Just to dispel any notion that this here publishing endeavour is some sort of cult or pyramid scheme: I recruited another writer to join #60pages and I got no stinkin’ shirt. Just the gratification that my friend’s great ideas will be heard and read by people. Which, nice, I guess.
But it got me thinking about what you need to enter #60pagesland, this country where they speak Mid-Atlantic English and the offical flag shows a glass of Gin and Tonic. A profile and a photo and a sponsor, basically. Easy enough, right? But those things alone already create an image “to live up to”. It’s not like anybody really believes “Just do what you want”, right?
Becoming a new citizen of any country is of course a very painful process. It doesn’t always have to be as clear a metaphor as Ellis Island, where Cuchulainn turned into Coll, Katzenellenbogen into Katz and Leopardo into Leotardo.
(Actually there weren’t that many name changes at Ellis Island – most of them were done before or during the passage, and quite a few times voluntarily. The price was still paid, and a whole slew of ethnic slurs have their origins there. My point remains I think.)
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). All of this of course could very well be considered a novel – one however that is “stretched to screaming point, and beyond”, as somebody once said about something. Even if we don’t always realize it (and that’s also a beautiful way to wash off that stamp on our hands the bouncer gave us at the entry). And how grand it would be to read a novel that doesn’t know it’s one.