This is what happens when you agitate. This is what happens when you go around for months telling your fellow volunteers that the online book review on which you all spill way too much blood, sweat, and tears needs more interaction with its readers, more free-form content, more edge, more voice.
This is what happens when you agitate. This is what happens when you go around for months telling your fellow volunteers that the online book review on which you all spill way too much blood, sweat, and tears needs more interaction with its readers, more free-form content, more edge, more voice.
What happens is they turn around and say, “You’re right, Josh. When does your first post go up?” From this bluff-calling is born “An Independent Voice.”
Let’s be clear: I’m no corporate mouthpiece, no shameless propagandist for the Independent. The staff have, in their infinite wisdom, given me free range. (Proof: my use of the Oxford comma in the first paragraph. Our senior editors would hate that! Mwa-ha-ha.)
What I am is a guy who — probably like many of you — loves the written word. I’m an avid reader. I bang my head on my laptop (no, not literally, that would be bad for the laptop) in my attempts to write and publish fiction. My living room looks like the New York Public Library transplanted to the site of Old Faithful. I go to the National Book Festival and drool over Junot Díaz and Jennifer Egan the same way 14-year-old fan-girls drool over Justin Bieber … alright, maybe not quite the same way.
My goals for this engagement are simple: I want to learn something, and I want to have fun doing it.
However, and this is the part of the party where the annoying DJ tries to coax you onto the dance floor, if this effort becomes an extended soliloquy, it’s going to be an exercise in futility. Don’t leave me out here doing the Electric Slide all on my own! I want to hear your opinions. Actually: I need to hear them or this effort will be judged a bust … especially by our managing editor, a dour humorless jerk who is always going on and on about our site’s analytics until my eyes completely glaze over.
As an added incentive to get involved, please know that I especially love it when people explain to me why I’m wrong about stuff. (It’s true — just ask my wife!) So comment below, tweet at me @wirobooks, write on our Facebook wall, or e-mail me at [email protected].
I won’t be posting on any prescribed schedule, but you can expect to hear from me at least a couple of times a week. So please, check back often.
One of the great things about literature is the way it brings people together. Be it the library, a book club, a critique group, Goodreads, or Twitter: reading and writing are solitary pursuits, but they’re enhanced by discussion. So let’s talk about books!
