structure. Sometimes it feels like forming coherent plot. At other moments, character development. The thing about a novel’s shape is that it morphs as it builds. It refuses to hold still, wriggling around like a baby in the middle of a diaper change.

Every book I work on has some kind of initial, shadowy shape that lives rent-free in my head. That shape often shifts and changes as the book wears on. The shape of my last novel, Mostly Dead Things, developed as the story grew—the present and the past wove together, presenting a specific pattern. I realized once the draft was done that the entire book felt like sewing or embroidery; an apt comparison, given its theme of taxidermy. Linearity and non-linearity became the backbone (pun absolutely intended) of its final shape.

With Teeth, my second novel, was different. The book began with the shape of the family living inside of it. There was the shape of the domestic unit itself—a triangle of people—but also the shape of their shared stories. People in a household share common traits and lived experiences, but they also share stories that can wander away from each other. The way that a child remembers their first day of school isn’t exactly the way that their mother remembers it, right? I began to consider that everyone in a household is essentially an unreliable narrator. That’s when the real shape of the book began to manifest. What had initially felt like linked circles became a type of helix: combined threads that rotated around a fixed axis. Sometimes touching, but always leading away from each other.

I love to read novels and consider how the author decided on its shape. Was it intentional? Was it a subconscious decision? Some novels use time as the vehicle, others use an actual car. Some jump perspectives, launching from mind to mind. I like to imagine that last shape as a Super Mario Bros game. Will the next book I write resemble King Koopa’s lair? Only time will tell, but I’m willing to bet our Princess is in another castle.

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Read more about crafting the shape of a story:

K Chess on writing a book within a book.

Joseph Scapellato on finding the right shape for a plot.

Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton on the relationship between form and content.

Martin Solares on drawing the shape of a story.

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5 Novels with Interesting Shapes
RECOMMENDED BY KRISTEN ARNETT

Julie Buntin, Marlena
Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl
Bryan Washington, Memorial
Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Mary Robison, Why Did I Ever?

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With Teeth by Kristen Arnett is available via Riverhead Books.

Welcome back, friends! Today we’re having an intervention about digital hoarding. Yes, grab a drink. We’re gonna be here for a hot minute.

Got an avalanche of emails in your inbox? Probably. Listen, I know this is a thing. It’s an internet meme at this point; an image with “there are two types of people” written on it with a gmail icon attached that either has 1 or 738,273,812,937,128 attached. Certain personality types sit better with a flood of chaos in their inbox, but buddy, I am not one of them.

Part of it is my librarian’s brain, right? I like information to be organized, easily accessible. Cataloged and traceable. I want it stored in such a way that when I’m ready to utilize it again—one week, three months, several years from now—I can find it immediately because I’ve developed a system that lets me know exactly where I’ve placed it. I’ve basically curated my email. I’ve cataloged it and made it work for me.

There’s an impulse in all of us to just keep every little email that floats our way. It doesn’t take up physical space in our homes, so what’s the harm? Imagine thousands of unread bits of mail strewn all over your living room. How could you find the bill you need to pay? The birthday card from your Grandma with five bucks stuffed inside it? Those tax forms you probably should have looked at three weeks ago? No, the internet has allowed us to believe that because something is digital we can forget about it, or let it drift there, hanging out in the cloud, whatever the hell that means. We all keep things we probably don’t need. Digital information that’s redundant, or legitimate junk mail, or stuff that doesn’t matter to us.

Like I discussed in my previous column on tech hoarding in the library world, librarians are notoriously bad at getting rid of physical minutiae, but we are wonders at organizing digital repositories. Part of the reason for this is we understand that information needs pathways to flourish. We’re all about access, baby. How can we answer questions if we don’t have reasonable ways to look up the answers?

So let’s get down to business. This librarian is gonna teach you how to get your digital house in order.

First of all, let’s figure out WHY. Why do we feel like we need to keep every single email we ever receive? Why don’t we just hit delete right away? Some of it is just plain laziness, right? Instead of dumping that pizza coupon email in the trash, we move on, because we’re in the middle of something, or maybe we have other shit to do like feed the dogs or actually make it to work on time. Other emails are trickier. Maybe we need them for a minute—they’re an invite to some kind of event we don’t wanna forget about, or there’s a question we’ve gotta answer but we don’t know what to tell them just yet. Then there are the bigger questions, emails about work projects or bills or pictures and video clips or that first email you ever got from that woman who was cute that you met at the party and you think maybe it’s gonna turn into something so why not hold on to it, just in case?

