Remembering LLWE...
The Luminous Lavish Writing Experience was, for the briefest of times, a beacon of light for those venerable wordsmiths, realized, true and true in the eyes of the world or, more evidently, who write for the simple pleasure of the exercise - for themselves, first and, perhaps, foremost too...
Hosted by the famed website for causes, concerns and worldwide activism of all sorts, Care2Connect.com, ''LLWE'' was... is... a haven for all writers who aspire for more; and especially those who haven't been as fortunate as, say, Coelho, King or Rowling.
From my thirty-seventh year through my fortieth, I was the sole group administrator of the ''Experience'' - originally titled ''Luminous Lavish Writing Experiment'' as it was extremely tentative and not meant to be a ''forever thing'' by any stretch of the imagination either; well, so what, as nothing is forever, hmm? Subsequently, for simplicity's sake, it became known as ''Luciano's Luminous Writing Experience'' - 45 members strong, though none has time to pen a word, really... On a website where 25 million people drop by ''on occasion'' (to quote care2connect administrators themselves) it is indeed nothing more than a drop in the ocean; however, it was better than nothing at all, either. The group reached a high point, even, as it peaked in participation and interest - so much so that a co-host was adjoined to the task: Annette P. (no relation) became a fellow administrator, although the page would remain eponymous only for little ol' luminous me... (It wasn't my deliberate choice; just for the continuation of ''the brand''s sake... that's all! Indubitably!)
In the early days of its existence, the group became an ebullient place -for but a brief moment in time- where creatives would gather and congregate on a regular basis; projects and ideas were thrown around, without anything concrete ever being done, really. Still, it mattered not: for the objective was to be creative, to remain in that state where ''anything is possible'' and remain positive about all of those opportunities that lay -or didn't, really- out there... For such was the luminous quality of this; and such was the lavishness, too!
I linked up the updates from this very blog -and other sites just like it- to that page, so that, in the advent that I would no longer have the strength nor the will (or simply the time) to continue updating the group, these would inject continuous life into it and keep the members interested, reading and participating, exchanging between themselves... All that influx was meant to stimulate those ideas, keep that nourished and forever coming; inspire the scribes, as one feeds the chicken and the geese in a fairy tale farm, perhaps? Golden eggs may be laid, eventually...! Who knows! I remained available, reachable, through my profile there and e-mail, all that time. It is important to note that unlike, say, a ''writing.com'' administration that did attempt to reach me over time (to complain of my occasional prolonged virtual absences from their site) care2.com never contacted me about this group's administration or lack thereof - they just allowed it to become, eventually, a phantom place, an ethereal dwelling, a ghost group. Unlike the ''writing.com'' web (or community) service, therefore, they did not just unceremoniously delete it... obliterate it... yank it off the net.
All Care2 did was tweak a little bit... mess around a tiny wee bit... change, without warning, rhyme or reason, the URL of my page overnight, just like that, out of the blue - giving it the aura of being gone, at first click... What a difference a simple underscore can make... hmm?
(The problem with ''writing.com'' -if one may make a parenthesis and a parallel at this time- is simply that it seems to exist in another realm all of its own, complete with ''credits'' or ''GPs'' or whatever fictitious currency that acts as rewarding virtual tokens -of affection- and stimulus for all possible participants. To be fair, Care2 also has a ''system'' of rewards and credits -butterflies are dispensed, in their case, for the most inspiring and benevolent shares, really- but it isn't quite the same thing going on there... Care2 is firmly entrenched in reality - set to make changes in the real world. Not quite so with writing dot com. Though a fine creative exercise by itself -one that may, yet, get ''creative juices flowing'' indeed- this practice on writing.com leaves the writers ill-prepared for the ''real world'' out there - and that should be the primal objective of such a website - as opposed to Care2, where signing petitions is the primordial writing being done there, really. Writing.com is like a fantasy world all on its own - and there are already enough sites like that without this one, with the name that it bears, having to be just like all the others. With a site called "Writing.com" one would expect a site preparing yourself to be a real writer! The truth is that so many of those ''creative exercises'' that permeate that website and take up considerable bandwidth as well as the time of its users -things such as their polls, quizzes and, most of all, those crazy ''madlibs'' and other games that they have in spades over there- well, it all appears to be such a killing of time, really, and nothing other than time-wasting indeed, ultimately... A wordsmith like me and my ilk, we struggle enough as it is with indecision, lack of contacts in the biz (agents, publishers, vampires, leeches) - we do not need Time Wasters on top of that! Though designed to create a community spirit and basic interaction as well as mutual assistance, in the end, everyone involved is simply going around in circles in that tiny little pond, when each and everyone of them aspires to break out and swim in the great big oceans beyond... And make a very real impact in the literary world! It will not come to be with sites like that, exercises like those and "madlibs" - for sure not those! But I digress...)
