As I mentioned earlier this month, I am thinking of putting out a collection of entries from English Dreaming, English Rain in book form. Regardless of it being destined to only have a print run in single figures, I want to ensure that it can survive beyond binary oblivion. The need to preserve is not purely about author vanity. I have learned harsh lessons in how vulnerable memory and the words that help capture it can be.
One of the joys of blogging is interaction with readers and I would like to capture the flavour of that within the proposed English Dreaming, English Rain 2005-2007 tome. To this end, I am looking into the possibility of setting up this blog's first poll. The rough idea is that readers would be able to vote on which entries from the last two years deserve to make the transition from digital to dead tree format. Being the lowest of the lo-tec boys, I am not quite sure how to make that happen yet, so in the meantime if you have suggestions please email me.
9 comments:
Easiest: ask them to leave their votes in the comments. Tally by hand.
Not that hard: ask mary ann to please put a poll on your page either in the side bar or as an entry...
If you publish the most interesting exchanges you had with your readers, and provide a link to their blogs, you will be a god. :)
Yeah, put the poll on the sidebar. That way everyone can see it, no matter how long you leave it up. I don't know how you publishing industry types do it, but Blurb lets you slurp your blog, make a book, and then print on demand. Which is really cool for us little people out there who also want to preserve something we've written for someone to read someday.
Apparently polls are a fairly new feature to Blogger so they can be a bit glitchy. Seems reasonably easy to set up though:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42077
I suggest a series of shorter polls in order to get a spread of favourites rather than just one or two clear winners.
Can't help you on the technicalities of the poll, sadly, but I think your recent post about your trip to Brussels (Twenty-three Miles...) and My Innate, Old School Grasp of Romance ought to make an appearance in the book.
I am quite the newcomer to English Dreaming, so it's easy to vote for what's visible on your blog now (think of me as the equivalent of a 14-year-old girl who votes for Rihanna's Umbrella as the best single of all time). But I will plunder your archives and come up with more votes.
Mary – I do not want to overwork the HTML Fairy, especially when I may need to ask her help to me navigate the strange technical worlds of publishing on demand, so maybe I will tally by hand.
Mariana – I could, but the permissions paperwork would be a nightmare. I will have to mull it over.
Nina – The way us ‘publishing industry types’ or at least I do it usually is to come up with an idea, write about three pages about it, send it to an editor, wait for about six months while it goes to the Frankfurt Book Fair, wait a while longer, get call from editor wanting me to write a whole book based on the idea in a few weeks flat for a derisory sum … I think the desire to turn English Dreaming, English Rain is exactly the same for me as it is for you. I want to save words that mean something to me from binary oblivion and to share them with others.
Wasn't Blogger recently touting a new 'poll' feature?
Anyhoo, nice idea - both the preservation in print and the selection committee.
Puss
Definitely the travel/London description posts. They're wonderful.
I agree with general catz. Your descriptions give me glimpses of places I've never seen except through your eyes.
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