Essays

I write fiction under several pseudonyms, so you won’t have access to that, although if you read my site carefully enough, you might be able to guess where my pseudonymous writing is. Eventually I’ll reorganize all my writing, but here are some writing things to get started.  The writing samples listed below showcase some of my better  (i.e., noncrappy) writing.

• Austin is a Beautiful Mistress (also known as my “Austin Sucks” essay) is probably one of my most widely read essays.
• South by Southwest diaries was a diary of attending a premier geek conference in Austin in 2006. It details a lot of thoughts about art, culture and current technology.
• Straight Talk about Graduate School is a minor piece that warns people about the false appeal of graduate school.  I still receive lots of comments about this one.
• Sava’s Feet is a 1997 essay about my reverse culture shock  after  returning to Houston after Peace Corps
• Getting All Riled Up for Nothing is about how opinionated people can disengage from heated discussions. I speak from experience!
• Jack Matthews: An Author the Internet Forgot and Art and Sport of Book Collecting are two essays I’m writing regarding Ohio’s best (and least known) short story writer. I also published a long interview with Jack Matthews which to my knowledge is the first extended interview he’s done on print.  I plan to write a collection of essays about the fiction and nonfiction of Jack Matthews.
• Seanachai, Etc: A cheap man’s guide to storytelling podcasts. Provides overview of what’s out there and speculates about how the genre will evolve.
• I’ve written more than 75 posts for Teleread.org about ebook technologies and publishing for teleread.org. Why Ebooks? Why Not Web-Based Books?, How big should an ebook file be? , Comment Spam Poetry: A million spammers will create Shakespeare — or will they?, Books, Ebooks and Climate Change,  Thoughts on Ebook Pricing and Ebooks, Amazon.com and Chump Change. (archived link):  I also have gathered a list of useful links about ebooks. Why Books/Ebooks are not Sacred, Are Wikis good for creating ebooks?, Also, my interview with a marketing analyst about the future of reading and ebooks generated a lot of reaction, Why Ebooks Won’t Win the Nobel Prize (or other prizes) anytime soon, Watching Movies with Doris Lessing, Is US Copyright Law Hurting Wikipedia?,Kevin Kelley and how to profit in the free economy,Selling Business Ebooks: Aaron Wall reveals his secrets. What’s for Breakfast…An Ebook Perhaps?
• Share the Music Day essay (which pretty much explains a lot of my personal and artistic beliefs). Prescient in 2003, my discussion of the topical/technological issues are probably out-of-date, but the general points still worth considering.
• Posting Elsewhere: In addition to posting essays on teleread, I write occasional reviews for the Share the Music weblog.
• My thoughts on blogging and online culture: Insults engraved in cyberspace, Balancing Online Resumes with Online Identities, Dear Mr. Will: A defense of Weblogs, Keeping A Pseudonym Hidden: Possible?, Why Writers are Amazingly Stupid, the Effects of Blogging on Writing Style. Bloggers vs. Journalists: a Comparison, Thread to End all Threads and  my friendly conversation with a famous technical author about his book.
• I seem to enjoy writing obituaries for famous and nonfamous people.  Thoughts on Igmar Bergman’s death, Goth Musician Belinda Bach, and the tragic death of adult film star  Hailey Page (with a NSFW photo) “There is just nothing left of her” (my thoughts about a tragic child abuse story).  To the girl you put up a Youtube video about her 13 year friend who committed suicide (and this followup).   Also, here’s my non-obituary musings of Bambi Woods from Debbie Does Dallas. (mostly work-safe). Horray for George W. Bush (and to hell with poor sick people),  Stoning of a Kurdish girl is a hard knock to all of our heads and  Virginia Perry, a family obituary for my aunt. Here’s my lengthy  obituary for Jack Matthews, an Ohio author I admire.  Finally, I wrote a kind of photo essay about my father Donald Nagle and published the eulogy I gave for my father at the wake. Chance Encounter with a Genius (or two) talks about the life and death of programmer Aaron Swartz whom I briefly met.
• Various Political Essays: I’ve written a lot of random observations among politics. Most of these kinds of posts are interesting only during the week after writing it. Here are some political pieces I thought might actually be readable a year later: Liberals and Arguments, Does Google News favor Partisan Reporting?, Why We Fight and Fail, Refuting Republican Rhetoric, When is Public Lewdness not Lewd? , A Real Thanksgiving Treat would be Freedom, We have a Shortage of TV News Analysts who are Not Millionaires, Anti-abortion is easy: why not have an opinion requiring moral courage?
• The Networked Novel: Gestation Periods, Birth Weights and the Literary Heartbeat. Part 1 of a 3 part essay. Honestly, I’ve written elaborate notes on part 2 and 3, but was sidetracked.
• Thoughts on Business/Productivity/Technical Writing: Why Users Don’t read documentation, Tips for Work Productivity ,  Are Meetings Really Productive? , a comic look at business meetings. Really I should post more often on thing about which I know nothing. Also, Job Interview Test.
• What Killed Postmodernism?
• Would Kafka Have Kept a Weblog?
• Fat Robert, Meet Skinnier Robert details my attempt to lose weight.
• Taco Stand, the only fiction I’ve published so far under my real name.
• Lavishly Praising Bloodbaths, a diatribe against Hollywood blockbusters
• Other weblogs (long abandoned, but have some pretty interesting things there): Asiafirst, a literary culture weblog, Unsolvedheart (a personal blog about love, relationships, dating) and Share the Music Day . I also contribute regularly to blogcritics, teleread and somewhat regularly to slashdot and kuro5hin.
• 25 Things to Know about Edating.
• Thoughts on How to Write a Sitcom , Why Friends Does Not Suck .
  
• Career Articles: The “Must have 5 Years Experience” Fallacy, Careers, Altruism and Getting By and Job Interview Test.
• I have a  page with my technical writing portfolio.
• Literary/publishing topics: Creative Writing Degrees are Not a Complete Waste of Time , Random Thoughts on Creativity, Truthful Rejection Slips, Questioning Beauty , Gao Xingjian and “Soul Mountain” : Ambivalent Storytelling, Differing Worlds of an Artist, Wild Animus by Rich Shapero: a Modern Masterpiece?, Religion in American Literature and Film, Hari is Alive! , Delete without Censoring; Sorting through the Shards with Sadi: The Confessional Essay, It’s a Wonderful Life: Many Choices of George Bailey. , Reading and Romance: Why Books on Your Facebook Profile Don’t Matter, Embarrassments of Obscurity (Part 23);  Waltz with Bashir: Do Perpetrators Tell Better Stories than Victims? See also the lyrical Emily Dickinson in the 21st century.
• Literary Disclaimers 101. How book reviewing bloggers can handle conflict-of-interest situations.
• Good Art Can Have (And Should Have) Political Values
• Short Fiction of Jack Matthews. My introduction to the short stories of a long-neglected short story writer.  I am currently working on an extended interview with this author (to be published in Fall, 2009).
• Copyright Ghosts of 1923-1932!, an ongoing series about books and films that would have passed into the public domain if Sonny Bono law were not passed.
• Dilemma: Should I attend this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference?
• My most useful blog posts contains a list of articles with interesting and useful information but are not necessarily well-written.