A Proposal

Dear Readers,

It may come as no surprise that someone who maintains (in a gas station bathroom kind of way) a blog online enjoys creative writing as a hobby. I've penned a couple things, though nothing to be too pretentious about and certainly nothing publishable. A couple angry poems, one short novel manuscript in need of serious overhaul and the first half of a dozen short stories. I've recently been encouraged by a friend to get back into it and to invest some more time and energy into my writing. It's good for me. It's a creative release and a little bit escapist without being so dangerously addictive as to pull me out of the real world. And it's productive, of a sort. Making something, I would contend, is a more worthy thing than consuming something.
But true to form, I get stuck. More so than not, recently. But I've had an idea and want to toss out a line to see if anyone wants to bite.
I've been thinking about collaborative storytelling. That it might be a really cool thing to try and it might even be a growth opportunity for storytelling and fiction as an art form in general. The literary community is very individualistic, not unlike painters and sculptors. And I can understand that composing a piece independently is extremely worthwhile. I quite like reading stories that are the product of one mind. You can think all kinds of interesting thoughts about authorial intent. But I believe art, at its core, is not just about self-expression. It's about truth. About saying something that's true and honest and real. Using a lie to tell the truth. Self-expression is a powerful vehicle for that, but I want to believe that art is about more than expression; I think it ought to be about communication.
To that end, why is our storytelling so individual? If the goal is to highlight or communicate a slice of the human experience, is it possible to listen to more than one voice and still hear one message?
There are art forms that do collaboration really well. Music. And by that I mean some musicians in modern bands, who compose and develop music collectively. Jam sessions with pencils. But in many other art media the challenges of presenting a piece that is cohesive necessitate hierarchies and structures that sometimes impose some limits on open idea-sharing. Films and plays have directors and producers. Orchestras have composers. Ballets have choreographers.
The beautiful thing about fiction and storytelling is that it's a product-based art form and not a presentation. Cohesiveness can be applied to the broken parts after the fact before it's shown to the audience. And in the process, the divergent ideas can present a more three-dimensional picture of whatever issue or theme is being discussed than I, as one author with limited perspective, can achieve alone.
To get to my point (yeah, I know only the die-hards are still reading), I'm putting a call out for collaborators. My idea was a kind of loose adaptation of the one word story game we've all played around campfires at camp. Someone (preferably not me) starts a story and carries it as far as they want. Short chapter-ish length as a suggestion, but I want to try being really free-form and not imposing restrictions until we have a chance to develop our own that make sense for us. Then they pass it off to the next person. We all pass the story around for a while until it's done. Or we're bored with the project and have an idea on how to start again better. I think I could learn a lot from working with what other people have given me. Plus, I think this could be a very useful exercise in helping me develop my own voice a bit more.
So, if anyone wants to be a part of this little writing experiment, email me or comment or something. Don't know how many people we'd want or how long it would take, and I'd like to make those decisions, like all the creative ones, collectively.
Any takers?

News Report - early December

Here's wishing you all a very anxious and anticipation-filled advent!
We *just* got back in the door from a very exciting and exhausting shopping trip in Edmonton. We've gathered from Google searches and talking to people who've lived here longer than a couple months that there are actually lots of different places to shop in Edmonton. We've somewhat plugged our tourist ears and sang a noisy "Fa la la la la" on our way to the West Ed.
Which is, by the way, a pretty cool place. Two days in the biggest mall in North America. Did we do any of the fun stuff? Not really, no. We saw a sea lion doing tricks, which was cool. And wished we'd brought our bathing suits to do the water park. But principally we Christmas-shopped. We're proud to announce we are very nearly done our Christmas shopping.
Shopping, in general, is a bit trickier now living off the grid. And we *mean* off the grid. The phone company doesn't even run a line to our house. Anyway, any time we need to do any shopping or errands (groceries, gas, library books, Christmas gifts, etc) we need to either drive 45min and hope it's in Rocky, or suck it up and do the 90min to Red Deer. Which we're happy to say we almost never need to do. But if you need a Walmart, then you need a Walmart.
Save the last few presents and some wrapping, our advent can now relax into a more reasonable and sane pace of counting down the school days left and listening to Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas" on repeat.
In the interest of throwing cool parts of our life in people's faces, the highlight of our Edmonton trip was our evening at the symphony. We were fortunate enough to arrive in town the night that the ESO was playing Handel's "Messiah". Now, I've had a lot of people who know more about classical music than I do tell me at length all the things that are wrong with the "Messiah". It was thrown together hastily, it's less narrative than other pieces in its genre, it's rough, etc. I've often said that classical music is a big blind spot of mine and I'd like to learn more. But on this subject I think I'm content to remain blissfully ignorant. What I like about the Messiah is that what Handel has done - whether sufficiently giftedly or not - is attached musical cadence and narrative to the grand narrative of what Scripture says about Christ. I can understand why, too. When I read broad strokes of Scripture, especially any of the Old testament prophets or the Psalms, I feel like I notice 'movements' of themes and the tone of prophecy as I read. A kind of wave-like motion between God's mercy and His wrath. Between promise and fulfillment. When I thought about it that way, nothing seemed more natural but to use the evocative power of music to draw attention to the currents of these themes in Scripture. And as an advent devotional practice, it was really nice.
Also in the news: having finally finished registering our vehicle in Alberta and getting Alberta plates, we're pretty much finished the long list of things we had to do to become Albertans. Hooray! At the staff Christmas party this past week we had an experience that felt uniquely 'small town Alberta': we had a steak fry at the legion. We got together at the legion and they gave us raw steaks and side dishes and an indoor grill. Like fondue, AAA Angus-style! Is that a thing at other legion halls?
Keep your stick on the ball. Or your eye on the ice. One of those.