Swinging an Axe

Chop, Chop

A few days ago a stiff breeze fell two hefty limbs that came crashing down into our cable box and did our Internet connection damage. We couldn’t stay on long. Every few moments the signal was lost. It was a miserable experience.

Most folks we know are addicted to their social networking sites, and to their online magazines, and to porn.

Recently, though, we’ve been thinking about seclusion. Cormac McCarthy stays pretty well hid and Charles Portis isn’t media friendly and where the hell has Thomas Pynchon been for the last forty years and the late J.D. Salinger was always locked away.

We wonder if this seclusion allows for better perspective.

Yesterday we sectioned the fallen limbs with a wooden handled axe. The limbs were as thick as a man’s throat, and it took a great deal of heaving to break through the bark and wood. No one watched us do it. It was the most productive thing we’ve done in years.

It made us think about our writing. If no one ever saw it, would it still be something we did. If it all went into a box, and that box went into a safe, and that safe went into an ocean liner, and that liner was sunk at the bottom of the ocean, would we still feel the need to produce words?

We’d like to think we would, but recent online ventures such as:

* HTML Giant
* Big Other
* Third Face

(Yes I chose those three in particular because I like the name progressions)

Have shown us that community is a very integral part of the writing process for our generation of writers.

Should it be?

Is that how we should be remembered? More importantly, is that where and how we should be spending our time? — Brian Allen Carr

Video: Chopping Wood