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Hmm, weird. It's at bluntswords.sanfordmay.com for anyone interested.

Of note: I'm just launching Blunt Swords today and rather than go in and creat a lot of vacuous content to push participants to the site, I'd really like to see writers register and begin to build valid content. This isn't a business endeavor; I'm not going to be selling advertising or cyber-begging for Amazon.com gift certificates: I'd really love to see us develop a great Web community for writers. Without the commercial trappings of Zoetrope, and even some of the smaller sites.

My IM (AIM) address and e-mail are both available on my profile at bluntswords.sanfordmay.com; please contact me if you have any questions.

I'll consider it, Sanford. So far, I'm doing just one of those, for fiction. Real life groups work better for me, at least. They are less likely to attract the truly hopeless, for one thing. (Sad truth of the matter is just about any cretin posting to the Internet thinks he or she is a writer.) And, direct interaction leads to better communication, I believe. Maybe it is the eye contact.

I'll be the first to say that I have *very* low expectations for Blunt Swords: it likely won't take off and if it does, it will devolve into the kind of banal sniping festival that is the hallmark of most online writing groups. But when you make the distinction between "real life" and online forums -- places where writing is the primary form of communication -- you denegrate writing itself. If "direct interaction" leads to better communication, I'm lead to wonder why you bother writing at all.

And those cretins may be *bad* writers, but they are indeed writers. Borders, Barnes & Noble and Elliott Bay Book Company are chockful of bad writers, too. Condemning the Internet is condemning a medium that in no small way has revived the written language as a favored form of expression. A more appropriate criticism of the Internet is that it may stunt the growth of social interaction; but for writing it is an astounding if imperfect incubator.

"Denigrate", of course.