Global Crisis

This is the 500th post on How Did We Get Into This Mess? I started the blog as a place to dump essays that I couldn't sell, as I was new to freelancing in May of 2013, and caught up in the rush of public writing. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and pitched and landed about 1 in 10, leaving me with a lot of extra prose lying around. And so, I started this blog. My rate of successful pitches is more like 3 of 5 now, because I have relationships with editors and I got better at knowing what kinds of pitches find homes. And yet, the blog continues and has become its own thing. About 1000 people a day come here, a number that though small compared to commercial sites, seems preposterously grand. Thank you for reading, commenting, sharing. I will continue to do my best to say interesting things in clear ways.

Yesterday, my book came out (this is the publisher's website). Below I offer a few thoughts about connections between my scholarly work and my public writing.

Book Selfie!

Here's the blurb:

In Sacred Plunder, David Perry argues that plundered relics, and narratives about them, played a central role in shaping the memorial legacy of the Fourth Crusade and the development of Venice’s civic identity in the thirteenth century. After the Fourth Crusade ended in 1204, the disputes over the memory and meaning of the conquest began. Many crusaders faced accusations of impiety, sacrilege, violence, and theft. In their own defense, they produced hagiographical narratives about the movement of relics—a medieval genre called translatio—that restated their own versions of events and shaped the memory of the crusade. The recipients of relics commissioned these unique texts in order to exempt both the objects and the people involved with their theft from broader scrutiny or criticism. Perry further demonstrates how these narratives became a focal point for cultural transformation and an argument for the creation of the new Venetian empire as the city moved from an era of mercantile expansion to one of imperial conquest in the thirteenth century.

Some of my public writing is, of course, about medieval history. Crusades, popes, saints, medieval-like rhetoric from Sarah Palin, Christopher Columbus - these are all topics about which I've written essays that emerge directly from my expertise in medieval history. I am honored to be a public medieval historian and try to represent my profession well.

But really all my writing is based on the habits of mind I've developed as a scholar and a teacher. I gather data, I organize it, I pick it apart, I generate a thesis, and I try to explicate it as clearly as possible given the word-count restrictions and the venue. Moreover, thanks to my academic training I know what it's like to build a body of knowledge and then work it hard. I have no background in disability, media criticism, or law enforcement - but several years into these beats, I'm beginning to feel pretty grounded in all of them. Most all, just like with my medieval history, I have a sense of what I don't know. As any scholar recognizes, knowing one's limitations is critical to growth, to collaboration, to direct future studies. My reading list is immense, and that's a good thing.

There's something more direct, too. I write about memory, narrative, and language. I'm interested in what people did and do, but equally engaged with how we remember the past, how we represent ourselves and our histories in image, word, and text, and I believe such questions of representation matter. That's what my book's about - a group of stories, all of which present meaningful fictions about a recent event, and their consequences. It's also why I write about language and disability, language and gender, and related issues. The words we use to shape our reality, and the ways in our reality is revealed by the words we use, both consume my interest.

So thank you for reading. My book is now a real thing in the world. You could use it as a coaster. You could use it to squash spiders. You could even read it. And, of course, I'd be grateful if you bought it or (for academics) asked your library to do so.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

One of my frustrations with disability writing is that it's often perceived as a niche, and a small one at that. Instead, it's us. All of us. Not all of us at once. Not all of us now. But disability is a fundamental component of the human condition. And of course disability is also diversity, rich in its various forms. Studying disability forces us to shed our narrow normative ideas of what normal is and isn't. My maxim: Disability is not a niche.

But that's how disability seems to most people, especially my fellow abled folks. It's a struggle for any writer who cares. It's a existential struggle, though, for people with disabilities.

I have some further thoughts on writing about disability, specifically about being an abled writer about disability. Sparked by this post from Criptiques, which is very nice to me, but which also raises the hard questions of how to make disability stories matter.

