Writing

Husband let me borrow his Iraq gear for writing. pic.twitter.com/i7QBYjTAta

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) April 6, 2014

Steal This Book

I read Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist. I guess you could say it's like the poor man's version of Lynda Barry's What It Is. It's not very long, and I think it took me an hour to read it. Although, you don't really read it so much as survey it. Basically, it's some art and some ideas on how to be more creative. It reminded me of a lot of the sort of advice/self-help writing I did when I was blogging for Forbes. Nowadays, that ... genre sort of makes my skin crawl. It seems to be stuff written by people who aren't doing something about why they're not doing it and the product that produces is a thing that pretends to be doing something, even though it really isn't. I didn't really get Kleon's art. I guess it sort of reminded me of another person who does this sort of thing and has been very successful at it. It's like a TED Talk in book form or something. All that said, I like a lot of the ideas in it. The core concept is that nothing is original, so if you're creating something, don't sweat it. I like that because it takes off the heat. I think what I liked best about the book is that it makes the whole creative process seem like no big deal, and that's good to hear because artists takes themselves way too seriously. I think the best part of reading the book isn't really the book at all. It's that if you're reading it, you're thinking about the act of creation, and that's a really important part of creating.

Research

Research. pic.twitter.com/4fTvPvBxGP

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) April 1, 2014

Who Was the First Sex Blogger?

Sex blogger Lilly has an interesting post in which she presents: "A Brief History of Sex Blogging":

"Erosblog, run by Bacchus, started in 2002, is primarily a mash-up of aggregated sexy photos and commentary on sexuality things of all types1. I believe this is the first thing that can be considered a 'sex blog', and he recalls being the first to use that terminology.  Susannah Breslin with her Reverse Cowgirl site came shortly after Bacchus started. ETA: I was off by a few months! Reverse Cowgirl came first, but as Bacchus said, we’re not sure Ms Breslin would consider her site a sex blog. Do you?"

ErosBlog did some digging:

"Susannah Breslin’s blog The Reverse Cowgirl’s Blog (which you might or might not consider a sex blog, though it had a lot of sex-blog-like content, and rocked the subtitle 'in which a writer attempts to justify the enormity of her porn collection') got started a month plus five days before ErosBlog did. That’s why I have always acknowledged that blog as a possible contender for 'the first sex blog' even though nobody called it a sex blog before I first coined the phrase."

As I pointed out on Twitter this morning, I was preceded in sex blogging by Daze Reader, whose first blog post dates back to May 2002. I didn't launch The Reverse Cowgirl until August 2002. I've always seen Daze as the first sex blogger. I don't know that I would've ever created my blog if it weren't for Daze's pioneering sex blogging.

In regards to Lilly's question, would I consider The Reverse Cowgirl blog a sex blog? Yes. At the time, I was a freelance journalist and my primary beat was sex. I created the RCB to share my crazy life working the sex and porn beat, from Porn Valley to the Playboy Mansion, and I was intoxicated by the opportunity that sex blogging afforded me: an uncensored venue where I could write and express whatever I wanted -- without censorship.

Someone should write an oral history of sex blogs. It would be fascinating.

Trigger Warnings

Slate critics Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss FX's Cold War throwback TV show The Americans, whether Amazon is ruining literature, and the matriculation of trigger warnings into the college classroom.

This week's Slate's Culture Gabfest mentions my "stupid" writing on the topic of trigger warnings. [29:08]

Guntucky

I took this photo in January at the SHOT Show. The man in the photo is Winfred Sumner, also known as Gran-pa Biff Sumner, who appears on CMT's "Guntucky," a reality TV show that focuses on a family-owned shooting range that's "more like a theme park for gun lovers." The show's second season premieres April 15. According to Sumner's bio: "He's small in size but big when it comes to his temper, gun knowledge and lust for the ladies." Earlier this month, Sumner, 77, was arrested for pointing a firearm at a police officer and charged with "alcohol intoxication in a public place and first-degree wanton endangerment of a police officer."