I’m joining a cool project, helping a photo-essayist to produce a treatment for HBO. No pay, but I could use the new experience. Who knows where such a thing could lead?

Note to self: even before achieving the 4-hour work week, the 40-hour-work week needs to include at least 4 or 5 hours, if not more, to embrace the random.

I am too cheap to buy the book that contains Carol Bly’s essay, “How Radiation Oncology Almost Made Me a Republican”, but I’ve always been intrigued by the teaser quote from the piece on her Web site:

“What makes someone act like a conservative? I finally—these four years later—have figured it out. For those forty-five days (of surgery and radiation oncology) I was like a little kid in a very good prep school. There is no emotional ease like the ease in American prep schools…in those forty-five days I lived in that sort of kindly ambiance. Anyone would want to stay in such an ambiance. Of course they would! They would want to stay in such an ambiance all their lives.”

I know prep school is a horror rather than a joy for many people, but I agree wholeheartedly with Carol Bly here – and I’m not even sure how or why the surgery and radiation oncology experience replicates prep school’s ambiance.

For now, I have managed to arrange an era that replicates a dimension of prep school that’s easier to describe: the schedule. 8 hours of intellectual play broken into two hour chunks – with physical activity in between. Heaven.

This week I picked up a favorite book for a re-read: Aphrodite’s Daughters: Women’s Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul. The ideas still resonate, as do the chapters written in the standard pop psychology language that has been with us since the 1970s. What seemed incredibly dated was the 1990s vintage essentialist feminism: identification of women and our spiritual capacities with the goddesses of myth, the hero’s journey metaphors … all struck me as corny and diminished my ability to enjoy the ideas.

I contrast this to my recent first read of Elmer Gantry. A bestseller of 1927 it satirizes small-town, Midwestern church life. I had to look up a lot of words that are not commonly used today. Overall, though, the language experience was fresh.

If you’ve been a professional writer long enough, you have undoubtedly gotten this request: “I have a great … story … memoir … screenplay, I just need someone to flesh it out.” In the same category are copywriting requests from prospective clients that actually entail devising the entire marketing or communications plan.

It’s baffling. But what’s behind it?

I think this writing crisis is the result of cultural changes:

• The teaching of formal language arts skills have fallen out of favor. Thirty years ago, correct spelling was required in middle-school term papers, and learning grammar included structured exercises such as diagramming sentences. I wonder, were those approaches a necessary element in the teaching of advanced rhetorical and critical thinking skills?
• At the same time, professionals and small business owners must write for themselves; “secretaries” aren’t around anymore to perform discreet, unacknowledged editing for style and polish.
• Finally, the “publish or perish” imperative has moved beyond academe: business leaders and self-employed people publish books, and even moderately ambitious job seekers need Web sites.

This certainly creates business for professional copywriters. It also suggests that there are competitive advantages for people in any field who choose to achieve mastery at expressing themselves via the written word.

I’m guilty. I have started and abandoned more than one blog. This time, it will be different. How can I be so confident? Because I’ve changed my approach: my blog is not a writing project; it’s a publishing project.

In recent history, writers and authors (whether literary creators or business communicators) have reached audiences through entities such as publishing houses, newspapers and magazines, and organizations that produce newsletters, white papers, and other materials. These publishers supplied the specialized technical skills (like printing) and money required for production and physical distribution. Blogging technology eliminates lack of such skill and lack of money as barriers. The cost of blogging is minimal. The technical skills required are relatively easy to acquire and cheap to buy.

Publishers have always done more than produce and distribute. Writers who excel at generating texts often don’t have the knowledge we need to create and maintain a sustained venue for writing. Fellow bloggers, join me in a commitment that goes beyond a pledge to blog “regularly.” Let’s address the strategic and tactical demands that ongoing publishing requires:

Identifying an overall purpose for the endeavor and a strategy for realizing that purpose.

Editing and curating content so as to align with the purpose.

Stephen King said, “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.” This quotation is salient to the writer trying to negotiate a social media presence.

Professional and business types advise that job seekers and business owners stay away from controversial topics that might alienate future employers or customers. Meanwhile people advocating for political and social change gather online to organize and debate and educate by bring difficult conversations to more and more people.

Choosing a strategy might be seen as a fairly simple matter of priorities, of deciding on a primary purpose for the Web in one’s life – unless …

You are both an activist and a job seeker or business owner.
You trade in ideas: day job or no day job, an aspiring artist whose work covers political topics can not afford to avoid “politics” online.

Consider this interesting project by a corporate consultant; it addresses the price of letting these taboos stand: Excerpts from “Sex, Politics & Religion at the Office”