i have been on fictionaut for a couple weeks now. i have some thoughts about it. i want to say these thoughts in some concrete way, i don't know why. i think, mainly, fictionaut is an interesting space. overall i've enjoyed my time on the site and there seems to be a lot of very good, surprising writing.
i will start with things that make me uneasy.
the "favorite" tag has many possible problems, obvious ones:
1. stories become about competition (who can get the most favorites) and that seems strange. favoriting pushes a "standard" or "judgment" thing in very concrete form right to the front of the story, ie, right to the front of the piece of art. art isn't to be experienced like this. what i like about art, when i'm doing well, is that i don't 'judge' right away. i think there is something to be said for 'letting the art happen.'
2. there are logistical problems with the favoriting system. it could lead to Author A favoriting a story of Author B so that Author B comes to Author A's story and favorites it. in this scenario, everyone is masturbating on everyone else's stories.
3. should published stories be allowed to be "published" on fictionaut? i don't know. a nice answer to this might be something like "as long as the story is not in a current issue; it must be archived or in a back issue. " that seems fair. that way, the journal gets its visitors or purchases, etc. while journals' copyrights need to be respected, i do believe in the "art" more than the "journal" itself. while the journal is the vehicle - the tool for getting the art out there - it is the art inside that matters.
4. (personal) it became difficult (for a moment) for me to say "thank you" and "great story" a lot with any authenticity or sincerity even when i like a story. i was feeling worn out. i can make myself be authentically sincere and nice in an email occasionally to a stranger, but fictionaut almost forces me to be authentically sincere to strangers very often, which is not possible. there is also the strangeness of having a bunch of "noise" thrown at a story, reducing it in some way, i don't know how, i haven't thought far enough.
5. upon setting up my account, i thought, i'll read stuff that other people have read (i looked at "views") and then i'll "construct" my "favorites" list so i can have a sort of "complete" looking profile. but this got me wandering, what about stories that don't have as many views? so i began looking at those with less views. then i began wandering, what stories am i missing? i saw there are like 53 pages of people profiles on the site, so i'm probably seeing, what, a tenth of those stories, probably less? accessiblity issues seemed weird there. Fictionaut may need an archiving format.
now i will say the positive things; these positives are not meant to cancel out anything above, they are only either another way to view a thing or, i don't know, me just trying not to look at everything so negatively (the numbers don't correspond, sorry, i'm lazy, they should).
1. i'm not terribly sure it matters whether a story has been published or not. no, i don't think it matters. if it is art, it doesn't matter. if it is a thing that is supposed to be free and viewable and gettable, it doesn't matter. within the rules of publishing, it does matter, but in terms of art, it doesn't matter whether the art is in one journal or another or both.
2. "favoriting" stories/poems is also already happening in the online community, it just doesn't seem as odd because it's coming from individual web sites. people link stories on their blogs and have online zines on their blogs, etc, which is essentially the same as "favoriting." often many people talk about the same story or same book on their blog (for instance, a lot of people have talked nice things about Light Boxes, which we call reviews), so this could be viewed as many people "favoriting" this book. however, these "favorites" don't actually come on the book, as in Fictionaut. what does come on the book, however, are blurbs by other fairly famous writers. this is the same thing Fictionaut does with comments. the comments, i think, are like blurbs. still, all the reservations i have about favoriting are still valid above.
3. the word "competition" is scary in terms of Fictionaut. is Fictionaut using a "competition" based system to "choose" which art is "best"? yes it is. but this is what all journals do anyway, except readers don't get to see the losers, those rejected manuscripts. one of the more interesting things with Fictionaut (and not intended to be interesting in a malicious way) is that readers now get to see the losers, those not faved or commented on, etc.
4. i read this blog post searching for stuff about fictionaut. i like darby larson and what he says about things. his writing i like too. Abjective (the journal he edits) looks amazing and the writing is always staggering, so much so that it makes me feel like i should stop. but then i realize that i'm writing with a completely different set of aesthetic values. this is why i'll never send to Abjective, however much i enjoy it. anyway, he mentions that an aesthetic will arise in Fictionaut and this, in some way, will limit the site, ie, limit the type of writing on the site. i think this is true, but again it's no different than any online journal, with a set of editors, all with particular aesthetic values. darby's aesthetic values for Abjective, for instance, while not easily definable by me right now, do seem very clear to me. so, if Fictionaut begins to move toward a particular aesthetic, i don't see what is wrong this. this is what is supposed to happen. the system becomes self-organizing or else it'll fall apart. the worry is that an inferior aesthetic will dominate or an aesthetic that leaves out too much good writing. the real hope would be that the aesthetic somehow continually changes, slips to other types of stories, etc...
5. the other thing darby writes about is lack of critical analysis. i agree. there is a lack of critical analysis, but it doesn't appear, as of now, that that's what Fictionaut is about. i view fictionaut as an online self-publishing journal edited by writers. it allows writers like me to pick a story i like and favorite it, giving it attention or a comment, publishing it in my profile. so in this way, my profile becomes an aesthetic statement and my own sort of mini-journal, which is interesting. in this way, one can reject a dominant aesthetic if one arises. maybe. also, i have seen some good critical analysis, some really close reading and revision in comments. so there is potential for critical analysis.
that is all. i've spent way to much time writing this and not grading papers and i'm still hungover from two days ago. i feel like i'm taking this all way too seriously.
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