Hello everyone!

The book is FINISHED! And within my goal of finishing it by the first week of August, too!

Here's what you need to know:

The book is called An Autodidact. It is 107 pages long.

The PHYSICAL BOOK costs $10 (before shipping), and is available for purchase NOW at Lulu.com. All proceeds (after printing costs / Lulu's take) go to my college education. I wanted to keep it dirt cheap, though; you've already helped me out so much! If you paid enough to get a free signed copy as your reward ($100+), don't fret. I have already placed an order and will be getting those to you as soon as is humanly possible.

The EBOOK is available for FREE download NOW at Lulu.com. For those of you were kind enough to pay $10 or more, feel free to get it there; that is the easiest way for me to distribute it. For those of you who didn't pay that much, you are also welcome to download it, although please consider purchasing the physical book.

There is lots of content in the book that was not available on the blog, including several essays and the entire creative section. And the stuff that was on the blog went through some substantial revision. So for those of you who have been kind enough to help out and critique what I've posted, there is still some new stuff in there!

Please enjoy the book in whatever form you read it, and if you like it, tell someone else about it.

There is still some time left in the summer, and thus there is still some time left for Autodidactism. As I mentioned the other day, I am going on vacation this weekend. However, I still plan to do lots of reading of all kinds. There are many books I haven't read, and a few things I want to get done before school starts. I'll post one more update before the end of the summer.

Again, thanks so much everyone, for your assistance and for believing in me!

Michael

P.S. I apologize for the overuse of Caps-Lock in this update. I am VERY excited!

Hello again! I thought I'd update you on what I've been doing.

I've been doing lots of pushups as a new form of exercise, for me at least. I've started participating in a meditation challenge along with Reddit, which I've accompanied by watching several films about Buddhism and reading a few books on meditation. As a personal challenge, I've been trying to watch Democracy Now! every day. This is a good way of living up to the promises about shedding apathy I made in one of my essays. I've also been trying to learn to drive again. I got my permit again—Massachusetts permits expire every two years—and I've been driving every day for the past two weeks. That was one of the mistakes I made last time around: not practicing every day. I would arrive at the weekend and have to get comfortable again, which often took an hour or two, before I could make any real progress. This habit of doing something I want to learn every day is something I learned at school, originally to cope with the difficulty of Ancient Greek and ultimately to make things like exercise regularly. Unfortunately, I was too late to schedule a road test for this summer, but all of the hours I've been putting in will pay off in the long run. I hope to get my license either on break or next summer.

Most importantly, the book is done, at least the text. I still have to design the physical and digital books and upload them to Lulu. I've posted one more essay in the last month, but the low count is because I've been working on the creative section I mentioned in the last update. I figured I would keep that and a few other essays hidden, so that those of you that have been reading all the drafts and posting comments would have a few surprises when they read the book (in addition to some changes from the drafts).

As always, this project has been a struggle between reading more and writing more. July was definitely more about writing than the previous months; I hope August will be a chance to finish most of the books I wanted to read this summer.

I hope you'll see another message in your inbox soon which says that the book is available for purchase or free download. At best, I'll be done tomorrow or the next day, but I'm going on vacation soon after that and it may have to wait until after. Yes, there is such a thing as a vacation from this project. I took one in July to see one set of grandparents, and this upcoming vacation I'll be seeing the other. :) I timed the dates so that I would force myself to take a break from the book at particularly stressful times, and to create a natural deadline. I'm retroactively appreciating that wisdom!

Well, it's been more than a month since my last update. On the one hand, I feel bad because I'd like this project to uphold that Kickstarter ideal of making your project into a story as much as possible. But on the other hand, I don't want to bug you when I don't have all that much to say- here, anyway. The project has been, for the most part, a struggle (albeit a very pleasant one!) between reading more and writing more.

You can see what I've read so far this summer on my Goodreads. I've posted four new essays on the blog since my last update: A Deal With the Devil, Nadsat, Joyce, and Literary Genius, Thoughts on July 4th, and (as of just now) An Inquiry into Happiness and Genius. Some are short, and some are very long (mostly that last one; I hope to have at least one more essay of that length, as inquiries are the most challenging and interesting to write). Again, if you have the time, please leave a comment about spelling errors and beyond!

I've decided that I'm also going to have a creative section in the book, but I probably won't have a draft of that up until August. Get excited, though; I like what I've written a lot!

Okay, that's all for now folks. I'm off to Texas for a few days tomorrow, and then I'll be pounding away at writing this book for the rest of July. I hope to edit and design the book in August, although I will probably end up writing some, too.

I just wanted to let you know that I posted my first essays online, at autodidactism2010.wordpress.com. There is one on Film, and one on Harry Potter. Please read them at your leisure, and if you have any helpful comments to make, please do so. I'll let you know in future updates when I've posted more essays (although I won't make an update just for that; this one is to let you know how to find them), but check back regularly or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Thanks in advance for your help! I hope you enjoy the essays.

Hello everyone!

Summer is here, and that means Autodidactism2010 is here. I made a blog post on my personal blog about being back home that may be of interest. If you're on Tumblr or subscribe to RSS feeds, you should follow the blog. I'll post good quotes and related things there throughout the summer.

One important update about the course of the summer: the temple that was hosting the Vipassana Meditation Course that I'd signed up for sent me an email in April saying that there was going to be construction at the site for the rest of the year, including the dates of my course, which meant it would be very noisy. They allowed you to opt out of taking the course in light of the construction, and I took them up on the offer. I still want to try Vipassana Meditation, but I'd rather have the full experience if I'm taking ten days out of this summer to do it.

One of my main goals is to keep this project true to Kickstarter form and tell a story about the project, to post regular updates so you, too, can participate in the project and see how the book that is this project's end comes to be. However, I also want to make sure I'm not posting too much and bothering you, so you can expect an update on average about every week or two.

