For most of the past year, it’s been my great privilege to write a weekly column for this and other newspapers in Georgia. Now, though, I’ve decided to step away from the column and other recent endeavors – although only a bit and only for a while.
Why? I’ve been working on Trouble in God’s Country for more than a decade now. When I began fiddling with it, I thought there might be a book in it. You didn’t have to spend much time wallowing around in various public data sources to see not only that the divide between Metro Atlanta and the rest of the state was huge, but that it was getting bigger year after year after year.
I set up the blog (at www.troubleingodscountry.com) as a parking place for draft material and to test interest in the subject matter. It turns out there was some.
Before long, though, the blog became my primary focus and the book work sort of got pushed aside. Now, in the past year, the column has consumed most of my research and writing energy and the blog has joined the book project in that back seat.
Now, I’ve decided to get the book project back into the front seat. I plan to take the next few months to try to finish pulling it together.
I’ll probably regret saying this, but it shouldn’t be that difficult. I downloaded all my old blog posts recently and combined them into a single Word document and found I had written right at a 100,000 words. That’s way more than enough for a book. Now the task is to figure out which 50- or 60- thousand words to keep and which ones to throw away.
I want to thank DuBose Porter for the opportunity he’s afforded me to write these columns over the past several months. DuBose is, of course, the longtime executive editor of the Dublin Courier-Herald. He is also executive director of the Georgia Trust for Local News, and it’s in that capacity that he has pulled together the philanthropic funding needed to buy and sustain nearly 20 daily and weekly newspapers across South Georgia. His efforts have helped keep various rural Georgia communities from becoming news deserts, and I hope my columns have contributed at least a little to readers’ knowledge and understanding of the extent and gravity of the problems with the state’s urban-rural divide. My view is that this divide constitutes a truly strategic problem for our state, and I hope my efforts contribute the development of solutions to that problem.
One of the great things about writing this column – and one of the things I’ll miss most – is that I’ve gotten to know (at least via email and telephone) a fair number of new friends who have gotten in touch with questions, suggestions and occasional criticisms. I’ve appreciated them all and invite you to stay in touch via the blog.
At the top of this note, I said I was stepping aside only for a bit and only for a while. As I go about the work of updating and freshening up my data research, I’m sure I’ll kick over fodder for new stories and new columns. I’ve told DuBose that as I do, I’ll go ahead and knock out a fresh column. I don’t think it’ll be long before I write the first of those. So stay tuned. I’ll be back.
(Charles Hayslett is the author of the long-running troubleingodscountry. com blog. He is also the Scholar in Residence at the Center for Middle Georgia Studies at Middle Georgia State University. The views expressed in his columns are his own and are not necessarily those of the Center or the University. Distributed by the Georgia Trust for Local News.)
