We are LIVE!

Yes, ladies and fellas, Typetrigger is up and running, expanding and becoming exactly what we had envisioned it would be. We just barely made our launch date of August 24: like a stubborn baby, it was born just before midnight. Invitations started going out 10 minutes later, and now, about 36 hours into this thing, momentum is starting to build.

We have about 100 users signed up (Thank you! Thank you!), and a few dozen people are writing. We know we have a lot to learn about how you all experience TT, so please communicate with us. We are opening a Discussion page on this blog so that people can easily keep us posted on issues they are having or features they would like to have.

This is a gidddy, giddy day for us, and we hope that Typetrigger is as fun for you.

Is genre dead?

Just read an interesting editorial (in two parts) on plagiarism by Stanley Fish in the NYTimes, a subject that seems likely to be a hot topic in the Typetrigger world.  Mr. Fish arguement is summed up in his original title: "Plagiarism is Neither a Moral Nor a Philosophical Concept." He does not argue in favor of abandoning the concept, but of understanding that it is a contextual and situational issue more than a moral one.

Public cases of plagiarism has been a huge embarrassment in recent years, provoking finger-wagging as well as assertions that we have evolved into a society in which remixing is as valid as creating new content. Or that there is no such thing as new content. Authenticity in food and originality in art are mere snapshots in time of a (false) sense of static being. I follow and enjoy the structure of the arguments, but at present I am wondering what all of this means for genre.

I essentially agree with Fish, but for most creative types, plagiarism has less contextual relevance, and I am guessing that Typetrigger will see many users riff on one another and sometimes even rip one another off. Being the internet, a place where cutting and pasting are done in seconds, I am open to remixing to an extent. But in the case of creative writing (where originality of concept has less clout than in the world of patents), I wonder what happens to original meaning when riffing crosses genres. Fiction has long been veiled autobiography, and autobiography is often laced with fiction, so what is it when lines and words float along from one genre and author to the next? What is genre, and can it last?

Not Highbrow | Not Lowbrow | Just Mustache

We are getting our first batch of shirts back from the printers in a few days, and we are very excited to start sporting them. The art was done by fantastic tattoo artist, Jason Minauro. It was just what we had in mind, only better.

This tag line has become our unofficial (maybe soon-to-be official?) slogan around here, and it helps us keep in mind what we want to cultivate on Typetrigger. I (Lily Pierson, founder) have a tendency to be verbose and unintentionally high-falutin'. I was called out on this by a friend as we were starting to work on how we would describe Typetrigger to the public. My language was off-putting, rather than exciting, and I am glad to have been told that if I kept it up I would alienate the very people who I want to work with.

Trying to find the right balance, my fellow declared: "Typetrigger isn't highbrow or lowbrow. It's just mustache." It stuck, and we mean it. Typetrigger is essentially playful, and while it can accomodate serious writing, it is equally adept at handling fun frivolity.

We will putting these shirts on the backs of all of our t-shirt wearing friends, and we will be giving them away every week once we are up and running. You will soon be able to order them from this here site as well!

Get it yet?

When we started this blog a while ago, we hoped two things. One, we wanted to engage some writers in what we were doing before we launched. Two, we hoped to give the public at large a taste of what Typetrigger would be like without giving up the secret recipe.

The first submissions from Leslie Jamieson and Amy King were thrilling: two women we didn't know, both talented writers, took our vauge prompts and came back to us with short wonders. It was the first time that we had seen how other people responded to the concept, and it was just what we'd hoped for. Since then we have been pleased to see what all the other writers have submitted, and the array of subjects and styles has been fun to see.

We had offered our writing community the chance to respond to one of four triggers:

-White Shoes

-At Sea

-Open Windows

-Sweet Things

The only requirement was that the responses be short (300 words or less, to be precise). For the most part we have here a combination of poetry and memoir, but there is no limit to the diverse genres that could be explored in response to these triggers, and we are excited to see how our users create their own niches once we are live next week.

After nearly a year in the making, we will be launching in an invitation-only beta mode on Tuesday, August 24. If you are interested in joining us, drop a line via the Join Beta link on the right. We will send you a link when we are live and you can consider the possibilities yourself.

At Sea | Again (Amy King)

Excerpt from GEOGRAPHY OF PLEASURE

An orange star dying on my windowsill

—the sugared thing—is never a ship but a leisure.

Yes, to be allowed at least one leisure per life,

to sky someone in from the dispossessed

is to dispose of mind and body contents,

a bouquet of erotic breaths, the honeyed air

of a lover’s lungs open as this planet, or the next.

That banquet unknown, like manna torn

by the ridges of your tightening teeth.

How I wish one was matter

from one’s own country, belly up

beneath the spell of geography, responsible only

to those drifting snapshots, neck turned,

half-smile tie by the growling oil green

of a bench on which sits figs, pomegranates.

Sunflower seeds shell the dirty asphalt.

Square basement windows belch

a pack of cigarettes that flinch on star gas.

At dawn, a banknote’s smile sucks us down,

frames a flock of sheep by the chimney’s feet

that climb twelve floors of syllabled steps,

the first piano view of a factory as nature.

Money the men.  We nature whores. 

Depleting minor corpuscles and drain

the red serum from our skin graft’s scales.  

I have never found the neighboring sea

pretty, insert eyes that, instead, the lake frogs

and flies, stretch center over the cobwebs of me

in an arch of trees:  they spear across

vineyards, the airy earth too thick with vines

and footsteps up to the front of our wheelchairs.

Children’s voices wash across a city terrace,

loudspeakers drown on our bottles of wine,

and a marching song comes rolling in

from the mountains of those who work to own

the luxury of bills, the leisure of beaches

and beaks that scramble along the attic walls…

you go there, fondle that star,

and ache the race to nowhere.

Amy King is a poet and teacher.