The idea of putting sections from my Big Secret History Book Project up on a blog as I finish them has crossed my mind, especially now that I'm nearing the halfway point. Now I don't believe that digital media is going to completely replace print media and any Luddite tendencies on my part spring more from inclination than from ideology or deliberate planning - certainly I know enough about digital media to be confident that there are plenty of people more than willing to pay for a print version of online content, thus the question "Am I just giving away for free what I can make money on?" isn't really one I'm losing sleep over - so I don't really have actual beliefs leading me toward either direction, but I do have some practical pros and cons.
The various pros all boil down to the obvious: free exposure. There's also the sort of convenience the Internet offers aspiring writers through its very nature. Fishing for feedback would be a very simple matter and shopping the manuscript around (when and if it's done!) will be a little less painless. Perhaps even there will be enough of a buzz that offers of representation or publication will even come to me; it happens.
The cons, though, are worrying. For various reasons I'm uncomfortable with the idea of openly displaying a project that will not be anywhere near completed for a long time, especially before it's edited and critiqued by peers and others. This might be easier to swallow if it was a work of fiction or opinion-based non-fiction, but this will be a history written for a broad audience but under academic standards, and leaving a simple yet severe and excruciatingly embarrassing mistake in the text (which really is inevitable) open to universal scrutiny might cause enough harm that all the good would be moot. Also, while I won't be making any revolutionary, orthodoxy-shattering arguments, I do have several points I make that, as far as I know, are original or at least have only been touched on by other historians and writers. Maybe I am a tad paranoid, but the possibility of plagiarism - or maybe someone "taking the bloom off one of my roses" is a less harsh and more apt way of putting it - is the strongest barrier against going through with this.
Anyway, there are alternatives: having a blog that just posts key excerpts and/or keeping it in an online portfolio that's open only to people I invite in, among other things. I'm not terribly good at promoting myself, which is really unfortunate given my career aspirations, but I hope at least I can take advantage of the technology of my time and do something rather than trusting everything to word-of-mouth and whoever publishes my work.
So you might have heard that a private swim club in Philadelphia threw out a group of black kids. Usually country clubs, golf clubs, and the like are discreet about their bigotry, enough so that the racism, sexism, and classism at such places is often treated like an open secret, but in this case the club's president actually issued this statement: "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion...and the atmosphere of the club." You couldn't aspire to a more catastrophic choice of words than that.
At the same time, a co-host of FOX News' morning show, "Fox and Friends", capped off a discussion about a study on dementia by suggesting that Alzheimer's and dementia is caused by people intermarrying with other ethnicities and "species" (!!!). This is too much for even FOX News, apparently, and another co-host tried awkwardly to laugh down her cohort's eugenic-y perspective. The camera crew must be commended for still catching a look of exasperation and horror on her face. Oh, FOX Newz, never change!
So, yeah, you probably didn't need more evidence that we've somehow gone back in time to the Age of Robber Barons and Segregation and Eugenics, but if you did here it is.
Five years ago in May 2004 Robert bigsabu bought a red plastic wind-up robot he named Murray. Robert was living in Seattle at the time, and he sent Murray off to make the rounds among his LiveJournal friends for photo ops all over the country.
I had him in Lexington/Louisville for a little while before he made his way down to Mississippi with Jayson standardtom.
I'd forgotten I took these, but stumbled across the folder while looking for something else. In addition to local landmarks like Col. Sanders' grave, the Louisville Slugger museum, and Churchill Downs, you also get a guest appearance from chrisglass who'd come to Louisville to attend Wonderfest the previous day. Bob digibob is still here (and still in that house), but Aaron beary_poppins passed away from renal failure in September 2007.
I am new here... So hi! Today I was bored and I decided to go artsy, Final Fantasy style! Hope you enjoy it :) sorry about the lame quality... ooh btw, does anyone have any news on heartland?
In short, the lesson of today’s health care anger-parsing cycle is that if the Democrats want to pass a reform bill with 60 Senate votes, the final product Obama signs will probably just be to mail every American a pistol and a single bullet with a little note saying, “For when you get cancer.”
I couldn't have said it better myself.
My personal health care plan is to hope I gain citizenship to Canada, the Netherlands, or some other country with same-sex spousal benefits and a public health care program by legally marrying some nice, handsome Canadian, Dutch, whathaveyou. It's a hell of a lot more feasible than expecting the Democrats to actually do anything other than kowtow before health industry lobbyists.
Hello friends. My friends and I are in The Love Show at Spread Art Gallery in east williamsburg, brooklyn ny friday July 17 tell your friends from ny to stop in. i cant make it, but my best friend, Kira, will be coming up from DC to represent me, i will astral project into her body, so for the night u can treat her like the tranny she is. http://jethrorebollar.com/loveshow
im moving to LA soon for school, so help a hobo out.
for my leaving-to-LA get-together, was thinking Goth Mock FUNeral by the water like people send me down the bay or something. john suggested "we can have a cake shaped like you with a smaller cake shaped like a heart inside that we can eat" (crickets)
whatever happened to the good old days when high school students on tv and film were played by 25-year-olds? sigh.
edit: sorry, i don't mean to detract from his acting. he's actually great! i can't wait to get my hands on the season 2 dvd, the first season was da bomb.
tired
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