Recurring theme... I'm dead exhausted. Need to take care of end-of-month bills, get the downstairs cleaned up for the Halloween / birthday party (mine) tomorrow. I'm kinda in shock that we're at Oct 30th already. Feeling bad about some bills for the old landlord that I should have passed on sooner; not sure if there will be consequences to face.

After going to "Party Monster" at Cinema 21 yesterday, G & I had an excellent conversation: applying the tools of instructional development to what I want to do with YL. ...I've recognized for some time that "just write a book" is an inadequate plan. I need to be prepared to promote it, and to use it as an activist tool, not just leave it dead in the water. Current thinking is revolving around creating a website. It would probably start with 20 or 5 or 2 "best essays" -- but it could be a launchpad for selling workshops as "product", and for networking existing YL activists together. (For starts.)

AUDIENCE ISSUES

I. Potential markets for YL writing

• existing youth liberation groups
  
• youth drop-in centers
  
• queer Y, Y of color, young women groups
  
• national youth rights orgs
  
• progressive adult activists' causes
  
• academic social justice courses
  
• RC / co-counseling communities
  

II. Potential users of my YL writing

• youth activists
  
• adult allies working alongside YL activists
  
• outside progressive adult organizations
  

III. User level

• first exposure
  
• beginner - formulating opinion, exploration
  
• intermediate - involved in activism
  
• expert - leadership
  

GOALS

I. Mission

• create tools to support the movement
  

II. ...What kind of movement?

• Justice requires that youth represent their own point of view in society; adults advocating for the interests of youth, without youth input, keeping youth silent, leads to injustice.
  
  
• Youth-led watchdog groups need to be established at the national, state, and city level -- and be specialized for addressing different domains (e.g. law-makers, schools, media defamation, court cases, etc.).
  
  
• The creation of discussion groups should be encouraged, perhaps via publishing a book, that will give youth an opportunity to develop their perspectives in a social setting. Some portion of participants are expected to go on to become activists.
  
  
• Connecting with and training leaders needs to be done one-on-one, making road-trips in order to establish face-to-face connection.
  

OTHER PRACTICAL CONCERNS

• Rather than aim at a book, or even an arc of essays, offer "20 best essays".
  
  
• Develop timeline for developing website in successive stages of evolution.
  
  
• Explain up front the time-based nature of what is being presented: the parameters of the project for this quarter, Jan - Mar, for instance.
  
  
• Ease of use vs. ease of reuse: create a reason for readers to return to the site again.
  
  
• Bios of YL leaders. In addition to a clickable map of the US locating geo-based YL orgs, use a brief survey to get biographical info for movement leaders (a "who's who").
  
  
• Formal vs. informal style: In addition to the completed essays (which shouldn't be presented blog-style, if I don't want to respond to comments), there should be an adjoining informal blog that lets readers get to know me more as a person or lets them see the process of creation.
  
  
• Like the Artist's Way practice of filling 3 pages with writing every morning, it could be helpful to my creative process to do the same for YL -- without forcing that material to turn into completed essays.
  
  
• How much money would I be willing to spend on YL each year? $1000? ($1200, to turn it into an even $100 per month?)
  
  
• I could conceivably hire someone to help manage certain details of this project; e.g. scheduling roadtrips, administrivia, filtering email.
  
  
• I very much like the idea of finding someone to respond to email for me; who can make decisions about what needs a longer response. I could generate long responses, if I didn't feel bogged down with having to reply to everyone who wrote, in a prompt manner.
  
  
• To expedite responses to emails, people should submit queries via a form. They could click check-boxes, that help me understand who they are and what they need. [It would also prevent the spambots from getting my email address!]
  
  
• How many hours am I willing to put into YL? What proportion of those am I willing to put into writing, roadtrips, email response, etc? At what point would the drudge work make the rest of the endeavor no longer worth it to me?
  
  
• I need to consider purchasing a domain name.
  

...Besides all that, something I need to sort through is "product development", what my process of creation and refinement should be.

Seems like any project I take on is exciting at first, but can become tedious as time goes on. How do I lose my joy? This kind of project is not something to take on if my heart's not in it, if I'm doing it just cuz I've got nothing better to do.

Initial thoughts about that. When all that matters is the product, getting a thing done, joy goes away pretty quickly. Things are better when I'm focused on the process, e.g. I just want to put in an hour every day. [Quality via quantity.] Things seem even better when there's a meta-level, wherein I step back and write up a summation of how things are going, where I'm getting stuck, what's exciting me, etc.

1. Product
2. Process
3. Meta-process

...I recognize that one of my weak points is doing research. Whereas I know how I'm going to end my essay when I write, research is a process of exploration and discovery; it could go on infinitely. The meta-process notion gives me a new idea: I could write a report on my progress on a weekly (or whatever) basis. I may not have discovered all that I want to by then, but it turns what I have accomplished into something tangible (rather than letting the effort just disappear into the void).