“I am regularly faced with the dilemma of how to make stories about disabilities resonate outside the disability community” journalist David Perry, aka@Lollardfish tweeted yesterday. Perry is one of the few nondisabled freelancers I know of who regularly reports on disability issues in major media outlets and I greatly respect his work even if I disagree with him occasionally. (He also tweeted that in terms of the negative reactions nondisabled people have toward disabled people, pity was preferable to indifference, which I’m not so sure about.) That aside, I’m a big fan of his and am happy to see a savvy nondisabled writer “get” or even care about disability culture and politics without expecting a pat on the back for it.
It’s so rare. Like, a blizzard in July rare, or a disabled character in a movie played by an actual disabled person rare.

I am overwhelmed by this, so much so that I am almost too embarrassed to share it. But this writing beat, especially the ones that involve abuse and murder, it's a hard beat. I'm going to take this praise and say thank you, in public. Part of self-care is accepting praise as fuel to keep working. This ... this makes me want to work harder.

More importantly, I want to use this moment to re-iterate my rules for allies. I write about them a lot, I think they apply broadly when writing about inequality when one is privileged, but they certainly apply to my disability writing.

1. Listen.
2. Remember it's not about you (it's about people with disabilities)
3. Remember it's sometimes about you (abled people need to be engaged. See "not a niche" above).
4. It's mostly not about you, though.
5. Don't expect gratitude for doing the right thing.

There are other rules - don't tone police, accept anger even when directed at you, and most of all, accept criticism graciously and try to learn from it (that's part of #5). They all cycle back to #1) listen. I am going to screw up. I expect you to call me on it. I hope you'll call me on it. And then I'll try to do better.

This especially matters in the disability world because while I am abled, which is a problem, I am part of the disability community as that most problematic of creatures - a parent.

Parents are a problem. I am a problem. Parents do a couple of things. One, as Ari Ne'eman tweeted we feel free to share our children's worst moments in public, even with national media. Two, we speak for our children, especially non-verbal ones, assuming our wishes are their wishes. We reinforce disability hierarchies. I try to be hyper-vigilant on this in my own conduct.

These are just proto-thoughts about writing, thinking about how to form arguments and tell stories that include, build empathy, build understanding, effect change. Overall, though, I don't have an answer to Criptiques' "non-disabled dilemma." It's such a core challenge. If we can erode that wall and make disability stories matter more broadly, I think a lot of other changes could follow.

What worries me, of course, is that's not the trend. The trend is the other direction, towards eliminationist rhetoric and exclusion. Ignoring ableism. Casual dismissal of people with disabilities as real humans. The easy acceptance of a false "normal." We've got  a lot of work to do.

♫I enjoy being a man!♫ Says the author of this piece on academic dads. http://t.co/ZLHhkltDDA
— Karen Kelsky (@ProfessorIsIn) May 19, 2014

What do we, as writers, owe other writers?

I've been thinking about this in the context of my "talking while privileged" argument. In general, when making arguments about privilege and power, I try to be gracious when people with less privilege don't like what I say. I thank them for reading. I listen to their critique. I think about what I might learn from it.

What might I learn from this, other than to be angry that another writer decided to reduce my prose to this little la-la-la insult and send it out to her thousands of twitter followers?

1.Sometimes, it's ok to be angry. I don't know where Kelsky and I lie on the spectra of power and privilege. She has a much bigger profile and a big business weighing in on academic matters. On the other hand, when writing about gender, I try to accept criticism from women with grace (much as when writing about academic labor, I try to accept criticism from adjuncts with grace). But this is a mean little dig, it's not seeking me out with a mention, but I know my article and it's from a fellow writer for the Chronicle. I get to be angry. 

2. I am a man writing about feminism and fatherhood. It's going to raise hackles, people from both the left and the right are going to have visceral, quick, reactions and it's important that I don't get angry. 

I actually think Kelsky might like my essay about using my privilege as a father to help dismantle my privilege as a father and yet create a better working environment for both men and women. You cannot make someone read you closely, so I am going to have work on my early sign-posting to derail this gut reaction. When you've been dealing with sexism, as I'm sure Kelsky has, when you dwell on the internet with its misogyny and mansplaining, it's little wonder that readers like her have a gut, negative, reaction to my writing. I believe, though, because I'm an optimist, that I can win some people over by just writing better.

