A Metaviews project

Read more. Write more. Hold each other to the reading.

Ray Bradbury told a room of writers to do two things: write one short story every week for a year, and every night before bed read one poem, one short story, and one essay. His reason for the second: "the more metaphors you can cram yourself with, they'll bounce around inside your head and make new metaphors."

Both halves are harder now than they were. Reading is in decline. Writing has become cheap, which changes what writing is for. So this is a place to read, a place to share what you wrote, and a record of both, kept by people who are trying to do the same thing.

Bradbury hated computers, which is the one part of his instruction we are reversing. His actual instruction was "whatever works, whatever works," and the practice survives the reversal intact.

Three things at once

This is a research project, a media project, and an exercise in reading and writing, all at the same time. The site keeps a record of what people read and what they made of it, which is evidence about how reading and writing are changing in a culture that presently exists in the form of the world wide web. It has a public surface where things get published and read. And people read and write here, which is the point.

How to use it

• Read. Each day, one poem, one short story, one essay. These are pointers, not a collection: the web is the library, and you are free to read what is not on the page.
• Record what you read and what you made of it. Voluntary, yours to change or delete.
• Write one finished piece a week, any form, with the tools you have. Share it here when it is done.
• Keep each other going. Streaks and boards, because they reward, and because watching other people read and write is part of how anyone becomes a writer.

Beginning

There is no cohort and no start date and no fee. People start when they start, and the first thing to do is read something and write something.