Tag: identity

  • Identity 2: Obligatory Boogaloo Reference

    Illustration by Don Tate II, Austin American-Statesman

    A few months ago, I mentioned an online identity series I was working on for the Statesman. The second major story of that series, focused on junior-high-aged kids, ran in Sunday’s newspaper. It was one of those stories where I got panicked in the last week before it was due thinking I didn’t have nearly enough material, so I worked really hard to fill in any holes that I had and in the end ended up with more than I needed (an essential problem to have on large pieces, I find).

    This one didn’t require a huge edit/revision the way the first story did. I tried something different in the writing process, too. For larger project stories I’ve been outlining, something I was always lazy about until we did a training session with Thomas French. He shared with us the outline for his stunning story “A gown for Lindsay Rose” (GO. Read it. Now.) and it restored my faith in outlines. For this latest story, I did a much chunkier outline than usual, pasting in quotes and bits I had in my head as I went through my 50-or-so pages of notes. Usually I just write section heads and try to keep the topics I want to cover in the story under those headers, but this time I actually put fully formed material into the outline. It made writing the story much faster and I spent a lot less time hunting through my notes for quotes or data that I had highlighted during my last read-through of the notes. Sometimes we have to trick our brain a little to keep organized.

    The story also yielded the Don Tate illustration above, which I love. Don has a talent for taking these stories that are only half-formed when we discuss them and he starts and turning them into great artwork. We’re very lucky to have him. He makes our articles look good.

    The other piece I had in the paper this weekend was a Digital Savant column about Facebook’s phone number-grabbing shenanigans. It ran as a blog post last week, too.

    I’ve lost track of what Kirkus Reviews app reviews I’ve linked to, but I’m still doing about one a week. A few recent ones include Tail Toes Eyes Ears Nose (which Lilly loved), F:SH (not so great) and A Bear Ate All The Brussels Sprouts (beautiful, but odd).

    We had a really full and wonderful weekend. Lilly’s godmother Jessica visited, the kids took full naps when they were supposed to, we visited Schlitterbahn and my wife and I even had time to go to the movies to see The Help. (Which, I didn’t realize, could get you in trouble with social media friends who believe the movie is racist. Sorry!) Lilly also invented (at least it was new in our home) the term “bootie-butt.” I may blog about that separately. It was kind of revelatory.

    I’m taking some vacation time in early September and Late October, I think, so I’m figuring out what I’m going to do around that time and if there’s some writing I should be doing. I’ve been sort of avoiding the computer at home, late at night when I normally work on freelance stories and blogging. I’ve felt like I do enough posting and writing all day and by the evening, I’m really tired of hearing (reading) my own voice. I think that’s common for writers and something that it’s best probably not to think about too much. The best cure for that, I think, it just to read a lot of stuff from other writers you admire and I’ve been trying to do that as much as possible when there’s time.

  • Identity

    Illustration by Robert Calzada / Austin American-Statesman

    It might have been right after South by Southwest Interactive, when my brain was a slick, goopy putty, that I told my editor I had an idea for a series of stories about online identity.

    There was a fear in me that I didn’t have any decent ideas left (which I now chalk up to being mentally exhausted at the time), and maybe the online identity idea was a way of punting to some indeterminate date in the future as a way of not dealing with a huge project at that moment. But the funny thing about proposing a big project to an editor is that they tend not to forget that sort of thing and next thing you know, you’re actually writing this project, which of course is not at all the way things seemed like they were going to go in your head.

    Which is a roundabout way of saying that I have a sizable project I’m working on at my job and the first chunk of it has been published. The series is about online identity — about the ways that our lives are being lived in large part online and what that’s doing to our sense of self — and it kicked off Sunday with a story that focuses on our online reputations and how they’re increasingly tying to our offline activity.

    The first story was tough. I ended up with about 70 pages of notes and with a story that was about 30 or 40 percent longer than it needed to be. My editor Sarah got in there and helped tame this big, broad thing into something more tightly focused and when we both saw the story alongside the infographic/illustration and photos in its newsprint form we were a little stunned to see that it all worked somehow. The feedback was good. Got a lot of great comments via email, on Facebook, Twitter and even on Google+, where it attracted a lot of commentary. Even the comment trolls were pretty kind to me on this one. People I run with in online social media circles seemed to really get where the story was coming from and had a lot of useful stuff to add. It turned out to be a great experience.

    (Great except for the stressful Friday afternoon when I was writing the piece and thought I was writing way too broad and nebulous for the story to be any good. That part sucked pretty hard.)

    Next up on the agenda is a Tech Monday piece using some material that was cut from the reputation piece and then a story in August about how kids’ online identities and interactions are helping shape their offline senses of self.

    I’ve been pretty obsessed the last few years at how all this time we’re spending online is shaping us (and will shape our kids). I don’t have a really solid answer, even when it comes to myself. I feel like I have fewer real-life interactions with friends, but that’s also due to having kids and not being able to go out as much.

    I feel like I’ve met so many amazing people who would never have otherwise crossed my path had I not met them online, but I also feel like many of those relationships are as thin as stretched cotton candy. When it comes down to it, I’ve also been disappointed by online friends, betrayed even, and of those dozens or hundreds of people who dwell in my virtual neighborhood, only a handful would I ever call in an emergency or rely on for help with anything of importance.

    …

    What else is going on… On Monday, the Digital Savant blog is going to partially morph into a weekly print column in the Statesman. The first one runs Monday and I’m trying to mentally psyche myself for having a weekly column deadline. It’ll be a mix of how-to pieces, tech reviews and reported essays about tech, very similar to what’s in the blog but in a little bit more fleshed-out form, I hope.

    In a few days we’re turning in our last Trailers Without Pity video for this season. We should be back in October or so, but I’m grateful for the break. The videos are a lot of fun as long as we have a finish line in sight for some rest.

    Lilly turns 4 next month, and we’re a little freaked out about it. She starts Kindergarten next year and that’s a whole other kind of angst for us, the parents. Carolina isn’t yet 2, but she’s rapidly growing out of babydom, too, and that’s hitting me harder than it did with Lilly since we don’t plan to have more kids. I love my little pre-verbal, diaper-busting Carolina. That grinning, babbling toddler won’t exist in that form anymore and I’m getting teary just admitting that to myself.