Whether blog article, photo, video, podcast - should tell a story. The best stories are retold and shared with others, and the very best stories create conversations which might live on for generations. How does a content creator elevate their work from craft to art? The same creative parameters apply whether the delivery method is digital or analog or both. When applied with vigour, the work elevates to something beyond an ephemeral musing. Using a mixed-media project called "Letters from Russia" as a example, Dave will discuss practical tactics for harnessing inspiration, plotting the big picture, grinding out the "real work", and finally creating a satisfying tangible artifact. Dave will discuss the role of blogs, podcasts, reader interaction, RSS, and self-publishing with chapbooks and/or on-demand web services as efficient methods of sharing and distributing the project to an audience. Created by: Poet, podcaster, pundit, and chronic documentarian, Dave Thorvald Olson particularly enjoys making arts and crafts and listening to vinyl albums while gazing at trees or soaking in a hot bath. An ace marketer by day and renegade social media brewer by night, Dave gracefully nurtured, launched, sold, and/or jettisoned several internet companies. He now works for Raincity Studios (partially) revolutionizing the way media is created, consumed, and shared. Published in numerous magazines, journals, and books, Dave is most proud of his handmade chapbooks, static montage art, and international audio hi-jinks. His co-conspirators frequently comment on his ability to recount stories after several micro-brews while inventing new lexicon and avoiding the bill.

1. Letters From Russia

2. Inspiration
Tension ~ Purpose ~ Meditation

7. Execution
Environment ~ Character ~ Process

9. night lake diving
freshly skinny white
leaping from the storm
the 2AM moonlight
fractures with the impact
the rocks below
clarified by the
glacial melt
jagged but deep enough
for divers and explorers
escaping ennui and malaise
on the shore bobbing over
rocks
shook freed from constraints
the absence reveals
no barriers for the lubricious
and clumsy
emerging from the cold
to stumble on the wretched
shore
where bullets won’t start a
fire
only tinder and a spark
is all i can stammer

19. Distribution
Audience ~ Medium ~ Publication

23. Are these letters authentic? Please respond promptly and honestly, I
really need to know ASAP. Thank you,
--
I enjoy military history and literature, so when I stumbled across these
letters while doing some research of my own I made the now obvious
mistake of believing them to be authentic. I absolutely treasured them for
months and even did further research in an attempt to discover if Henri
had survived the French retreat, and in doing so found your podcast and
website. I was very dissapointed to discover that they were fictional.
--
Kristopher Floyd Says: May 8, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I have just learned that these letters are not authentic. I had feared as
much. More should have been done to make that fact obvious from the
outset, and the fact that more was not done leaves me now feeling
somewhat hostile towards the work and its author. This “project” seems to
me to be nothing more than a well written prank.

25. Chronicle book letter

26. Letters from Russia - war &
love epistletory discourse
http://www.uncleweed.
net/words/literature/lettersfromr
ussia.pdf
http://www.uncleweed.
net/words/literature/letters-
from-russia-illustrated.pdf
Twitter: @uncleweed
Library: uncleweed.net
Flick: /uncleweed