You're meant to hear that mentally in the breathless tone of a movie trailer voice-over. I'd like to work one up but I don't have any of the skills needed, so just imagine it.
In comments on one of the 52 Guitars posts, the commenter who calls himself El Miserable suggested that next year I do 52 authors. I said there was no way I could manage that, so Grumpy proposed sharing the fun, assigning various people to write about five writers, leaving me with twenty or so. That's still a little questionable, but I'm game. I'm not sure I can write about writers as briefly as I do about guitar players, and I've had difficulty with that. But we'll see.
I propose, further, that the project be open to anyone who wants to participate, and that the number of writers per person to be written about be a maximum of five, with the option to do fewer, in case five seems like too many for some people who might otherwise like to play. And I guess if you really want to do more than five, why not?–unless it would require not letting someone else participate, and I very much doubt that that will be a problem.
I've created a page (like a blog post, but not associated with a date, and stays put) where a roster and a schedule will be maintained–see the "Here" section of the sidebar, where it will stay. Several people, including the two above-mentioned, have already, in that same discussion, claimed their authors, and those are listed there. (Let me know if there are any mistakes or omissions.) I'll consider those taken unless the claimant changes his or her mind. There's a list by participant and by author, but as yet there is no schedule. Since it's only late July, there's plenty of time to fill that out, but if you want to pick a week now, let me know.
I think we should keep the guidelines for content pretty open. This is a Catholic blog, and I would reserve the right to refuse to publish, for instance, a scabrous attack on the faith (an intelligent argument would be different), or a lengthy excerpt from the works of the Marquis de Sade. But on the other hand you don't have to strictly toe the Catholic line. And if you want to write a small critical essay, fine. Or if you only want to say "I think X is great" and post some excerpts to justify your praise, that's ok, too. Chances are good that I will do that with some of mine. Just because this is a blog, the pieces need to be relatively small: let's say 600-1200 words as a general guideline, but feel free to go up over 2000 if you really have a lot to say. My impression is that online pieces much longer than 2000 words don't get read.
A word about the word "author": for some reason I tend to avoid using it, and I'm not sure why. It sounds slightly stilted, or something…can't put my finger on it…and I thought about using "writer" instead. But at least in my mind I tend to apply that word to novelists and journalists, and not to, say, philosophers or theologians or critics. And I do think non-fiction (and poetry) should be included in this, so I'll stick with El Miserable's original term, authors.
If you haven't already joined in and would like to, post a comment here with the names of the writer(s) you'd like to discuss. Or email me–see the Profile link for the address. Obviously, as the people mentioned earlier indicate, there's no requirement that you use your real name. That's up to you.
If you're not used to dealing with word counts and are wondering how long a 600-word piece is: this one is 643.
Light On Dark Water 
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