Generation Y Michigan is a new site I built for Michigan Radio that we just unveiled last week. The site was envisioned as a blog for newsroom intern Lauren Silverman to explore the reasons why Michigan can’t hold or attract young adults. But because of the overwhelming positive response, we’ve decided to open the site to guest submissions. Naturally, if you do submit an essay to GenYMich, I would like to publish it on Supraterranean as well! Below is the info I posted on guest essay submissions earlier today:

Michigan Radio and Generation Y Michigan are inviting the audience to submit guest essays for publication on this website. If you’d like to publish an essay, please send it as an attachment to generationymichigan@umich.edu. Make sure to include “Generation Y Michigan Essay” in the subject line. We encourage you to provide a short bio (40-80 words), contact email (if different than the one used for submission), and a photo of yourself.

We are still working out the specifics of this new aspect of the project, and we don’t have too many requirements at this time. The essay should focus on the topic of young adults in Michigan, and the reasons why they would move to, stay in or leave the state. These can be based on personal experience, observation, interviews or research. The length should fall in the range of 500-2,000 words, with some flexibility. Your essay should be an elaboration on a theme or idea — in other words, please don’t submit a list of pros or cons about Michigan. Feel free to include an image to go with your essay, as long as you created it or you have the right to use it (include a link to the original image if it’s a Creative Commons photo from Flickr or a free-use image from a stock photo website like Stock.xchng).

At this time guest essays will not appear on the front page of Generation Y Michigan. However, they will be published under a Guest Essays tab in the site navigation and the Recent Posts box in the site sidebar. Essays will be subject to the terms of Michigan Radio’s User Agreement, specifically in regard to discrimination and hate speech. Michigan Radio will not edit the content of essays, but we may make grammatical corrections according to AP Style.

GenerationYMichigan.org is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA license. By submitting, the author agrees to have the essay published under the conditions of this license. These contributor requirements are subject to change at any time.

I saw this today and I couldn’t help but post it here. Plus we’re all in need of a lighter post. NPR is holding a vote for the 100 Best Beach Books Ever. They received 600 nominations, which they narrowed down to a list of 200. Now you get to vote for 10, whether those are good books to read at the beach, good books about beaches…or (if you’re not a fan of beaches) books that you’ll read wherever you are.

Anyways, NPR makes it really easy to embed the voting screen, so you can do it right here! It’s probably not a huge mystery what I voted for: The Rum Diary, Big Sur, Lord of the Flies, and Heart of Darkness. I didn’t feel like voting for 10, and I’m not much for reading on the beach…

UPDATE 7/29/09: The winners were announced today. What do I have to say about it? As Mr. Horse often stated on Ren & Stimpy, “Hmmmmm…no sir, I don’t like it.” This list has almost zero connection to beaches except Jaws and (barely squeezed in at the 100th spot) Treasure Island. Nor are they short books — as in, convenient to take to the beach. Who the flip would pack Anna Karenina, a 1,000-page book, in their beach tote? The unsurprising top ten includes the Harry Pooper series and Bridget Jones. Whoopee. I guess even NPR’s book-reading audience isn’t too far removed from the general book-reading population. You won’t find me on their beach though…

Here’s another quick update and apology. I have not been very active on this blog the past week or two. I’m currently very busy over at the MusicEdge blog on SpartanEdge.com, writing a huge End of 2008 Special in five or six parts. Please check it out if that’s your sort of thing. I’ve also been extremely busy preparing Issue #6 for release this past Monday.

I can’t even believe we’ve had six issues! Technically the six-month mark will be December 23, but that’s not too important. Anyways, the past six months haven’t seen too many changes to the look and feel of the site. It’s been more a of a long process of fine tunings. Still, I have so many plans for the site and so many ideas for improvements, but no funding — or web developer friends willing to redesign the site. Just a few of my ideas: creating a fully interactive community with profiles, tags, recommended content, cross-categorization of articles, and more.

I think Supraterranean will do just fine the way it is, but “just fine” isn’t enough for me. Anyways, I should be back to blogging in a few days, once things are cleared up over at MusicEdge. Have you joined us on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter? If not, please do! Twitter is turning out to be an especially valuable resource for sending daily updates to followers.

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17254185263&ref=ts

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Supraterraneancom/51508395623?ref=ts

MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/supraterranean

Twitter page: http://twitter.com/supraterranean

Last week at a Vietnamese restaurant, I received a fortune cookie with the following message: “Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.” I thought it might be the wisest fortune I’ve ever seen in my life. It reminded me of my favorite line from The Matrix. “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” For example, no matter how much I read, or talk about writing, or think about how I want to accomplish something through my writing, calling myself a writer won’t make any difference. On the other hand, I — more than any other person — can most effectively prevent the realization of my own potential. Many outside forces seem to prevent my progression, but in reality I am totally free to fulfill my ambitions. And that, “my friends,” is the most terrifying thing ever.

In related news, Amazon BookSurge is the first source I’ve seen for self-publishing books. They claim to help with editing, design, publication, and promotion for independent authors. Also, they’ll work with the publishers and book stores so that you (the author) don’t have to. It seems like a great idea, very much in line with the concepts behind Supraterranean.com. I say, let’s take it to the extreme. Remove the literary agents and publishers of creative writing. The industry is build on absurd notions of only publishing what can be sold in mass quantities. Writers and artists need a community to learn and grow. Progress is now more self-directed than ever before.

Speaking of Supraterranean, I just wrote a press release for the site and put it on as many web PR sites as I could. Here is an excerpt:

“The Internet has opened the power of publishing to all. Or at least, that’s the hope. The web brought about an unexpected amount of interaction, cooperation, and sharing that has bolstered creativity on many levels. But the publishing industry has remained particularly static, with traditional stop gates still in place. Supraterranean wants to change that, so that the Internet continues to foster personal expression and cultural progress.”

Please do us a favor and send a release link to friends and family!

Links:

PR.com
Free Press Release
Widespread PR
I-Newswire.com

(Sorry this post was so random…but sometimes randomness is fun.)

Just a quick post today to let you know that Supraterranean is now on Twitter and AboutUs.org. Subscribe to our updates on Twitter at the following address: https://twitter.com/supraterranean. For some reason AboutUs over-capitalizes the title (i.e. – SupraTerranean.com) but I can’t figure out how to fix it. Anyways, here’s that link: http://www.aboutus.org/SupraTerranean.com