Listen, I’m not saying you have to throw any of this stuff out (even though you absolutely should throw out expired pizza coupon emails, you dummy), I’m just saying you need to assess it. Lots of times we wind up keeping digital information because we think… why not? If we stuff our phones and computers full of emails we can always purchase more storage. It’s that easy.

The problem: if your inbox is filled up to the brim with things that are sitting unopened or unread (shoutout to Kayla for sending me a screenshot of over 1,000 unread emails—I am completely in awe of your non-linear brain) then it means you need to devote some time to going through that list and getting rid of stuff you don’t need. TOSS IT OUT. Things that have already been answered, or spam, stuff that’s a reply-all email to a reply-all email about a joke chain you were sent six month ago. Delete that shit, friend. Remove the burden from your life!

After that’s done, you get to do one of my very favorite things. You are gonna curate folders to put all the mail you’ve gotta keep. Think about these emails as your own personal stack of books you need to catalog and shelve correctly. You wanna be able to find one when you need it, right? So make folders for all the basic areas of your life. One for your job, one for family, one for friends, one for writing, etc. Now, here’s where things get interesting. Because much like call numbers, these folders are gonna have defining folders inside them that house further information. Like when it comes to LC classification, we know that the alphabetical letters up front tell us where something is specifically located: K is for law, right? P is for literature, N is for art. But it’s the numbers that come after those letters in the call number that tell us more specifically where information is housed. So in your main folders, you’re gonna have subfolders. By that I mean in your BILLS folder you’re gonna have different folders for like, say, your credit card, one for your tax information, etc.

Does it sound like a lot of work? That’s because… up front, it kind of is. Everything good requires a little bit of elbow grease, does it not? So devote a day to this task. Grab a beer or five and delete to your heart’s content. But then save some stuff. Because guess what? During that boring nonsense you are going to discover things you’d completely forgotten about. Emails you never answered. Pictures you’d thought were lost. Drafts of your own work you emailed yourself? LONG LOST ESSAYS AND PET PICTURES. It’s going to be an information smorgasbord!

No one’s saying you’ve gotta detonate the mess. This is about respecting your data. It’s about treating the things you have with respect and knowing you can use them effectively if you know where they live. Digital stewardship is ultimately about accessibility! Take it from me, you want to be able to use the things you have. Nobody wants to be that person emailing for the 50th time because they can’t remember what they talked about in the last email they sent, buried at the bottom of the queue.

And at the end of the day, your inbox will be cleaned up and you’ll know exactly where things live. You’ve lifehacked your email like a librarian. And it looks goddamn great.

What’s that thing they always say about if you do something you love you’ll never work a day in your life? I mean that’s true and all—when you love something, it can feel less like work and more like passion—but I’m also here to tell you that tenderness gets a little strained when you try to use it to pay your overdue power bill.

That’s right, I’m talking about a library paycheck! That tiny little figure that gets added to your bank account after you work a 40-hour plus work week. It’s not fun to talk about money (it’s truly a nightmare), but it’s something we all understand. We need to make a salary so we can afford to live. We need to get paid.

Like many other important professions in the learning field (hello, teachers!) librarians are paid very little while they are expected to do a gargantuan amount of work. Many of us are not only doing our own jobs, we’re doing several at once. We have to know how to perform circulation tasks, reference duties, run a Storytime program, clean up a massive spill, and even understand some technical service components in case we are needed to help out with tasks or god forbid take over after someone’s been laid off.

Library work means that you’re expected to do things like cover shifts when your employees don’t show up even if you’ve already worked a ten-hour day, fight with administration on tiny matters that somehow blow up into huge ordeals, and answer reply-all emails from people who decide they need an answer to something immediately (even if it’s the weekend, even if it’s your cousin’s wedding, even if it has nothing to do with your job or your department, or maybe they’re just sending everyone a joke forward again). I’ve been told that working over 40 hours is just part of being a professional. While I know that’s not right, it’s something many of us are forced to deal with. Is it worth it to fight over the hours if you’re worried you might be fired? A paycheck is sometimes better than no paycheck at all.

It becomes nearly impossible to maintain an acceptable standard of living when you’re forced to do a tremendous amount of work for nearly no compensation. I’ve known several co-workers during my time in libraries that have either had to quit their job because they couldn’t come up with enough to pay bills, or they were forced to take on a secondary job. The idea that any person would have to work over 60 hours a week to make just enough to scrape by is an unfortunate reality when it comes to library work.

For instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics clocks the median degreed librarian’s salary at around $58,000 (this is waaaaaaaay more than I make as a manager, by the way, hot damn I wish I made that salary), but it also tells us that non-degreed library techs and assistants only make a median of $29,000 a year (and I know when I was in that position I made a whole lot less).

