Blog Migration

This will be my third cut at writing a personal blog about turning to personal writing, about the process of "becoming" (hopefully) a "writer", and about the motivations behind Mai Shangri-La as a story, an allegory and perhaps a cautionary tale.

I decided to drop the first blog because it focussed on reading and writing at my place of work, an international school in Asia. As I wrote, I found that more and more I was presenting personal perspectives and opinions on issues I found personally compelling rather than perspectives which related in a meaningful way to the interests and needs of my students.

My second attempt was better (I thought) but still contained artifacts from the first (including the initials of my school in the URL - I had just renamed and refocussed the blog). My hope with this one is to make a clean break; to completely separate my personal writing from my professional interests and responsibilities as a HS Teacher-Librarian. I also wanted to name the blog after my novel. As my "Proof" copy from CreateSpace nears a third-draft cleanup/rewrite, I'm beginning to think about promotional strategies.

For the moment, I've opted the POD route, rationalizing that I'm saving trees, actually accepting for now that my premise has not been compelling enough, or my writing interesting enough, to attract the serious interest of either a literary agent or a publisher. In the long run, however, I do, of course, hope to "break into" the print publishing world, and the POD edition of Mai Shangri-La has become one of my principal sales-tools. This blog will become the "author's notes" for that edition, and hopefully, a vehicle for introducing the novel to a potential readership, and possibly for continuing an exploration of the themes and issues raised in the novel.

Welcome to my "writer's world".

Rob Rubis
March 29, 2008