“But Henry, you said months ago that you would have a book out before the end of the year!”
I totally did. At that time, I wanted to get something short out, quickly, so I wouldn’t feel like I was entirely taking food out of my mouth by writing as much as I do on this blog. Then, I started posting more frequently and writing book reviews.
And then I looked at the original book concept and saw that it wasn’t in the interests of the readership to charge you $3 or whatever for a gussied-up compilation. And the relationships that I’ve made through this whole neoreaction thing have been worth more than whatever that would’ve earned.
The Autodidact’s Guide (title pending) isn’t the upcoming book. It’s a forthcoming short e-mail course.
I hate bad newsletters. I would rather not have one at all than to make a bad one for you. However, with the site’s traffic breaking records twice in the past week, I feel like an idiot to not have one, because it means much less efficiency in terms of publishing on my end, which means less effective quality for you to enjoy. The influence of this blog is also reaching more normal conservative circles, rather than just the cult of NRx, so more people are coming to this blog once for one article and then bouncing forever, never to be seen again.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m also using this as an excuse for practice, so I’m doing it anyway.
Anyway, this e-mail course will teach you everything that I’ve learned both from my own experience and other, more accomplished autodidacts. Look for it sometime… soon… because I’ve learned not to promise release dates that I’m unlikely to meet.
The newsletter teaser (if not a real regular newsletter) needs to be up before I release the book. Which is actually coming along well, now. Or I will have to waste a lot of time hawking it to people one-on-one. Time that I don’t have, really.
Enough people have asked me about this sort of thing through Ask.fm and e-mail to show that you all want my advice on this topic, even though I tend to be reluctant to really give advice unless I’m 110% sure that it’s going to be useful and non-harmful.
Ideally, this’ll also make it easier for me to write more in-depth articles with better research punctuated by shorter updates.
That’s about it. I’ll yell about it when I’ve finished with it.
Also, I missed my self-imposed Thursday book review deadline. The scheduled review will be up this weekend.
Do you mean “Autodidact’s Guide”??
I thought he meant “autodactyl,” and kept wondering how anybody with that condition could manage to write so much.
I was in a hurry and misspelled the the title.
Should be “The Autodidact’s Guide.”
Yes. Bad spelling; rushed post.
Can’t wait. Look forward to your perspectives on the matter, as a fellow autodidact.
if you really want to learn something you probably have to teach it to yourself.