Writing Blog

I had called it “Kitsap Little Theater.” Our first production was a one-act play called The Day After Forever and as the 17 year old director and producer, I took the whole thing very seriously.

It wasn’t my first attempt. In the fifth grade I got involved with a group of kids who were rehearsing during recesses. When I gave them my new and improved version of their script, unsolicited, I was named director. It might have had something to do with the subsequent departure of the original authors, since they had been the directors as well. How very Charlie Brown.

My follow-up piece, something to do with mice and Christmas, never made it on the boards.

Neither did my PTA-sponsored attempt at the Broadway musical The Pajama Game a few years later. At the time it was my big failure in life, but in retrospect I understand dealing with my own adolescent turmoil, along with that of a cast comprised fully of adolescents, might have been too much for anyone.

So I approached that later attempt as a young man with something to prove.

Originally I had intended to produce Arsenic and Old Lace but only three people auditioned. I told them I was the stage manager. These were experienced community theater folk and I was afraid they might balk at a teenage producer/director. I don’t know how I expected to make the “real” director materialize, especially since I had already given her a name and identity, but since we never made it to rehearsals I was spared the trouble.

Instead, I rounded up a few loyal friends from back in my Pajama-Game days and settled on producing one of those more intimate, small cast shows. One of the community theater women from the audition stuck with me. I don’t know if she believed my story about the “real” director, who had supposedly quit the whole affair because of a low turnout at auditions, or if she actually stayed around because she wanted to support my effort. Looking back I suspect the later.

I haven’t mentioned how another of the community theater women stuck around for a few rehearsals before coming up with some excuse to bow out, or how that led to my first experience playing a role in drag. But that is another story and I was able to draw upon the experience a few years later when I played Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Anyway, I’m not sure why I decided to use the words “little theater” other than because there were a few groups I had read about and admired with similar names. But it was always about the type of theater group I had set out to build, and never about the fact most of us were so young.

Looking back, I realize the missed opportunity. The very thing I worked so hard to downplay was also the very thing that made it all so remarkable. How many teenagers would find a place to rehearse, gather a cast, rent an auditorium and advertise the production? If I had known how marketable such remarkable things can be, more than a half dozen people might have witnessed our performances.

Sunday evening an entry came in for my contest on Bloggity. Bloggers are entering to win what I’ve called a Blog Boosting Brouhaha, a session where we’ll confer on five ways to improve their blogs. This particular entry was thoughtful, intelligent and realistic, but that isn’t what made it truly remarkable. The remarkable part was the blogger is only 13 years old.

At 13, Dan Miranda is writing a blog with the maturity and thoughtfulness few adults attain. He is writing about time management, but he could just as well write about the fantasy sports that got him started. The point is, he isn’t hiding behind some imaginary adult façade:

“I can’t help to reveal I’m only thirteen years old, but I only see this as an advantage. My writing can only get better, my blog can only go higher, and my readers will only increase their knowledge - with perseverance, determination, and intelligence.”

I guess you can tell why I’m going to do whatever I can to encourage him.

Sometimes the things that make us remarkable may be obvious to everyone but ourselves.

Photo: Mikelo

Elsie’s thin hand pressed the afghan into the tight space between her leg and the wheelchair arm. Her sister had crocheted it, this green and orange thing, her lifeline to the outside.

“Ready to go back?” A staccato voice.

“Yes.”

“Eat your desert this time?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Want me to push you?”

Her soft blue eyes shifted. “I can do it.”

“Good girl, Elsie. It’s important to take care of yourself some.

Elsie released the brake, carefully, one wheel and the other, slowly, not to betray herself. Back from the table, aim at the door.

“Elsie!” The staccato nurse.

Elsie froze.

“That blanket’s filthy, I’ll get it washed.”

Elsie pressed the tight space again. “No!” Then softer, “It’s fine.”

She searched for a good line, “I’m cold.”

“It’s seventy degrees in here.”

