So why do so many good ideas come in the bath-tub?
I'm thinking about relationship management, relating it to the familiar marketing terms and the familiar finance terms, but also adding it as a discrete function in online communications. Speech is great because it goes away, limiting the damage when you really screw up. The best and worst thing about online writing is that you could be forced to live with your words for a very long time, and people can compare it to other words you've written, and come away with very contradictory messages. How do you deal with th at?
Well, you could just police everything you write to a paranoid level, or you can just let go and create an ethos that allows for mistakes and allows for change. Change is a human perogative, yet we sometimes confuse it with inconsistency. "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." We need to learn to grow, which means being willing to be wrong. A lot.
One page down, like 80 more to go...
Seriously, I'm finding that the hardest thing is limiting the things I'm interested in to one single question. Maybe I can arrange something more experimental then that, but most proposal guides I've seen really recommend the single-question thing.
I'm thinking about things like "blogging as practice of online reputation management." I'm also thinking that I'm out of my mind.
UNM "Visual Rhetoric Resources" lists resources for discussion of Visual Rhetoric.
I do a lot of explaining why VisRhet is so darned important and growing more important all the time, especially for professional writers.
Very few writing positions are just writing positions. At some point, most writers have to integrate their writing into a larger work which includes graphics or charts or must somehow fit into the overall look of something else. For magazine writers, they just have to turn in raw text, but how that text looks to an editor says something about the author. Is it saying the write things? Visual Rhetoric gives you the tools to figure that out.
CNN says 8 out of 10 people want a new job. Now, I'm not one of them. If you want to sound out about the sucking of your job, pipe up at SUCKS500.
I’ve got the letter of resignation written, I’ve got the beginnings of my plan for next semester, and I’ve got a vague idea that I need to look for either a consulting or a temporary job. I’m sending out resumes, talking to people who have information about jobs channeled through them.
I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing in order to find a new job. Those are all good, necessary things, but they are reactionary. Now I've gotten all of the mundane machinery up and running, things like making sure that my credit debt is paid off and my insurance is situated, I need to really examine my situation. The real heavy lifting in this process has just begun. Working with engineers and scientists all day does not usually encourage this kind of introspection, so this process has been hard for me, like exercising a muscle group long unused.
Writing the Master's thesis proposal is important. Real important. Given how important it is, you'd think that there'd be plenty of information out there about how to go about it. There isn't.
I've begun the proposal-writing process in earnest, in anticipation of Thesis Boot Camp in January. UMass Dartmouth has a thorough treatment of the thesis proposal that is really helping me focus on what needs to be done.
"Writing at the Master's Level" talks a lot more about content, and about the audience for a thesis.
Dr. Kendra Gaines's Graduate Writing Resource includes not only discussion of the whole process, but also a list. Lists rock!
I've officially resigned my position at EPSCoR in New Mexico.
Now, the great work begins, at least in theory.
I'm going to be teaching two sessions of online Technical Writing next semester. My goal over the break is to get Postnuke installed somewhere accessible, and figure out how to integrate it into WebCT using some kind of common interface.
I should know more in a few weeks about how much of this is possible, but it should be interesting.