Today is National UnFriend Day: Time to Pull the Trigger

http://gizmodo.com/5692389/today-is-national-unfriend-day-time-to-pull-the-trigger?skyline=true&s=i

This one is hitting me tonight with the age-old rhetorical question: Why couldn’t I have taken it upon myself to devise this sooner?

We’ve all pretty much got facebook pages. In some cases, even our pets have them. To the latter I will pause and lob a low blow, because I love my dog, too, but I don’t think it’s healthy to assume his identity online. Additionally, I wouldn’t want him spontaneously evolving opposable thumbs and hijacking my account; to date, he’s only the third witness to my horrendous shower-time renditions of “Summer of ’69″ and I’d like to keep it that way. But I digress.

We’re not always proud of them, these always-on portals into realms often bordering on or outright laughing in the face of overshare. But we all do it anyway. At some point or another, most of us have wasted an hour or two on facebook– even the better part of an afternoon — only to walk away with the knowledge that “That Girl” (who is mentally addressed as such because she only ever has been known as “That Girl [who wrapped herself in cling wrap and introduced herself to everyone as 'Leftovers' that one year at that Halloween party at that dude's place out by the lake]“) is now single and espousing the Gospel of Man-Hater in all caps as her status.

It’s time to cut “That Girl’s” apron strings.

In fact, let’s all do what Jimmy Kimmel calls “trimming the friend fat.” Because as much as I loved The Man Show and several other things this fella has done and have therefore appreciated him as a comedian, I’m impressed by the profundity of his claim that facebook has the power to cheapen the concept of friendship.  I’ve seen it happen first hand and even been a party to it. So here we go.

Dear fifteen-odd people from high school and other points backward to whom I wasn’t really that close then and from whom I’ve grown dramatically apart in the years since: Holla. It’s not a shot at you, really. It’s in our mutual best interest. You could care less about my recent, well, anything, and vice versa. But I mean this in a nice way. The text between us is cheap and if we don’t cut each other loose, we’re only further cheapening the purely ostensible relationship. To make it worse, too often what could be a unique tool for keeping in touch with people labeled your “friends” for a reason is reduced to a public lunch menu. I’ve been as guilty as anyone of placing something out there for no good reason that the whole world could have totally gone without knowing. So, in a sense, I’m making a good faith effort for both of us.

Today I encourage you all to clean out your friend closets for all the right reasons and, as always, consider your text.

http://www.nanowrimo.org

OK, OK, so you good people out there probably mistook me for dead, missing in action, or something far, far worse. Truth is, I’m still here. Just took some time off from teh interwebz for personal reasons not limited to several writing projects and prepping for last weekend’s GRE session. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. In this case, I’m counting on it.

Today’s short re-introductory post may be a Great Moment in Bad Timing, but I wanted to share this news with you all nonetheless. Every year, November 1-30 is officially “National Novel Writing Month,” better known as NaNoWriMo. Say that five times fast. It’s a celebration for all sorts of folks who dedicate an entire month to writing a slap-bang 50,000-word novel and suffering through the discouragement of “typical” writerly necessities like rereading, extensive editing, and gratuitous proofing. Everyone can get involved from mail carriers to brain surgeons to some trained monkeys; all you need is Internet access and a real sense of dedication that won’t fizzle out in a 30-day time frame. And when the going gets rough, which it inevitably will for such a project, Wrimos the nation over can find solace and encouragement in everything from “support groups” to sponsored write-ins at local libraries and coffee shops. When you sign up at the official NaNo site, you’re automatically given the details on all these events in your area, which totally limits available excuses for not participating.

So fire up your java-makers and grease up your keyboards. Believe it or not, you still have some time if you’re into something a little more intense than a healthy challenge. While you will have missed the kickoff celebrations in your area, you can certainly jump headlong into local events with your fellow Wrimos.

