Publishing and Social Media

One of the dangers of social media I think warrants more discussion is the fact that everything we do these days is being published. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn- the number of platforms we use keeps on growing, as does the amount of personal information we publish on a daily basis. Even this blog, these exact words, will be posted online for everyone to see. 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, that idea would have been absurd- no one would have guessed that an average 21-year-old student would have been able to write some words and post them somewhere so that the entire world would be able to read them. While it's exciting to be a part of this revolution and have that kind of power, I think there is definitely some danger involved with this capability.

We've all heard the horror stories from our peers and parents of not getting hired after potential employers went through social media accounts and saw something incriminating. I personally try to make sure that nothing about me pops up online that would shed me in a negative light, but it's a difficult task- everyone takes pictures, everyone makes posts, it's just not possible to maintain a completely positive and completely risk-averse presence online.

With that being said, I think social media accounts should make more of an effort to ensure that their users are protected. Viewing and deleting old posts and pictures should be easier, and there should be better methods to ensure that nothing is published that individuals wouldn't want the world to see- as we all know, once it's online, it's out there for good. Digital publishing clearly has its benefits, but the dangers are growing as well.

War Novels & Publication

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I am currently taking a class called American Fiction at War: 1960 - Present. Throughout the semester, we've so far read four complete novels, with two more on the horizon before the semester lets out. While the books have all been different in a number of ways, covering various wars from various perspectives, the guiding theme throughout the literature we have read has, obviously, been that at their core, they are "war novels." What exactly a war novel is and what defines the genre is an interesting conversation in and of itself, but regardless, each novel so far has provided a highly personal, deeply introspective, and powerful first-person perspective on the war each author lived through. From Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, authors pour their hearts out into these novels, revealing intimate details about their lives and wrestling with issues that have defined their personalities. While I understand that, in many cases, authors write war novels as a kind of public/social good (as in, providing an important perspective on a conflict that should not be overlooked or forgotten), I think a topic that warrants exploration is the actual act of writing and publishing a novel as unavoidably personal as a first-person war novel.

The process of writing a novel can take years, and requires an enormous amount of mental effort to accomplish. Publishing that novel is perhaps equally as difficult- editing the novel, getting it noticed by a publisher, and actually securing print/distribution is incredibly taxing, as well as potentially financially disastrous. What I think is interesting is the fact that authors of war novels are willing to put in an enormous amount of physical and emotional effort into writing these novels without knowing for sure whether they will be published and noticed by the public. It can't be easy to confront these issues, so what is the motivation? Is it just the potential for financial gain, or is it therapeutic in a way to actually write everything down? What happens if the novels aren't picked up- do the authors then feel as though their life stories aren't worth hearing? It seems like the potential for failure might make the war these authors live through that much more damaging if the novel isn't successful...