When I got my Master’s in Library Science, a big factor in that decision came down to the idea of pay. I had already been working in libraries for eight years and knew that if I got my degree, I could possibly double my salary. I mean, there were other factors involved in this decision. I knew that I wanted to be a librarian, that I was passionate about it, but I also knew that taking on a degree like that meant putting myself in debt (students loans for goddamn days). It would also mean sacrificing my free time to go to classes, because I knew with one hundred percent certainty that I’d still have to work full-time in order to make grad school happen.

There was also this worry: what if I got out of grad school with my degree and I still wasn’t able to find a job?

It’s already stressful enough to work in a profession where you know that crazy things are going to happen on a daily basis. There are high expectations that come along with working in a library. You know that you are there to help people, to allow others to succeed and to grow. Librarianship means ensuring people get the information they need. To do that, it’s important that we’re able to be our best selves. Sleep, eat, drink some water (hahahaha yeah right). It’s tough to do that when you’re pressed about money or working more than one job in a single week.

There’s also the matter of where our paycheck sometimes goes. I know that when I worked at the public library, there were many times that I spent from my own bank account just so I could have what I needed for Storytime. Out of markers? Guess I’ll grab some. Need more felt from Michaels so we can have better puppets? That’s gonna cost me. When your library is on a shoestring budget, so are you. You learn to skulk around the Goodwill and catch sales for BOGO items (not wine, although that helps). You learn to budget the hard way.

There are so many conferences that happen around the country every year for libraries, and it would be incredible if everyone could go. But again, these things all cost wild money, too. Airfare, lodging, even conference fees—many of us are priced out, even if we’re the ones who should absolutely be attending!

It’s easy to get frustrated when you think about how important your work is and know that you’re not ever gonna be compensated fairly for it. To know that you’ll have to work long hours, longer than anyone should work, just so you can buy dog food and afford to pay the bare minimum interest on your student loans.

I have to tell myself: this is a job that’s important. I do it because I care. At the end of the day, that matters more than anything else. So I will scramble to make a paycheck and I will advocate for higher wages, but I will continue to do this work because it’s what I know I should be doing. It’s what gives me a good reason to get up and get going in the morning. And hey, that won’t pay my grocery bill, but it will make me feel okay about myself. And that’s worth it to me.

Recently one of my library employees was doing a little spring-cleaning behind the circulation desk and unearthed a wealth of items so antique I wondered if we’d amassed them during the Stone Age. Libraries love to hoard things! I mean, I get it. You try so hard to catalog and place and collect materials that getting rid of them can feel a little like ripping off a limb. During this cleaning process, we found broken laminators, drawers full of outdated policies, tangled headphones from 1983, documents so furled and yellowed they resembled ancient scrolls, and an avalanche of outdated technology. Floppy discs! So many of them!

“What can we even do with these?” my employee asked, and I pointed out the special bin where we could place it.

The trashcan.

I am a huge supporter of weeding. By that I mean it’s important to cull your collection. Weeding allows for new growth, provides space to put fresh materials that might circulate and appeal more directly to your current community of readers. But sometimes weeding can mean taking a long, hard look at all the junk that’s managed to accumulate in the library. Buddy, you gotta throw some of that shit away.

Because libraries cater to the public, it means that we grow and adapt to accommodate changing needs. Often that means adapting to the new tech that our patrons use in their everyday lives. Out with the old, etc. Outmoded materials don’t magically go away, though. Most of the time they wind up stashed in library cabinets and in desk drawers. Libraries have closets full of secreted materials! We save them for many reasons, but chief among them is there might be a need for it in the future. Okay, sure, another very important reason: what the hell do you even do with them?

Fax machines
To be fair, I still have to use the fax machine on a daily basis at my job, but most places have stopped using this totally dead technology. Scan it, email it. Send a picture from your phone. Upload a goddamn PDF. Yet fax machines are present in almost every library! Sitting there collecting dust. The best part about a fax machine is it almost never works right and no one knows how to use it. The second best part is when it knocks itself off the hook and starts dialing out and you can’t get the screeching to stop.

Microfilm and fiche readers
Again, these are still used in some libraries. But many libraries (especially smaller public libraries with less room for expanding collections) have given away their microfilm and fiche to archival projects. The last library I worked at had one reader and I was the only one who knew how to use it. That meant any time someone wanted to access it, I had to walk over and show them how to operate the machine. Lemme tell you, it is truly a joy to sit around in a cramped little room with an undergrad trying to explain how microfilm works while they ask if you could just “do it for them.”

