Kickstarter

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!