I’m considering an expansion of the site. During my first day of the novel writing class I found myself telling my students that they need to learn how to stay active and communicate online. I remembered back to some of the domains I used in the past for such things–specifically the now defunct thoughtwired.com. With this site, talislegger, existing on a wordpress architecture I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to create a second site or subset of this site where the students would be able to populate it with their own words, ideas, and stories. I’m still quite stoked about the idea, but with the advent of Social Media sites like facebook and Pintrest, I’m not sure creating a writing space for them that is off social media is entirely necessary. I can see the benefits of such a practice. They wouldn’t be held in check by the form of those sites and they could do a plethora of activities such as create blogs, vlogs, and columns. They could post stories privately or publicly without worrying about whether or not some site found their words inappropriate.
Maintenance is an issue. Students actually using the site is a bigger issue. Again, with the advent of social media individuals are drawn to those key and notable media and rarely have time to access yet another site. Still, I believe that gap can be bridged in the same way the 10 minute rule bridges it: they can post to facebook or wherever. They can generate an RSS feed. They can develop an online presence for the agents and publishers to come see.
I think I just sold myself on building a new site… now what to call it?