The Book of All Future Names
July 22nd, 2008 — Charlie HustonLos Angeles, July 22 - Something else.
A few weeks back Warren Ellis posted some musings on his site regarding how he might like to see the Internet in general, and blogging in specific, evolve.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could stand up now and say, okay, these are the post-curation years? The world does not need another linkblog. What is required, frankly, is what we’re supposed to call “content” these days. When I were a lad, back in the age of steam, we called this “original material.””
Ellis’ site was one of those I took a good hard look at when I first embraced the idea of a site of my own. The combination of archive/research tool/reader portal was about what I was looking for. Someplace to store ideas and material that might be of future use, post random thoughts, reflect on my very new working life as a writer, and give readers a reason to come back on a regular basis. The archive and research tool part of that plan got dropped. I ended up doing brief essays focussing primarily on writing and publishing. As life changed, I returned to that original vision and moved my clippings and files to the site, intending to post on a wider range of subjects in a more spontaneous manner.
But that’s not working.
After becoming a father this place went unattended for quite a while. Returning to it and giving it an overhaul, I’d hoped to inject a little new life into it, while also making it more easily integrated to the new demands on my time. But I’m still posting far more irregularly than I’d like. I’m not talking about the bits of research and such, but the original essays and commentary that used to be the bulk of what Ellis quaintly refers to in the language of us in the older generation as “original material.”
What struck me when reading Ellis’ post was basically that I think he’s right. More to the point, I think what’s he’s driving at is right for me. I still want this site to serve as an archive that I, or anyone else, can use to mine ideas, but I also want it to carry original, creative content. words, put together, in the form of stories.
Essays served me well, and I’m sure I have a few left in me. But I think part of the reason I’ve been so often stymied in that last year when I try to think of something relevant to write is because I’ve said about all I have to say regarding writing and publishing. For now. I’ve plateaued. Certainly I’m learning more about writing just about every day, but most of it is either so personal, or so subtle, that I don’t know how to share it. As for publishing, I feel like my last several essays on the subject tended toward redundancy and whining. Could there be anything more agonizing to regard than redundant whining? No, there could not.
What is coming out of me with some degree of freedom are random words, slipping together, and fitting in a manner that I find pleasing and soothing. Also good exercise. One such example was my post from a few days ago, Necrotic Culver. This was meant as a lark. Having received spam sent from “Necrotic Culver”, one of those randomly generated spam names that are meant to slip past your filter, I fell in love with the name. I thought it might pop up in a Joe Pitt book. On later consideration I thought I might use it as the jump off for a stream of consciousness bit of micro fiction for the site.
And I liked it. More than I expected. I liked the world the name led me into. And I thought about writing more.
Days later, I received more spam (inevitably), this sent from “Shadding Lyttle”.
A perfect fit for Necrotic Culver’s world, I thought.
And so it is.
And I wrote more.
And I will write yet more.
The Book of All Future Names will be ongoing, episodic, original fiction for the web. I will publish and archive it here. It will be written in stream of consciousness with no advance plotting, as few written notes as possible, and no reverse engineering. Which is to say that I will not edit past episodes to fit as it evolves. Names for all the characters will be drawn entirely from spam, either spam senders, or fellow addressees, or from the content of the spam. Episodes may be of any length, from a few words to thousands, but they will be published within a day or two of being started. I’d like to write them directly into my WordPress editor, but I’ve lost too much material that way when my laptop has glitched. Instead, I’ll be writing on Word, cutting and pasting into WordPress, and posting. I may experiment with email posting at some point. New episodes will appear when I have them. But most certainly with regularity. I will still post items for my archive, along with details of personal appearances, upcoming releases, and suchlike, but for the next several months I will primarily be using this site as a venue for The Book of All Future Names.
-c