So I started this blog as just a general kind of outlet for a vague feeling of inspiration... some subconscious need to express myself, to grab my share of the noosphere. Most of the stuff that I think about, however, I don't really feel warrants manifestation into the written word... Maybe there's some sort of unknown 1/100,000,000th law of creation, where only that percentage of the potential to create is worthy of something to be created... I'm thinking of sperm here, specifically, but it seems to apply to thought, or ideas as well. Anyway, I'm a teller of stories, a thinker of stories, and a sometime 'writer' of stories. And I also like to promote the story telling/writing of people I know, if I feel it's at least half decent. This spring, a friend of mine recently published all of the short stories he'd ever written, in whatever form they happened to be in, at a self-publishing website called Lulu.com, which is a fantastic little sight/resource for anyone who writes anything and would like to see it in a bound edition. I'm not going to tell you that it's a great resource for becoming a well known published author, but most people who write leisurely are not out for fame or fortune, and for those of us, it's the perfect sight. I first read about it in a book called "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine.
Now, despite the fact that I don't have any authentic illusions of literary notoriety, although I won't deny the occasional day reverie, I am always torn between the desire to write only for oneself, as an act of pure, untainted, more or less, necessary form of expression, on one hand; and on the other hand, to give my work a life beyond the page by having it read... Think of a lonely virus, inhabiting a pulpy tree in the jungle, unknown to the world, until someone chances across it, and becomes infected with it, and then Voila! en Ebola outbreak! Well, my friend, Chris Kilgore, shares this trait with me, and so he's put together this little project that I think is interesting, and is worth giving a plug on my blog, especially since no one ever reads it. What he's done is collected all of his fiction, and as a way to avoid the inspiration-sapping starts and stops of the conception -> edit -> finish, process of writing, he's developed a sort of perpetual-inspiration method in which a story is never considered finished (a concept which we've had many discussions about), but is always re-read and tweaked, if not completely reconceptualized with each new edition (which he claims he will put out yearly). We discussed Whitman, and how he was constantly re-creating "Leaves of Grass". So he's collected all of fiction, much of it nowhere near being finished, some of it nothing more than a working title and a vague idea. But even in that embryonic stage, it was something, a way to get started, and so the process is now in motion. You can buy a copy of this book, on Lulu.com, at the this link, if you're interested. He's set the price of the hard copy so that he doesn't make a red cent on any purchases, and on ebook purchases he makes only a dollar. I'll continue to write about this project from time to time as he works on it, and hopefully some readers of this blog will take an interest and comment and share ideas and stories and it can synergize into something greater than the sum of its parts.