Now, the Luminous Lavish Writing Experience was devoid of any such games and it limited itself to the most relevant creative exercise of all: writing what you want to write, plain and simple! It encouraged one and all to do so, whether in collaboration with me or all by your lonesomeness - for such is the way of the writer, is it not, usually? It could have acted as a support group, where writers would discuss all of those pitfalls encountered along that solitary journey, as it should be expected... It might have catered to the closeted tabloid fandom -just a tiny bit there- as it threw an occasional spotlight upon those fortunate ones, the lucky quills that got uncanny amounts of success, somehow, somewhere, somewhen... But one thing that was for sure: it was never going to become another such web resort where people live a fantasy, with virtual rewards cajoling them and their ego, where, ultimately, one could feel like they are in fact wasting their time and not making one iota of progress towards realizing their goal... their dream.
More so than that old ''writesight'' virtual showcase, also (though its given handle was so clever) - much more so than the ultimately disappointing and utterly useless ''writing.com'' (where one can basically play silly little games rather than indulge in real writing and practical networking) - and considerably more so than that ''writingUP'' thing too, the Luminous Lavish Writing Experience will be sorely missed for its interactivity with fellow scribes and readers alike, true equals and cohorts aspiring for the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon the modern man - to be read. It was well-intended and set-up, all within the context -and greater overall frame- of cause-awareness and concrete action-taking to better one's environment. ''LLWE'' was the ideal platform in which to exchange ideas, brainstorm, share tidbits of plot and development, perfect one's knowledge of the various pitfalls of the writing industry indeed, in order to survive all of the inevitable pratfalls along the way... It was ideally-suited to seek further courage in order to launch that next barrage of unsolicited material - in the wake of the latest formal rejection slip (or several such!) received... Beyond other such ephemeral web losses (as GeoCities... Yahoo 360`... and others) the specter of losing LLWE, too, is almost too much to bear... almost.
''LLWE'' was the place ideally designed for scribes and wordsmiths of every ilk to learn how to circumvent the usual cutthroat atmosphere of the literary business - where preditors, publeech-ers, shar-ké-gents and other bloodsuckers hide at every corner, ready and primed to get you... Or, rather, to get your words away from you, since ''ideas cannot be copyrighted'' - need I remind you...? ''LLWE'' was conceived (and populated, too) by wordsmiths imbued with a totally different spirit; that of collaboration, that of servitude, that of kinship. After all, ''Care2Connect'' was its birthplace and is it not the spirit that is supposed to be permeating that place already...?
Oh well; we'll always have Writers' Café...! ;-)
(LL)WE HOPE...!
Here's to all 45 care2connectors - and all the others, spread out all over the web...
Hosted by the famed website for causes, concerns and worldwide activism of all sorts, Care2Connect.com, ''LLWE'' was... is... a haven for all writers who aspire for more; and especially those who haven't been as fortunate as, say, Coelho, King or Rowling.
From my thirty-seventh year through my fortieth, I was the sole group administrator of the ''Experience'' - originally titled ''Luminous Lavish Writing Experiment'' as it was extremely tentative and not meant to be a ''forever thing'' by any stretch of the imagination either; well, so what, as nothing is forever, hmm? Subsequently, for simplicity's sake, it became known as ''Luciano's Luminous Writing Experience'' - 45 members strong, though none has time to pen a word, really... On a website where 25 million people drop by ''on occasion'' (to quote care2connect administrators themselves) it is indeed nothing more than a drop in the ocean; however, it was better than nothing at all, either. The group reached a high point, even, as it peaked in participation and interest - so much so that a co-host was adjoined to the task: Annette P. (no relation) became a fellow administrator, although the page would remain eponymous only for little ol' luminous me... (It wasn't my deliberate choice; just for the continuation of ''the brand''s sake... that's all! Indubitably!)
In the early days of its existence, the group became an ebullient place -for but a brief moment in time- where creatives would gather and congregate on a regular basis; projects and ideas were thrown around, without anything concrete ever being done, really. Still, it mattered not: for the objective was to be creative, to remain in that state where ''anything is possible'' and remain positive about all of those opportunities that lay -or didn't, really- out there... For such was the luminous quality of this; and such was the lavishness, too!
I linked up the updates from this very blog -and other sites just like it- to that page, so that, in the advent that I would no longer have the strength nor the will (or simply the time) to continue updating the group, these would inject continuous life into it and keep the members interested, reading and participating, exchanging between themselves... All that influx was meant to stimulate those ideas, keep that nourished and forever coming; inspire the scribes, as one feeds the chicken and the geese in a fairy tale farm, perhaps? Golden eggs may be laid, eventually...! Who knows! I remained available, reachable, through my profile there and e-mail, all that time. It is important to note that unlike, say, a ''writing.com'' administration that did attempt to reach me over time (to complain of my occasional prolonged virtual absences from their site) care2.com never contacted me about this group's administration or lack thereof - they just allowed it to become, eventually, a phantom place, an ethereal dwelling, a ghost group. Unlike the ''writing.com'' web (or community) service, therefore, they did not just unceremoniously delete it... obliterate it... yank it off the net.