“I’m cold. Please.”

“Well, whatever. You want that nasty thing, I offered.”

Elsie waited. Must not appear rushed, hurried. Slowly to the door.

“Elsie, you taking anything from the dining hall this time?” Another bossy nurse.

Elsie couldn’t speak. She shook her head.

“Show me your hands.”

Slowly Elsie held her palms up, like a small child. Empty.

“Good girl.”

When the nurse had gone and the path seemed clear Elsie rolled into her room. She loosened the afghan and pulled a small napkin-clad square from the tight place, and smiled a little; mischievous, younger and alive.

Savoring the moment, Elsie pulled back the napkin, knowing the brownie would taste like freedom.

Photo: freeparking

You know the drill. All the kids line up on one wall of the gym and the teacher picks two “team captains.”

If one or the other “team captain” doesn’t particularly like you, you’re screwed.

They’re going to take turns picking kids for their team, and you’re going to stand there hoping you’re not the last one left in line; the one somebody has to take because nobody else did.

Unless you’re one of the star players, be it dodge ball, softball, flag football or any of the other domains of those blessed with that particular mix of excellent hand-to-eye coordination, competitive spirit, and aggression you learn early on it’s best to be named “team captain.” And if you don’t think you’re likely to be named “team captain,” you learn the best thing to do is start your own team.

That’s a pattern I’ve followed most of my life; because they might not pick me for the team, I’ll just start my own. They weren’t sports teams, but that doesn’t matter. It’s all about control, really. Because you might not give me what I want, I’ll just circumvent the entire process.

Oh sure, I might start out on someone else’s “team.” But the pattern has been I’ll start my own if I’m afraid they won’t let me take things where I want to go, even though I never asked if they would let me.

It’s all about fear and it’s all about power. I’m afraid of the power you might have to control my choices, so I take control myself. I intercept your ability to reject me and make it a non issue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

“What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.”

I fled from being part of existing teams because I was afraid the teams wouldn’t have me, then because I fled, they fled from me. To an extent, it’s another self-fulfilling prophecy.

I got a postcard in the mail the other day. The essay I submitted to North American Review has been received, cataloged and given a number.

So I’ve decided to stop running away. I’ve decided to stop creating my own teams. I want to see if, after all this running away, if I might be good enough to play on theirs after all. How will I know either way unless I try?

One way or another I’m due for a first. I’ll get my first rejection slip or my first published article.

But either way will be a victory.

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Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a vain emperor. He longed for the day when all his subjects would obey his every command and hang upon his every word. So he started a blog because he heard blogs were the perfect way to build authority.

The Emperor followed all the latest blogging trends. His graphics were breathtaking. His choices of font and color were impeccable. He used the newest plugins, since of course it was a WordPress blog. And of course, the Emperor didn’t do any of the actual blog setup himself; he had everything outsourced.

“My, what a beautiful blog,” people would say.

The Emperor would then puff out his chest and say, “I know.”

But one morning the Emperor felt a little depressed.

“Nobody is visiting my blog,” he said. “And further, my subjects are not yet obeying my every command. This blog has done nothing to build my authority.”

“Quite right,” said a dashing young marketer who stepped from the shadows. “Your blog is sadly ignored though it is the most beautiful and stylish of blogs. What your blog needs is traffic; traffic will cause your authority to skyrocket.”

The Emperor liked what he heard.

“Then go,” said the Emperor. “Bring traffic to my blog if you can.”

“And I can, but for a price and this offer won’t last,” said the marketer.

So the Emperor paid vast sums to bring massive traffic to his blog.

The Emperor Gets Social

The marketer hit the social bookmarking circuits and submitted the Emperor’s blog to Digg, he wrote favorable reviews on StumbleUpon, and built numerous backlinks so the blog would do well in the search engine placements. He even hired people to leave comments on each and every of the Emperor’s blog posts.

Soon, the Emperor’s blog began to draw attention from his subjects.

