But why not?
I always felt that when people post things that aren't finished or that are in progress, it's sort of a half-baked effort to produce a "real" book, comic, or article. I've felt like it's only proper to produce finished works. If you want to be taken seriously, you show that you can finish something.
As I thought about it more, I started thinking about creative minds that I really appreciate who have a big online presence who haven't necessarily published a great American novel or contributed to a huge movie. In particular, there's an artist named Emmy Cicierega who my brother and I have sort of followed for a while now because she has a distinct art style and posts frequently. Her work on DeviantArt has led to collaborations with other artists. She and a group of artists also got an amazing amount of funding for their Kickstarter, which was for a collaborative art book. She has a variety of real, physical things now published!
The reason we like her is because she posts a lot of brief, entertaining cartoons like this:
These goofy sketches lead us to look at her real work, though.
There are also a lot of webcomic artists who have followed the formula of producing content online until they know they have a following and enough product, then producing print forms of their digital content. I don't know if any of you read Megatokyo back when it was popular ten years ago, but it was picked up by Tokyopop and published because there were already fans.
This is like Green Day refusing to sign with a label until they know that they are going to get a good deal because they can say, "We're bringing a huge crowd of fans along with us, what are you bringing to the table?" They could afford to ask for more because whether they got signed or not, they were going to keep playing shows and having their fans. To me, Green Day has been extremely smart business-wise. That's probably why they have a musical and an Xbox game and not just a garage band. They also have produced a huge amount of content over the years.
I know this isn't really related to academic blogging specifically, but this post is really interested in the "Launch" aspect of Dr. Burton's post about academic blogging. I'm more inclined to think about this in ways that will benefit my future hypothetical career of dealing in creative something. (Writing? Artwork? Product design? Who knows.)
I've also been wondering about the pros and cons of posting unfinished content on the internet. I think it's helpful if you also have finished content alongside it, like the artist you used as an example. However, I think it's potentially harmful if you only post unfinished content without having that balance.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think as long as a creator can show that she is capable of good, finished work, it isn't harmful to post things unfinished. Even then, it could show that you're learning and growing, like we talked about in class. Even if your stuff isn't very good, it can be better than old stuff you've done.
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