Hi Guys,
How's it going? Things here at "I want a word" are pretty good - the words are still coming in, slowly but surely, and I'm now up to a grand total of 46. That still may not sound that impressive, and I know that there's a long way to go, but I'm pretty chuffed just to have made it this far.
I'm pleased to say that there have been a few developments since my last blog entry. Last Sunday I was featured in the Sunday Post, a Scottish national newspaper, which was pretty exciting. I'd been interviewed by their reporter about six weeks earlier, so was starting to give up hope of the article ever appearing in the paper, but there it was. It was a bit tucked away, on page 64, but I was still quite pleased, and relieved that the picture wasn't too bad! Unfortunately the Sunday Post website isn't really that great, and only features about 5 news stories per week. As mine was on page 64, you probably won't be surprised to hear that it didn't make it onto the website...
"I want a word" did make another appearance on the web this week though - on the biblioatry blog, run by my myspace friend "bibliolatrist". She gave a nice little summary of the project, as well as some other interesting reading/writing info, so I'd thoroughly recommend that you check out her blog!
And as if that wasn't enough for one week, I discovered that "I want a word" actually received a mention in a podcast. Mark Putnam, the coordinator of the plotastic project, did an interview with "The Writing Show", and gave me a mention, which was nice. Or at least I hope it was. Owing to the rather low-tech nature of "I want a word" HQ I haven't actually been able to listen to the mp3 recording of the interview. If anyone else is interested, you can download it here, and please do let me know what's said!
Thanks for checking out my blog.
Chris
www.iwantaword.com
Friday, 29 June 2007
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Suffering for your art
Regular readers of this blog will know that "I want a word" is far from being the only community writing project out there in cyberspace. You may, in particular, remember plotastic!, a project run by Texan Mark Putnam.
None of the other writing projects I have yet come across, however, are quite as unusual as the one that I was introduced to yesterday. One of my myspace friends left me a comment about a writing project "where people around the world got one letter from this book each tattood on their body somewhere". At first the idea just seemed a bit too outlandish to be true, but I was intrigued enough to investigate further, and after a bit of googling, I eventually stumbled across the home page for the "Skin" project, coordinated by artist and writer "Shelley Jackson.
In her owns words, Skin is "A story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers", and she goes on to elaborate further:
"Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another. In the event that insufficiant participants come forward to complete the first and only edition of the story, the incomplete version will be considered definitive. If no participants come forward, this call itself is the work."
It sounds fairly crazy, but at the same time also rather cool. And in a world where strageness sells, Shelley has received a lot of media attention, and it seems, a large number of willing volunteers.
Where, in my humble opinion, the idea has problems, is that it sounds like a logistical nightmare. After a willing participant contacts the author, she then chooses whether to approve them as a word or not. If so, she sends them a disclaimer, absolving herself of blame in the event of "health problems, body image disorders, job-loss, or relationship difficulties that may result from the tattooing process". Assuming they agree to that, they are then sent a word, which they are free to tattoo on any part of their body (although font and colour restrictions are applied).
The project began, as far as I can tell, in 2003 and Shelley has (as of December 2006) received over 10,000 applicants for the project. Very impressive indeed. Less impressive is that so far 1409 disclaimers have been returned and around 470 words have actually been tattooed. Don't get me wrong, I am still hugely impressed that the project has got that far. I know how difficult it is to run a writing project and must take my hat off to Shelley for getting it that far along, but I'm guessing it's going to be a fair while longer before the project is complete.
Reading about this project has also given me a shot of confidence. If there are ten thousand people out there who are prepared to tattoo a word on themselves, then surely there a are ten thousand people who are willing to cotribute a word to a book. Of course, on the other hand, I suppose it's possible that "I want a word" just isn't extreme enough for the modern world....
I guess we'll find out in due course!
Take care, and I hope you're thinking of your words!
Chris
http://www.iwantaword.com/
None of the other writing projects I have yet come across, however, are quite as unusual as the one that I was introduced to yesterday. One of my myspace friends left me a comment about a writing project "where people around the world got one letter from this book each tattood on their body somewhere". At first the idea just seemed a bit too outlandish to be true, but I was intrigued enough to investigate further, and after a bit of googling, I eventually stumbled across the home page for the "Skin" project, coordinated by artist and writer "Shelley Jackson.
In her owns words, Skin is "A story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers", and she goes on to elaborate further:
"Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another. In the event that insufficiant participants come forward to complete the first and only edition of the story, the incomplete version will be considered definitive. If no participants come forward, this call itself is the work."
It sounds fairly crazy, but at the same time also rather cool. And in a world where strageness sells, Shelley has received a lot of media attention, and it seems, a large number of willing volunteers.
