Sunday, October 29, 2017

Jagged and Smooth

This is the closest account I am able to give of a very complex dream from which I have just awaken.  I know that many details are wrong, but I hope to catch the essence of it.

As soon as I was "in" the dream this morning, I realized that it was a repetition or continuation of the same dream I had had once before.  I don't know how we know that in our dreams, but I knew it.  The rules of the thing were at once familiar to me.

I am sad that I cannot remember the exact two words or phrases used in the dream, so "Jagged" and "Smooth" are only approximate substitutes.   The dream revolved around an anonymous fiction-writing site.  The site was a collection of stories, each published under a pseudonym, and each purporting to illustrate either the principle of Jaggedness or the principle of Smoothness.  I was one of the authors.  I believe that I had authored about three stories (say, Jagged 13, Jagged 37, and Smooth 40).

To try to get your story added to the Jagged and Smooth website, you had to electronically submit your manuscript (from 400 to 10,000 words) and the webmaster decided whether you made the cut or not.  The stories were posted chronologically from oldest to newest.

I couldn't be sure, but I think that at the end of some period of years, there was supposed to be some kind of party at which all the authors could meet each other.  But one of the author's works were so compelling to me that I wanted to meet him without having to wait that long.  It was some of the most amazing writing I had ever seen.

I don't know how I found the author, who turned out to be a woman in her late twenties.  I met her out at her farm in the country, and we spoke outside.  She had a few small creatures (like large insects, but I don't think they were insects) that I had never seen before.  She seemed a little distressed to be talking to me before the date on which the authors were supposed to be revealed.  But she also seemed flattered by the things I said about her writing, and she somewhat excitedly answered my questions about her stories.


So, now I wonder:  Could or should such a site be created?  It wouldn't have to be Jagged/Smooth.  It could be Bitter/Sweet or something similar.  I think the problem would be getting good authors to contribute to it.  And then, even if good authors were to find the site, they'd have to be willing to work on the writing with no immediate accolades.

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