Well, kids, today is a large one for me and time on the blog runs short. It’s good to be getting back into the swing of things after some late-summer downtime. Check out NaNo, even if you can’t get in on the action this year; remember that it’ll be back around in 2011!

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

(Sept. 25 – Oct. 2, 2010)

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

With this year’s Banned Books Week beginning in just a few days, it seemed a good time to thrill you all with a tender anecdote and make available all the resources you need to take part in this year’s festivities, which I hope you will.

One summer in high school, I set about a new pet project. I devised a plan to, at least once a year — generally somewhere in my summer reading antics — read a book that had been banned or repeatedly challenged in the U.S. And while I’ll admit even now that this endeavor was largely fueled by my hormone-powered, intense “fight the system” mentality (not to mention a heady come-down off of my first experience with Fahrenheit 451 and imagining these books forever reduced to Salamander food), before I could even finish my first assignment I realized why I truly enjoyed the concept and would perpetuate it. It is the spirit and intertextual value of these very volumes that have pushed the envelope for years, have made writing and literature what it is and continues to become. Whether it’s gratuitous obscenity, sex, violence, or simply a good dose of original thinking, most every book challenging or banning has been a sort of honor badge, a mark of a work well ahead of its time (although I have no defense for a particular Missouri school district’s banning of R. L. Stine’s immensely popular Goosebumps franchise several years back).

When the idea hit, it seemed like a decent challenge finding books that had shaken the foundations of everything for which our culture speaks. Sure there are a few that hang out in the contemporary canon of “must-reads:” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, and more. But what I quickly learned about my quest was that it’s actually not so hard to find volumes over which people have found the common ground of outspoken malcontent. Turns out people get upset easily. Who knew?

Take, for example, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Over forty years after its release, its presence remains frequently challenged in school and public libraries. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, is in the same position. Why? Well, here’s one of three challenges to I Know Why taken straight from the ALA’s 2009-2010 list, which you can find here:

Challenged in the Newman-Crows Landing, Calif. School District (2009) on a required reading list presented by the Orestimba High English Department. A trustee questioned the qualifications of Orestimba staff to teach a novel depicting African American culture.

I LOL’d. Seriously? Sounds like the trustees get some great PR training. But that’s not entirely fair: I don’t know the other side of the story. And the great sea of the Internet didn’t land much in my net when I went looking. But there are a number of categories under which people file official challenges against books. Often they express the themes of harsh, inappropriate, or offensive language, sexuality, gender issues, family values/representations of the “family unit,” drugs and alcohol, and racism. If the reasons for which books draw fire in any given year were thought of as a barometer for our country’s social and cultural climate, it would be safe to say that in 2010 Americans are scared to death of talking about sex. A California middle school, in January of this year, even began consideration of a ban of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary because a student came across the entry for “Oral sex.” The ALA’s list doesn’t bear any mention of resolution, though some light Googling did reveal several writeups of the story. These included a comment from School Board President Rita Peters where she called the challenge an approach to censorship (You go, girl!). Even so, the L. A. Times reported that the dictionaries were moved off campus. Now this isn’t my forum to discuss my opinions on how our public institutions educate our young people on the fores and afts of the birds and bees, but this thing reeks of all the legitimacy of a jailhouse lawyer’s afternoon idling. School officials and administrators proved willing to sacrifice the American gold standard of linguistic learning, reading, and writing tools for the objection to just one word. And it’s not even one I feel obligated to cover up with a flurry of asterisks to spare the faint of heart. Besides, have you talked to any number of crafty, hormone-enraged middle schoolers lately? I’ll put my money down to tell you that even if Webster can’t be there to tell them what it’s called, the thought has already crossed their minds.

But I digress. The point is you’ve got just a few days to gather the supplies necessary to hunker down for a day or two with a real work of art. Closing books closes minds.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, this year’s pick for me was William Burrough’s Naked Lunch, which had quite a violent birth and reception including some star-studded litigation. If you’re looking for a Banned Books Week recommendation, I can’t send one more highly right now for its artistic, political, and social relevance. Until next time, keep your minds as open as your books.