Where, in my humble opinion, the idea has problems, is that it sounds like a logistical nightmare. After a willing participant contacts the author, she then chooses whether to approve them as a word or not. If so, she sends them a disclaimer, absolving herself of blame in the event of "health problems, body image disorders, job-loss, or relationship difficulties that may result from the tattooing process". Assuming they agree to that, they are then sent a word, which they are free to tattoo on any part of their body (although font and colour restrictions are applied).
The project began, as far as I can tell, in 2003 and Shelley has (as of December 2006) received over 10,000 applicants for the project. Very impressive indeed. Less impressive is that so far 1409 disclaimers have been returned and around 470 words have actually been tattooed. Don't get me wrong, I am still hugely impressed that the project has got that far. I know how difficult it is to run a writing project and must take my hat off to Shelley for getting it that far along, but I'm guessing it's going to be a fair while longer before the project is complete.
Reading about this project has also given me a shot of confidence. If there are ten thousand people out there who are prepared to tattoo a word on themselves, then surely there a are ten thousand people who are willing to cotribute a word to a book. Of course, on the other hand, I suppose it's possible that "I want a word" just isn't extreme enough for the modern world....
I guess we'll find out in due course!
Take care, and I hope you're thinking of your words!
Chris
http://www.iwantaword.com/
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Exciting times!
To be honest, I was feeling a bit despondent at the start of the week. I hadn't sold any words since the previous Monday, and I felt like I was struggling to maintain any real momentum with "I want a word".
You can imagine my sense of relief and excitement when I logged on to e-mail account on Monday morning to discover that I had sold another five words, bringing the grand total up to 29. Woo! That may not sound like a huge total, but it was a great feeling just to know that things were once again moving in the right direction.
Things then took another positive turn this morning when I received a phone call from a press agency. They informed me that an article about "I want a word" had appeared in the Herald Express (the local newspaper for Torbay, where I grew up). That was exciting enough in itself, but the press agency also wanted to write a story about "I want a word", so I spent a while this morning sending them pictures and giving a telephone interview. This came totally out of the blue and was a really pleasant surpise: my fingers are now firmly crossed that it could lead to some more coverage elsewhere.
I also discovered in the last few days that "I want a word" has featured in a couple of blogs: it really excites me when I find out that there are people interested enough in the project to give it even a passing mention in their own writings, so that was pretty cool. The furst of these blogs was "Tampa Book Buzz", which I very much enjoyed, and the second was a blog called "Shakespeare I ain't" which described the project as "(a) creativly lazy way to get paid". While I appreciate the sentiment, I can assure them that it has taken a lot of work just to get the project this far, and I don't see that letting up any time soon either!
Keen readers of the blog will remember that in my last entry I asked people to vote for a new choice of profile song for my myspace page, to replace Natasha Bedingfield's "These Words". The response wasn't overwhelming, frankly, but I did receive one reply, from Andy. He came up with a few suggestions, my personal favourite being "Paperback writer" by the Beatles. As yet, I've not found a version of this (or any of the other suggestions) that I can put on my myspace page, but I will keep working on it! In the meantime, I'm going to keep the vote open on a rolling basis, and try and change the song once a week (unless people vote to keep it!), so if you have any suggestions, let me know.
And in the meantime, thanks for checking out my blog.
Chris
http://www.iwantaword.com/
You can imagine my sense of relief and excitement when I logged on to e-mail account on Monday morning to discover that I had sold another five words, bringing the grand total up to 29. Woo! That may not sound like a huge total, but it was a great feeling just to know that things were once again moving in the right direction.
Things then took another positive turn this morning when I received a phone call from a press agency. They informed me that an article about "I want a word" had appeared in the Herald Express (the local newspaper for Torbay, where I grew up). That was exciting enough in itself, but the press agency also wanted to write a story about "I want a word", so I spent a while this morning sending them pictures and giving a telephone interview. This came totally out of the blue and was a really pleasant surpise: my fingers are now firmly crossed that it could lead to some more coverage elsewhere.
I also discovered in the last few days that "I want a word" has featured in a couple of blogs: it really excites me when I find out that there are people interested enough in the project to give it even a passing mention in their own writings, so that was pretty cool. The furst of these blogs was "Tampa Book Buzz", which I very much enjoyed, and the second was a blog called "Shakespeare I ain't" which described the project as "(a) creativly lazy way to get paid". While I appreciate the sentiment, I can assure them that it has taken a lot of work just to get the project this far, and I don't see that letting up any time soon either!
