I have six MUST DO chores scribbled on a yellow sticky. Six MUST DO BORING chores, which means even though they are very easy – i.e. go to the YMCA and sign up Ian for the winter session of swim classes – I will stall and surf and re-warm my coffee until as late as possible.
I’m taking my mom to the mall in an hour. She is one of those grew-up-in-a city-and-so-isn’t-a-natural-driver people. She hates driving on highways. She drove over a bridge once about twenty years ago with her hasard lights on. Not driving on a highway is a major obstacle to getting about this congested area of the country. She knows the back routes to almost every mall and store in the area, but there are still a few that are only accessible by highway. So, I’ll take her there. Never a happy shopper, she’s also pretty much stopped entirely. So, I’m buying all her Christmas presents for the boys this year. She’ll give me a check later.
I have to make some time to read this Atlantic article about writing advice from people who actually get published. It’s another one of those sure-fire traffic topics, but I need to get inspired.
I’m not that inspired lately. Another old timer blogger dropped out of the business yesterday. I am not using the blog as a generator of article topics anymore, mostly because I’ve decided to finish half-written books this spring, rather than write magazine articles. So, I’m trying to decide what’s going to happen here. I could write one big blog post per day that is more personal than political, like Lileks. Or should I ramp up efforts and do rapid-fire, mini-posts, like Sullivan, and then embed lots of ads to make this a job? I could go either way.
I’m immersed in disability world stuff right now. Because I don’t want to wear out my welcome with the topic, I’ll throw out a couple of links without much commentary. A review of Raising Henry in the Times. Do autistic kids take in too much input and then shut down?
Soon, I’m going to transition from the decorating and shopping phase of Christmas to the cooking phase. Got to prepare the fishy menu and make the cookies for the care packages. And soon, I’ll get sick of all this Martha Stewart shit and get back to complaining about income inequality and the politics of schools. Soon. But this sticky note of horrible chores awaits.
****
I’m just going to add to the blog post throughout the day, as I get a minute or two to surf….
Love to hate rich folks? Check out this Christmas card.
It’s nice to see that it’s not only American professors who are griping about the dumbing down of standards.
Oooh. Lots of people still wondering about yesterday’s Brooks column.
Apt. 11d 
I’ve only read the reviews of Raising Henry, and will probably try to read the book somewhere before being judgy about the author (like I was about Patricia Gilman). But, my off the cuff statement is that I don’t know why we’re not getting a chance to read your book, rather than Adam’s. I’m pretty sure it’s the “who you know” problem which is annoying, and not because it’s unfair, but because I think your book would be better, and we’re missing out on it.
LikeLike
“Or should I ramp up efforts and do rapid-fire, mini-posts, like Sullivan, and then embed lots of ads to make this a job?”
Bear in mind that Sullivan is Sullivan Inc. It’s not just him pounding away at the keyboard.
As of a year ago, Jack Shafer wrote of Sullivan’s attempt to go independent again, “If you admire journalism and entrepreneurism, you’ve got to be pulling for Sullivan and his five employees and two interns to pull down the $900,000 he says he needs to operate The Dish for a year.”
http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2013/01/04/the-andrew-sullivan-traveling-blog-show/
LikeLike
How’s that going, anyway?
LikeLike
I have no idea–I haven’t read Sullivan regularly since something like 2002 or 2003.
I dimly recall that that a couple years after that, he fundraised heavily to pay for bandwidth and to pay him for full-time blogging and then went on a very long hiatus as soon as he got the money.
http://www.theagitator.com/2005/02/01/sullivan-quits/
I was just having a look at the Daily Dish to see if Sullivan is still passing off employees’ work as his own, but it looks like the blog doesn’t use bylines anymore.
In general, whenever anybody has improbably high output as a writer, there is a very simple explanation as to how they manage.
LikeLike
That’s about when I quit, too. He did publish two out of the three notes that I dropped him, so there’s that.