All Care2 did was tweak a little bit... mess around a tiny wee bit... change, without warning, rhyme or reason, the URL of my page overnight, just like that, out of the blue - giving it the aura of being gone, at first click... What a difference a simple underscore can make... hmm?
(The problem with ''writing.com'' -if one may make a parenthesis and a parallel at this time- is simply that it seems to exist in another realm all of its own, complete with ''credits'' or ''GPs'' or whatever fictitious currency that acts as rewarding virtual tokens -of affection- and stimulus for all possible participants. To be fair, Care2 also has a ''system'' of rewards and credits -butterflies are dispensed, in their case, for the most inspiring and benevolent shares, really- but it isn't quite the same thing going on there... Care2 is firmly entrenched in reality - set to make changes in the real world. Not quite so with writing dot com. Though a fine creative exercise by itself -one that may, yet, get ''creative juices flowing'' indeed- this practice on writing.com leaves the writers ill-prepared for the ''real world'' out there - and that should be the primal objective of such a website - as opposed to Care2, where signing petitions is the primordial writing being done there, really. Writing.com is like a fantasy world all on its own - and there are already enough sites like that without this one, with the name that it bears, having to be just like all the others. With a site called "Writing.com" one would expect a site preparing yourself to be a real writer! The truth is that so many of those ''creative exercises'' that permeate that website and take up considerable bandwidth as well as the time of its users -things such as their polls, quizzes and, most of all, those crazy ''madlibs'' and other games that they have in spades over there- well, it all appears to be such a killing of time, really, and nothing other than time-wasting indeed, ultimately... A wordsmith like me and my ilk, we struggle enough as it is with indecision, lack of contacts in the biz (agents, publishers, vampires, leeches) - we do not need Time Wasters on top of that! Though designed to create a community spirit and basic interaction as well as mutual assistance, in the end, everyone involved is simply going around in circles in that tiny little pond, when each and everyone of them aspires to break out and swim in the great big oceans beyond... And make a very real impact in the literary world! It will not come to be with sites like that, exercises like those and "madlibs" - for sure not those! But I digress...)
Now, the Luminous Lavish Writing Experience was devoid of any such games and it limited itself to the most relevant creative exercise of all: writing what you want to write, plain and simple! It encouraged one and all to do so, whether in collaboration with me or all by your lonesomeness - for such is the way of the writer, is it not, usually? It could have acted as a support group, where writers would discuss all of those pitfalls encountered along that solitary journey, as it should be expected... It might have catered to the closeted tabloid fandom -just a tiny bit there- as it threw an occasional spotlight upon those fortunate ones, the lucky quills that got uncanny amounts of success, somehow, somewhere, somewhen... But one thing that was for sure: it was never going to become another such web resort where people live a fantasy, with virtual rewards cajoling them and their ego, where, ultimately, one could feel like they are in fact wasting their time and not making one iota of progress towards realizing their goal... their dream.
More so than that old ''writesight'' virtual showcase, also (though its given handle was so clever) - much more so than the ultimately disappointing and utterly useless ''writing.com'' (where one can basically play silly little games rather than indulge in real writing and practical networking) - and considerably more so than that ''writingUP'' thing too, the Luminous Lavish Writing Experience will be sorely missed for its interactivity with fellow scribes and readers alike, true equals and cohorts aspiring for the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon the modern man - to be read. It was well-intended and set-up, all within the context -and greater overall frame- of cause-awareness and concrete action-taking to better one's environment. ''LLWE'' was the ideal platform in which to exchange ideas, brainstorm, share tidbits of plot and development, perfect one's knowledge of the various pitfalls of the writing industry indeed, in order to survive all of the inevitable pratfalls along the way... It was ideally-suited to seek further courage in order to launch that next barrage of unsolicited material - in the wake of the latest formal rejection slip (or several such!) received... Beyond other such ephemeral web losses (as GeoCities... Yahoo 360`... and others) the specter of losing LLWE, too, is almost too much to bear... almost.
''LLWE'' was the place ideally designed for scribes and wordsmiths of every ilk to learn how to circumvent the usual cutthroat atmosphere of the literary business - where preditors, publeech-ers, shar-ké-gents and other bloodsuckers hide at every corner, ready and primed to get you... Or, rather, to get your words away from you, since ''ideas cannot be copyrighted'' - need I remind you...? ''LLWE'' was conceived (and populated, too) by wordsmiths imbued with a totally different spirit; that of collaboration, that of servitude, that of kinship. After all, ''Care2Connect'' was its birthplace and is it not the spirit that is supposed to be permeating that place already...?
Oh well; we'll always have Writers' Café...! ;-)
(LL)WE HOPE...!
Here's to all 45 care2connectors - and all the others, spread out all over the web...
Keep on weaving dreams!
+++
Labels: commemorative
posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ at 12:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home