A Memorable Fancy

This somewhat disjointed reflection on writing is sparked by a discussion at fimoculous whether one should write for free.  The question revolves mainly around journalism, but extends to other media forms as well.  This leads us to Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” which I have not read but which Malcolm Gladwell reviews and critiques for the New Yorker. The idea behind Free is that, in the case of writing, there is an abundance, not a scarcity, of information, and with music it is difficult to impossible to contain “piracy,” so in both cases a new approach becomes necessary – that of giving stuff away and making money off of the ancillary markets it creates. This means a lot of free labor up front with the hope that proper marketing or attention will recoup the time/work spent. Some more established musicians (David Bowie, NIN, Radiohead) are doing just that: giving the music away for free and making money on touring and merch. [Since I started composing this post,  Chris Brogan and Mark Cuban have also weighed in on this issue, talking about brand identity, and using free writing to build recognition (although, frankly, I don't get Cuban's argument about content being free but not freely-distributed).]

None of this seems particularly new to me, as we have been doing something similar in academia all along (although I suppose the stakes are different in many ways). I write for free here in my blog and in other spaces, and, ultimately, most academic writing is done for little or no compensation. Academic books rarely make much money for the authors.  The idea in academia, I think, is that one will gain social or cultural capital with which to garner speaking gigs, teaching posts, promotions,tenure,  lectureships, grants and fellowships and the like. In this way, academic writing straddles the line between journalism, where one writes for pay, and the music/media industry where people try to get recognized in order to captialize on that recognition, to get discovered in some sense, albeit in a much smaller system.

Mark Bousquet has a good take on free labor in academia, and the trick of getting people to do more because the love their jobs. After all the salary comparisons in the first half of the article, he links the current jounralism crisis to long-standing prevailing practices in academia,  including having students do a significant portion of the work, which then endangers their own survival after graduation. He looks at current academic trends of free and cheap labor not as a special casejust  because we “love” our jobs, but as a typical of a growing tendency in other fields. Taken from this angle, it’s not free products that  pose a problem, but the free labor that institutions extract and expect to run and profit.

(thanks to Melissa Gregg at  Home Cooked Theory for link to and insightful discussion of Bousquet’s piece)

Here are some Sunday morning links foryou, many of them local.

NPR has been runnin a lot of stories about Detroit latel in their “Remaking Michigan, Retooling Detroit” series. Of particular interest is Detroit’s Big Screen Image Problem, Why Can’t Detroit Cash in on its Music Scene? and Why I Love Detroit, and This Sculpture. Last Monday on “The Story” Dick Gordon interviewed Jerry Balanger, owner of Park Bar in Detroit, who has a very interesting perspective on business in Detroit, including a fun alternate currency he invented.

Speaking of alternate currencies. here’s an article about it by Douglas Rushkoff, who also has a show and podcast called “The Media Squat” on WFMU.

Back to local, I just discovered this blog page on Wayne State’s site. I looked at a few, and they are interesting, but this is puzzling to me. I don’t know who these undergrads are or how they were selected to blog on Wayne’s main page. There is no “about” section and no contact info for the administrator. What is this?

HASTAC is hosting a discussion called Blogging and Twetting Academia, which has not yet had a ton of activity, but what is there is interesting.

I find getting started to be the hardest thing about writing. On a larger scale, when beginning a project or chapter, sitting down, figuring it out, and starting to write is terribly difficult. On a more daily level, the same holds true. I know what I should write today, and have the research done. I get up extra early with most of the day in front of me. And I do something else. An hour goes by and I still haven’t started. Most of the time I simply get distracted and next thing I know it’s lunch time. One thing I have found about the dissertation process is that continuity is important. It is important to read, research, and, most importantly, write every day in order to keep momentum going. Otherwise, you lose the thread of the project and have to reacquaint yourself with it, wasting valuable time.  But getting started remains difficult.

I do the right things. I have given up excessive teaching requirements. I have a quiet space dedicated to writing. I get up early. But I take a long time to get started, and then I lose it completely. Here are some of the things I have found get in my way, and what I know I should do about them, but often fail to do.