Card catalogs
Once bastions of the library, card catalogs have been relegated to attics and crawl spaces and basements or sold on Etsy as wine holders. I will tell you that I do have one of these in my house and I would absolutely put wine in it if wine ever lasted longer than a night in my home.

Listservs
Saw John Overholt tweet about listservs today (Hi John!) and had such a feeling of total librarianship that I almost had to lie down on the floor. Listservs, a truly outdated technology, are still used exclusively by librarians. What are they? They’re essentially a reply-all email chain you can never escape dealing with topics that nobody is ever really talking about in a helpful way. At this point in time I can safely say I am a member of at least… seven different listservs. Jesus. Name a type of listserv and your librarian is probably on a thread for it. My favorite listserv story is about the time people in the InterLibrary Loan list got into a huge fight about putting removable stickers on the front of books. One woman replied to the list with, and I quote, “some of y’all are just godless wretches.”

CD-ROM databases
Does your library have stacks and stacks and stacks of CDs and CD-ROMs? Yes. Are most of them from AOL? Affirmative. Can anyone use them anymore? Not really. Does anyone need to use them or have any use for them? Absolutely not. Well, wait, I stand corrected: you can use these at Storytime for holiday crafts. Give the kids some glue and glitter and thread a piece of yard through the middle. Voila. Repurposed technology (and glitter all over the inside of someone’s car).

Telephone books
Just google it for god’s sake.

Overhead projectors
Sincerely my favorite form of outdated technology. Overhead projectors! Nobody ever knew which way to put down the transparency sheet and it wound up upside down or backwards. Someone would always do something disgusting with it, too, like lick their finger and use the spit to wipe off the marker. I miss overhead projectors. If you’ve got one in your library, send it my way. I wanna use it to play Pictionary with my dogs.

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What’s your favorite outdated technology in the library? World’s oldest credit card reader? Library server from the year of our lord 1995? Send me your best and I’ll post ‘em up here for next week’s column for us to all laugh (and cry) over.

There are phrases people tell librarians that raise my hackles every time. “My fines pay your salary” is absolutely one of them (thanks for the 15 cents, Brenda, I’ll try not to spend it all in one place). “Isn’t print dead?” is another (please stop saying this, don’t say this to anyone, ever again, I’m banning this phrase forever, amen). I especially loathe hearing “It must be so nice to have a job where you can read all day.” A big part of my job is working with the collection, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m lounging behind a desk leafing through a big stack of novels—absolutely not! I save those massive to-be-read piles for home, where they can tower menacingly next to my bed, threatening to fall over and crush me to death at any given moment.

Since I’m a writer, a particular phrase I often hear is “librarianship must give you so much fodder for your work.” I mean, hey, they’re not wrong! Here I am, writing you all a column every other week about libraries! I’m writing about what I experience in my work life. I’m writing about what I know (or what I’m thinking about, God knows I never feel like I really know anything). Librarianship is a huge part of my life, so it’s absolutely gonna factor into my work.

Not every librarian is a writer. Hell, not every librarian is even a reader! I’ll never forget the time I was working an evening shift at the public library and one of the new part-time reference librarians told a patron that they’d never heard of William Faulkner and asked if they wrote “those vampire graphic novels.” Some of us are voracious readers and some of us are not. Some of us like writing and some of us don’t. Some of us work circulation and some of us are in technical services. Some of us like spreadsheets and some of us want to murder Microsoft Excel on a daily basis.

Library work is curation. It’s weeding. It’s cataloging. It’s looking at collections through a broad-but-constantly-narrowing scope. It’s staring at a budget and praying you’ll come up with the numbers you need for books and for paychecks. It’s sometimes data-centric. It’s often about public service and interacting with the community and yanking paper from the jammed copy machine. It’s not sitting around writing a book. It’s barely sitting down at all most days!

So how does librarianship impact my writing?

Clearly it has given me a sense of humor. I’m able to look at my bizarre interactions with patrons and think about how things that are aggravating or annoying would work in a fictional sense. How can I turn this into a joke, I think, as I’m struggling to remove tacky glue from the cover of a board book. Is this really how people speak to each other, I wonder as someone yells about the difference between ravioli and manicotti on their cellphone. If I can look at how things function as jokes, then I’m better able to understand humor in my own writing. I can see an interaction and possibly understand how dialogue might work. I can think about what kind of person would eat a pizza in the public restroom and wonder over the broad range of weird humanity. It gives me some perspective.

