Captain Future's Log

Writing For

Let's say there are three kinds of writing I do that gets out into the world. I write for publication (in print, usually), for community blogs on the Internet, and for this blog (and my other blogs.) Each has different challenges and rewards.

Publication is the only time I get paid. For that, I give up more control, and I'm often writing about what others want me to write about (even if I came up with the idea) and in their formats. I have limited control of the final published piece. There are challenges to doing that well, and the reward (apart from the daily bread) is doing it well within those constraints, and maybe transcending them a little.

But my work for publication seldom gets a direct response. People tend to write letters to the editors only to complain. When I do hear about a piece from someone personally, it's often weeks or months later, when I feel pretty separate from it as a published work. It's interesting to observe how a piece continues to live, though. An article I did for the North Coast Journal many months ago on the efforts of local Quakers to visit Guantanamo is continuing to ripple outward in Quaker and "torture" circles, as it gets passed around at the yearly regional and national meetings. That kind of response I hear about second or third hand is gratifying but distant.

Writing for community blogs (like dKos) has the virtue of response. I've received generous comments on long pieces that few publications would touch, and even a short piece that nevertheless reflects some serious thought and intent, like this one, got a few appreciative comments. A few is better than none.

I don't get paid for what I write there, or here. (Despite the ads, I have yet to see a penny.) I also don't get many comments here. But I do have control. I can add the graphics I want. I can continue to rewrite the piece (though I guess this is blogging heresy) as many times as I like, even after it is "published."

So it's mostly for the pleasure of making something I more or less like, in the time I have to do it. Apart from Captain Future saving the world, it's the pleasure of building an identity for the site, and a ouvre of past posts, which people find through searches by topic or names. When I was in 5th grade I made up some comic book characters and drew my own strips. This is kind of like that, except with an audience. The number of daily visitors is still growing, though very slowly, along with the number of those who return, so I'm guessing that the proportion of visitors who read something here is pretty high. So that's good. (And hi to my fans in Thailand, Afghanistan, GB, Aus., India, Suisse, Italia and Washington, D.C. )

That's about the extent of it, except for the Soul of Star Trek blog, which has gotten me invited to the 40th Anniversary Star Trek convention in Seattle, to moderate a panel called "The Soul of Star Trek." It also means on the actual anniversary night of Star Trek's first episode aired on US TV, I'll be lifting a glass of champagne with Majel and Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., and several members of the bridge crew of the starship Enterprise and the Next Generation Enterprise, up in the Space Needle... Where no blog has gone before.