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What is a Word NEXUS?

The blogform is a great gift to writers — perhaps the greatest the Web has given to writers since it first promised us the Power to Publish.

In the blogform, “journal” has reached as high and full a meaning as ever in the history of journal-keeping.

A blog is the greatest note pad ever made, in other words.

In this blog, however, the first job is to “receive” a body of writing that already exists, and, accomplishing that, to then “offer it out” — creatively, if possible.

In their previous home on the Web, these pieces of writing were arranged chronologically in a number of separate sequences, with virtually no links between them, and a central — “hub and spokes” — navigation. That web site was very much a protoblog – it had a number of “rolls“, but it only connected them in one common place.

In spite of the limitations* of this architecture (*the primary “limitation” being my laziness), it worked well. Each “roll” was like a corridor from the present into the past — with a dead-end. You went in and you either reached the end (the oldest piece of writing in that roll) and came back (or left), or you turned back somewhere in the middle (or left). For those who “walked” through even a short section of corridor, the experience was “immersive”. But, like narrow corridors, the spokes of the wheel (lol) could get a little claustrophobic.

What the modern blogform does so well, via the category structure, is allow a blogger to easily associate different items (posts) with many other items, under many different categories. This is, of course, very convenient for the reader. But it also allows the Blogger* (* “blogger” now being expanded beyond “writer of text” to include “arranger of text“, as well) to make creative as well as purely navigational/classificational choices through the associations he makes — or merely suggests — between items that share a category. The potential spectrum of meta-expression possible via blog categorization choices runs from the utilitarian to the poetic — from finding an item written in March inside the March folder, to finding a superficially sterile office memorandum in the “Free verse poems about Love” category. You’d have to think about that a moment. That’s the definition of art: to be compelled by the artist (through time and space) to CONSIDER his intentions.

Suffice it to say, I’ve become excited by the chance to try to “make” yet something more by bringing together these many individual somethings in deliberate ways. In this regard, though I am using only “old” pieces of writing, I am filled with the anticipation of making something new.

The idea of the “Word NEXUS” is, simply to provide another way for me to create associations between items, in parallel to the category system. Like a search engine, however, the Word NEXUS system is based on text string matches, rather than Subjective Inclusion, like directories. I have observed it in myself and find it interesting that writers can become “localized” over certain terms. There are some concepts, names, settings, etc. that pop up here and there in the work of all writers. To seek some of those out in my own Ouevre, as I do this, provides additional creative options, as well as discovery opportunities for me.