State of the Union (2020)

I felt compelled to note that many of the links on the right side of the web page no longer work. This is sad.
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You need to ask Bradford Cox or somebody if you want access to Deerhunter's blog.

Mario Batali Voice is defunct, redirecting to a page that simply transmogrifies the blog header into a
domain name (SteveAlbinicooks.whatimadeforheather.com, or something).

Dickson has not updated his Working Marathon Runner blog since 2015.

Daniel has not updated Adventures of a Gastrophile since 2012.

Jill has not updated Bitchin' Vegan Kitchen since 2011.

Even Portastatic (which to be fair has mostly been supplanted by Superchunk/Mac solo) is apparently finished since 2012 (CMJ was still a thing).

THINK AND GROW POOR and DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME, thankfully, are still available.

Owing to the massive difficulty of attracting anyone's attention (absent schadenfreude), I should stop trying to produce content that many no doubt find spurious.

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Moving onto the second list of links, Daily Routines was turned into a book. We should all be so lucky. The promised land for the majority of us content producers.

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing is - pretty active! Last post was made almost one year ago (7/19/19). It is arguably more active than Flying Houses. I will need to revisit this soon.

Nathan Bransford -- really? Updated his blog yesterday? He wins this contest.

Paper Cuts, the NY Times blog, should actually be removed, because it just links to The New York Times Art section, but I guess just going to that page that doesn't take up 1/10 articles for the month.

Pub Rants ALSO WINS!  Updated July 6, 2020.

Book Cannibal also stopped since 2012.

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Things have changed since 2008. Are blogs still the best way to reach a bigger audience with longer form writing, absent a job/contract/respected platform to do said writing? I don't know, but I have been attempting to crowd-source/focus-group/revise-collaborate my WIP via Google Docs with an ever-growing list of users authorized to comment.

And nobody comments. Nobody wants to read it. So this ultra-efficient feedback device is--for me at least--misbegotten.

I had an idea for a social media platform designed for writers and other artists, that would narrowly focus on each users' projects, for feedback, criticism and advice. I also once had an idea for a reality TV series framed around an MFA-creative-writing class. But the act of writing is not inherently interesting, they told me. I beg to differ--there could easily be a way to make it interesting--but it appears most people just don't want to read as much, they'd rather listen to audiobooks most of the time.  Or podcasts.

Instagram has emerged as a sort of successor to the so-called blogosphere. Just one of the many reasons this blog has been "retired." Instagram is very good for visual artists and dubious, at best, for writers. Text on Facebook does not do much for me. My engagement rate, if you will, is much higher on Instagram. My posts on Facebook are more or less completely ignored, except by a handful of friends that have apparently not muted or unfollowed me. This blog has been about as successful as my Facebook account in terms of branding and eyeballs.

And yet, while we have not read nearly as much as we would have liked during Quarantine, there was Let's Play Two and now, currently, Dept. of Speculation. I'd like to write about both of these. So stay tuned.

And please, if you would like to help me with the WIP as a guinea-pig reader, please reach out. Thank you and be safe.