Brian Joseph Davis

Since the launch of Richard Nash’s Red Lemonade site—the first iteration of his planned Cursor platform—talk has been buzzing among writers about it. The question I’ve heard, literally on the street in New York when I’ve bumped into people, and online, is this: how is this different from any other attempt at online writing communities? Well, I can only describe it as someone who joined recently, but I do have the perspective gleaned from having helped found a different, smaller scale online community.

Of course my take on the digitization of publishing has always been a little different, being not just a writer, but a member of the generation of artists that started to make art explicitly for the Internet, using any kind of file and platform that seemed to make sense. Most published authors, on the other hand, still see electronic distribution as some kind of consolation prize. I’ve always made multimedia work—audio, text pieces—just for the Internet because it’s better. It’s better than galleries and it’s better than radio. I’m not alone in that, as musicians and filmmakers had been doing the same for just as long and realizing real world economic benefits.

When I helped start Joyland the intention was to create a literary journal for the open web and what we thought would work was a limited editorial network built from contacts and friends made through touring. The model was nothing more than Maximum RocknRoll scene reports or mail art networking sped up with Drupal and focused on new fiction and prose writing. Aesthetically and functionally, it has worked really well because the community is based on the affinities of the editors, but the site is also relatively open and transparent so it grows organically. I honestly believe that all aesthetic issues—good, bad, cutting edge, too crazy, too boring, etc—come down to sociological ones. We either want to join established clubs, make our own, or define ourselves against others.

And I think that’s what may make Red Lemonade work, especially as the idea extends to other writing genres and communities; Richard said as much during a panel this week. Historical attempts at these large online writing communities have all shown that too big a net is cast over the notion of “writing” as a singular activity and goal when, rather, “writing” is a writhing mass of ever evolving code between people. On Red Lemonade, there are stock dead authors and their texts to link to and follow and I think it’s no accident that they’re drawn from the archives of The Evergreen Review. I know Terry Southern will never follow me back but in following him it’s a nice short hand for other members of Red Lemonade. A friend said a few months ago that as gates go up, the web will start to look a lot like it did in the 1990s: closed off tide pools neighboring one another. Whether that’s good or bad for digital culture in general remains to be seen but I do know it is good for writing culture, which thrives on scalable walls.

When working within traditional publishing one of the more teeth grinding struggles for the author is for her to find someone who “gets” what she’s trying to do. Joining an MFA program helps connect with other writers but it is expensive and no guarantee of access. What I liked most since posting forty-odd pages of a new work on Red Lemonade is that the feedback has been instant, good, and challenging to me, the kind of thing an author usually has to wait months for from editors. In terms of interface, emphasis is on long form manuscripts and the annotation function encourages readers to support opinion with an example—not just get their troll-on. There are hopes that a donation-for-download set up will be forthcoming and that will make it even more like Bandcamp for working writers, which is one really effective way of looking at the site beyond the hopes of being published.

Will this lead to authors being published by Red Lemonade, which has print and distribution support by PGW? That will be interesting to watch for, but what I think is more important is that instead of training readers to be writers—the purported goal of many Field of Dreams-like writing websites—is that Red Lemonade could train writers to be readers and act as citizens of their craft. That, I know for a fact, will result in sales.

Another interesting question a friend asked is: Will this model put edited content out of business? (I think he implied things like Joyland.) I don’t think so. Just because someone is incredibly talented doesn’t mean they’ll have the confidence for something like Red Lemonade or be able to work alone in editing. If anything, Red Lemonade is showing there is no longer any need for one system of publishing and there’s room, and sure as hell enough authors, for any number of different approaches.

The one thing I don’t like is the lack of time in general to read the authors I’ve read before and the great authors I’ve just encountered. Soon though, soon, and I hope I’m not already becoming a bad citizen.