1. Social networking. The first thing I often do in the morning is check twitter, then facebook or RSS feeds, all of which lead to endless clicking and commenting and socializing. Solution: either save it for later, or put a firm deadline on it. Use these things as a reward.
2. Blog reading. I might argue that reading blogs in RSS is more important than the others to my work because of the number of blogs I read that relate to my research, but I should schedule that for a certain time after morning writing.
3. Cleaning or tweaking my workspace. When I sit down to write, nothing seems more important than making more coffee, doing dishes, or rearranging the desk. I need to resist this urge, or schedule 20 minutes in the afternoon for such things.
4. Teaching /other work stuff. Sometimes you simply have to grade, or respond to student emails or prep for class. I usually save this stuff for late afternoon, after I am burned out on other things. I also try to postpone responding to emails until a set time, and do them all at once, instead of as they come in.
5. Worrying about the rest of the day. Sometimes I obsessively schedule and reschedule the rest of my day, including social obligations, tutoring and other work. Again, this needs to be compartmentalized.
6. Napping. I’ve been really good about this lately, and there’s nothing wrong with a quick 20 minute nap. Problem is, I’ll bring a book with me and read for awhile (again, tricking myself into thinking I’m working by reading for pleasure), and the 20 min nap is really an hour.

Most of these are related, and I know other people share these and have others to add. The solution, it seems, is to come up with a strict schedule and keep to it, and turn off the Wifi while working.  My laptop even has a little button for that, as shown at the top of the post.

Does anyone have any other ideas or just want to complain? I suspect a lot of people have this problem no matter what they do or what they are working on. What about those of you who don’t, who are always successfully juggling several projects? How do you do it?

For April Fool’s day, Molly and I (and later, Aaron) played a little prank  over Facebook and twitter, which I will outline for your enjoyment here.

It all started when I woke up with a great idea and texted molly: “Let’s break up over twitter.”

The following conversation ensues:

Meanwhile, Aaron has his own little prank going on:

…and he tweets thusly:

and i reply:

and some playful banter takes place about Aaron and me shacking up, in which Molly gets indignant and I make Milk references, &c.

Over at Facebook, I decide to break up with Molly. Here’s part of  the wall-to-wall. Remember you have to read reverse chrono, that is, bottom to top.

Meanwhile, we both changed our relationship statuses.

At this point, we both started getting concerned messages inquiring about our status. The conversation continued:

Note: I also posted that top post  about social networks((of which I am quite proud)) on twitter.

And then things started getting a little weird. Our prank and Aaron’s merged.

Not to be outdone, Molly also found a new partner and a new lifestyle:

But, in the end, things didn’t work out and we decided to give it another go:

APRIL FOOLS!

U of M press is going all digital for monographs. The comments on this article indicate, predictably, that some people think it’s a great idea and others think it’s the end of the publishing world as we know it. I am in favor of digital publication, if it means that books will be cheaper and/or more will be published. The article notes that the latter should be true, while the former will be true at least for libraries.

I like books. I like the feel of paper and, like many, I am in the habit of writing in margins. But I also hate moving boxes of the things every time I move. Reading onscreen can be tiresome, and not always practical. I can’t bring my pdfs into the woods with me on a camping trip. Also, reading onscreen sometimes hurts my eyes. On the other hand, I can’t search my paper books for key terms. I would love to see a device like the Kindle that allows me to write on it and save my notes.

I think Michigan is making a wise choice, publishing electronically but giving the option to print-on-demand if you want an actual book. One thing I worry about is the idea of licensing books to libraries, etc. When a library buys a book, it gets to keep it, but what if the license expires on an e-copy, or the publisher wants to change the terms radically? All the books from that press just disappear for all intents and purposes. I also worry about losing access to individual books if I lose affiliation with my university library. In the end it comes down to the price scheme for the individual user, both for e-books and for print-on-demand. What do you think?