Being and Formulating

In my previous posts, I’ve talked about why I want to start a new blog and put my writing on the web. Now it’s time for the what. Over the past few years, I have been working on transforming some of my short stories into a novel. I now have a complete draft, and I want to use this blog to post this work, Monkey Logic, chapter by chapter, revising it again as I go along.

I mentioned that one of the benefits of posting my writing on a blog is that I can get feedback. There are also a few other benefits as well:

• The novel will be serialized, chapter by chapter.
• The novel will be searchable.
• I can ascribe categories to each chapter, which is one of the more interesting possibilities. Monkey Logic has a lot of short chapters. It will be possible to add categories for characters, places, whatever to each chapter. Readers will be able to read chapter by chapter and/or read it organized by one of the categories. If a reader has a particular fondness for one character, he or she can easily select just the chapters with that character, for example.
• I can include links and other features. I have a few ideas for things I can add to the basic novel. I’m not going to go into any detail here because these ideas may change. My initial focus will be the story itself, but I hope as things progress, I can add things to enrich the experience.

That last point is an important one. I do want to make sure something extra happens here. I’m hoping the feedback and ensuing conversations will be a big part of this something extra. I have seen some interesting web-based fiction but haven’t seen much that really exploits the possibilities. I’m not saying I posses the skills to do anything grand here, but I want to play around a bit and see what I can come up with.

So, now no more being allusive. The next post will be Chapter 1 of Monkey Logic.