“My my,” they said. “Look at all these comments. This blog must be very interesting.”

Then they subscribed to the Emperor’s RSS feed.

“My my,” others said. “Look at all these RSS subscribers. This blog must be very influential.”

Then they linked to the Emperor’s blog.

“Goodness gracious,” people cried. “Look at this blog’s page rank. It must be a very important blog.”

The Emperor was very happy because with all the comments, subscribers, and page rank, he had finally built the authority he so desired.

So the marketer approached the Emperor again and said, “You have built much authority. What you need now is a book you can sell to everyone who follows your blog.”

The Emperor liked this idea very much, since he had his eye on a beautiful suit of clothes one of his emperor friends had recently purchased. So he immediately sat down and compiled several of his blog posts into a book. He then announced the book’s publication on his blog.

“I must have this book,” the people said. “The Emperor’s blog is the most beautiful , stylish, influential, and important in the empire. Anyone who doesn’t hang on the Emperor’s every word must be a nincompoop.”

The Emperor’s book sold like hotcakes.

The Emperor and the Big Book Tour

Now being a vain Emperor, he wanted his fans to adore him in person. So he decided to tour his kingdom, reading selections from his blog and the new book. Of course, all tickets to the readings sold out within thirty seven minutes.

The morning of the first reading, the air crackled with anticipation. The Emperor took the podium and began reading posts from his blog.

“This morning,” he said. “I had a bagel for breakfast.”

The crowd murmured, “I read that one. One of his best, one of his best.”

“Yesterday,” the Emperor continued. “I had two bagels.”

The crowd roared with approval.

The Emperor read post after post from his blog, each post sending quivers through the crowd. Then the Emperor paused and cleared his throat, ready to begin reading passages from his book.

But far in the back of the crowd, a small voice cried out, “Excuse me, please?”

The crowd turned in unison, aghast one so young would dare interrupt an Emperor so powerful and wise.

The small voice belonged to a small boy. He stood on a chair and addressed the room.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I wondered if anyone has noticed the Emperor’s blog has no content? He really isn’t saying anything important; we all eat bagels every morning.”

“What?” shouted another voice from the crowd. “Ridiculous, absurd. The Emperor’s blog is the most beautiful, stylish, influential and important of blogs. Just look at all the comments on each and every post.”

“Well now that you mention it,” said another. “I really only commented because everyone else had, and I wanted backlinks for my own blog.”

“But look at the number of RSS subscribers his blog has,” said someone else.

“Well really, I never actually read the posts. I just subscribed because everyone else had,” another voice answered.

“But look at his blog’s page rank,” someone said. “You can’t fake that, his blog must be important.”

“Now that you mention it,” said another. “I only linked to his blog because everyone else had.”

And for a long time nobody said anything.

Then finally, one by one, the people filed quietly from the room. They all went home and unsubscribed from the Emperor’s blog, removed the links from their own sites, deleted him from their RSS readers, and listed their copies of his book on eBay.

And the Emperor went out and bought some new clothes.

This story has been reclaimed and remodeled from my archives to begin a weekly offering of Fairy Tales. But! The series will be happening on my new blog, Bloggity. Join me there for Friday Fairy Tales.

The Internet’s nature gives birth to the ephemeral. Surrounded by so much of that is temporary and fleeting, we become accustomed to quick reads, quick information, and quick gratification.

So in the spirit of quickness, I won’t bore you with details. This serving of Stories Sundae is a quadruple-scoop with four different kinds of micro fiction.

1.

Very Short Novels offers stories at “299 words each. Anything more is waste.” The author writes under the pseudonym David B. Dale, and promises “Character, conflict, emotional impact. And sentences! Everything you want in a novel, without one extra syllable.”

I came across his “Boy on the Roof” about a month ago and like much good fiction, it stayed on my mind awhile.

2.

