Nuclear energy is a good metaphor for promotion. Nuclear molecules are unsteady molecules. Unpredictable. The Underground Literary Alliance achieved very quick attention when it began in 2001 because it was notably unsteady. Out of control. The problem was we didn't get the reaction going fast enough. The controllers of lit were able to put a containment facility over us.
At the time I stressed that 99% of our energy needed to go into our pr activities. Everything-- everything-- should've been secondary. The objective was to break through every boundary.
If the reaction is ever restarted, this is how it will operate.
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okay.
Objective: break through every boundary.
Tool: Public Relations
Discussion:
I'm not getting this clearly. Educate me. For example, I personally define PR as "Shameless Self-Promotion". Also, "every boundary" to what? Maybe list a few example boundaries?
Oh wow. Here comes the accepted narrative again. Funny, the congloms can engage in "self-promotion" behind huge budgets. Franzen and Co. lap it up, and no one calls it shameless. If literary outsiders do the very same thing, trying to be competitive against enormous odds, everyone becomes outraged. The dowagers splutter. "It simply can't be done!"
We're not on different wavelengths, my man. We're on different planets.
If you're a writer, today, you can't not engage in self-promotion. Unless you wish to barricade yourself in your room with your poems, embracing their purity and insisting they're too pure for the world.
I didn't invent this society. I'm just trying to live in it.
The only thing "shameless" about the ULA's promotion was that for a time it was very successful.
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The fact is tho that even revolutionaries engage in p.r. Even the Bolshies, who were quite effective at branding, had an effective flag, strong personalities to promote, gave them cool names like "Man of Steel," engaged in personality cults that would've made the Elvis fan club blush, and so on. They could be used as a model in a marketing textbook. Names like "pr" or "marketing" are simply codes, shorthands, attempts to define and express what is already going on. We're social animals and we live in a social world. Some groups-- see the Essenes-- try to deny this. Others-- see another tiny group around in that time frame-- take the opposite approach and plunge themselves into the world to get their message across. That's promotion, whatever other name you can put on it.
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Breaking through boundaries? For a group of absolute nobodies with no credentials, connections, or funds, the ULA did quite well at breaking through the natural barriers that'd been erected to keep their like down.
There are also intellectual boundaries-- the inability of status quo Lit to think outside the box, to understand writing that's different from what they're accustomed to. I'll be addressing those boundaries in a pair of upcoming posts.
Have you entered the Story Opening Contest yet?
I have my draft in front of me. It will be typed in today. I haven't done prose in a while.
my poetry is born of the impure nature of my mind; tainted by what I am. the problem is that even I am disturbed by what I am. want to read it? I dare you! maxnort .blogspot .com Keep in mind there is no profit in reading it; if anything, most of it's a waste of your time unless you bother to try to understand me, then you have to deal with having an insight into my head.
pr through boundaries like that?
My friend, everybody is examining what's inside their head right now. It's what most current fiction and poetry are about. This is the most solipsistic period in American literary history.
My favorite living poets tend, like Frank D. Walsh, not only to be masters at language, of using every style of wordplay, Shakespeare-style, that there is, but they're also engaged in the world, discussing things which effect all of us. Which still leaves room for a lot of madness, as in Frank's "Reagan's Brain."
The ULA was engaged with the world. Those interested in us surely kn ow this.
I'll take a look at yr blog when I can.
I am smiling to myself. Is the email in you profile good? and will you keep a secret?
I check that email once or twice a week. Will look in Saturday. (May not be online tomorrow.)
Sure, I'll keep a "secret," as if anyone would be interested anyway.
Re contest posting. All restrictions are off-- but sometimes if you do open ID and you've never posted at the particular blog before, the first time doesn't always take. 2nd time should.
you have email. I don't use openID. I have tried several ways, and couldn't post even to a different thread there.
I note Sandidge got his entry through. Good! Take a look, people. Feel free to let us know what you think. I'm sure Mike won't mind, as it's a fine entry.
We've got some good ones for the judges to consider. Will there be any last minute surprises??
Contest ends Monday! (11:59 pm, to be exact.)
Surprises? My son found out and wants to enter. I am resisting helping him. Any entry I let him make will be his. opinions?
there are many good entries. Thank you for the compliment. I'll be happy if we all just get a fair reading. comments would be nice, but they aren't essential.
That blog is setup to use a pop-up verification window in a way that firefox under linux takes issue with. Chrome handles it okay, however.
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