Keen readers of the blog will remember that in my last entry I asked people to vote for a new choice of profile song for my myspace page, to replace Natasha Bedingfield's "These Words". The response wasn't overwhelming, frankly, but I did receive one reply, from Andy. He came up with a few suggestions, my personal favourite being "Paperback writer" by the Beatles. As yet, I've not found a version of this (or any of the other suggestions) that I can put on my myspace page, but I will keep working on it! In the meantime, I'm going to keep the vote open on a rolling basis, and try and change the song once a week (unless people vote to keep it!), so if you have any suggestions, let me know.
And in the meantime, thanks for checking out my blog.
Chris
http://www.iwantaword.com/
Monday, 4 June 2007
Looking up, and name that tune
Hi Everybody,
Thanks for coming along to check out the "I want a word" blog.
I'm pleased to report that I'm feeling a lot more positive than I was when I posted my last entry. For those of you who haven't read it, I'd been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism on a writing forum: people seemed to think that I had launched "I want a word" as some kind of sinister attempt to rob them. So, I guess I want to start out by saying a big thank you to everybody who responded to my previous entry: the responses were uniformly supportive and went a long way towards reaffirming my faith in the online population. I'd also like to say a big thank you to everybody who posted comments on my myspace page. Whether they were in response to my blog or not, they were a big help in convincing me that "I want a word" could be a worthwhile and succesful project.
On that note, word sales seem to have been picking up over the last week too - averaging about 1 word a day. Now, if I'm going to get to 10,000 words before the end of 2008, things are still going to need to pick up a bit more, but it's a step in the right direction. If I really am going to make it to 10,000, words I think that the key is going to be publicity. Which is why I am still a little disappointed. Three weeks ago I was interviewed by "The Sunday Post" (a Scottish national newspaper) about "I want a word", but sadly there has not yet been any sign of the resulting article. Still, you can be sure that next Sunday I'll be in the newsagent with fingers crossed and bated breath, just as I have been for the past three Sundays. On a more positive note, I have been informed that there should be an article in the "Herald Express" (the local paper in Torbay, where I grew up) sometime in the not too distant future.
Anyone who has looked at the myspace page for "I want a word" will know that the current theme tune for the project is "These Words" by Natasha Bedingfield. When I was setting up the site it seemed like a most appropriate choice, and I also love the lyrics:
"Read some Byron, Shelley and Keats,
Recited it over a hip hop beat"
Over the last few days a few people have been suggesting that the song "Word Up" (either the Cameo or Korn version) would be a good alternative. So, I'd like to throw this question open to the floor: should I keep my current profile tune or change it? If I should change it, what to? Anything goes, except for the fact that suggestions must be word related! So please, let me know what you think and, as long as I can find the tune, I'll go with the most popular suggestion.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all thinking of your words!
Chris
http://www.iwantaword.com/
Thanks for coming along to check out the "I want a word" blog.
I'm pleased to report that I'm feeling a lot more positive than I was when I posted my last entry. For those of you who haven't read it, I'd been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism on a writing forum: people seemed to think that I had launched "I want a word" as some kind of sinister attempt to rob them. So, I guess I want to start out by saying a big thank you to everybody who responded to my previous entry: the responses were uniformly supportive and went a long way towards reaffirming my faith in the online population. I'd also like to say a big thank you to everybody who posted comments on my myspace page. Whether they were in response to my blog or not, they were a big help in convincing me that "I want a word" could be a worthwhile and succesful project.
On that note, word sales seem to have been picking up over the last week too - averaging about 1 word a day. Now, if I'm going to get to 10,000 words before the end of 2008, things are still going to need to pick up a bit more, but it's a step in the right direction. If I really am going to make it to 10,000, words I think that the key is going to be publicity. Which is why I am still a little disappointed. Three weeks ago I was interviewed by "The Sunday Post" (a Scottish national newspaper) about "I want a word", but sadly there has not yet been any sign of the resulting article. Still, you can be sure that next Sunday I'll be in the newsagent with fingers crossed and bated breath, just as I have been for the past three Sundays. On a more positive note, I have been informed that there should be an article in the "Herald Express" (the local paper in Torbay, where I grew up) sometime in the not too distant future.
Anyone who has looked at the myspace page for "I want a word" will know that the current theme tune for the project is "These Words" by Natasha Bedingfield. When I was setting up the site it seemed like a most appropriate choice, and I also love the lyrics:
"Read some Byron, Shelley and Keats,
Recited it over a hip hop beat"
Over the last few days a few people have been suggesting that the song "Word Up" (either the Cameo or Korn version) would be a good alternative. So, I'd like to throw this question open to the floor: should I keep my current profile tune or change it? If I should change it, what to? Anything goes, except for the fact that suggestions must be word related! So please, let me know what you think and, as long as I can find the tune, I'll go with the most popular suggestion.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all thinking of your words!
Chris
http://www.iwantaword.com/
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