I’ve also used the organization from my library work and have applied it to my writing schedule. When I’m at the library, I’m on all day. There are one million things I need to do and I have to list them all efficiently, get organized, remember all of them at once because there are a billion jobs that need to get done and only one of me. Scheduling very strict rules for myself when it comes to writing has helped me to stay on task. I’m able to apply the principles of my job to the more nebulous areas of creating fiction.

And then there’s all the reference work. Librarianship has given me prodigious research tools. It means that if I’m working on a project, I know exactly where I need to look to find more information. Okay, granted, sometimes that means I fall down an internet hole looking at pictures of horses wearing cowboy hats for several hours, but it often means that I am able to find out the information that’s going to lead to a better quality of work. I can be my own reference librarian! I can find out what I need to know to make the writing better.

This seemed appropriate.

The intersections of librarianship and writing in my life sometimes can feel like a struggle. There are days when I’d love to be writing but know that it’s not possible, simply because by the end of a ten-hour shift, my brain has decided it can only focus on beer (oh God, I wish I had a beer right now). I get frustrated. I wanna be able to do the work that feels necessary, but oftentimes both sides of my life feel competitively important. I do know that librarianship has allowed me empathy and respect for others, and that is essential to my work. I like helping others and knowing I can assist them with things. My writing is better because of librarianship and I am very grateful for that.

Okay, time to go write. If you need me, I’ll be over here “researching” for a few hours (aka googling ducks in raincoats).

Here I am, back at the circulation desk, after two magical weeks off doing nothing but sleeping and reading and traveling and drinking beer and hanging out way too late at the 7-Eleven. I started off the morning by waking up at the crack of dawn to open the library and groaning because I remembered all the work waiting for me: emails, reply-all emails, email forwards, webinars, conference calls, meeting invites for meetings that should actually be emails but instead will be two hours of everyone talking about their break. Aggrieved, I popped some Advil, unlocked the doors, and then unloaded an actual avalanche of newspapers that arrived during our hiatus. A patron hovered over my shoulder as I sifted, asking about an article he’d heard about a week ago, something having to do with politics, but what exactly? Not totally sure. By the time I’d sorted through dozens of them, covered in gray newsprint up to my elbows, he’d decided it wasn’t any of the newspapers we actually carry.

So I’m surrounded by piles of opened newspapers, eight o’clock in the morning, no coffee, blistering headache, not actually helping anybody. Definitely feeling bummed I wasn’t back home in bed. I popped a few more Advil. And I complained. And I frowned. And I bitched about it on Twitter dot com. And I thought to myself:

“Why the hell am I doing this?”

Sometimes… Oh buddy, sometimes it’s hard to remember. I mean, I know it’s only the second week of January, but already it feels like it’s been years. So I have gotta get my mind right. Damn it, it’s still a fresh new year. There’s still time to think, hard, about why it is that we choose to do anything. So here are some resolutions I’m making about librarianship that I plan on dragging with me through this beautiful new Year of Our Lord 2019. Because although I don’t always savor the bad parts of librarianship, there is plenty of stuff I do love about it.

Let some shit go: Here’s the thing about library work, it’s all in the details. It’s about finding the exact right thing, about perfectly answering the question, about finding the correct information. Sometimes… it just doesn’t work out that way. It just doesn’t come together. As a certified control freak, I struggle when this happens. And you know what? It’s fine. A former director of mine (shout out to Jonathan Miller, I miss you, buddy) once sat me down after I’d been stressed over not finding an ILL book for someone and very kindly reminded me that, hey, at the end of the day, it’s library work. Nobody is gonna die if you can’t answer a question. So I definitely need to remember this advice when I start to lose it over not being able to help someone the way I’d like. Not every search is going come up a winner, and that’s okay.

Find humor in things that would normally piss me off: There are always going to be patrons who yell at me because they’re in a bad mood, always going to be people shoving weird crap in the copy machine, always going to be messes to clean up in the public restroom, food rubbed into the carpet, missing items people say they’ve returned but are actually still in the back of the car, no money for anything so we can’t afford what patrons need, books shoved into weird places because people want to help “shelve,” somebody peeing on the side of the building. If I can’t laugh when it comes to dealing with this stuff, I’m gonna drive myself crazy. Laughing reminds me that these annoyances are a small fraction of what I actually deal with, that they are NOT the norm, and I am going be able to look back on them later and have a funny story to tell at a party, anyway. Life is too damn short not laugh at things. I want to laugh more this year. I have gotta laugh at some of the bad stuff, too.

