Writing about writing about writing...

So, as some of you will know, I have a fair few blogs. One of these is documenting the development of my major project, currently code-named "Open Words". The idea behind my project is a website that allows users to post various pieces of creative writing and uses various web technologies in order to build and foster a helpful community. This community would allow users to help each other improve their writing.

As my programming/web design/etc. skills aren't very advanced, the project will be focusing on the creative side of things. This means I will mostly be working on designing the various elements rather than implementing them. For example, it will be much more important for me to design (at least conceptually) a set of tools and/or a system that would allow users to easily post and edit various pieces of writing and have other users comment on them, than it would be for me to build a database to store all the pieces/comments.

I came up with this idea after thinking about how I improved my writing. As a member of the Tabcrawler forums, I found the community of helpful users that existed in the Lyrics & Poetry section really helped me improve my pieces when I posted them. As the membership of the forums shrank, I found that the help offered on the forum dwindled (in quality as well as quantity). I also found that the forum, as well as other sites like DeviantArt, didn't work well when posting longer works (even a short piece of prose on DeviantArt is rather unwieldy).

Another thing is that on sites which cover a variety of creative work, I found that writing is often pushed to the back, as visual or audio art is more "immediate" or "accessible". There are some sites dedicated solely to creative writing, but I feel that these don't encourage enough discussion of a piece, or don't allow you to go into a lot of depth easily. Comments are stuck at the end of a piece, meaning that if you want to comment on specific lines, you either have to start referring to "line 33" or whatever, or you have to copy and paste chunks of the text into your comment. Another annoyance is edits of work. If you read a piece and then the writer updates it, how are you to know what they've done? You could be stuck reading it all again, when all they've done is added a full-stop.

Other than trying to create a site which addresses these issues, I'm hoping to build a community that values openness and collaboration. I'll attempt to create the site using open source tools and technologies and I'll encourage users to give their ideas on how to improve/enhance it (and even to help with the programming, if they're so inclined). I'll also encourage users to release their work under Creative Commons licenses. This means that not only can they give each other advice, but they can also share ideas and maybe even things like characters and whole worlds!

Further down the line, I could turn this site into some sort of business. Initially starting off making money via things like advertising and subscriptions, but then moving onto independent publishing of works (or collections of works) from the site. Sort of like a book version of CDbaby. There's probably various other directions it could go that I haven't even thought of yet.

So, if you want a more in-depth look into what I'm doing and how things are progressing, click the link over on the right. I've just started posting my initial ideas/notes on what I plan on doing. After I've finished all that, I'll start posting some of the design mock-ups I've come up with. This should be good. Fingers crossed it all goes to plan.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 45: The Devil's Panties is a comic by Jennie Breeden about various odd things that happen in her life. The comic for the 31st March depicts her sister, Summer, stating that she's "got rocket ships on [her] undies", to which Jennie replies "I've got the Cheshire cat, see?". Jennie then proceeds to accidentally give herself a wedgie.

Edgar Allen's search history

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 44: Early today, I found an image (linked as it's pretty long) on Fukung (a site where people post random funny images) featuring the keyword suggestions given when beginnings of questions are put into Google's experimental search (such as "is it easy to...", "why am I...", and "aren't you..."). When "why is..." is entered, it comes up with "why is a raven like a writing desk?" (as shown in the picture).

Grammar, spelling and proof-reading.

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).

-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

So, I've been called a "Grammar Nazi" in the past, and all kinds of variations on that tired old theme. I like people to be readable. I have no qualms about people writing in different idioms and using contracted and evolved words (I regularly use words like "wanna" and "kinda" and "mo"). I positively encourage people to use "made-up" words (I love the Urban Dictionary). What I do not like is bad practice that confuses meaning and confounds expression. "ur" is not an evolution of language. "i" is very much bad practice.

The beauty of language is that you can use it to mean exactly what you want and that said meaning can be multiple. The decoding of language should not be focused on what you are saying, but on what you mean.

The internet is (mostly) a text-based medium and so you would think that people would take care to make sure it is known exactly what they are saying and what they might mean. Unfortunately, this is most often not the case. I will often chastise people about errors and encourage them to proof-read their work. I do this, not only because it encourages good practice, but because the way you write online sets the tone of how people will perceive what you are saying. In the same way that I am writing this in a somewhat formal style (without words like "gonna"), CAPITALS OVERTLY EMPHASISE THINGS, and things like (possibly intentional) spelling or punctuation errors result in the intelligence level you present dropping.

My problem is not that people aren't speaking correct English, it's that they aren't making clear what they are saying.

One thing that majorly gets to me is a lack of proof-reading. One or two errors in a piece of writing is understandable, but constant errors suggest you haven't read through what you've written. If you don't care enough to read what you've said, why should I care about what you have to say? Also, proof-reading is not only for catching mistakes. It should be used to work on how well you convey your meaning. If you don't proof-read, how do you know how your writing works as a whole? A piece of writing relies on the interpretation of the reader. If you're not a reader yourself, how can you know what that interpretation could be?

To finish this off, I'll leave you with a talk by Erin McKean. If you've read Ubuntu Music, then you should know of TED Talks. This talk is most definitely my favourite talk they have on offer. Not just because it's fun and entertaining, but because Erin has some brilliant views on the evolution and use of words.




Think of words as children. Allow them to grow and evolve and do exciting and interesting things with them. But, please, for the love of God, don't abuse them.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 8: On tonight's "Friday night with Jonathon Ross", Noel Fielding (of The Mighty Boosh) talked about Bruce Forsyth and mentioned that "Play Your Cards Right" had big playing cards "like Alice in Wonderland".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 9: On Channel 5 tonight, a show called "Valley of the Sex Dolls" featured someone (I didn't catch her name) from S.I.R. Video Productions who had a tattoo of the Cheshire Cat (the Disney version) on her upper right arm.

-Alice