On a site called Rumble Magazine, I found Marylou Fusco’s “The Body Central.” The website tells us, “Marylou Fusco has won the literary journal, So to Speak’s fiction contest. Her work has also appeared in The Best of Philadelphia Stories anthology and is forthcoming in Carve magazine.” We also learn, “She has eaten blackbirds, but it was a long time ago.”

3.

Mathew Honan lives in San Francisco where he works as a freelance writer, blogger, photographer, and a contributing editor to WIRED magazine. His 22 Short Stories serve both as examples of microfiction and playing with literary hypermedia. Here is another of his sites (if you click on its text it changes) which some may consider microfiction as well, and interestingly has been made into the book, Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle: 366 Ways He Really Cares.

4.

Ernest Hemingway may be the father of microfiction. He said this six-word novel was his best work:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Wired Magazine tapped the realm of book, TV, movie, and game writers for similar contributions and received a few dozen concise stories. Most of the plots remain undeveloped, but a few send our imaginations out to fill in the blanks.

Here are a few in no particular order:

1. Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth. - Vernor Vinge
2. Epitaph: He shouldn’t have fed it. - Brian Herbert
3. Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer? - Eileen Gunn
4. Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time - Alan Moore
5. It cost too much, staying human. - Bruce Sterling
6. God to Earth: “Cry more, noobs!” - Marc Laidlaw
7. The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly. - Orson Scott Card

Click here for the rest.

Now who says they don’t have time to write a novel?

If you’re interested in writing micro fiction yourself, you may want to visit The Micro Fiction Mini Site for its excellent list of articles and resources.

Stories Sundae is a weekly series exploring the traditional and the web-influenced aspects of creative writing. Subscribe to the RSS feed or get updates via email to follow this series.

Photo: wmshc kiwi

I think I’ll put an end to my Lifehacks à la Gilbert and Sullivan series while I still have a few people reading this blog. That doesn’t mean I’m conceding, giving in to peer pressure. It does mean I’m running out of ideas and starting to feel decidedly been-there-done-that, which for a Renaissance soul like me means you’re losing your creative passion for a thing.

And “creative passion” is exactly what I’m going to talk about in an upcoming stint of guest blogging, but more on that in a bit.

I had planned to write this post for the series, then one other. The other was to be the conclusion and tie everything up in a neat package with a neat ribbon and bow. But I’m writing this on a Friday, and Fridays are great days for ending things like work weeks and series (they must be because so many companies end their work weeks on Fridays).

Besides, I’m seeing a great “wrap it up” statement in my idea for this post.

Here is what Wikipedia (love Wikipedia) had to say about Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience. Except they call it an opera, and it’s not, it’s an operetta and there is a difference:

The opera is a satire on the aesthetic movement of the 1870s and ’80s in England, when the output of poets, composers, painters and designers of all kinds was indeed prolific-but, some argued, empty and self-indulgent. This artistic movement was so popular, and also so easy to ridicule as a meaningless fad, that it made Patience a big hit.

Aesthetics. Those were people who really got into appearances. They suffered for the sake of suffering, and supposedly that was supposed to make great art.

In the operetta (sorry, Wikipedia, but get it right) Reginald Bunthorne is an aesthetic poet whose apparent sincerity and purity make him a big hit with the ladies. I say “apparent” because he is a total fake. In a private moment with the audience, Bunthorne gives a little advice:

If you’re anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare,
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them ev’rywhere.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind,
The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

And ev’ry one will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
“If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”

If you noticed, or even if you didn’t, there was a bit of an unintentional thread running through my G & S series. Go back and look if you don’t believe me, but the entire series was pretty much about being true to yourself.

More specifically it was about me being true to me, even when it wasn’t.

Sometimes you can actually see the battle raging inside me, the battle of “how do I build a readership when I have so many divergent interests?”

Then of course was the, “Okay this really is me and how I think and write but egads subscribers are dropping like flies and only a few people are leaving comments.”