Remember that I want to help people: This is really it, this is the thing I want to take with me into this new year. The fact that I chose this job not because of helping me, but because I wanted to help others. That I want to do that in any way I can, and sometimes that is going to mean doing it the way that a patron would want, not Kristen’s way. I need to constantly remind myself that public service is exactly that, it’s service, and service means being open to how others need assistance. I’m lucky to get to do what I do, lucky to be able to have this opportunity to interact with humanity and get a chance to love people, all kinds of people. I will remember that librarianship does not mean doing just the parts I like or that I am interested in; it’s about finding ways to share information. It’s about people.

So I’m putting away the Advil, finding a cup of coffee, and getting the newspapers squared away. Now I can focus on other things, try and breathe a little, remember that this is only the first day back of the new year and I’ve got plenty of time to work on these resolutions. And hey, if I screw up, I can come back to them again and again. I can work to be better, every day, and feel lucky that I get to do what I do.

And if I need a beer or two after work, then that’s cool, too. Cheers to that! Cheers to librarianship. And happy new year to all of you.

Much love,

Your librarian

Most of my time at the circulation desk is spent telling people what kind of things they can’t get at the library. When you work the front desk, you get myriad questions from a multitude of patrons asking for nonsensical things. I mean, I’ve had people ask me for vitamins, lottery tickets, and a sample of my perfume. Someone asked me for instant oatmeal. Can I have a bite of your donut, Miss Kristen (absolutely not). Could I borrow printer ink? A ream of paper? Fourteen packs of yellow post it notes (yellow only). There was a day when a man asked three different times for my toothbrush and I finally had to ask him to leave the premises.

No, sir, you cannot have my toothbrush. No, not even if it’s for a science experiment. No, I’m not trying to stand in the way of progress, I just don’t feel cool giving you something that goes in my mouth. Yes, I understand I am the actual worst and I will absolutely go fuck myself. Okay buddy, have a nice day!

I do not take any of this personally (unless they’re asking for my used chewing gum, please stop doing this, okay). And in a weird way, it kinda makes sense that patrons would come up and ask me for all matter of ephemera. After all, aren’t we the people that answer the hard questions? Isn’t the library the place you come when you need help with anything and everything? We should be the people to ask when you’re looking for something obscure. Librarians SHOULD be the ones you call when you’re desperate and you need help fast.

What that means in terms of librarianship is that we have gotta completely reassess what it is that we’re providing the public. Programming? Sure. Up-to-date electronic resources? Yep! Board books that aren’t full of baby teeth marks? Absolutely! But it also means redefining what it is that patrons can check out. By update the collection, I mean reinvent it entirely.

A very cool thing that’s been happening in the wide world of libraries is that we’re expanding everything we might house and catalog. Sure, we still have printed materials like books and periodicals, and yeah, we still got all those DVDs kids love to scratch up and rub their sticky jam-hands all over, but we’ve also got a variety of other items engineered to help you make the most of your life and of your community space.

What do I mean by that, exactly?

Well, for example, you can now check out “event” clothes (i.e. stuff for job interviews, graduations, proms, etc etc etc) from the NYPL. Why is this something people would even want? Easy—because it means that people who don’t have ready access to this outrageously overpriced stuff can borrow them and return them when they’re done, free of charge! The goal is to provide ready access to things that people in the community might need. Do people in the community need stuff for job interviews? Hell yes, they absolutely do.

Libraries aren’t only checking out clothes. We’re cataloging gardening materials like seed packets and spades, then there are laptops, phone chargers, reading glasses, musical instruments (electric guitars, clarinets, flute, even the goddamn triangle), digital cameras and professional grade film equipment, bicycles and scooters and skateboards, puzzles, board games, and even cooking supplies (someone please bake me a cake, I’m begging you). One library I worked at started offering up reading lamps for three-day checkout so that patrons could use them outside at night. These are meaningful additions to the collection that people actually use!

This has also meant that there are more items available for kids and for teenagers, our most at-risk populations. There are toys and dolls, textbooks, homework supplies, pens and pencils, rulers, calculators, and craft kits. Some libraries are even offering museum and art gallery access to their patrons. The library should always be a space for people to come inside, learn, and grow. Librarians are feeding growing needs. It means we’re always on the lookout for what the community would benefit from the most. Is it a new database? Okay. Is it a selection of blankets to keep you warm in the frigid study rooms? That’s cool, too.

Last year, American Libraries even posted a fun and handy map that locates “the library of things,” an interactive collective of interesting items that each state offers to their community patrons. It’s wonderful to see all the ways that libraries are working to better build up their patrons, subsequently building up their communities.

