Gotta Feeling

As you may be able to tell from this blog, I'm a big fan of technology, the social interweb, and all that good stuff. I just got involved with a group hoping to make an online literary magazine. While some lit mags have made their way to the internet, offering e-versions of their printed materials, these sites are often uninviting and not at all interactive. On the other side, there are hundreds of writing communities online where people submit and review each others' pieces, but this takes on a review-and-edit-like stance where the shared materials are not the final drafts; rather they are just being prepared for publication and catered to an audience. While both of these sorts are grand testaments to the power, popularity, and connectivity of literature, we hope to combine the best of both and make an e-based literary magazine where the texts are final products that go through a vetting process but where the site allows for social interaction through commenting, sharing, liking, and voting on favorite submissions. We hope to make the literary magazine accessible and personable while keeping it structured and allowing for new voices to be heard, shared, and appreciated. It's something I'm excited about mostly because I feel like the internet can often be a place of extremes.

On one hand, we have the hoity-toity highbrows who feel the internet is destroying culture and thus cling to the printed form. On the other, there's a sort of publish-anything mentality where everything is put out there and the author expects a pat on the back. But I like the middle ground, somewhere where the respectable culture of the printed can meet the liveliness and vitality of the digital crowd. For me, then, this is an opportunity to blend sides, break boundaries...and perhaps stick it to the man on both accounts.

I think this can be a huge success--where people serious about writing can interact with those serious about reading. They can interact, they can receive feedback, but they can also be celebrated for their hard work in writing something worth publishing. 

So hoorah for literature! And hoorah for a new age and new medium! This is gonna be good.