Spellchecker doesn’t think “egads” is a real word, but I’m going to leave it in there because to me, it is. And that’s part of the whole “big point” if you get what I mean.

Something interesting happened through the process though.

Part way into the series, I wrote Synergy and Three Little Maids From School. That was when I first noticed people were not commenting. Oh, some did eventually. But it wasn’t anything like what had been happening since I picked up blogging again in mid-February.

I started freaking out (okay, only a minor freak out but a freak out nonetheless). I started thinking I had better pull the plug and make this a really short series. Then I got an email from someone who enjoyed the post, liked the way I write, and asked me to do guest posts on two blogs. This was Mary Jaksch from GoodlifeZen and Write to Done.

Not only did she ask me to guest post, but has been very helpful as I prepare the posts. She has shown me what is appreciated when you submit the post (like HTML formatting and fitting the post to the particular blog) and provided tips for landing guest spots. And she doesn’t even particularly like Gilbert and Sullivan!

It just goes to show you the Universe is still in charge, and things are seldom what they seem.

Lesson learned: Embrace all the varied and wonderful things that make you unique and unleash that on the world, even if you feel foolish. Your right people will find you if you’re not hiding behind something else, something that isn’t really you. Then sit back and don’t worry about what will come; the right things will come along with the right people. Just let your creative spirit go skipping down the halls, if that’s what it needs to do. If you’re not comfortable embracing your inner fairy, then maybe you could at least learn something from a Nancy Boy.

Okay, so I went a little crazy on the link love. But we’re not in this journey alone, and these links represent just a few of the people who have helped along the way.

The point is, just be true to yourself.

Series closed.

This is the final installment in a series of “Lifehacks à la Gilbert and Sullivan.” Subscribe to the RSS feed or get updates via email to see where everything goes from here.

Successful essays utilize techniques regularly employed by fiction writers: action, narrative, and dialogue. Dialogue can be used to reveal character and explain past events or motivations. Dialogue is an integral part of storytelling, intricately bound to character development. What a character says, or doesn’t say, reveals much about that character.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:

Spend an afternoon in a location (or reflect on one where you’ve been). Explore it thoroughly, then recreate an actual scene you experienced where something you’ve observed ran in strong contradiction with what you expected in this location. Reveal the subjects observed by appearance, action, and dialogue.

The suggested length is 500 words.

How To Participate

Add your response to the prompt in the comments for this post. I also encourage you to leave comments on at least one of your peers’ contributions, and something more substantial than “nice post” or “I liked it.” The best comments will say why it’s a nice post or why you liked it, as well as offering constructive tips.

Take your time, come back and post your piece when you’re ready.

A Bit On This New Series

Last Sunday’s Stories Sundae focused on the personal essay. Since it was first in that series, it seemed fitting the first in this new series, Creative Writing Prompts, should have a similar focus. As I said then, the personal essay fits blogging like a glove. Well, I didn’t say it exactly like that, but you get the idea. The point is, bloggers can benefit from this writing exercise as much as anyone.

It’s more fun with lots of responses, so tell all your friends. Stumbles, Tweets and other social bookmarks are great ways to spread the fun too!

Photo: DeaPeaJay

This is the first in a weekly (remains to be seen) series of “creative writing prompts.” Subscribe to the RSS feed or get updates via email so you won’t miss next week’s the next prompt.

In Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta H.M.S. Pinafore, things are not what they seem. It appears young sailor Ralph Rackstraw loves above his station in life, the Captain’s fair daughter Josephine. But as in life and as in the bulk of the G & S Canon, things are seldom what they seem.

In fact, under her gay and frivolous exterior, so gay and frivolous everyone calls her “Little Buttercup,” dockside vendor Mrs. Cripps hints she may be hiding a dark secret.

The others however are as uninterested in hearing her secret as she is in revealing it.