“City Disavows Pastor’s Talk of Burning Koran”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/us/11gainesville.html?ref=todayspaper

Well, after a move, some down time, and several weeks without regular Internet access, OTT is back on the proverbial streets and chucking bricks of intertext through quiet shop windows.  So let’s get down to it.

Today is a pretty big deal for most Americans: Patriot Day 2010, the occasion on which we remember a seriously sad chapter in our history, this being the ninth anniversary of that benchmark event. And unless you live under numerous tons of shale, you’ve no doubt at least heard of the roiling antics this past week in Gainesville, FL, with the epicenter at the campus of the Dove World Outreach Center inside the head of one marvelously-mustachioed pastor, Terry Jones.

And now that we’ve got that on the table, let’s be big boys and girls and fast forward through the politics and issues of opinion, emotion, religion, and personal preference to discuss OTT’s real interest, The Empirical Act: the destruction of text as personal/political/social commentary.

Goodness knows the human race has a penchant for destroying its accomplishments. We are a self-deprecating species, especially so it seems when it comes to our texts. Over the course of history, we have held book burnings for any number of reasons (though much like war, most text-purgings are religious or political in nature). Take for example the native peoples of the Americas, the codices of whose documented history were merrily and fanatically subjected to the cosmic “Delete” button by Spanish invaders. Or, more recently, just take Google for a quick jaunt and see how many different kinds of text and heritage were targeted for destruction by Nazi forces during their march to power. Sometimes it seems like the proverbial history books aren’t simply written by the victors; it’s more or less what they leave behind and what we pull from the ashes that remain to tell the tale.

…in the long sum of history, [books and humans] are one and the same flesh.”

-Ray Bradbury

The Dove Shenanigan, however, is somewhat different in spirit than these greater torchings. Where older instances of this rite served the purpose of removing collections of knowledge from our global consciousness, great tools like this here Internet thing provide a failsafe to help  prevent the complete loss of knowledge. It is a more symbolic gesture threatened now by Jones than, say, Montag’s professional plight in Fahrenheit 451. Of course, this has served as at least an ulterior motive behind targeting most all holy books dating back even further than the destruction of Jewish holy books of law by Antiochus IV around 170 BC. The burning of any dogmatic volume carries with it a certain condemnation of or personal affront to those who regard it as reverent, attempting to devalue the book’s text and, precipitously, the opinions, feelings, and thoughts of its readers.

But what does it really mean to put fire to a book? Ray Bradbury might equate it to murder. for “…in the long sum of history [books and humans] are one and the same flesh.” And on many levels, this seems like a perfect analogy. Why, after all, do we refer to it as an author’s “Body of Work?” For the text is what outlives the writer, is his body and blood taken by the reader each time they commune through the work. By virtue of his creation, the author became, in his lifetime, a textual institution.

So I consider today’s cancellation of the Koran burning a reprieve from public execution. For regardless of whether you hold the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Rig Veda, or none at all to be true, these books and others all contribute to the text and intertext of our history as a species, and the historians who recorded it (regardless of their take on things) each had something valid and important to say.

Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert Emmons

http://www.amazon.com/Thanks-Science-Gratitude-Make-Happier/dp/0618620192/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280671369&sr=8-2

When’s the last time you thanked someone? I don’t mean the last time you tossed out an obligatory, mail-merge-created, retail thank you. I mean when’s the last time you thanked someone and expressed real gratitude in a sincere way? Think about it. Maybe it was a note or a phone call, a returned favor or espoused in conversation. Either way, you may not have realized it, but in so doing you were not only creating useful and powerful intertext with your audience, but you were strengthening the humanistic bonds between you.

