Saturday, October 3, 2009

Welcome to the new Sinister.

The left-handed electric mice who run this blog have made a tactical decision to shift its focus from politics to writing. This decision was reached because:

1) The mice have neither the time nor the energy to attempt to follow and comment coherently on the increasingly bewildering political circus.

2) A good deal of pretty good fiction and poetry has lately been spewing forth from the sinister brain that controls the mice.

3) In November, the electric mice will be working quite a bit of overtime to write an entire novel in the span of 30 days. This particular experiment might kill most of the mice.

Several things to note. First, the archives will remain available and visible on the left sidebar. Secondly, the right sidebar has been removed, allowing the main text to take up the majority of the screen. Thirdly, the font has been changed from courier to arial/helvetica, which is, in my opinion, much easier to read.

This relaunch simply reflects a change in emphasis. While the primary purpose of this blog will be to showcase my fiction and poetry, I may still write about politics from time to time. However, my intent is for all posts to be interesting, engaging, and held to a higher standard of writing quality than is usually found in a purely political blog.

Now, this next bit is critical. This blog isn't just for me to show off my work and go "woo look at me I'm great." I want people to give me feedback on what I write. I want constructive criticism. I want you to tell me, "Hey, this idea here works, but you've done something kind of stupid over here." Most of all, I want you to tell me if you think something I've written is good enough to submit to someone who might publish it, and if not, what you think I need to do to get to that point. I want to grow as a writer, to work hard at it, to focus my energies on creating a unique voice that I can contribute to the greater literary world. I want to be one of the people that high school students get bored having to study - because that's how you know you've really made it.

In any event, enjoy the new format. In a little while, I'll be posting the first part of a science fiction story I've been working on.