Dermis Forum To Help Make Sense...

I thought it might be easiest if I expound on this a bit more in order to dispel any lingering confusion about why I made this group in the first place. It began as a discussion that John and I were having about a question he posed concerning one of my poems. It occurred to me that, while the primary object of WritersCafe is to concentrate on the ins and outs of writing, there is something beneficial that could potentially be missed in restricting ourselves to that mode of thought about our work.

We all write based on what we know, what we believe, what's important to us or what interests us. Those issues, however esoterically revealed through our work, play a phenomenal part in the development of our style and content. There is of course a place and time for the discussions, debates, and conferring that writing should evoke. The meat of Cafe life is not concerned with it, and therefore it makes sense to keep talk of beliefs and theories to a relative minimum. However, these things ought not to be totally ignored.

Before I resolved to build this page, I searched through a number of other groups. There were two things I noticed. First, the groups seemed to function much in the way I described above in that they pandered to certain styles, ideas, etc. that the involved members had in common, and served as ways for them to channel those themes that preoccupied them into places where others would be likely to take notice and react with proper enthusiasm. However, the other thing I noticed was that there was not one among them (at least that I could find) that was specifically designed to change in content from moment to moment, and to invoke discourse among varied lines, or to promote shifting perspectives.

So, that's how this was born. I thought it would be nice for people to have a forum in which they could talk about a range of the broader themes that their work either implies or explicitly states. Being exposed to the samenesses and differences between each other more directly will, I hope, help us all to better understand who we are and why we do what we do. Or perhaps it'll send everyone into doubtful panic. That would be pretty cool, too.

I'm interested to see what comes of this.

Sounds cool to me... but then I like to talk about anything.

Reminds me of two things...

Once someone was bothered about the location of the stories I write...I forget why, but I always write about places I don't know too much about (I do some research though)..I'm not sure why other than I find my area boring in a way that nothing exciting happens (outside of bad politics and people getting killed), oddly I like living here (along the boarder of DC), probably because I've almost always lived here (I was ready to stay in LA if I could though). Still..I'm wary about writing a story about the cesspool I call home.

Secondly...reminds me of a poem I read a few days ago...because I saw the pic that it came with and I knew exactly where it was taken. It seemed no one understood the poem, but it seemed pretty clear to me because it seemed Baltimore...at least the way I see it when I visit there..not so much as a city, but a slum where life had not died. So I wrote a very long review trying to break it down so maybe someone else will read it and understand.