In Which I Reboot My Blog

Most blogs die after a few posts, and this one has been no different. It might be depressing to learn exactly what number of personal sites launched into the internet can actually support life, and how many drift off without power, cold and out-of-date. Perhaps the most significant quality of Web 2.0 is its power to make people very excited about new things for very short periods of time.

That said, I can also say that I’ve been looking for an excuse to reboot this blog for a long time now. I originally started it because I wanted a place to post things I write, and to have a base to which I could refer when I talked with other people about writing. I’d planned to post drafts and selections from my fiction writing here, but I learned that doing so can sometimes (in the case of short stories, anyway) be construed as “first publication.” And that’s a problem because, you know, $$$, which isn’t much in the first place with short stories. Not that I would know; rejection is free.

But still I’m drawn to the focus I set up as “writing, criticism, and light scholarship.” That covers a lot of ground, sure. It’s imprecise. It is quite possibly pretentious. But I think the main problem with it is that it establishes a one-way field: after all, what I’m really announcing is *my* writing, criticism, and light etc. It’s kind of like I’ve established a magazine full of Me. I’m not entirely sure there’s a market for that.

And, anyway, I think it would better to fashion this site as more a crossroads than a cul-de-sac. To do that, for a while I’m going to focus on other people’s web sites, ones that have been useful for me in pursuing my own interests, and especially the really enjoyable ones: science fiction, gaming, what’s funny, and, yes, even writing, criticism, and light scholarship. Heavy scholarship I will leave to the academic libraries.

So, then. Welcome! Next up, I'll begin exploring some sites that I've found usefully unusual as a writer, a gamer, and long-time denizen of the Web.  This is what the internet looks like from here.