But after a great deal of general topsy-turvy we learn Mrs. Cripps had once been the nursemaid of Ralph Rackstraw and Josephine’s father, the Captain. Prone to confusion, she inadvertently switched the two babes and Ralph should in fact be the Captain and the Captain should in fact be Ralph.

So being of high birth, Ralph hadn’t loved above his station at all, but below it. As such, he is free to marry the low-born but lovely Josephine.

Two hours of twisted plots could have been avoided if everyone had sought to understand Mrs. Cripps’ earlier warnings. But of course we would not have had two hours of Sullivan’s lovely music either, so all is forgiven.

In Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he extols us seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Mrs. Cripps extols us:

Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers.

I think Covey may have learned a thing or two from Mrs. Cripps.

It seems fitting I’ve written this post on April Fool’s Day. How many of us might avoid being called “April Fools” if we sought to heed Mrs. Cripps’ advice?

This is the sixth installment in a series of “Lifehacks à la Gilbert and Sullivan.” Subscribe to the RSS feed or get updates via email to see if it’s really what it seems.

Frank Gelette Burgess, artist, art critic, poet, author, humorist, and inventor of the Purple Cow once said, “To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.”

Leonardo da Vinci (whose introduction requires no laundry list of accomplishments) is quoted with, “Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”

Gilbert and Sullivan addressed these same ideas in the Major-General’s famous patter song from The Pirates of Penzance.

Understanding military leadership’s necessity to see things from a distance, as well as their ability to appreciate nonsense, the Major-General breezily rattles off a laundry list of his impressive academic accomplishments.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

What’s that? You say knowing the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes, understanding calculus and binomial theorem, and the ability to whistle all the airs from that delightful operetta H.M.S. Pinafore has nothing to do with military competency? Rubbish, I say!

Granted, a taste for G & S does require an ability to appreciate nonsense, but this capacity may easily transfer into an ability to see the all-important bigger picture in life, work, and all the above. Gilbert and Sullivan’s patter song could be the anthem for modern armchair generalists.

I am the very model of a modern Armchair Generalist,
I treat life like a drug store and approach it with a lotta lists . . .

Stephen Covey tells us if we ever hope to be one of the seven highly effective people with habits, we must “sharpen the saw.” Although many of us do in fact have an axe to grind, sharpening our saws is an entirely different affair; of course Mr. Covey is (in part) talking about sharpening our minds.

Of course, sharpening our minds doesn’t give us carte blanche to go all willy nilly. In his novel, The Prime Minister, Anthony Trollope describes the character Everett Wharton:

[He] had read much, and although he generally forgot what he read, there were left with him from his reading certain nebulous lights, begotten by other men’s thinking, which enabled him to talk on most subjects. It cannot be said of him that he did much thinking for himself - but he thought that he thought.

And of course any conversation about thinking leads us to the famous Dr. Seuss-ian epiphany:

And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! ‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas . . . perhaps . . . means a little bit more!’

Taking in the view from Mt. Crumpit, the Grinch became a generalist, a divergent thinker. Gilbert and Sullivan, Stephen Covey, and Benjamin Franklin would all be proud.

Creative minds unite untie.

This is the fifth installment in a series of “Lifehacks à la Gilbert and Sullivan.” Subscribe to the RSS feed or get updates via email to see when I stop the madness.

Over the last several years the Internet’s influence on pop culture has increased exponentially. It has changed the way we shop, the way we communicate and has introduced new types of recreation. The internet has also started to affect the way we read, and this transformation has in turn opened the door to changes in the way we write and circulate our writing. Perhaps more than any other tool of change, blogging has impacted the writer.

Blogging has become a readily accessible and often free platform for writers to self publish. Gone are the traditional gatekeepers and many of the filters between writer and reader. Within minutes of completion, an article, short story or poem can be published and in front of thousands. Distribution is not only much faster now than ever before imagined, but reaches further than ever possible; anywhere people can access the internet, there is access to a writer’s work.