Reared a Southerner (and, yes, ’round here that is a proper noun), I was schooled early on in the art of the thank-you note. Birthdays, Christmases, and random acts of kindness all became reasons to seek out little bits of stationery and pen all the reasons why I was thankful for whatever had come my way. And while we have more ways to convey gratitude now than ever before, there’s still something necessary about avoiding email, tweets, even phone calls in favor of face-to-face interaction or a nice handwritten sentiment when it’s available. Which is to say: Make it available.

Clever scientists and diarists of the human condition have shown that the simple act of thanking someone — perhaps more so now as it becomes an increasingly lost art as people give over to the ever present sense of  entitlement and “busy-ness”– actually produces powerful and positive chemical responses in the brain. It strengthens the bonds between those in the exchange. And it makes us feel just downright good.

For instance, Emmons, author of today’s recommended reading, found that folks who kept “gratitude” journals and accentuated those people and things for which they were grateful felt better and were generally in better health. Showing gratitude activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which effects your heart, glands, and musculature in a healthy way. Try sharing some of this good energy with someone you appreciate.

So remember your text. Bear in mind how it affects you and those around you. It’s a powerful thing. Go out there this week and share some positive intertext.

Faulkner Explains it All

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/20/faulkner-explains-it-all.html

Thanks go out this week to the folks at Newsweek who are certainly doing their part to publicize a recent project from the University of Virginia. If you link up to UVA’s page at http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/, you can now be treated to any literary audiophile’s delight: a compilation of seminars, readings, and other musings from one of my personal favorites, William Faulkner.

Talk about intertext!

This, to me, is a little bit like being a metaphorically-stale fly on the wall at the exact moment when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon knew that, indeed, this was the elusive tomb they had sought for years, the find of the age. But let me tell you why.

At the risk of being somewhat redundant after linking you good people Malcolm Jones’s Newsweek write-up, I’ve  got to say how enlightening (dare I say intertextual?) it is to hear an author reading his own work, speaking in his own voice, and candidly chatting with attendees. It’s not often that one gets the insight imparted by the human voice of a persona with which one is accustomed to interacting in a silent, literary way.

My idea is that no person is either wholly good or wholly bad, that all people…try to be better than they are, and probably will be.

I can’t say that the voice doesn’t match up perfectly with the way I imagined him, all sweet and syrupy Oxford, Mississippi. And the ideas he imparts — ideas on writing, on living, on the human spirit and condition — have some great insight on writing as a craft and how, sometimes, people can get just a little carried away by “reading between the lines.” His stern refutation of “writing sociology” puts into a new perspective numerous thoughts shared and circulated on his writing and the social context into which it is often taken: one of a struggle for civil rights. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on the rhetoric of an author’s work, sometimes we look too hard, and sometimes we forget to, as I think Faulkner was encouraging his audience to do, appreciate the art and let the characters dictate the culture, not the reverse.

While I’d love to sit here all night and wax philosophical about one of my favorites, this UVA database is crammed with well over 28 hours of audio! Sounds like I’ve got some catching up to do.

Until next time.

Zombieland

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1156398/

Those of you who know me are probably more well-aware than you’d care to be of my penchant for zombie movies. There’s a certain peerless quality to these stories that illuminates our basest, most visceral instincts and often lends a quietly tasteful notion of social commentary (see: consumerism, herd mentality, etc.). And then there’s blood. Lots and lots of cathartic corn starch, milk, and red food dye.

What’s not to love?

Recently I had the good fortune to find that the conscientious crusaders at Netflix have added Zombieland to their ever-growing list of instantly-watchable films. Here I’ll pause for a metaphysical high-five, since this means that I don’t have to wait the excruciating 48 hours for the disc to arrive, nor will I have to cry as I slide it in the mailbox to be returned. To take that to the next level, having unfettered access to it reminded me several times of why I love this movie (aside from Woody Harrelson using banjos as melee weapons, Bill Murray as himself, and a really satisfying performance from Jesse Eisenberg). The lessons imparted in, and the intertext of, this film can stretch and easily apply to all of us in our personal journeys if you just know how to look at it.

