Category: metablogging

Season Two: Byzantion

Welcome to Season Two! I hope you like the updated look of the blog.

As I said in Tuesday’s post, I am narrowing the focus of this blog for this season. Over the last couple of months, I have become fascinated by the Byzantine Empire, and as a result I have decided to blog about my research into that period of history.

I will blog about other things, but as often as I can, I’ll discuss what I’m learning about the Byzantines: the eastern Roman Empire, which stood for 1,123 years from the time that the Emperor Constantine move the capitol of the Roman Empire there in 330 AD until the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks on June 4th, 14531.

I offer this disclaimer: I’m new to the field of historical research. I’ll try to be as disciplined as I can, but I will likely make some rookie mistakes. If you, dear reader, are a historian yourself, I’ll appreciate any feedback you can offer on my efforts.

My intention is to both maintain a conversational tone (it’s a blog, after all) and subject any historical writing I do to the best level of academic rigor I can manage within this context. I don’t see much evidence that citing in blogs is done to this standard, but The Chicago Manual seems to me to offer the best solution to these two seemingly conflicting ambitions. I’ll start by using a summary of the 15th ed., as that is what I currently have access to, but will move to the 17th ed. as soon as I can acquire a copy.

Also under the heading of disclaimers, I do realize that there are many people who’ve devoted a lifetime to delving into the incredibly rich history of the Empire. I may or may not have much of interest to show someone like that, especially at first. My enthusiasm comes from the several fascinating things about the period that I’ve learned, beginning with the fact that no one from that period of history thought of themselves as a “Byzantine2“, and my hope to make the case that those eleven hundred years are much more important to the shape of the world as it is today than most people realize.

I’m also nerdy enough to believe that some people think it’s fun to learn new stuff. If you’re willing to follow along, I will try to share my journey to Byzantium in as entertaining a way as I can. My hope is that you’ll find the place as fascinating as I do.

Still, this blog will not be solely focused on doings a thousand years and more ago: I have other interests, and I will write about them here. Think of these posts as letters from your geeky friend Diane. To wit: Your geeky friend Diane has stumbled, via one of her random-ish fits of curiosity, into a topic that is richer and more crucial than she expected. Now she wants to tell you what she’s learning, because she’s excited about it, but doesn’t want to become a bore with only one topic in her head.

Notes

1. Speros Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1970), 189-92

2. Anna Komnene, The Alexiad, trans. E. R. A. Sewter, rev. Peter Frankopan (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), 5

Preseason Post: Announcing Blog Season Two

Here we are at the beginning of October, and as promised I am restarting regular posts on this blog. Since this is that new beginning, I thought it might be worth talking about some of what I have in mind for the coming batch of entries.

One of my long-range goals continues to be to build my ability to produce good-quality work on a regular basis. To that end, I’ve committed myself to writing at least one 500-700 word essay per week. Essentially, I’m having a go at making a weekly column.

Last season, I allowed myself to experiment with many different kinds of writing: from short-form poetry to a science fiction short story, from Op-eds to essays. I feel that the quality varied widely from post to post. Some entries were poor enough that I’ve hidden them, others contain writing I’m quite proud of.

I intend to aim for greater consistency, not only in terms of the quality of each post, but also in the regularity of their appearance. I did manage to get at least one post per week up last season, but some were late and some were, I must acknowledge in my editor-hat-wearing view, of poor quality.

I’m focusing on what was most successful in Season One, which is the short essay form. I intend to do an occasional “poetry week,” because I feel that those weeks also went well.

I’ve been less happy about the fiction I’ve posted here, so I won’t use this space for it any longer. That’s not to say that I think the work itself has been poor. This simply seems not to be the proper venue for that sort of writing. I believe a 3,000 word short story is too much of a commitment for the casual web surfer. Also, it takes me longer than a week to hone a fiction piece into a shape that I feel comfortable with. I don’t mean that I will be giving up on the writing of fiction, just that I won’t post any of it here.

Further, although I will not be posting exclusively about it, I have settled on a research topic that much of my writing will be devoted to for the upcoming season. I’ll speak more about that in the Season Opener.

Business:

  • I’m moving the publication time for my weekly posts to Thursdays at 5:00 PM. This is for my benefit. I find that I compose these posts over the weekend, and that I need a little bit more time to hone each post. In the past, I’ve allowed myself to continue editing posts that have already gone live. I won’t promise never to do that, but I want to do less of it.
  • The design of this site will be getting an upgrade, including a new banner and site logo designed by John Mendelssohn. I’m very happy with what he’s made for me. Here’s a video he’s put together describing the services he offers, in case you’re looking for some high-quality design work.

Season Two goes live Thursday, October 4th, at 5:00 PM EDT. See you then!

It Actually Is a Hiatus

Hello, beautiful!

I hope you haven’t missed me too much! I’m sorry to have been away for so long. I was enjoying my Summer, and yes, writing.

This past May and June, I had the rare privilege of hearing Jason Reynolds (who’s winning all the things right now) give two graduation addresses, and they were both very profound, in different ways. One was for Lesley University’s graduate commencement, and the other was at graduation for the semester-after-mine’s graduation ceremony at the MFA program I went to.

The gist of his second second speech at the MFA graduation was that as writers, we are not chosen, we choose to write.

I seem to keep firing up Word. I’ve either been actively writing or thinking about what I’ve been writing this whole summer. I feel like I’m doing the thing. I’m not going to analyze that too deeply right now, but… thing.

And I will be starting up my second season of this blog the first week of October.

Keep watching!

Hiatus

I’ll be taking the summer off to concentrate on other projects. That doesn’t mean that there will not be any posts here between now and September, but they won’t be regular Tuesday posts.

I have great appreciation for those of you who follow this blog, who read and “like” my posts. You give me confidence, and your eyes on my words have held me accountable.

Thank you.

Three Month Mark

CHALLENGE: Answer these questions by the time this post goes live: Do I go on hiatus or do I keep doing this? If I keep going, when do I stop? If I stop, how long until I start again?

I have found it difficult lately to meet my self-imposed deadlines here. I think that I may need to keep trying to challenge myself to do these posts for the simple reason that it is difficult.

I mean, that makes sense, right? Oh, good. Another question.

Well, really it’s all the same question: Keep doing this? I think I need to. Pushing through anything that might seem like writer’s block would be a great reason to keep plugging away. The challenge of finding subjects and following whatever research and/or soul-mining paths that are necessary to keep producing blog entries could be seen as an end in and of itself.

What’s been happening lately is that I will start working on an entry and then realize that I’ve taken on a bigger subject than can be handled in a blog entry. I also need to place work elsewhere than here. The fine line I have not found yet is the one around what is appropriate for this blog, and what fits better elsewhere.

Not finding a way to quickly identify the proper place for each new writing impulse means that I have more work to do here.

RESOLVED: Keep going! There will be a new entry here on Tuesday of next week, and for the next several weeks.