Brian Connors
18 August 2000
blather is a creative writing mailing list based at egroups.com. Someday, if it works out, I intend to turn it into a serious website with a Slash backend so it doesn't clutter mailboxes, but not now.
Whatever you want. Essentially, I created blather as a place to share thoughts, poetry, stories, and the like with anyone who likes swapping those sorts of things. It was inspired by a mailing list I was a member of many moons ago called Nerdnosh, but has a somewhat broader scope.
The short answer -- anything you want as long as you wrote it.
The long answer is that pretty much anything is welcome. Short stories and/or serialized novels, poetry (especially haiku), mood sketches, screen plays, sci fi, jokes, and cascade stories (where one author picks up where the other left off) are all welcome. Fanfics generally aren't (unless they're really good); there are plenty of good places to find original Trek, Bab5, Star Wars, X-Files and what have you material. Purely technical material is frowned upon; if you need to go into deep background for a story, a link to an outside web page is sufficient.
Garbage posts are unwelcome -- spam, unoriginal material, urban legends, and pointless random forwards will all be greeted with a personalized tounge-lashing from the moderator (who was in training for alt.flame before he left college) and possible temporary suspension of posting privileges. Plagiarism is also strongly frowned upon and will result in immediate definite suspension; if you can't come up with something original, it's in your best interest simply to lurk until you can.
Discussion and reviews aren't allowed on blather. If you want to see those, subscribe to the companion list, blather-disc.
What about it? I'm a firm believer in free speech, so I don't intend to censor per se, but if you're going to post over-18 material, one really good erotic sonnet is worth a dozen mediocre [MMMFF/pedo/inc/orgy/ichthyobestiality] fsck stories.
Simple guideline: if you're going to go downstairs, make it good and make sure you include [18+] or something of the sort in the subject line. Note that I will police such material more strongly because I have no control over whether minors read this material; if there are any problems, I have no qualms about forking the list to suit others' sensibilities. Use common sense -- don't get me in trouble, don't get yourself in trouble, and don't get eGroups in trouble either.
Go to the Blather archive page at egroups to see what's up.
Just enter your name in the field at the bottom of the main page. That's all.
