Be Interested in What Other People are Doing

by Cathy Day

So, now I have three blogs.

This blog.Screen Shot 2013-01-14 at 8.10.08 PM

 

#amnoveling, which I use for my novel-writing class. (Go there now and read my students’ posts about their favorite novels and their writing regimens.)Screen Shot 2013-01-14 at 8.08.44 PM

 

and now one for Literary Citizenship.Screen Shot 2013-01-14 at 8.09.20 PM

 

Is this necessary? I think so. I already have multiple email addresses for the different roles I play.

College-employee me.

Teacher me. Yes, these are two different things. My bsu.edu account fills up every day with all matter of university, college, and departmental matters that have nothing to do with teaching. My students’ messages were getting lost in the shuffle. So I created a special gmail address that I only give to them.

Friend and family-member me. These messages get pushed to my phone. A select group of people get this address.

Writer me. These messages are not pushed to my phone. This is a more public email address.

Consumer me. The address I use when I buy things. This is where all the spam goes.

I like this compartmentalization in my daily communication, and I guess I like it in my blogging, too.

The Big Thing, this blog, is still about novel writing and teaching novel writing, as well as posts related to the book I’m working on. And I’m starting to realize that what I write here are essays, something more akin to a newsletter. It’s me talking to other creative writing teachers and writers.

My #amnoveling blog is the hub of a particular course I teach. Me talking to students. Students talking to me. But it’s transparent, so you can follow along. It’s not a MOOC or an online class, but if you’re industrious and motivated, you can certainly follow along. 

Literary Citizenship is a very different kind of hub for a different kind of class. Me talking to students. An opportunity for my students to get increased traffic to their own blogs, their own hubs. There’s a drop down menu that takes you to their blogs. Follow along and be a fellow literary citizen.

The difference between #amnoveling (in which every student in the class authors the blog) and Literary Citizenship (in which I’m the only author) is that I will only post (or cross post) the best of what my students and I write–not every damn thing we write. 

This, I hope, makes your trip to the site worth your while.

So: What’s the secret to getting published on Literary Citizenship? Besides being a student in the class?

Simple. They must write posts that fit the categories, which are all outward focused:

ACTIONS

  1. Online Community
  2. Attend/Organize Literary Events
  3. Interview Writers
  4. Review Books
  5. Other? Create a category

WHAT IS LITERARY CITIZENSHIP?

  1. Definitions
  2. Shining Examples

I’ve limited the blogs categories in this way so that they will blog about something other than themselves, so that the mantra of the course will be upheld:

BE INTERESTED IN WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING. 

And here’s how you can help me, faithful reader:

  • Please consider subscribing to the Lit Cit blog (see “Follow us via email” in the top righto of the home page).
  • Check in regularly, share and retweet our posts. The more traffic the blog receives, the more excited my students will be and the more motivated they’ll be to write posts worthy of being posted to the site.
  • You can also talk about the topic of literary citizenship on your own blog. If your post fits into one of our categories, I’ll reblog it or cross post it here. (I’m still figuring this out a little…) Here’s a collection of posts about Definitions of literary citizenship, for example.

What is cross posting? Well, I’m going to take the latter half of this post from MY blog and cross post it to Literary Citizenship. Is this plagiarism? No!  We’re trying to figure out a genuine, non-skeezy way to get our blogs read by more people.

Thanks for being a part of that.

CW Programs Literary Citizenship Teaching Writing