I also know this. This little barb stung. It stung much more than the endless parade of homophobic comments from right-wing trolls, the cries of gender betrayal from MRAs, or the clueless, "everything's fine for me!" from other straight white dads. It stung because I think we're on the same side here, but I am coming across as the enemy.

But then you pluck the barb out, put on a bandaid, and get back to writing. It's going to be a busy day of essay writing, working in the yard, and playing with my son. Enjoy Friday.

From http://mimiandeunice.com/2011/01/05/killer-of-scribes/

A week or so ago, on Twitter, Virginia Heffernan introduced me to the word "hyperlexic" in the context of her piece on the speed-reading app Spritz (which Bogost has addressed here). She talked about the way we  generally valorize certain kinds of reading, like novels, and dismiss others, like texts or Facebook.

However one assigns value, there's no question we are a hyperlexic society. More people are reading more words than has ever happened in human history, and that's interesting.

The flip side of hyperlexic is hyperscribal (or hyperscriptoral to use the analogous Latin form to "lex," I think).

We're all writing. I don't even mean the kinds of performative writing on blogs and beyond, but that we have become a society that communicates via the written word. It started with letter writing, email spurring a rebirth of epistolary arts, but now extends throughout society, from the flip OMW to the urgent TORNADO WARNING on our ubiquitous devices

I grew up in Nashville, moving there when I was 10. It's an interesting town for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that it's filled with poets. Throughout the city, the people you meet seem "normal," but late at night they are sitting in their apartments and houses, holding guitars, trying to find rhymes and rhythms to talk about love, loss, substance abuse, desire, and identity (Thank God I'm A Country Boy). Throughout the city, you find people embedded in careers across class lines, though concentrated in service industries, who are writing songs, performing when they can find the courage, looking for that break.

You might say this of New York and L.A. too, but those are giant metropolises in a way that Nashville is not. In "The Thing Called Love," a 1993 Boganovich film about Nashville, there's a moment in which Trisha Yearwood is in a police station, and the police officer (played by Fred Thompson) is singing at her trying to pitch a song to her as she's going in to fill out her paperwork.. It's totally realistic.

Poetry and music, much of it cliched and commercial to be sure, infuses the city and changes its culture.

I offer this anecdote about Nashville not because I'm a booster - I haven't been back since I was 21 or so - or to boost my country music career (I play driving Tennessee Irish music though in my two bands: The Tooles and Mulligan Stew). For me, thinking about Nashville helps me process what I see going on in society.

We're all writing. We're all trying to communicate important things via written word over spoken word. sure, a lot of it is "bad" writing, it's cliched, it's unexamined, it's "Do you like me, check yes or no?" But it's writing and its ubiquitous. That has to have an impact on society. Maybe, like Bogost suggests, reading is already dead. Maybe, like Heffernan offers, reading is reading is reading.

Here's what I know - As a teacher, I'm going to skew optimistic and try to level the hyperscribal and hyperlexic elements of society to improve learning, to whatever extent possible. 

As a teacher, I constantly think about how to leverage our students "natural" social media use, their natural writing, their natural forms of communication - and I use nature in the context of things they are likely to do without being instructed to do so by the teacher.

Here, for example, is an essay on using Facebook in the Classroom. I expect it to work for about another 3 years, tops. If I taught art history, you bet I've have an instagram account and try to get students to follow it. I giggle about snapchat (folks, your lecture notes will be on for the next 5 minutes), but surely a more creative teacher than I has figured out a way to leverage its temporary nature to try and enhance learning. Twitter is a natural tool for forming pathways of communication in a large class (here's a piece by my grad advisor and some students on its use in a World History class).

All of this is to say that if students are reading more and writing more, we can "Go where they are," my motto, and try to move them to where they want to be. We don't have to say that all writing and all reading is good writing and reading. But it is, if you'll excuse the tautology, writing and reading. And it's new.

I have more say on this topic, especially about the way that medievalists and early modernists, people straddling the emergence of print culture in the West, can help us understand what's going on in our society and what these changes might mean for the future of reading and writing.

