writerly things
sastyk | February 6, 2013From Baldur Bjarnason, the reality of writing on the web:
15. People will always prefer you to state the obvious and spout common sense. If you say anything that requires a bit of thinking, or that would require them to learn new skills or ideas, your audience will evaporate into nothing, no matter how important those new things are. (Also see point 8 above.) You can trust that ideas that are new and unfamiliar to an audience will be either ignored or met with anger.
16. Nobody cares when you’re right but a lot of people really enjoy it when you’re wrong. They will rub it in your face.
17.…
sastyk | June 17, 2011I have one more crazy week involving travel and lots of other responsibilities, culminating in our final home visit in our foster care certification (as some of you will recall, we had a tough visit our second time with a social worker who was totally appalled by the farm - our social worker's supervisor kindly agreed to come out so that we won't have to deal with shifting standards (our own social worker is totally cool with it) and can be clear what we need to do and what is ok), so there will be little content this week.
So I'm asking y'all to provide content - tell me what you are doing…
sastyk | November 29, 2010It has been just about a year since I made my transition to Science Blogs, and other than the kerfuffle in July and the fact that they still don't pay us particularly often, in general, I think this has been a successful move for me - particularly in my larger goal, which was to reach a readership that wouldn't get this material otherwise. Science Blogs also drove me to write some good stuff, in response to critique or query or new readers - and that's important to me. So a quick year in review - I thought for those who hadn't seen them, I'd go back and pick my own favorite piece from each…
sastyk | August 31, 2010 First, there's the end of summer canning and preserving - the warm dry weather has meant the most astonishing harvest, all of which needs attention yesterday. Second, there's the beginning of fall getting everything ready before winter on a farm, most of which involves carrying heavy things (hay, firewood, etc...) around). Third, there's the start of Eric's semester, which is heavier than usual. Fourth, there's my teaching schedule. Fifth, the start of our annual homeschool year and grades 4, 2 and kindergarten for three kids. Sixth, the eldest is off school for two more weeks - and…
sastyk | August 30, 2010About a year ago I was sitting around with a couple friends and they asked me where I thought my career was going. They were genuinely curious - what does blogging actually lead to? What kind of career advancement might a blogger get eventually? Can you transfer from blogging to journalism? Get a job at a better blog? Where does all this take you?
My comments was that in many ways, I don't know the answer to that. I think in the longer term, journalists and bloggers are going to reconnect, but how that connection may happen, or what the future of that connection might be is extremely…
sastyk | August 4, 2010You can be doing more fun things. I'll be out of touch and my blog will be quiet. But you could be reading some of my old colleagues and some new cool stuff at the new cooperative blog group "Scientopia." Zuska's there and Dr. Free Ride, and a lot of awesome folk - so have fun!
Sharon
sastyk | July 26, 2010C'mon, you know you've always wanted to. This is the chance - if you've never made a comment (or you've made a thousand), tell me who you are and what interesting stuff you are doing to save the world - or even just to get along decently. Or tell me something interesting and cool I should know about. Or write me a haiku. I'm flexible.
I love it when I meet someone who says "Oh, I comment as..." and I meet a lot of people who say "I never comment, but I've always kind of wanted to." And now you will have, if just one time! Plus, if you say "I'm a commenter" (which you now get to do)…
sastyk | July 19, 2010I've noticed that the comments have been kind of nasty lately around here, and I just wanted to remind everyone of my comment policy. The major part of it can be summed up as "please make an effort not to be a complete jerk." Look, I know we all get angry sometimes and say what we oughtn't - me too. But for the most part I expect you to keep such incidents to a comparative minimum, say what you oughtn't fairly creatively, without resorting to obvious expletive, and confine your insults, if you must offer them, to me. That is, within reason you are free to call me a jerk or an idiot or…
sastyk | July 8, 2010As a lot of you probably knew long before I did (we loaned our computer to our housemate who is frantically prepping for his orals ;-)), Scienceblogs took down the Pepsi blog. This actually exceeded my requests to management as parameters for me coming back. I had asked that Scienceblogs create a separate area for its advertorial content, mark it explicitly as such, and distinguish it visually from the other blogs. They removed it entirely. So I'm back.
There are other issues at scienceblogs as well, which you've probably all heard about now - I think my colleague Martin Rundkvist gets a…
sastyk | March 23, 2010Hi Folks - It has been a week since I hit the wall and took off from the computer, and I'm back, at least sort of. The combination of a lingering illness, exhaustion from trying to finish the book, stress from a book not doing what I wanted to and just way too much time in front of the computer hit me all at once, and I really needed to step away for a while.
My wonderful editor at New Society (and the kind marketing director who I also dumped my stress on) have been really nice about my melt-down, and we're talking now about a new deadline and release date for the book. I'm very grateful…
sastyk | March 16, 2010Hi Folks - I've been under the weather physically and stressed out mentally, overwhelmed by a book that isn't coming together and generally pretty unhappy recently, and I have decided it behooves me to take a vacation from the blog. So no posts for a least a week. I'm talking with my publisher about how to handle the book situation, but mostly, I need to get away from my computer for a while. Back when I've got my mental health back. And apologies to anyone I owe email or attention to - I will write back soon!
Sharon
sastyk | February 9, 2010I have nothing to do with the recent kerfuffle about civility and comment policies that has been meandering through science blogs, but a large quantity of posts on the subject on a largeish number of blogs has, I admit, gotten me thinking about my own comment policies. Since I often get queries, often in personal email, about my comment policies, particularly why I let X or Y person say what they do, I thought it might be useful to make my comment policy more explicit.
My basic philosophy towards commenters is that I don't censor and I don't ban except under extreme provocation. In over 5…
sastyk | January 11, 2010I've never had so much trouble writing a book before. Depletion and Abundance was hard, but it was so thrilling that someone wanted me to write a book that I could barely see straight from excitement. A Nation of Farmers was a project I had been passionate about for a long time, and the collaboration with Aaron was truly inspiring. Independence Days seemed like such a logical next step - help people who got the basic idea of needing to eat better do it year-round. I did three books in two years, and by the end of the marathon I was exhausted. And then came the idea of doing a book on…
sastyk | January 4, 2010I've always meant to write a post with this title, but somehow never got around to it. Then I saw The-always-amazing-Zuska's latest about the way that Erma Bombeck's name is being used to derogate people as being unserious and tied somehow to domestic life. Somehow I hadn't realized that "Bombeck" was an insult - although it shouldn't have surprised me, given our deep social contempt for women and women's traditional work (the subject of most of Erma Bombeck's humor.) Not that I needed another reason to be bored and annoyed by the eternally over-rated Steve Pinker, but here's one.
This…