McSweeny's Review

The Sharpened Axe of Publicity

I’ve been surveying the landscape for years now, but I’ve recently started looking more closely at the individual brush strokes. In the past few months, I’ve even started taking my brush and very tepidly putting some earthy tones to canvas. Abraham Lincoln once said if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend four sharpening the axe. Well, I wonder what he would have done if he had no deadline and no guarantee that the axe worked or if he even liked cutting down trees anymore.

I’ve been writing a blog for years now and the one conclusion I’ve drawn is that it isn’t working. I’ve spent the years since this revelation analyzing why it isn’t working. I mostly believe it’s because the subject matter has no focus. Movie reviews, football predictions and stories about my childhood are written and published in consecutive posts. It also probably doesn’t help that I have no real publishing schedule that I follow.

When I go to read something online, I generally bring up a search engine and type in “stupid cat videos” or “Bill Cosby dead” or “Abraham Lincoln quotes” and I’ll click on a link or two. If I’m really interested in a topic, I will bookmark their website and check it frequently, aka ESPN and Rotten Tomatoes. Very rarely will I stumble upon a site with no specific focus that I will come back to again (with the exception of friends’ sites). The Onion and McSweeny’s are two good examples of such sites. My blog only has two regular readers and one of them isn’t even my wife.

I haven’t really ventured into the electronic publications, mostly because my writing doesn’t fall into those categories. The things I enjoy writing are more commentary on current events, be it social issues, political issues, or most often, sports or movie-related commentary. I have on occasion written something worthy of submitting to an electronic publication, but part of me thinks I’m too busy sharpening my axe to start cutting just yet. Part of that sharpening is figuring out how to operate this whole social media landscape, including my blog – which just underwent a major transformation last month. Also, trying to figure out what I want to do with my writing would help.

Adam Ruben, a fellow storyteller and non-fellow chemist, writes a monthly a science-related humor column called “Experimental Error” for sciencemag.org. Derek Hills, another storyteller friend, has written theater reviews for Washington City Paper. Nevin Martell, a food writer from the same storytelling crew, has a few regular gigs with magazines such as City Eats and Washington Post. I also have a friend who fell ass backwards into being a regular contributor for the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series. These people all get paid for their craft and the common thread is that they all found a niche in the writing world. Alex Petri, fellow storyteller and comedian, writes the ComPost, a daily editorial for the Washington Post. She is the notable exception. She is also brilliant and has an English degree from Harvard. I have links to all these friends on my “blogroll.”

As far as how this will shape what I do for this class, I’m not sure. Because I already have my own blog with an established and purchased web address, I’m using this blog mostly as practice. I plan on incorporating the things I’ve learned from this class into my future posts and projects. Right now, I have plans to continue with my current website (dustinrecsports.com) as a general “Here’s what Dustin is all about” site to promote myself. I also have visions of writing a very specific “stay at home dad” blog with an obviously more specific focus. Additionally, I have plans for a multi-author website that I’d like to use for my final project. But since none of this fits into the material I’m being asked to write about for this class, it will likely be a standalone blog that I’ll only really share with people in this class. I think it would be confusing to include posts like this on a stay-at-home-dad blog and as I made mention several times already, it’s all about the niche.

Day One

Dear Diary,

Day One has already pissed me off. Adam showed us how to add a twitter feed to our blogger site. As usual, it did not work. It might be the ever-incompetent twitter or the equally confusing blogger. Odds are close to 50/50. I've completely ruled out user error. (Ed note: It was a user error)

Oh yeah, we also have to use blogger. After I just made a big deal about the big change to wordpress. It's like having to walk back into your ex-girlfriends room for your keys after you just slammed the door.

So anyway, I spent the entire class trying to figure out why my twitter feed wasn't working and missed his explanation of everything else. Which probably would have helped. But also probably wouldn't have worked.

Sorry for complaining so much, Diary. I'll write more tomorrow. I love you.

Dustin.