I am responding here to the comments in Kelly's post below:
First, let me clarify that my use of "hollow gauntlet" isn't in any way a response to Kelly's posting, or to Jo Walton's. It's refers to the inherent idiocy of Hendrix's delivery of his position--which was framed in an exceedingly confrontational way. As to myself, I already do post stuff up for people to read. Not entire novels, granted, but stories now and again, poems for sure. But was I planning to post anything just now? Not particularly. And I'm not going to hurry up and prepare something because Hendrix mouthed off, or because people got ticked about it, either.
I'm just saying that Hendrix's post was seething with unexpressed anger and he decided to take this out on people that he disagrees with, which happened to be a very poor move. The man's a writer. I don't for a second believe that he didn't know what he was typing when he used "wiki-cliki, sick-o-fancy" and "webscabs", and ended with "Have a nice life." That's about the biggest "#^@% You!" the guy could have put in there, particularly given the frame that it was his departing from office speech.
And let's be fair. I read plenty of piss and vinegar in some of the posts suggesting the reprisal of the "technopeasants". The entire idea of a day where we post up our work is--while perfectly valid and even a good idea on its own--tainted in the respect that it is in response to Hendrix's comments, and because of the tone of their delivery, his comments don't particularly deserve that degree of attention. Now, if this day had been planned beforehand, and this was merely an extra surge in standing behind that, then yeah, I'd be right there too. But as Jo says in her own post, this day is "in honor of Dr. Hendrix".
Do I think posting work online is a valid, and valuable, way to promote your work and the work of those around you? Absolutely. I think it's a fantastic idea.
Will I do so to afford draw further attention to the argumentative, paralytic prose of a self-styled Luddite? Methinks not.
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6 comments:
Well said.
How about to draw further attention to your own work?
It would seem to me that by participating in a multi-blog multi-professional author release of professional quality material one is in essence adding to a web anthology of professional fiction, one that should have a fairly high profile and attract many readers.
For several years now, I've been thinking about putting reprints of one or two published shorts on my website for people to see. This would seem an ideal time due to the massive free publicity blitz provided by the Hendrix flap. Alos, I frankly don't see a huge amount of difference in terms of commercial and moral value between this and the semi-annual Wyrdmsiths anthology, or this and the Wyrdsmiths blog for that matter.
I'm with Kelly on this one. I'm perfectly content to use Hendrix's poor manners to generate eyeballs for my work. It makes him useful in a way his original letter was decidedly not.
I've already had some godawful writing available on the net for years. It's gotten me some interesting correspondence, the lead quote in a college thesis, and the opportunity to demand someone take down my work because they were using it to advertise. Imagine what something good--with good links--could do.
I'm still on the fence about this whole issue, I'm afraid.
Right now I currently have lots of "teaser" material of my fiction available on-line for free (including somethings I didn't agree to, namely Amazon.com's "Look Inside" feature) because I do tend to agree that in this electronic age you do need to give something away in order to generate attention for yourself. However, I'm usually very careful not to include the entire work, only portions of it -- enough, hopefully, to send a veiwer off to look for the print version of my stories/novels/whatever.
Anyway, Kelly, who's attention are we getting by doing this? Isn't this a closed circuit?
Oh, and you can already buy the t-shirt:
http://www.cafepress.com/pixelstained
Lyda, not a closed circuit at all. There are already dozens of pro and many more semi-pros and amateurs who are talking about doing this. That means links etc. at a lot of sites with a lot of eyeballs, many of whom probably don't currently have a copy of WebMage on their shelves and who might be motivated to go out and buy one if they like my free short fiction enough.
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