But having written 800 words before breakfast, I need to go make some food then get to work on my "real" writing. I'm "writing" a "talk" on narratives about objects across the Medieval-Renaissance divide in Venice.

Being hyperscribal is hard on the carpals but good for the brain.

In the last two weeks, I have received a half dozen requests for advice from newish writers looking to expand their readership or break into more formal publication. They all ask me roughly the same questions - how did you do it? Does blogging help?

Unfortunately to those seeking my advice, the true answer is that I have nothing useful to tell you.

I have no advice on how to break in, how to get your word out there, whether blogging helps, whether you need a twitter account, whether instagram is better than pinterest, whether Facebook is dead, how to pitch, how to get paid, how to get noticed, how to get on TV, how to get published, how to make a living, or how to not die as a writer.

I stumbled into writing, driven by irrational overconfidence typical to my set that my opinions would matter, first placing a few op-eds, exploiting the randomness of a global event relevant to my medieval expertise, then starting this blog.

Did blogging help? Has it worked to make me a more successful writer? More importantly, will it help you?

I have no idea.

My only advice for aspiring writers is this - if you blog, make sure the blogging itself sustains you even if no one is listening. Make sure that when you blog, you are writing things that you want to write, that you want to get better at writing, so that the iterative process of homing in on your core arguments makes you better at them. The blogging must satisfy you because surely, you will write brilliant essays that you love, and but 25 people will read it, or 10, or 5, or no one.

If the writing feeds you, sharpens you, gets you ready to say the things you want to say more effectively, then blog. If you find yourself writing only to get readers or make money of advertisements, well, I have no objection to commercializing your prose, I wish I were better at it, but you're doing something very different than I (I have a great day job; I have privilege) and I can't tell you whether blogging is a good idea.

So for writers, I have no real advice.

But for you, dear reader, I do have some advice. Share Good Work.

Every RT, every Facebook share, every email - these things make all the difference to writers, especially small timers like me, and even more to people just starting out. If you read something you like, share it.

I get around 100 views per post. That's nothing in the world of social media. But when about 10 people RT or share on Facebook, I get around 200 readers. Double! You have a huge impact for a writer like me.

Now think about the blog that has only a few dozen readers and the kind of impact you can have? The blogs of these fascinating people seeking me out for advice sound wonderful, but to grow they'll need readers who share.

There's a problem in charitable giving in which people are too ready to give to the big ticket players. Big donors like to give to Harvard, but a fraction of the money at a smaller school would transform lives. Big donors like to give to the mega museums or even, dare I say, symphonies (my sister is the concertmaster of the Omaha symphony. Everyone should give it money!) - rather than to smaller arts institutions. Whereas a few thousand dollars might save a small institution or endow a scholarship, such money just vanishes into the vast pool at the huge place. There's no impact for the small or medium donor, but still they give.

I see some of the same forces at work with media. Think of whatever giants in the blogging world that you like, people with tens of thousands of readers a day. They probably write good stuff and it's good to RT good work, but spreading the word of a blog so that a piece gets 10,020 readers instead of 10,000 isn't such a big deal. But raise a post from 200 to 220, well, that's significant.

Sharing, of course, is not like giving money. You could share 20 posts just as easily as you could 1. But my sense is that most people don't. Most people don't want to spam their friends with lots of links in a given day, but maybe just post one or two to Facebook, maybe tweet something every hour. People treat sharing as something they have to budget - and they probably do. Think about spending some of that budget by sharing someone just starting, someone just finding their voice.

Comment, too, if you can. Most new writers (me for sure) love comments, even just a "great piece!" Let us know you at least scrolled to the end.

What I'm saying is this - if you read a post you like, seriously consider sharing it. Share from the least visible up. I think about the voices of women, people of color, the disabled, or writers who are LGBTQ. Share the people who amplify such voices (that's what I try to do). Share people with fewer readers instead of those with more.

But mostly, just share.

And then maybe I can tell writers that yes, blogging is a good use of their time.