It’s like I’ve said here a million times: the point of a library is to be a place for the people. Serving the public doesn’t just necessarily mean feeding their minds. It means taking care of each other, having empathy, and knowing that sometimes a suit coat is gonna be crucial for a person who needs to ace an interview. We are here to serve the public. And if that means you wanna checkout a toothbrush, we are gonna make those readily available to you.

Just not mine, okay?

I spend a lot of time bemoaning the nonsense that patrons get up to in the library (let’s face it, it’s a lot of damn nonsense), and sometimes all that tomfoolery really bums me out. I start to question my life’s work. I wonder why I even bother. This week, in the middle of writing another list of stuff that annoys the hell out of me when it comes to librarianship, I closed the computer and took a mental health break. I drank a beer, watched some very bad television, and cuddled my dog. I refused to check my work email. The next morning, I opened my computer back up and came up with a new list; a list of things that librarianship has given me. A list I feel thankful for—even if those things weren’t necessarily appreciated at the time.

I.
Patience

This is a big one. Whether it’s waiting for somebody to finish up on the computer so you can close the library and FINALLY eat dinner or being forced to listen to a patron complain about the fact that the temperature is too cold/hot/lukewarm for their liking, librarianship has taught me infinite patience. It’s hard to sit and listen to people complain. It makes you want to stuff your fingers in your ears and start humming the theme from Jeopardy.

At the end of the day, library work is a service job—and that means that the number one thing you’re doing is serving the public. That includes listening to complaints. And sometimes when I am listening to people complain, I realize they just want someone to listen to them. So it has helped me have patience in other areas of my life, to know that at the end of the day we all just want to the opportunity to bitch about something. We want people to listen to us. Okay, yes, some people are just big ol’ pills—but it’s helped me realize that if I have patience for them, I can basically deal with anything. Which leads me to my next point…

II.
A Sense of Humor

Oh buddy! Do you think I was always this naturally hilarious? Well, I mean, the kernel of humor was inside me all along, but working in a library has allowed me to view all of humanity as a spectacle ripe for amusement. Have I watched someone look up the phrase “take me to the search engine that starts with a G” on Google? Yes. Have I been asked how to spell “fornicate” while sitting at the reference desk? Also yes. Has a small child ever asked me if I was going to have a baby because I decided to wear a peasant top one Storytime after eating six donuts in the staff lounge? A hearty HELL YES. I mean, if I can’t laugh at myself, then what’s the point? Being around a variety of people in a community space has allowed me the true and delightful joy of understanding that people are just goofy all the time. So am I, a total dummy, and frankly I think that’s terrific.

III.
Empathy

Whether it’s dealing with an angry patron or comforting a crying kid at Storytime, library work has allowed me to better understand and more carefully respond to other people’s emotions. As a person who has a difficult time parsing what I feel a lot of the time—once on a date when a woman told me that I made her happy I responded “like a human happy meal, huh”—this has been extremely important work for me. Having empathy for patrons means that I can better understand their problems and work more diligently to provide answers. Having empathy means that I am sometimes exhausted at the end of the day, true, but it also means that I am giving support to others in a way that will work to better my community. If I can’t have empathy for people, then I can’t be a librarian. Because above all, serving the community means understanding that everyone needs to be supported and understood. If I want that for myself, then I need to provide it. It’s a reciprocal relationship.

IV.
Getting to the Root of a Problem

Library work means that I am daily figuring out the Rubik’s cube of the human brain. Trying to dig free the question that library patrons are actually trying to ask me has turned me into a master detective. Whether it’s someone wanting directions or a person asking me about a book they read as a child but they can only remember that it had a bumblebee in it, my brain is hyperactive; I’m constantly thinking-thinking-thinking at my job. This has happily bled into other areas: now when I’m trying to solve problems in my day-to-day personal life, I can use the skills that I’ve gleaned from assisting patrons with their questions. I can help friends, too. I can better understand the connections between issues. I can say with 100 percent assurance that my own life is enhanced because of helping other people.

V.
Better Writing

Okay, to clarify, I mean this has helped me better understand the human condition. To be a better writer, a person needs to read—constantly. I’d also like to add that for myself, being a better writer has also meant being around a wide and varied assortment of patrons. It’s meant listening to the weird and funny ways that people interact with each other. Listening to conversations and questions. Watching how people in a community fight and hope and love each other. I am a better writer because of what patrons have taught me. This is truly invaluable. I am extremely grateful for it.

 *

So yeah, sometimes library work drains me. Sometimes I wonder if I need a break. But thinking about all the good things I’ve gotten from it reassures me that I’m doing the work I need to do. The right work. So I’ll be thankful for that and thankful for all of you.

