From an interesting post by Anne Hill, chock full o’ links, called “How to Blog and When Not to Blog,” I was led to this one by Jane Friedman, “Please Don’t Blog Your Book.”
In other words, most plans for turning blog posts into books do not work. A few have. There might be a few exceptions, she suggests, such as self-help topics. If it’s going to work, she says, you have to be “laser-focused.”
Not me. No lasers here.
Indianapolis blogger Roberta X muses on the literary sub-genre known as “Weird West.”
Sometimes that means sort of H. P. Lovecraft-meets-Wyatt Earp, sometimes other things.
My introduction was the online graphic novel Tex Arcana, back when the Web was still young.
If your reading tastes don’t go that direction, here are Montana novelist Ivan Doig’s favorite Western reads.
Once when I asked a prominent historian what he thought of the many writings by Stegner, novelist and English-department star at Harvard and Stanford, about the background and the West, he didn’t hesitate: “He hits the nail on the head every time, damn him.”
Yep, every book that Stegner built (they always feel “built,” like Robertson Davies‘ stuff, but that is a Good Thing) was solid as the proverbial brick shithouse.
(with examples from religious studies)
Mark Goodacre at NT Blog makes the argument for blogging’s benefits, part of a series of blogger responses (links in his post):
I sometimes wonder whether one should think of publication as being on a continuum, from tweets to blogs to critical notes to articles to introductory books to monographs. The summit of all publication is the monograph, and the well-written monograph actually takes some real skill and effort. Tweets, on the other hand, at the other end of the spectrum, are forgotten almost as soon as they are uttered. Blogs are somewhere in between. They take a bit more effort than a tweet but like them they are pretty ephemeral. It’s remarkable just how quickly we forget them, and that’s if we ever read them in the first place.
Now, back to the monograph.
Caffeine is good for creative workers, whereas stimulants like Adderall do not necessarily help.
Caffeine also blocks adenosine receptors in your brain. Stephen Braun, author of Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, once explained it as an “indirect stimulant, as opposed to, say, amphetamine which liberates dopamine, a directly stimulating neurotransmitter. By blocking adenosine receptors, caffeine allows the brain’s own stimulating neurotransmitters (i.e. glutamate and dopamine) to do their thing with greater gusto and less restraint.”
For a time in college I did experiment with a combination of coffee and the now-obsolete tranquilizer Meprobamate (a/k/a Miltown).* Two inches off the floor and flying steady. It’s a good thing that I was too poor to get seriously into that kind of thing.
* People calling Milwaukee “Mil-town” are too young to get the joke?
Items that deserve more commentary, but are not getting it today:
• From MIT Technology Review: When we read books on paper, do we retain more than when we read on a screen?
• Re-creating the sound of ancient musical instruments, sometimes with synthesizers.
• A review of Apocalyptic Witchcraft, from Scarlet Imprint.
• At The Journal of Hofstadr Hearth, Alfarrin rethinks the blot in terms of Neolithic and Paleolithic, Aesir and Vanir, reciprocity and sharing. With a big shout-out to Paul Shepard!
• Related issues here at “Heathens in the Military: An Interview with Josh and Cat Heath, Part One,” at the Norse Mythology Blog.
Ring from Roman Britain with Latin inscription. (BBC)
Is this Roman ring the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring of power?
Maybe, maybe not. It makes for an interesting story, and at least you can say that he was thinking about magical rings before Lord of the Rings was written.
Freelance journalist Nate Thayer’s blog post about his experience with The Atlantic has made some waves.
In short, Thayer was pretty annoyed when Olga Khazan, an Atlantic editor, asked him to re-write a piece published elsewhere for The Atlantic — for free. Thayer reproduced their email exchange, which included him reminding her that “exposure” does not pay any bills:
I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children. I know several people who write for the Atlantic who of course get paid. I appreciate your interest, but, while I respect the Atlantic, and have several friends who write for it, I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts.
