on the porch
I am flying to Las Vegas tomorrow morning to go to the Clark County Library and read poetry. I love the idea of flying to Vegas to go to the library. I wonder if the library will have video poker. Anyhow, I am going to bring my pda and keyboard and will try and write a bit about my journey, traveling fascinates me. This book is an interesting account of travel way back when folks walked or rode carts made of wood, axles greased with olive oil…
I have a publisher, Zeitgeist Press, that is small and has not the resources a huge publishing house might have, but they have the freedom to publish work that they like, not just work they think can sell a boatload of copies. Because they cannot send me a $10,000 advance and put me on the John Stewart show, I have to do some of the work if I want my book to sell. And I do want to sell copies of my book, as well as copies of any other books I might write in the future. In the traditional publishing model, or at least the most recently dominant model, I would try to parlay the reputation gained early in my career, via small but prestigious presses, into a contract with a larger publisher. This larger publisher would then print and distribute my later books, set up publicity campaigns, and so forth; in return, I would get a small percentage of the profits of each sale, called a royalty, as well as positions on the boards of poetry journals, increased reading fees, and so forth. The internet, however, has made the exchange of media so easy that this old model…
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The Gored Gored turned out ok, not enough niter kibbeh, and I probably should have cooked the berebere, longer, but it tasted yummy. The injera, on the other hand, I didn’t figure out how to pour until the very last piece, and even then the recipe was wanting: doughy, rubbery, and way too dense.
From Michal Migurski’s blog, some good advice. A few of them remind me a bit of Eno and Shmidt’s Oblique Strategies : immaculate heart college art department rules This (by Sister Corita Kent) was worth retyping: Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students. Consider everything an experiment. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules….
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The last CMS I tried just went blank one day, and no help on their forum, so… I really only need blogging interface and linking at this point. I would like to put my book here for free download, CC copyright, but that is future tense.