The Good Men Project

By Susan Andrus — September 1, 2009 — Filed under News

The Good Men Project is a mul­ti­me­dia work explor­ing what it means to be a “good man.” A book of essays on man­hood and a dvd are set to be released this fall. But this isn’t just a book and it isn’t just a dvd–it is, and is striv­ing to be, a dis­cus­sion. Excerpts and a blog can be found on the web­site, which is part of what is described as “a com­pre­hen­sive social media net­work.” Read­ers are encour­aged to con­tribute their own two cents and one of the essay­ists was picked through a contest.

Unable to find a pub­lisher The Good Man Project seems to have found a place any­way through the Inter­net and social net­work­ing. I came across it because of a crit­i­cal tweet of an arti­cle writ­ten about the dis­in­ter­est the pub­lish­ing world showed the project. I was mildly inter­ested and a quick click of a link brought me to the web­site. The Good Men Project makes it easy to find out more, inter­act and keep up-to-date, which may just be the recipe to suc­cess inde­pen­dent of a major pub­lish­ing house.

Now, I’ve seen books with web­sites, Face­book pages and Twit­ter accounts before. They gen­er­ally link to arti­cles and reviews about the book and remind every­one where and when it will be for sale. The thing that seems to be dif­fer­ent about this is the wel­come and encour­aged interaction.

Check it out for your­self at www.goodmenbook.org.

Is this the wave of the future for inde­pen­dent work? Are we going to see more and more of this not-just-a-book sort of thing? Can you point me to some sim­i­lar projects? What do you think?

Rain

By Susan Andrus — September 1, 2009 — September 2009's Nudge

In the movies, pathetic fal­lacy rains.(Malapropism intended.)

Nearly all funeral scenes in movies(and books) are drib­bling and drip­ping because black umbrel­las are dra­matic, but we all know that rain can be so much more than the cue for con­tem­pla­tive solem­nity. In the midst of a hot August day a light rain can be refresh­ing and wel­com­ingly cool. Roil­ing black clouds ripped open by thun­der and light­en­ing can be fright­en­ing and awe-inspiring. Yet another dreary day of spring rains inspires anger and annoy­ance after already hav­ing been kept inside because of weather all winter.

For me, some­times those dark clouds and wind before it rains fill my heart with a desire to go, to change, to run. On those days I inhale the breath of the gods and the rain gives me life.

This month’s nudge, while we enjoy the last days of rain this sea­son, is to cre­ate with rain in mind. The rain doesn’t have to be the star­ring char­ac­ter, of course, or even obvi­ously present in your work. Just keep it in mind and let it nour­ish your growth and breathe the gods into you.