Scalzi's "A Month of Writers"

[ellenkushner]

John Scalzi is doing something incredibly cool this month over at Whatever: he's showcasing posts from various writers who blog (beginning on Dec. 1 with Steve Brust).

I, for my sins, am one of them - and am consequently now in a blue funk over which of my unworthy stupid boring posts might be able to stand up there with what he's got up there already. I mean, I just sort of mouth off when something crosses my brain - but damn, these folks are essayists! Lyrical, thoughtful, profound: Susie Bright on "Naughty Words," Chris Barzak on "Finding Myself in Japan," Brandon Sanderson "On [Philip] Pullman and Censorship" . . . . Bless you, Scalzi, for essentially editing an online anthology of some of the year's finest online thought-pieces.

Now, which of my lame-o entries shall I tender for self-promotional comic relief?

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Do we get a list of candidate entries to choose from?

I'd offer you one of mine on loan, except that we all know that's not what Scalzi has in mind.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention it - my Evil Henchperson & I are cooking up a wee Poll for same, even as we speak....

Feeling our oats, are we? OK, yeah, yeah, your essays all kick mine into the next county, true - and how *do* you make your typeface go all liiiiitle, like that?

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

That's because you don't do essays. It's not that mine are better, so much as it is that I occasionally do one, while you write things like novels and short stories.

The HTML tag for the little tiny typeface is 'small.' And, let's see whether I can explain this without messing up the comment itself: You do an HTML tag by putting it inside those little pointed-bracket characters. You know, these things: <>. So to do the little type, you just put small inside those brackets and with no spaces (only it doesn't need to be in italics). And then when you want it to stop, you use the same tag only with a / in front of it -- in this case, /small, similarly inside those brackets.

None of the clients seem to include this one, the way they do italics and bolding; I had to ask about it myself when I first started hanging around LJ.

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

Must it be 2007? Because it would be a shame to miss out on Dec. 30, 2006, post on special postal restrictions.

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, October 9'th! :D That was a supershibby story! (Psht, "lame-o", chyeah right...)

(Just got back from seeing Enchanted: at one point, the Disillusioned Cynic Protagonist calls a cab to Riverside Drive. Boo-yah! XD)

[handworn.livejournal.com]

There's only one metric for entries that I can think of, and that's the number of comments, visible month-by-month in the calendar view. The simplistic but possibly not completely inaccurate connection would be, more comments, more interesting posts.