National Lawnmower Expo 2006: My Progress and Plans for the Future

For some stupid reason, I didn't manage to release any blog entries until now (September). Whatever, that's not even the purpose of this entry.

For the past year, I have been working on a story I am calling "National Lawnmower Expo 2006". The reason it's called this is because lawn mowers were more involved in the plot when I started writing this, but are now only kind of related to the plot. There's a lawn mower in the story. That's it (just kidding, it's pretty important).

The plot is pretty straight-forward, but in a way that makes the audience suspect that there's more to the story. At least, that's what I hope it turns out to be like.

Most of the commentary that I make in this blog entry will probably make more sense after the entire thing is released. But that's part of the reason I'm writing this. This is your behind-the-scenes look. You get to see what I was thinking when I made this thing. Imagine me as an extremely successful indie internet artist, and this is the lost author's commentary that has just been discovered and is now being circulated around like crazy.

I came up with the idea for this story while reading The Laramie Project (if you don't know what that is, check it out. It's really cool). My original plan included physical media, made-up testimonies from "witnesses" (or characters), and was probably going to be made into a hardcover book that I would custom make for the project. Seeing as I have since then decided to make it into an exclusively web-based story, my plans have changed drastically.

I don't think it would be a bad idea to give a short summary of the plot (planned so far). There are no real characters, and it is entirely told from the perspective of someone who was never directly involved in the conflict. The reader comes into the story and hears a play-by-play of the events after they have already happened. There is't really any character development (unless you squint really hard). I wanted this project from the very beginning to be me presenting a situation and letting the reader speculate and imagine what that situation could mean on multiple levels. I also made it so that it was nearly impossible to fanonize (although I wouldn't doubt if someone found a way to make yaoi out of my story with virtually no characters). I love fandom (mostly), but I don't want it to impact how people see this, mainly because of how I've seen other works with genuinely deep and heartfelt messages/themes, but the fandom ignores them completely. This isn't to say that I don't want fans of my work, I just don't want them to treat it in the same way that other fandoms treat their source material. This is all probably wishful thinking, and I am almost definitely talking to a brick wall here. I guess (like so many other artists) I just want my art to be seen the way I intended it to be seen, but that has always been impossible.

As for my plans for the future of this project (rather than the project itself), I plan on finishing it completely within the year. It will be released in three "acts", with a prologue and an epilogue as well.

That's really all there is to say on the matter. If I'm incredibly lucky, the prologue will be released before the end of the month, as I do have a life outside of this.

Well, that'll probably be it for now. See you guys later, and I hope you like it when it's done.