Then a more senior editor, Alexis Madrigal, got involved, feeling Thayer’s pain but explaining how, gosh, publishing is in a tough spot and he just doesn’t have any budget for freelancers, even as he wanders the halls and ponders the magazine’s past glories
If I open up one of our musty tomes at the office, I can get sucked in for an hour just looking at the ads, or marveling at the eloquence of W.E.B. DuBois. When I look back at old Ta-Nehisi posts or see Fallows in the halls, I can get emotional. I was watching Ken Burns’ National Parks documentary, and he notes, offhandedly, how stories that ran in our magazine helped preserve Yosemite for future generations.
Commenters saw it differently:
I just love reading lengthy self-justifications from people who have full-time jobs taking other people’s work for free.
And
Congratulations: you’ve made your magazine’s arrogant, sorry-not-sorry half-apology and made it into a full out non-apology. The amazing thing is that you think you’re articulating a defense of the profound self-worship of The Atlantic, when actually, you’re engaging in it.
A lot of the comments does engage the money issue in intelligent ways, so if you are trying to write for money, it’s worth reading them.
It is understanding how the Great Vowel Shift moved pronunciation away from spelling — and how that older spelling was fixed and fossilized by the 15th-century introduction of printing.
Three quick items:
1. A 10-minute radio discussion of the Great Vowel Shift, from the CBC’s Sunday Edition.
2. A website devoted to the Great Vowel Shift, with discussion of Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. Check out the dialogs (top of page), particularly the one for Middle English — pre-Vowel Shift.
3. The technology of printing came to England from countries that did not use particular English letters such as thorn (Þ) and edth (ð) — and several others as well. Compromises were made, and some are still confusing people.
The lingering offender is thorn. If you read this, you can now sneer at anyone who pronounces “ye olde” with a Y sound as being inadequately educated. (You can also sneer at anyone who names a business, etc. Ye Olde Whatever in the first place, on general principles.)
3.5. You will also understand the Scottish pronunciation of the name Menzies.
Reins
See the leather straps crossing the horse’s neck horizontally?. Those are reins, held by the rider and used to direct the horse left or right.
Raise your hand if you have held a set of horse reins in the last year. Yeah, about what I thought — not many of you have.
As the Wikipedia entry on “reins” notes at the bottom, there is certain eggcorn connected with the word reins.
If you hold them loosely, letting the horse (or team of horses pulling a carriage, etc.) go as fast or slow as they want and where they want, you have given it “free rein.”
Not “free reign.”
Queen Elizabeth II. She reigns.
Note the woman at right. She is Queen Elizabeth II, of whom it is sometimes said (as of other recent British monarchs) that “she reigns but does not rule.” In other words, she is the head of state, but she cannot make law nor order “Off with his head!”
No show of hands about the queen, sorry. But the difference is clear enough.
So when you want to restrict the spread or movement of something, you “rein (it) in.” Or someone gives you a power to do what you like — gives you “free rein.” But it has nothing to do with being a monarch.
Yet I have found that egregious “eggcorn” in two scholarly books within the last two weeks, one from Johns Hopkins University Press and the other from Thames & Hudson, which “has always prided itself on the very high standards of the books it produces.”
The real lesson here is that writers should avoid those metaphors that are dead to them — or they make silly errors. And careless editors let them go through.
For instance, I have shot antique-style flintlock guns, so I know what a “flash in the pan” looks, sounds, and smells like. It is a partial ignition of the priming powder that fails to set off the main powder charge and fire the gun. In other words, a promising start that goes nowhere. It has absolutely nothing to do with gold-panning, despite what some people think.
If you have visited a steam-powered railway, like the Cumbres & Toltec, you have seen a coal-burning locomotive “get up a head of steam”—build sufficient steam pressure—before it begins to move. But should you use such an expression if it leaves some readers puzzled?
If your audience isn’t horsey, don’t give them free rein.
• At Wytch of the North, a lengthy blog post on being a godspouse.
We are looking primarily for practical articles describing new and original rites and rituals that cross barriers and challenge social norms. Although the bulk of the book will be made up of practical working material, we will consider articles relating to historically significant rites, philosophical discussions on the nature or significance of transgression, and first person accounts of actual rites and rituals. Original artwork will also be accepted for consideration.
• Certain ponderosa pine trees in my region are identified as being “sacred trees” to the Ute Indians. I would like to know more about this, since is a distinction between these “cultural” trees and those that were de-barked for eating purposes — this link addresses both eating the inner bark and the “cultural” use, complete with power dreams.