I dare ya to write an article!

I was originally going to post the below in the thread to Joe Rowland’s article, Solo in Review part 3, but I felt it would detract too much from Joes focus, so I have posted it here.

For selfish reasons, I feel compelled to comment on behalf of those that write articles.

One of the easiest things in the world to do is dissect someone’s article. You guys know the drill; you cut and paste sections of the guys’ article, and then add a quick comment negating his arguments in a sentence-by-sentence fashion. We've all done it to some degree and there is nothing wrong with that. With a few exceptions (the guys that are devoted to the art of hair-splitting), what most people are doing is forcing you to elaborate on your assertions and challenging the thought process that arrived at those conclusions.

One thing I learned quickly is that the second you hit that 'post article' button, your ideas have just entered the boxing ring. Sometimes that article scores a quick knockout, sometimes its a grueling 12 round slugfest, and don’t be surprised if at some point you get a bloody nose while listening to a 10 count being delivered above your fallen body! 

Sometimes the fight is sold out to a giant audience (usually when you write an article that you thought would cause little debate), other times after spending hours and hours putting your heart and mind into an article that means a lot to you, you find that no one bothered to buy tickets to see that one.

But for those of you that have never written an article and posted it, I strongly recommend that you do. Making well-founded and rational assertions is far and away more difficult than negating them, but the reward is also far and away higher.

Give it a shot, I dare ya!

George

PS: This is yet another reason I admire Tibor Machan, on top of everything else he does as an academic scholar, he also takes the time to regularly contribute his ‘Musings’ for Solo. Having written a few articles myself, and understanding the time and effort involved for just 1 article, the prospect of doing so on a regular basis is a daunting one.

 

(Edited by George W. Cordero on 12/27, 5:13am)

Perhaps my ideas are not that compelling.  I mention them because I believe that if you challenge people to write articles, you need to define the challenge and point to the goal line. 

George W. Codero wrote:  ... If accepted by Linz or Joe it will then appear on the homepage at some later point. Just scroll down on the homepage and on the left hand side there is a square with the words 'contibute content' - click on that and then follow your nose.