Category: Informal

High four-and-a-half!

Esther1 Comment

I know, I know, I never write, I never call! Last week I got caught up in my head about what to write for Monster Mash, and this week I’ve been caught up in, well, I don’t know what. But I wanted to share a post that I wrote for another blog!

Oy!Chicago is a blog collective for young Jewish twentysomethings; I’m a regular contributor, usually writing about health issues, but occasionally I get to add something a little different. Today, it’s taking a look at the brilliance that is @MayorEmanuel, the fake Twitter account of Chicago mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel, who over the past month has really put us through the ringer. I take a look at the implications and the effect this has had on its readership, along with some thoughts on what makes the experiment so great.

Read it all at Goodnight, sweet nine-and-a-half-fingered prince.

(As for my own Rahm story, I did get to shake his hand at an El stop this election cycle. It was on the day he was struck off the ballot for the residency issue, and I was very impressed that he was down at the turnstiles in the State and Lake station, rather than huddled in a conference room or raging from a podium. Yeah, call me impressionable, but it was neat. He’s not a big guy, but I liked that I got to shake his hand. Yes, it was the hand with half a middle finger. He said “Nice to see you” and then moved on to whoever was next. I’ve had my brush with greatness. And who’s to say I didn’t meet @MayorEmanuel himself?)

The first last good idea I’ll ever have

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Scenes from Snowmageddon 2011

Today was my first snow day since high school. Despite the semi-apocalyptic storm that battered Chicago and most of the Midwest, as people were digging out today, they were remarkably cheerful. I hope most of them had good days: I sure did. I slept in and took pictures and mooched around and romped in the snow. Granted, I also had plans of being productive. I have stories to plan, essays to write, novels to organize, sketches to draw. Instead, I romped in the snow.

I consider this a fair trade. But I’m also cognizant of the fact that while the nonfiction part of this blog has been fairly easy for me, the creative part has been like pulling teeth. I second-guess myself like crazy. There is stuff happening — you guys just don’t see it. But one good thing did come out of my mindless web-surfing and lazing about today. In the course of trying to figure out what the publishing implications of a project like this would be, I found someone else’s old post wrestling with a very similar thing. I’d been trying to remember the thing about first publishing rights for a while now, but it was a comment to the post that really caught my eye:

People who worry overmuch about piracy sometimes reveal a fear that their genius is finite, like “I mustn’t let that be stolen in case it’s the last good idea I ever have”. What can happen is that the acceptance of early work – even if it is no more than acceptance by plagiarising and theft – is so encouraging that it fosters feedback and releases a whole lot more ideas. Rejection by publishers is such a downer that it has snuffed out many writers, but a positive response from even a stolen copy of your work may inspire a whole new writing impulse. And you, Sarah, have a lot more to give the world.

What a lovely thing to hear, and truly, just as I needed to hear it. (My own paranoia isn’t about losing money or losing out on contracts, specifically, but I am nervous about being taken advantage of, which is about as useful a worry as any other irrational or unanswerable worry. As with improv, the internet is not kind to control freaks.) Slowly but surely, self. Thanks, Lionel. And readers, stay tuned. Thanks for your attention: we’re back to your regularly scheduled programming soon.

Let’s call it a settling-in period.

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Becoming a knitting superstar is not in my immediate future either.

Behind already! I’m trying not to get too down on myself for not keeping to schedule right out of the gate. To be fair, I had a magnificent burst of inspiration for last week‘s would-be work: a children’s story that I’ve been meaning to write since this summer. But, and this has long been a mental block for me, paranoia got the better of me. I began fretting about how to protect my work, how to ensure that no one would steal it or republish it without my permission or any of a number of control-losing scenarios in which I would, of course, be left with no recourse but to wallow in my helplessness in the face of an unkind, uncaring internet. Pretty good story, right?

On the other hand, it made me start to make stabs at a privacy/sharing policy and investigate Creative Commons licenses. I also took a bunch of notes on a page I’d like to make a permanent feature of this blog, in which I talk about two of my most formative storytelling experiences, and about how they’re not what you might think they are, and why that’s important. It will be great! This week’s essay and creation are also already underway, so I’m getting better (cheers, Lennon and McCartney).

What I think I’m working up to is thanking you all for your patience and support. It’s true! Thank you. I am looking forward to getting some writing done.