In recent years November has become almost synonymous with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), a 30-day, 50,000-word writing challenge for aspiring authors the world over. For this reason, I’m not surprised to find One Page Per Day (OPPD) getting its own share of attention in the week leading up to this year’s twelfth iteration of the writing bonanza–but I am intrigued by variations on the premise.
Visiting the page, I’m struck first and foremost by the doing away of sign-up forms, a serious irritant among internet fad sites. Instead, OPPD’s premise is simple: If you’ve got a Google account, you’re in. Twitter accounts also work, but the Google association has some fascinating ramifications I’ll expound upon momentarily, which is why it takes precedence here.
My next impression is simply of the cleanliness of one’s workspace: As a Mac user, I usually use WriteRoom to avoid distractions, but OPPD has managed to make a website, for all its surrounding detritus (tool bars, docks, tabs, etc.), appealingly clean and user friendly. Another plus is the reduction of font choice to tried-and-true Courier New: a font that also draws on the most idealistic roots of the would-be writer archetype. The fact that this program saves automatically is another exceptional boon, as is the unobtrusive (but still easy to read) word count meter in the upper right hand corner.
And then there’s the “Glimpse” function, a tiny tick-box making one’s daily writing public or private, depending on personal choice. To me, a writer who seeks publication of her work, and therefore is exceptionally cautious about what is and isn’t available already on the public domain, this is a tool I can only ever see using in a voyeuristic fashion–and with truly fascinating results. Here are some highlights from the first Glimpse page I read:
NICOLE’S CRYING EYES … THE FORGOTTEN CHILD …
MY NAME IS NICHOLE CLEMONS AND I HAVE A STORY TO TELL … I WAS ABUSED AS A CHILD AND I’M STILL TRYING TO HEAL … I HOPE BY WRITING THIS , I WILL SOMEHOW BE RELEASING THIS OUT OF MY SOUL AND MAYBE SOMEONE WILL HEAR THE CRY’S OF OTHERS THAT WERE JUST LIKE ME …
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This Might Be the Day I Kill the Receptionist
…was I so angry this morning upon walking in to see her horribly vapid face that I forgot the Sweet n’ Low in my coffee? And why the fuck is my boss not responding to my “Spicy Hot V8 Emergency” email request? Unbelievable.
Look, I usually don’t act quite this indignant. I assure you, however, THIS LADY IS INSANE. She is a shrill ridiculous harpy that somehow fills me with venom at the sound of her voice. She squeals out of joy or pain or if she makes a whoopsie. She is unable to give people directions, even though she has worked here for 11 years. She confuses “Bryan” with “Brandon” and refuses to actually look at a directory in order to pronounce names correctly. These drawbacks, in my opinion, make her a terrible receptionist.
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Unsung Feelings
The Sun always shines above the clouds. It is our job to soar above them and to over come the clouds which obscure our hearts true feelings and our perceptions intended response. The rainbow hints at the purity above.
There is a connection that I feel, which under different times would have been strong and enduring. Today, due to the events of times countless march, these feeling are acted upon in small curious steps. There is an attraction, that will not be ignored, but it will have to grow and strengthen over an un-natural time frame. Friendship is the key and the anchor which will allow, as time permits, to mature and grow into the love that both of us desire.
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The Rebellion
Owain spotted her looking around the room. She ran her good hand down her face and looked over at the soldier. He looked different. His short and ragged black hair was smooth. His clothing was rather contrasting: Owain wore a brown and unbuttoned vest with a cream colored button up shirt underneath, his shirt was tucked into a pair of dark brown pinstripe pants with a utility belt for common things like money and pencils. Along with the opposite choice of clothing from his dark uniform, he smiled more. The man looked cheery, and Victoria didn’t know why.
“That’s certainly a change of clothing. Sir,” she almost forgot that all civilians were required to address soldiers as “Sir”.
“Hey, I won’t have any of that. Don’t call me Sir, the name’s Owain,” his deep voice alarmed her again.
I’ve tried to capture a spectrum of the pages here — indeed, maybe a fourth of them, that I can see, are actually stories (the real percentage of stories to chaff should be a lot higher if other writers seeking publication are also privatizing their posts): the rest belong to varying categories of therapeutic writing–the trauma tale, the story of day-to-day annoyances, the personal thesis on Life, the Universe, and Everything. We’ve certainly seen this kind of writing before on online journals and blogs, but since the structure of OPPD is pointedly geared towards literary endeavours, the continued presence of this therapeutic writing is fascinating.
What makes this phenomenon more fascinating still is another key feature of the OPPD layout: the absence of traditional comment boxes. The only things you can do on another person’s glimpse pages are 1) click a checkbox to follow their pages in the future, and 2) send an auto-response form requesting that the user post another page. So the question quickly becomes, will this distinct incentive system change user habits? Will people come to the site initially writing for themselves and then, realizing that their therapeutic stories won’t garner anyone’s attention, shift their approach on future pages? Since the site also sends you a gentle daily reminder that you have a blank page waiting to be filled, encouraging you to focus on the act of writing every day, could OPPD actually, gradually create better writers?
Even if users don’t change their habits to meet an oft-noted desire to be a celebrated part of internet communities, their writing still retains a wealth of insights regarding threads of commonality between various lived experiences–to say nothing of the shared linguistic roadblocks limiting each writer’s articulation of individual fears, questions, hopes, and doubts. It’s almost enough to make me want to write a page per day just summarizing those universal trends myself, or else jot down notes on strikingly different voices and vernacular therein, for use in future character development of my own.
However, for writers pursuing publication, or others simply intrigued by the general literary current online, the Google side to this project also becomes eminently thought-provoking. Is this not the same corporation that opened up literature to the masses through Google Books, copyright often be damned? Does Google not have a stake in the future of e-book sales through partnership with Sony? Is Google not in general noted for changing the way we view the world (literally, through Google Maps) and how we access and exchange information within it?
I can’t quite put my finger on the direction the line of dominoes before me is taking, but perhaps that comes from spending too much time atop just one domino in the chain myself. Suffice it to say, of all the transformative zeitgeists promised readers and writers in the last decade–the renewed prominence of self-publishing in an e-book world; the low-cost wealth of literature at our smart-phone-trained fingertips; the widespread dissemination of creative writing programs and online degrees; the flooding of all literary markets with more globalized fare–One Page Per Day suggests our very real proximity to a world in which the act of writing is given true, day-to-day prominence in individual lives. Whether this will be a boon or a loss for writers seeking to make money at their art remains to be seen, but for now I take heart in the positive aspects of this latest endeavour:
Namely, while NaNoWriMo projects more often than not languish on desktops after November is over, OPPD encourages better writing practices in a gentle, corrective, everyday way that might just win out, over time.