I started the project in full about Tuesday last week. The main goal is to get into a routine of writing in the morning, napping and reading in the afternoon, at least until Polyphasic Sleep (which starts June 7th, with the company of my dear friend Hannah). My room looks a bit like this at the moment:
I've started six different essays that have been kicking around my head since I knew I'd be writing a book this summer. They all need significant filling out, revision and editing. When I've gotten a couple of them to a viewable state, I'll type them up and put up a place on my website where you can view what I've written so far and comment on it. Initially, I was thinking of using a wiki, but I think what I'll end up doing is using digress.it, a plugin for Wordpress. I'll let you know where to find this once I put it up, with some essays in it.

I asked a question on Ask Metafilter (a great resource, I highly recommend it) about some questions I had about self-publishing, and they pointed me in the way of a book, which I ordered. I figure $20 is well spent if it saves a significant amount of time for actual writing and not fiddling with software.

If you want to get an idea of what I've been reading, look at my Autodidactism2010 bookshelf on Goodreads. As you can see, I've been reading the Harry Potter books. Hopefully I'll finish them in the next couple of days, so that I can get back to some library books I checked out. They beg to be read in marathon long stretches, though.

Another look back into my childhood that I've had is through a photo project. I've taken pictures of most of the toys I had as a kid (with a camera loaned to me by one of my kind and generous donors and friends, Pete), and then boxed those toys up so that I can give them to charity soon. This way, I can keep the nostalgia associated with those objects, but someone else can enjoy them as they deserve.

Well, as I said, I'll try and post once every week or so, and even if I don't, you can safely assume I'm working hard. Wish me luck!

I wanted to stop to say a very big thank you to everyone who funded me! I realize it has been more than a month since I took the time to publicly say thank you, but it has taken that amount of time to get the money from Kickstarter to Amazon to my bank account to my college fund. Every single penny of your donations (after the fees Kickstarter and Amazon took out) is now being saved for my college education. Thank you so much!

I've only told you about one of my plans for my essays, the Harry Potter essay, but I have thought of many more topics that I would like to explore. How can the many depressed people in our world work to escape their depression and find happiness? How do you raise a child so that they will be as intelligent as possible without sacrificing their happiness? If film is art, what is the best art? What use is there in a person being an artist instead of a useful thinker? I have a few more questions up my sleeve, but they would require the amount of exposition that I'll have in my book. Also, there will be essays about the assorted experiences I go through during the project, mentioned in the last update.

I have realized that I want the book to be as self-contained as possible. While I will have a summer to read the books and try the experiences that will result in me writing these essays, you, the reader, will not. I do not want to write an essay about a book or film that you may not have seen (Harry Potter being a notable exception... if you haven't yet read them, get to your library and borrow them!). If I need to reference a book, I will quote the relevant material.

I have an important question for you. One of the most important parts of a Kickstarter project is making it into a story, an interaction between the project and the funder. That is why they have this "Project Update" feature. During the project, I want to post regular updates of text or video so that you know what's going on. These wouldn't be more often than every week or so, but I do know that all of the backers get an email about these updates. If there are enough people who really do not want an extra email in their inbox, I will move these updates to my website, mwfogleman.com. But I want to make that decision before the summer begins, so please let me know now if you feel strongly about one method or another.

Thanks again everyone. Get excited: it's going to be a great summer!

Hello everyone! I have just passed the $1400 marker, which means that fundraising has been successful and I will be able to do my project. There is still time to pledge, though, if you want a copy of the ebook or just want to help me raise money for my college education. Thank you, everyone who has pledged and made this project possible. I'll try and post an update this weekend about some of my plans for the summer.

I am 29.7% towards my goal. I'm going to round up and say that I am 30% towards my goal If my calculations are correct, $4.20 will make this a reality, and $45.87 will get me to 33%. Yes, statistics are a fun way to procrastinate, especially since I'm doing well. Most importantly, I've surpassed 25%. I read somewhere on kickstarter.com that something like 92% of projects that raise 25% of their goal end up being successful. Of course, getting past 25% does not make it inevitable that I will succeed, but it is a very good sign.

Someone asked me today how much they would have to pledge to get a physical copy of my book. The $100 reward does include a signed copy, but there is no reward below that that gets you an unsigned copy of the book. I'm not certain how much the book will end up costing from Lulu.com (it depends on a lot of things- the content / format of the book, the style of printing I go with, etc.), but I aim to make the physical book reasonably priced. I do know that if I also sell the book as an ebook on Lulu.com, I will probably sell it for $15- slightly more than the price you pay to get it as a reward through Kickstarter, yet less than the price I'd aim for as a physical copy. Of course, it is a very real possibility that I will license the book under a Creative Commons license, so if you have a friend who ponied up when it mattered, you could get copy. Which brings me to the most important point: pledge now, even if you want a physical copy later. The book's existence depends on your support now.

In future updates, I will try and include a snippet about a potential project that I'm considering as a part of the summer. As this project has become more real in my mind, I've had a lot of fun brainstorming ideas for things I can do. In addition to the list of books I keep at Goodreads, I keep a local list of potential products. Remember that these projects may or may not be a part of the end product, and they may be different, because "Flexibility is an important element for any autodidactic pursuit".

Last summer I wanted to re-read all of the Harry Potter books, but I couldn't rationalize undergoing the task because I'd already read all of them and didn't want to take precious reading time away from new, non-Program books. So during this project, I want to read all of the Harry Potter books in a week or maybe a little more (one a day may become too rigorous, we'll see) and write an essay about a) their literary merit (in light of my AP English Literature course, and a year at St. John's), and b) my memories about them as a formative childhood experience.

Keep pledging, and spread the word!