My Writerly Blog

I see a lot of proposed business models floating around, blog posts on what works and what doesn't for making a living off of storytelling online. So far, I really like the idea of "pay for what you like" - it's not only an impetus to produce quality work, but it's a direct feedback mechanism for the author. Essentially, the digital author offers content for free, but asks for donations from those who like the work. Novelr has some posts related to the theory and practice of this model. I've participated in this from a consumer standpoint: I download podcasts from PodCastle, EscapePod, and PodioBooks, and I use Duotrope as a resource for short story markets. All of these services are free, but I have given donations to all of them in appreciation and support of the quality of service they provide. And this was before I started my digital fiction crusade, before I recognized what the creators were doing, before I understood it from their point of view.

No, there's not much chance I could keep up with things enough to post a weekly update every week. But I wanted to pull together a collection of the things I've been looking at and reading lately. Please add on to it in the comments if you know of something I might enjoy! Chris Joseph's blog Flight Paths Drunken Boat The Iowa Review Dreaming Methods ( Consensus Trance is the most recent, and it's great fun. I particularly love the way the author has incorporated nonlinear and ludic elements in a primarily linear story.) Net Art Commissions on Turbulence ELO's Electronic Literature Collection e-Fiction Book Club Novelr Digital Fiction Show And a short story on the web that I absolutely loved: "Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four Hour Book Store" by Robin Sloan It's interesting to me that electronic literature is already splitting off into a gajillion splinter genres: visual novels, ludic stories, digital poetry, twitter fiction, serials, Flash fiction (

Okay, technically not really, but if this blog is evidence, I've been comatose from either natural or artificial causes for the last month. In reality, I have: Revised my online novel communities paper (and it was accepted!) Attended a wedding in the States (no comment) Presented the above paper at the MeCCSA postgrad conference (poorly attended session, but whatever) Applied for umpteen jobs and one grant (the only one I can apply for) to drum up money for this year. It's not looking promising, kids. Attended a workshop on academic papers...taught at a 3rd grade level. Or something similar. Disappointing. Cleaned up administrative messes in the grade reporting for almost all the classes I taught. So far, the errors have not been mine, but it's hard to tell when every school in the uni does it differently. Started a gig creating video tutorials for graphics software. So far, I've done vids for Adobe Flash. I like this gig. Too bad it's not ongoing. My supervi