I've been thinking a lot about "what kind" of writing I want to be doing --- whether I want to get back into thinking about journalism, of various stripes, or whether I want to start writing my dissertation. This sounds like a really pat, facetious thing -- of COURSE you don't want to start writing your dissertation! -- but it's actually a hard thing to think about. For instance: whether I actually want to get better at doing interviews? What other kinds of things qualify as "research" -- and whether I want to include them in what ultimately constitutes my "writing"? (oral history, yeah or nay!)

With that, I've been thinking about what to do with this blog -- whether I want it to be a place for publishing (my thoughts, short essays in development, writing of friends?) or whether I want it to be what it essentially is now -- a place for bookmarking random thoughts on what I'm reading. The trash bin operation -- the idea that you read and think X thoughts (which you write down) and subsequently prune into Y manageable thoughts (which you dog-ear for future reference, and hope you don't forget about). It's been marginally useful as the latter -- it'd probably be a lot more useful, on my end, if I tried to work these up into cohesive thoughts.

The idea, more broadly, for me, is how I want to think about writing as a process, in line with running workshops to generate branch income for Parts and Crafts (an awesome kid's education project a friend of mine is running). It seems like Working Text is a good corollary project -- a place for me to think about teaching, and to try out some ideas for group projects, seminar work -- all an excuse to get together and talk about work around the dinner table! Because I think I can stand to get better at my own writing -- but also because it's hard to do alone? Thinking about how to make this blog serve that project, I guess, is something I want to work on.

Any ideas? Help me construct my next life project! This, of course, is called crowd-sourcing therapy. Best answers will be posted on next week's show!