Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
Do Literary Writers Succeed in Digital Publishing?
Do literary writers find readers and make money in digital publishing? Not yet. Porter Anderson writes:
Literary fiction, by contrast, has no content guidelines, makes no promise of one topic or another, varies vastly in style and form. Not surprisingly, then, it’s perennially difficult to define without a fight. Claims of serious intent and/or artistic achievement may be asserted by fans of literary fiction. Its detractors love to charge that it focuses on language over plot; “navel gazing” poetics over entertainment; precious reflection over storytelling.
But Jane Friedman says you can see some successful writing if you look beyond the book length form. She says, “Thoughtful, intelligent ‘literary’ work is doing quite well digitally if you step away from book-length or novel publishing and into journalism-driven or nonfiction-driven publishing. Most of the following outlets and platforms include some fiction, too, just not a lot.” These platforms include: Byliner, Atavist, Medium/Matter, Symbolia, The Magazine, Storybird, and Hi.
In general, she says, people don’t want to read short stories or poems on no-name sites like Brandywine Books. Big name sites, like The Poetry Foundation, get readers, but not others. I think the field may still be in flux as more readers read everything onscreen. I also think literary writers should reflect on the poverty of our recent literary traditions and develop a new perspective based more on Shakespeare and Milton than on Freud and Beckett.
Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay Apologizes, Offers Context
The lead singer of Jars of Clay, one of my favorite bands, cannonballed the Twitter pool repeatedly this week with commits and questions on gay marriage. Dan Haseltine asked if ruling out gay marriage was really as bad as many say it is. I’m tempted to reenact the drama for you. I got caught up in it somewhat. I saw Dan’s tweet splash down: “I don’t particularly care about Scriptures stance on what is “wrong.” I care more about how it says we should treat people,” and my heart sank.
But yesterday, Dan explained the context of his tweets, what he was trying to say, and how he messed it all up. He says he came from a panel discussion on gay marriage in Australia last week where many things were said that provoked him. He hadn’t thought about it much before, so on Twitter, not the best platform for this, he wanted to ask questions outside of his own box, to assume he didn’t have all the answers and to wonder where his blind spots were, if any. And he said things that easily misrepresent his views.
It’s encouraging. I like this guy and his music. One of his recent songs says we “don’t know enough about love, so we make it up.” It seems to call our current sexual chaos into question. Some of us talk love but we don’t know anything about it. In one of his books, Jared C. Wilson notes that God is love, but love is not God. We can’t define love however we feel is right and then say that’s god. It doesn’t work that way.
I feel we’re in a similar situation with homosexuality and the civil marriage debate. Continue reading Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay Apologizes, Offers Context
Two Authors To Write 30 Days Live On Podcast
Indie Authors Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant have obtained funding for a live writing exposition through their podcast. “‘Fiction Unboxed’ is a publishing experiment. Platt and Truant are full-time authors, determined to prove with their Kickstarter project that well-told stories can bloom from excitement and inspiration, rather than from a ‘true artist’s’ tortured soul.”
They are doing this, naturally, by torturing themselves for a month.
Apropos of nothing, here’s an audio skit.
Like Saying It Was Magic
Dr. Vern Poythress has written a book on chance and the sovereignty of God. In fact, that’s the title. He says he was thinking about one of his previous books, Redeeming Science
Evolutionary naturalism is the view that all forms of life came about through merely material processes, with no guiding purpose at any point. But the narrow study of material causes can never legitimately make a pronouncement about God’s involvement or God’s purposes in the processes. And scientific study ought not say that there can be no exceptions, that is, events in which God acts in surprising ways.
Many pronouncements made these days in the name of science use the successes of science and the prestige of science as a platform from which to advocate the principle that there are no purposes and that God is absent. But such pronouncements represent a form of philosophy; the advocates of materialistic philosophy are importing their own assumptions into their interpretation of the scientific data.
Many of them say they will entertain any theory that explains the data well, but we have seen plenty of examples where this has not been true at all. Even the suggestion that a god of some kind may explain the patterns seen in the data is enough to raise the ire of Darwin’s watchdogs. That’s what the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Friday Fight
Sons of Norway demonstrate fighting with axes. I think they need some dance music, the way they sway around.
Keeping Quiet about Creation
I don’t think I wrote here that I thought the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate was less than great. The fact that you can still watch it is impressive, but the debate itself disappointed me. I thought Ham posed a question he did not answer. Though Nye appeared to be prepared to go toe-to-toe with him on specific scientific claims, Ham didn’t want to wrestle for some reason. The next day, his group announced that he would answer all of Nye’s objections that evening, but I want to know why he didn’t do it during the debate. It’s a day too late, sir.
A few years ago, I visited The Creation Museum in Kentucky with my family and enjoyed it. My only complaint at the time was the occasional straw man you saw characterizing evolutionists. I would have been much more impressed if certain presentations had presented teachers of Darwinian evolution as serious scientific people who could handle the data. Other than that, it was a great museum. But we need more than this to overcome the big problem as Joel Belz presents it today:
“The big problem more and more is that those of us who profess to be believers have to such a large extent joined them in their silence. So theoretically, we are still creationists. But practically speaking, we don’t let our allegiance to that great truth affect us much in everyday life.”
Science is not a godless field of study, and Christian need not cede it to them. As Dr. Poythress explains in his booklet, Did Adam Exist? Darwin’s model of evolution is only one valid way of interpreting the data–not the best way and not the only way. Interpretations that include God’s designing hand are also valid.
Shakespeare’s Dictionary?
Two booksellers are making a case for the authorship of notes in John Baret‘s An Alvearie or Quadruple Dictionarie, published in 1580. They hope to prove that the marginalia is Shakespeare’s. They have scanned the 300-page dictionary to open it up to the world for review and possible help.
Poetry, Brutality In the News
Austin Kleon shows us how he makes his newspaper marker poems. “Creativity is subtraction,” he demonstrates. I like this, but I think I lean toward more random, more crazy poetic expressions, like this dadaist poem I collected from the blogosphere of 2006.
“This bosses the suggests think Geographic
Washington dogg eu em gasolina
Companhia many book towards Down
Weman probably its USS Neverdock
To haven’t you’re difference am curriculum
first”
You can’t beat that, I tell you.
Also found in the news, much like the marker poems, is this blowback to an NYPD twitter campaign. They asked New Yorkers to post photos of #myNYPD. Did shots of smiles and helpful cops dominate the responses? No, they got more of takedowns and wrestling.
A Meditative Video of Ceramic Masters at Work
Video: Ceramic Masters at work. This is beautiful. What marvelous work.