LikeLike
Our family has been dealing with what seems to be strep for over a week now and my husband’s grading and my Christmas ambitions have been derailed. We’ve managed to place a few mail orders and last night my husband somehow managed to choose the photos for and order the photobook we give to adult relatives as their Christmas gift, but aside from that, almost nothing has happened. Oh, and we had to cancel two or three different cleaner visits due to illness and we have visitors (a family with 6 kids) coming this weekend–that will be fun, but things are going to be more grimy than festive. The only thing that makes this bearable is that we only have two more days of school to get up for. It looks like the Christmas card isn’t going to happen.
LikeLike
The writing article is pretty good, as these things go. I skipped Franzen; I’m interested in his early novels, not his later one, and in his thoughts on writing not at all. I thought the last one was best, as befits an article’s design.
On the whole, though, it’s hard to beat what John Scalzi has said: “Find a process that works for you, and do that.”
LikeLike
In general, whenever anybody has improbably high output as a writer, there is a very simple explanation as to how they manage.
I’d mostly agree, though I’d say there are several possible explanations. One is “recycling”- you write a book review, and then an article heavily based on the review, and then the article, with only very modest revisions, becomes a book chapter, and so on. This is at least part of the explanation for the output of people like Richard Posner and Cas Sunstein. (In Posner’s case it certainly helps that he, apparently, takes care of exactly 0 day-to-day tasks, too- his wife, apparently, does essentially everything for him.) Another explanation is amphetamines, though of course that usually has a pretty strong impact on the writing style or quality. The “not actually writing all the things yourself” approach, as might apply to Sullivan (and that lead to several of the semi-plagiarism scandals with historians, law professors, and other academics a while ago) is just one of several approaches.
LikeLike
All very true.
I like how when a big name gets busted for plagiarism in their books, the go-to excuse is, “My assistant did it!” as if that makes it better that they had so little control over what went into their books.
Come to think of it, the undergraduate version of that is, “It’s not plagiarism–my girlfriend did it!”
LikeLike
For those of us living under rocks, who retired?
LikeLike
The amphetamine dealer.
LikeLike
Yeah, who retired?
LikeLike
Dan Drezner quit blogging.
Thanks, bj. I may just skip the whole pitching the agent who pitches the editor silliness and go straight to e-publishing. I would be nice to bypass the whole who-ha-know crap about publishing.
Steve still reads Andrew Sullivan regularly. He has only a few minutes to catch up on the news, and he likes Sullivan’s links. Sullivan is doing well doing his thing. There’s very little actual writing on that website. It’s really just a Drudge report with more gay and Catholic articles.
There’s still room for having a personal touch to news curation. There’s no room for conversation among pundits and bloggers. There’s still room for personal musings. If I cared, I could put more time into this. Flacks send me offers every day offering money for links. It’s too time consuming and boring for me. I think I want to work on creating something more useful and permanent.
LikeLike
Laura said:
“I may just skip the whole pitching the agent who pitches the editor silliness and go straight to e-publishing.”
Go for it. As we’ve already discussed, the publishing houses don’t either promote or edit anymore, so you have absolutely nothing to lose by doing it yourself–in fact commercially speaking, you may make way more money. Just plan to put some money into paying a copy editor (or two) and paying for real cover art (I’ve seen some TERRIBLE self-published covers on Amazon–pay a real artist or graphic designer, people!) and then plan to put time into promoting your book.
If it takes off at all, you will find yourself doing a lot of speaking events, which I think could be a very interesting and valuable experience for you. If you email me, I can put you in touch with my dad and/or my aunt to discuss the nuts and bolts of the business. They write together and you would have a lot in common with my aunt–she’s a 20+ year adjunct.
You need a publisher like a fish needs a bicycle.
LikeLike
I’m trying to find non-internet activities because all this trying to limit screen time for the kids is making me think about maybe it isn’t the best for me. I’m considering building a cob house but first I’d need to find some land I could put it on and a source of straw.
LikeLike
Mind the large-lunged wolves.
LikeLike
That was a reply to MH, and not, I hope, a total non sequitur.
LikeLike
For cob, the straw gets mixed with mud. The straw is basically the rebar, so it’s totally wolf-proof once it dries.
LikeLike