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One of my colleagues, Brian Brooks, has resumed blogging at This Is Why, and people ought to go read what he has to write. Leave many comments, too, as feedback is helpful. And do not be an ass to him. Please.

I promote his blog, as well as that of the Tales after Tolkien Society, because I believe in collegiality. Brooks is a friend, and the Society people are my people, and it is appropriate that I talk them up therefore. It is also the case that I promote them because I believe in the potential for development represented by the format of the blog, following Kathleen Fitzpatrick and others. I believe that we all benefit from the presentation of ideas by people and through consideration of the same, and I believe that those who push forth their ideas benefit from the reports of that consideration. It is a commonplace, I am sure, but it has also been my experience that the more serious examination of what I write by others has helped me to write better. There are things in my work that I do not see; they are in my blind spots. There are things I see in my work that are not necessarily there; they are the projections my mind makes onto what it observes to help it make sense to me. Other readers are not blinded as I am, they do not project as I do, and so they can help me to remove what needs removing and enhance what needs enhancing...if they will.

It is a process with which I have become familiar, and from both sides. In my work at the front of the classroom, I am often one who reviews the words of others to find what they need to write and what they need not to write. In my work on The Work, I am the one whose writing is assessed. It is not always assessed favorably. For example, I had a freelance piece rejected yesterday, which annoys me greatly, but I still look for the feedback on it so that I can improve from the experience. My contribution to the Society volume is in revision at the moment (if a bit lower in priority, as I have a conference paper to pump out before I can attend to it more fully), and I early on lost track of the changes I had to make to the text of my dissertation after my committee saw it. (I remain thankful for the time the committee members spent in poring over the pages I sent them.)

I write in part to improve my ability to write, to think as I need to think to make some semblance of sense of the world and to express that sense-making in a way that may help others to do the same for themselves; I write in part to practice writing. As with any such practice, however, I do not do well to do it in a vacuum; I cannot always tell where I err when I write alone, and so I hope for commentaries about the words I release into the world. I do not think that I am alone in doing so, and so I ask not only for feedback for me, but for those with whom I associate and in whose success I would take some delight.