1. Personal Lists are Great

Our protagonist, Columbus, seems skittish and reluctant enough, even despite the frequent trust he puts in his “trusty double-barrel.” That being said, I don’t think I’d hold up much better as one of the last few surviving humans on Earth. But under that poof of exploding hair, he’s got some good notions keeping him alive. He’s got a personal list, rules by which to live successfully in his zombie wasteland. Rules like Cardio, Avoid Strip Clubs, Be Wary of Bathrooms, and my favorite, the Double-tap. While not everybody needs a specific zombie-besting strategy to be successful, it does seem like a majority of successful people have personal lists by which they live. Stephen Covey, anyone? He’s living well thanks to a seven-item personal list. Think of it like your own set of values: it’s really a necessity. After all, a man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. Speaking of falling for anything…

2. Things are Rarely what they Seem

A pretty girl, a big friggin’ gun, and a Hummer. What else could you ask for? Well, maybe a little discretion. After all, that pretty girl was portrayed as little more than just that (and some razor-sharp wits) before the string of holdups and robberies in which she and her unassuming but equally wicked little sister left Columbus and Tallahassee with little more than their britches. When you’re surviving in a zombie wasteland (or in today’s undead-eat-man society), you’ve got to keep your head on a swivel. Remember the Sirens? Or Monty Python’s famous rabbit? In a nice contrast to the bloodthirsty, obvious dangers in Zombieland, it’s the most unassuming threats that generally pose the greatest danger. Remember: Murphy’s Law reigns supreme. If that tender kitten can maul out your eyeballs, it probably will.

3. All the Hunger is the Universe is Inconsequential without the Brains

Zombies are my favorite tragic heroes. And every tragic hero has a deadly flaw. Achilles had his un-dipped heel. Macbeth, like a zombie, fell to his unchecked ambition and insatiable hunger. Warriors, Macbeth and zombies aside, this hunger and ambition is a great asset as part of a plan, but deadly when not properly harnessed and channeled. So you’ve got the hunger. You know what you want. Awesome. Now  get a plan for putting that to work instead of flailing about wildly and expending all your energy. The reciprocal of this is notable, too, for one can plan and plot and scheme, but if the drive to execute is lacking, the whole machine won’t ever leave the ground.

So, in the Zombieland of life, you’ve got to be prepared. Know your rules, keep sharp, and never let blind ambition get the best of you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some hungry zombies at my door…

Ian M Rountree

http://ianmrountree.com

Thanks to a tweet today from @IanMRountree, it was brought to my attention that Old Spice has a presence on Twitter. Now I know that lately hundreds of people have been questioning, evaluating, and speculating on the relevance of corporate brands, franchises, and even celebrities — this means you, LiLo, Lebron, Justin Bieber, et. al. – and how they add to or retract from the deluge of discourse that is Twitter. So, being the humble (and modest) fellow that I am, I’ll leave those notions to the marketing pros. I did, however, go and dredge up a Facebook wall exchange that resulted from an interesting blurb I found on the back of a bottle of Old Spice soap that I had brought home because it smelled nice. It is interesting enough that this soap found its way into my shower (as what I call “smelly” soaps aren’t usually my favorite since they seem to be a compromise for college-aged young men too busy with their debauchery to shower more than once every few days), but the pitch on the back, I felt, really was something different. So, naturally, I took it to the public forum for some quality dissection. The resulting conversation was as enlightening as it was fascinating. So here, for your enjoyment, I have reproduced the posts with names shortened to protect the innocent.

As a note to you ad men/women and corporate copywriters, yes, there are way too many people like me who will voraciously consume all the text which enters their homes, be it on soaps, cereal boxes, or even old receipts found out on the front lawn.

Dave: Seen today: “Swagger body wash from Old Spice is for the man who holds the complete works of Aristotle in one hand and a delicious sandwich in the other.” What exactly does that mean?

