Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Post-AWP Note-oid or, Paper Source: Antidote for Blog Fever

The past couple of weeks I've been thinking about blogging, talking about blogging, and blogging about blogging. Explanation: I've got a writers conference coming up this Saturday at (Washington Independent Writers All-Day Fiction Seminar at American University) for which I'll be chairing the panel on writers's blogs. And, I was just in New York at the AWP mega-powwow, aka bookfair, nonstop yadda yadda yadda, with Sergio Tronocoso, Francisco Aragon, Dawn Marano, Mark Statman, Leslie Pietrzyk, Richard Peabody, Christine Boyka Kluge, John Oliver Simon, to mention only a few, and plenty of the yaddaing about, yep, writers's blogs. Some blog, some don't, some care, some couldn't. Blogging is just a fad--- or it's the biggest thing that's happened to the literary scene since the 15th century. Or---? Well, happily for me, I'm walking distance to Georgetown's Paper Source, which has the most beautiful letterpress business cards, as well as endless racks of silky-looking papers and ribbons and, on the third floor, an Ali Baba's cave worth of doo-dads. Why not make an accordian book? With a cover of sparkly lipstick-red paper! "Do something creative every day" is their trademarked motto. Such wonders we have, yes, even amongst the Starbucks' and the Kinkos'. Yes, even as the book appears to be going, if not the way of the dodo, then, for the most part, into the digital soup. Plop.

More anon.