Vomit and Ooze

Last night, I finally made it to one of Pat Cadigan's readings at Borders. The guests were Cory Doctorow and John Courtnay Grimwood. It was all interesting, but for me the high point was the bit where Pat admitted to projectile vomiting her novels onto an unsuspecting world, while Cory claimed his just oozed out from under his door.

This was during a discussion of how Cory likes to publish beta versions of his novels in serial form on the net, whereas neither Pat nor John could ever imagine doing such a thing. Later, down the pub, I wanted to make a profound point about how this may not be so much a difference in willingness to let unfinished drafts be read as a difference in perception of the net, but the woman next to me spilled her drink all over the table, and by the time it got mopped up, the conversation had turned to other things.

It seems to me that some people (Cory, for instance) regard the net as a community of largely like-minded people, most (though spectacularly not all) of whom are well-intentioned and intelligent. So that for him, putting writing on the net is not all that different from showing it to his friends. He just has a lot of friends. Whereas others (Pat and John) regard the net as a thing used by people who are mostly strangers, of the sort one wants only to see one's best work, lest they judge you by something you yourself are not yet happy with. I haven't yet figured out where I stand on this.

In other news, it's a good thing I remembered my camera the other day. This morning, walking across the Heath, I found they had taken the table down and were about to go to work dismantling the chair, with a large crane and a camera crew in attendance.