things I’m cookin’

Actually, I can’t cook. Mac & cheese is my speciality.

I’ve had an on-again/off-again relationship with a few of my self-imposed poetic endeavors. (And endeavors of other sorts, but that’s not important.)

For instance: I never finished retelling the storyline of Devil May Cry 3 in poem form. Go ahead and laugh. I’ve got thick skin.

I also planned another set of poems for each special zombie type in Left 4 Dead. The first set was fun to write, and it felt like the natural thing to do was write more. But I haven’t.

So what am I cookin’ now?

Well, technically I’ve half-prepared it. It’s a story told in poems. It’s a skerdified (skerd certified) original, and entirely open-ended. I don’t even know what’s going to happen from poem to poem.

Confused yet? Lemme explain you.

Let’s start with the title: The Words Build. Not overly catchy, but it serves its purpose. What purpose? It may have to do with the wording of the poems, and it definitely has to do with the way the poems are written.

That was confusing again. Okay, I’ll try to speak better now thx.

Each chapter of the story is determined by a theme. This theme is not chosen by myself. In fact, it’s often chosen by someone who has never read any of my poetry.

There is a community project on deviantART called Wordspill. It goes something like this:

1. get a theme
2. open up a word processor of some sort
3. make the text invisible
4. type for ten minutes

And that’s all there is to it. No seeing what you’re doing, just writing your little fingers off. The next theme is randomly chosen by a participant from the previous round.

I’ve done a few, and they are pretty interesting. Lack of self-editing makes for wildly different pieces. Certainly a good writing exercise.

So at some point this spring(?) I decided that I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the greats (Casey Crescenzo and Jessy Ribordy, basically) and write some sort of intriguing epic story. But I needed a gimmick, something to distinguish myself from the oh-so-honorable pack.

Then it hit me: I would let the story be created for me. Not the details or anything specific of course, that would be cheating. But the direction. The themes point the way.

I suppose it’s the programmer in me that makes me excited about generative content. So long as the Wordspill club doesn’t fall off the earth and so long as I don’t get crazy and kill all the characters (actually, that could happen…) there are infinite possibilities for the story.

I like messing with structure. This is the perfect application my oddness. With the restrictions of theme and previous story I have enough challenges to keep my crazy head interested. You can check them out in my deviantART gallery under The Words Build.

ANYWAY

To drum up audience interest in the story, I’ve got a few thangs on the back burners.

Firstly, I’ve sketched and planned several possible “cover art” images that I can use to tout the project. Yes, there are skulls. Yes, it looks cool. Yes, I’m workin’ on it. Gig ‘em.

Secondly, said images could end up on t-shirts woo!

Thirdly, I think it’d be cool to host a contest.  The story isn’t cut-and-dry; I take my fair share of crytic-spooky-artistic liberty with the chapters. I’m sure most of the ideas can be gathered, but it’d be really interesting to me to hear what other people saw happening. I like to see how other people think, so this contest idea gets me all excited. Also prizes!

Fourthly, y’all must get sick of my rambling. I mean dang, I turned a simple explanation into a longwinded crazyfest. Silly words.

 

So what’ve you got cookin’? Feel free to share/link/tout/pimp/whatev. Free publicity ahoy!

 

Keep arting,

-C

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