Hey all! My name is Ryan McDonnell. For the past half year I’ve been working on a book about the competitive yoyo community, which is tentatively titled “String Burn.” I’m a BFA writing major at Emerson College, and coming this fall I’ll be working on this book as my senior thesis. I’ve been working with several writing professors at Emerson College who are very excited to see the book’s progress. One of the professors, Jabari Asim, has had his books featured on “The Colbert Report” twice. Another professor, Jonathan Aaron, has spent his life studying literature and has had his poetry featured in the yearly anthology, “Best American Poetry” five times. Both of these professors are very confident in the book’s success, and come this fall, I’ll be working on finishing and marketing this book to a publishing company.
Recently, I’ve solidified that I will be attending the world contest this year and I’ll be doing interviews with people that either have a long history with the community or have some perspective on a certain part of the community. But I definitely want to hear from others, too. If any of you feel that you’ve got something interesting to add to this book–any anecdotes or thoughts about what the community or what yoyoing means to you, please feel free to share. You can feel free to PM me or e-mail me at: RyanDMcDonnell@gmail.com, and we’ll set up a time to talk at the contest. Alternatively, if you see this guy at the contest:
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6762/photo6yv.jpg
Feel free to stop him and tell him you want to talk! So far this book has received a lot of attention from other writers at Emerson College and is very much expected to do well once it hits the market. I’d love for whatever help I can get from the community to help share with the world the hobby we have! In the two years I’ve been throwing, I’ve met a lot of great people, had a lot of fun, and heard of a lot of inspiring stories about what throwing means to people. I’m looking forward to sharing that with the rest of the world.
Thanks for whatever help you guys will give!
Ryan