E. S.: What does it not mean is the real question?!?!

June 21 at 11:48pm

W.F.: I think it means that Old Spice aren’t fans of Plato or Socrates. Hard to get the entire written works of Socrates when he had nothing recorded though.

June 22 at 3:39am

L.H.A.: He can read AND cook! 2 things women think are hard to find in a man.

June 22 at 5:41pm

Dave: That occurred to me, but then again: If you carry around Aristotle, can you read or are you simply being pretentious? Also, does a sandwich qualify as cooking?
If that were the ends, seems like appropriate means would be a Newsweek and Lamb Vandaloo.

June 22 at 6:29pm

W.F.: I’d say a New Yorker and maybe a perfectly smoked beef brisket.

June 22 at 6:36pm

L.H.A.: Yes! And, Dave….carrying Aristotle is as much proof of being a reader as a sandwich is of being a cook. Wannabees both.

June 22 at 6:56pm

Dave: So we’re reducing this to the answer that this trendily-packaged soap actively markets itself to poseurs and dee-bags, thereby laughing wickedly in the faces of those who purchase it in response to the joke they don’t get: themselves?

June 22 at 8:07pm

L.H.A.: In a word…yes:)

June 22 at 8:15pm

Dave: Ironic advertising. I love it.

June 22 at 8:20pm

Blizzard backs off real-name forum mandate

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20010198-1.html

In the never-ending quest to explore and define intertextuality, I’ve come to learn that the concept reaches further than merely analyzing the relationships among texts. Part of its animus extends to the way we relate to the texts which we create and how we put pieces of ourselves into them, most of the time without even realizing the extent to which we do. Whether it’s a menial tweet or the Great American Novel, who we are is ever present in our text.

One of the greatest places to see this tenet in action is in any online forum. It is the great text monster of the Internet, always toeing the line between pure genius and brain-mushing juvenile piffle, where we divulge everything from our most heartfelt sincerities to the flames and chatterings of our most repressed inner evil twins. Arguably, this intimate intertext is more often purposeful than not, but that’s the joy: authors here are demonstrating realization of their positions in relationship to their readers, whether it’s legitimate or flippant. And if you’re a fan of Activision Blizzard and its hugely popular game franchises, this great global institution has probably been of specific interest to you in the last week or so.

Early last week, Blizzard announced that they would be making a change to their forums for their largest project, World of Warcraft (with the intention of extending it to Starcraft II’s release later this month), and would begin attaching authors’ real names (ostensibly as an “option” available to users) to their posts on the game’s official forums. You can see the official announcement, known to players as a Blizzard “blue post,” here: http://bit.ly/bkAguI. Whether you give a flip about the game or not, you can learn something about intertext, marketing, and social media by taking a look at this announcement and the 2500+ pages of response to it from folks with names like Umatherman and Snotfaucet, most of whom are obviously less than pleased.

There are, of course, a number reasons for giving preference to posting as “Snotfaucet” over “James Quackenbush,” most of which are covered numerous times in the user responses. For instance, by maintaining an alias of this kind on these types of forums, one doesn’t run the risk of a potential employer or unrequited high school crush finding out about one’s dirty little gamer habit. Then there’s the argument that exposing names on such a large and frequently hacked and compromised Internet user group opens the door to even more identity theft. Also (and this is one of Blizzard’s cited reasons for suggesting this move), being forced to take authorial credit for forum posts would likely dissuade users from contributing to the endless cascade of flaming drivel that takes up so much of any forum’s real estate, and the WoW forums in particular.

But, then again, isn’t it our right as Internet users to ruin any large gathering of minds with unnecessary talk? Doesn’t having an unproductive outlet for nerd rage keep violence down and prevent hundreds of murders committed with computer parts annually? And, as more than one poster put it, without forum trolls, spammers, and flamers, there might be nothing good left to read.

But the user response was real. And huge. From a marketing standpoint, what business (even a giant like Blizzard) could afford to leave the angry rants of its customer base unheeded?