Except the people who keep jamming the copy machine. I’ve gotta draw the line somewhere.

It’s happened to all of us. After a hellish week, you decided to take your book in the bathtub to relax and whoops! You reached for your beer and accidentally dipped the book in the bath water like you were dunking a biscotti in your morning coffee. Or maybe you left it on the floor and like the much-fabled homework devourer, your dog ate it (please see below). Perhaps you left it on an airplane, in a rental car, or at that ex-girlfriend’s house that you’re never ever speaking to again because you’ve faked your own death to avoid them at all costs. You might have eaten a hot dog over it and dripped ketchup and mustard all down the spine. Maybe it got rained on! Cat peed on it! Someone ran it over with their car! Your kid drew all over it with Mr. Sketch scented markers!

You’re not the first person to ruin or lose a book and you definitely won’t be the last. What I’m saying is accidents happen and none of us are immune from the pitfalls of treating books worse than we should. We’re all guilty!

But what happens next when the book isn’t yours? What happens when it comes to making library restitution?

After destruction or loss of materials, it is, as they say, time to pay the piper. You’re gonna have to fork over the funds to replace what you’ve destroyed. Many times patrons have a lot of questions about how we go about pricing replacement materials. Why can’t they just let us buy another copy, they wonder. Wouldn’t it be far cheaper if we got a used copy off Amazon and handed it over? Why are they trying to bankrupt us? It’s supposed to be a free service and our taxes pay their fines/salaries/grocery bills/vet fees?

But when it comes to actual replacement fees, there’s more than just buying a new copy.

I mean, hey, sometimes a library decides not to replace the thing that’s been lost or destroyed. Maybe the item wasn’t circulating all that well anyway or it’s a dead technology (i.e. VHS and microfilm and goddamn laser discs) that the library doesn’t want to keep in stock. Perhaps the patron will just pay a set fee that the library has created a policy for in the event of loss/damage. It’s all up to that particular branch, baby!

A lot goes in to replacing materials that has nothing to do with how the base-cost of the item. For instance, your money is working toward not just buying that particular copy of Horton Hears a Who, but also paying for the time and labor of the person who has to order it, receive it, catalog it, and prepare it for the shelves. Items don’t magically appear in the collection because Grumpert the Wily Library Elf came in the night and placed out all the new books like Christmas gifts. They gotta be processed. It takes time and serious effort.

Many people never know what goes on behind the scenes at a library. The envision much of the work as the stuff that’s happening up front, like daily circulation and reference activities. But there’s a reason you’re able to use the online catalog and why you’re able to access the collection. They physically catalog your books, barcoded and clear-coating and embedding those strips that make the alarm go off when you try and sneak it out the door or accidentally put it in your bag before checkout.

The magicians in technical services oftentimes work wonders to repair damaged items. We understand that it’s a pain to pay for a replacement and it takes time and energy to re-catalog items into the collection. So when someone uses a pizza slice as a bookmark (or a used Band-Aid, true story), they do everything they can to try and clean the damage up themselves and get that item back on the shelves. Many times this work includes, but is not limited to:

• Clearing sand from book covers and spines after a visit to the beach (this suuuuuucks)
• Repairing busted AV cases and scratched DVDs after your kids played Frisbee with that copy of Mary Poppins
• Cleaning food stains from items
• Cleaning cigarette smoke from covers and sanitizing pages HORRIBLE
• Attempting to remove marks from the pages (either accidental or on purpose after someone decides to “censor” content they find inappropriate —Sharon, plz, stop blocking out all the sex scenes in the romance novels)
• Gluing loose pages—especially in graphic novels and comics, the bane of any preservationist’s existence
• Locating a photocopy of a missing page and inserting that into the book
• Fixing broken spines (and broken hearts)

Okay maybe not so much the romance part, but Tech Services works legitimate miracles so who knows if they could fix your love life! Oftentimes they even keep a book press in the back that they use to try and repair books; something that resembles a medieval torture device but will save you some cash dollars if you accidentally tossed the book in the pool.

There are preservation techniques in place that have been approved by the ALA as well as little tips and tricks that librarians pass onto each other to try and lifehack your damages. Things that work on the cheap so they can keep items in the collection and not have to charge patrons and create extra work for themselves in the process.

What I’m saying is this: don’t get snippy when it costs a lil more to pay for an item you’ve lost or damaged. We’re doing our best to help you! Also please stop using your driver’s license as a book mark. Or bacon. Or used chewing gum.

Love, the management.