Traditional publishing’s diminishing power as a gatekeeper to the world of readers has given an audience to a flood of new writing, some good and some great, and some which is neither. Just as the professional writer has gained a new audience, so has the hack. As a result, systems have developed to help readers screen the onslaught of new writing on the web.

This new series, Stories Sundae, will explore creative writing as it currently exists online. I will include examples from a variety of sources, personal blogs with one writer and community websites with several writers. Some of the writers will have been published, some not. Some of them aspire to professional writing careers, some do not. But across the span, these pieces will express both the traditional and the web-influenced aspects of creative writing.

Social networking has played a large role in the new screening processes. Providing social proof through things brief as a thumbs-up to extensive as a full-blown review, social networking gives readers control over which authors and what work can now rise to the top.

Several of the writing formats previously published through traditional methods have successfully transitioned online. Some formats which previously had a fairly limited audience because of printing and distribution costs have benefited from the proliferation of online platforms. Among these formats are poetry, short fiction and short nonfiction.

The personal essay has not only benefited by less expensive distribution, but because its form and function are uniquely suited to online publication, it has flourished.

Many blogs and personal websites share their owners’ musings about life and activities, so the marriage between blogging and the personal essay seems beneficial for both sides. I encourage you to read each of these seven examples of the personal essay, and see for yourself.

1.

On Jim Murdoch’s blog he describes himself this way:

“I am a 49-year-old writer. I began late in life but have made steady, if somewhat erratic, progress. I am currently struggling with my fifth novel.”

Like many bloggers, Murdoch self publishes on the web and in print. There’s Something We Need to Talk About shows one of the ways bloggers utilize the personal essay format to make their blogging both personal and relevant.

2.

Ken Armstrong’s describes himself:

“45 Years Old. Loves to write. Has had plays produced for radio and theatre, some short stories published (and broadcast) and a laundry list which was highly commended by ‘Whiter than White’ in Castle Street.”

Armstrong’s personal essay, Holy Thursday - 33 Years Ago is likely a more conscious effort at utilizing the traditional literary format, but since it has been posted on a blog it could automatically be seen as less than traditional. Despite the format, this piece echoes the typical blogger’s desire for self expression and revelation.

[By the way, I had pulled Ken's essay for inclusion before he started advertising here. So don't get any ideas!]

3.

Brian Doyle’s A note on Public Literature provides an example of how traditional print media, in this case a newspaper article, can find it’s way online and thereby increase its scope and audience. What may once have found a limited regional audience through publication in a newspaper called “Oregon Live” is now not only available to reader in Oregon, but Ohio and Okinawa as well.

4-6.

With the rising costs of printing and distribution, several websites have been developed which imitate the traditional literary journal. Included are How I Jeopardized My Sanity by Rosemary Mild, and A live cat is better than a dead lion* by Mary Patrice Erdmans both from the online literary journal “Slow Trains,” which publishes fiction, essays, and poetry on a quarterly basis. The Facts as They Are by Samantha Bell was published on “Prick of the Spindle,” another online literary journal. While both of these journals are published exclusively online, some of their counterparts publish both online and printed versions.

The backgrounds of these writers are as various as their contributions within this anthology. Samantha Bell is a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing who has been published in several journals. Rosemary Mild coauthors a mystery series with her husband and has essays published in Chicken Soup for the Coffee Lover’s Soul and the Maryland Writers’ Association’s first anthology. Mary Patrice Erdmans is a Professor of Sociology at Central Connecticut State University and has had work published in the North American Review as well as several others, and was awarded the Oscar Halecki Prize.

8.

The essay, How Funk Music Changed My Life by Luke Buckham comes from a sort of hybrid website which serves not only as an online literary journal, but a type of blog as well.

As blogging, social media and other types of personal websites continue to move toward the forefront of society, it seems likely the ways these sites can be used by writers will not only grow, but gain acceptance and exposure as well. This provides a true win-win situation for writers and their potential audiences, since the needs of both can be so easily served.

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