So, as detailed in today’s recommended reading, Blizzard wins the award for “Most Wishy-Washy (But Presumably Consumer-centric) Marketing and Development Move in Recent History” by announcing its intention to abandon the use of real names on forums less than 72 hours after making its new direction public. So sleep soundly, trolls, as your privilege to unleash your inner suburban teenage angst within the intertext of a whole community of Internet users remains intact. For now.

What you marketers and idea people might take away is this: Do you honestly think Blizzard did their research and ran control groups on this idea which were represented to an appropriate degree by all types of users? And, considering that maybe one in ten affected people will feel strongly enough about an issue to actually make a forum post, do you think they would have been more ready to anticipate this response or would have avoided this direction of their empire’s expansion altogether? Even better: consider how customer feedback and forums as a tool drive your strategies. How has  your opinion of the company and its marketing strategy changed (or not) because of this event?

This should raise some critical thinking points for you bloggers out there, too. Do you run comments on your blog? Because guess what: if your blog is your personal forum to the world, then it acts as the proscenium to your comments, your forum within a forum. Depending on how charged, opinionated, or relevant your blog posts may be, especially if you opt to not personally moderate your comments, you may one day (if not already) deal with trolls and their personal contributions to your textuality. If you’ve ever looked at pretty much any comment to any news story on cnn.com, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, go look now; it’s worth it.

Congrats, Blizzard, on your new MW-w(BPMC-c)MaDMiRH award.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

http://amzn.to/c89Z7s

It seems like day in, day out, I get this endless stream of people emailing me, tweeting me, and calling at all hours to breathe heavily in the phone and ask me the same perennial question: Dave, what advice would you give to writers just starting out? Okay, so people don’t really ask me that all that much. But if they did, by Jove, I would impart this glistening pearl:

Proofread your work.

What was that? Did you just make an audible sigh? Because proofreading your work means, well, working? And didn’t you just spend two hours on that epic blog post that’s going to change the world and end hunger in remote island nations and inspire the Pope to canonize you right now?

That may be true, but it helps sometimes to think less of your work and think more of your reader. Better yet, think of me. I’m your reader. I’m also your insanely hot date on my way across town to your flat for an awesome dinner of Steak Diane (which, I’ll note, you bragged to me last week that you do so well). And as I am your insanely hot date, you don’t want to disappoint me, do you? No. You want to score. And I can’t blame you. But there’s not going to be any scoring going on tonight if you start sloppily dangling your modifiers all over the place the second I walk through your door.

The only way you’re going to score (or hold my attention as a reader beyond the second paragraph) is to show me you care enough about your work – my dinner – to have at least read over it and covered your bases. If your pronouns aren’t anteceded, your subjects and verbs are having loud disagreements in the back bedroom, and the brandy doesn’t flame just right when you serve it up, I will either (at best) excuse myself from your table prematurely, or (at worst) go home and root in the cupboard for old saltines to suck on while I cry about our miserable date and fall asleep, disappointed, on the kitchen floor.

Bear in mind, too, when I say these things, I don’t mean that every piece of writing you share with the world needs to be perfectly adherent to MLA or other scholarly conventions. Again, consider your reader. Maybe you want to throw in a few fragments for emphasis or pacing. Maybe your audience is conversational (or stoned) enough for you to ramble on with run-ons that print out to be more than seventeen pages of 8-point Times. To that effect, maybe your audience will take you more seriously if you display your entire thesis on life, the universe, and everything in Comic Sans (*cough* Dan Gilbert *cough*). Especially since they can vary somewhat depending on your audience, Clarity and Consistency are the names of the game.

So the next time you sit down with your best friend the blinking cursor, think of me. And how insanely hot I am. And how unhappy I’m going to be with you if you burn my steak. Take your time and PREEFROOD because, after all, you’re putting your name on it, aren’t you? This is a reflection of you. Your diction, your syntax, and the intertext you weave will tell me a whole lot more about your soul than eharmony ever could.