Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

5 February 2004

Nothing Identifiable

I'm supposed to be working on my fiction, and I am. But where is it, people ask.

Here's A.L. Kennedy:

... being "born a writer" does not imply that the budding typist won't have to work at it just as hard as they might if they'd been born a policeman, or a fishmonger, or nothing identifiable at all. I might also point out that being born a writer can often feel paralysingly similar to being nothing identifiable at all, given that writing is an unlikely and ephemeral occupation, rarely respected until it has produced considerable fruit. It is almost always inexplicable to others until you have published at least a few books, and even then it can still be tricky. And whatever work it moves you to will not look like work, because the hours you devote to your writerly calling may seem perilously close to sitting down and staring a lot and will produce unmistakable (if occasionally angst-ridden) signs of satisfaction. Your progress will be irregular, baffling to quantify. It will also be deeply personal and, because of this, the idea that anyone can teach you how to become a writer, or how to write, is a myth.

(Via James Tata, last November. I remembered the excerpt and went back to find it.)

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