The Scrig-gamble
A story of a Scrigglite delving for gems on Scriggler
I read the email at least three times. I hadn’t had my cup of coffee and my eyes were still relearning how to read since the previous day. So when I finally got past the initial “hey there’s a competition for a blog, I have a blog!” idea and I actually read that I had to promote Scriggler and the gems I have found there I had to stop and think about it.
I’ll never get the scene from Women, by Charles Bukowski out of my mind. A couple of drunk Beat poets and some really average singer at the time — all drinking and reading their poems to one another. All the while each and every one of them detested each other for thinking they were worthy of standing in the same room. Each man in their own, was the best and unquestionably so. I feel like that was a running theme at the time, because there was Jack Kerouac in a cabin up in the woods thinking the exact same thing, please just stop and let me read my poetry, as his dear friend recites the very deep and personal Brown.
They were all fairly mad. Mad at the world, mad at themselves and maddened by the undeniable self. So I realized as I returned from my roller-coaster train of thought, that here I was, not having found any gems and experienced Scriggler as a bunch of egotistical word-welders trying their best to get others to read their words without having to do the same. Now don’t feel judged, I’m guilty too. And to be fair I’m not doing very well on the Scriggles end of this either.
The other day I posted a poem titled, Fingertips, about love breeding in mysterious places and how I needed to let go of my chronic fear of emotional intimacy. And then someone decides to comment something along the lines of what a great poem about longing, I wrote one too. Go read my poem about longing. So out of place and blatant that it was an eyesore, lying there so selfishly next to my sweet little poetic pet. Oh my heart sank as I realized I wasn’t the only selfish human on here. I guess it’s pretty difficult to weave a web between the mad.
Time too is an issue for the Scriggle reader. I am a law student with a night job and on the rare occasion that I do want to read in the little spare time I have left I’d rather read the tried and tested published pages that have morphed into a nice little bedside table, rather than taking the scrig-gamble. But the fact that there are no editors in the background filtering posts and directing the posts is about as life-like as promoting yourself in the fleshy reality is — painfully difficult and near impossible to succeed without dedication.
And yet the funny thing is, I’ve told almost everyone to start using Scriggler, it’s such a wonderful initiative! It’s clean cut and to the point. The point system, allowing you to track your exposure to others and make sure that you’re involved in other writers’ work. Scriggles are the spiderweb that glue us all together, but some of us are spiders and others are flies. In this case some of us devour the attention while others get devoured and in the end only a handful of Scrigglites get the prestigious crown covering their work. I’m wishing for my one-day moment (admittedly I have received the honor of having one of my poems being chosen for the Poem Of The Day and I hope to get some permanent jewelry eventually).
And Dmitry Selemir, tirelessly tweeting all our word-vomits and emotion-explosions for the world to read. Good sir, I would send you flowers if I trusted the South African postal system, but alas one must never make that mistake. Instead I thank you for being such an amazingly involved papa bear in all this and for taking the initiative you did to birth this concept. Not only does Scriggler monitor your views and urge you to post and read and become a little word-worker bee, but Scriggler shouts out to the world when you’ve made the leap of faith to share your words with the Scriggler community. Just like a proud mother showing everyone pictures of her beautiful babies. Scriggler makes you feel at home at a distance.
So how has my Scriggler experience been? I could lie and delete everything I have just written but rather I’ll remain honest. Scriggler and the team involved are wonderful. If you don’t pull your weight you will get nowhere and because of that I am confident the this forum inspires people-who-write to become writers and even authors. Scriggler is the platform for a diehard family of writers and the only way to really get there is by following the Scriggle-bible gospel of read others’ as much as you’d read your own and devotion, devotion, devotion. The gems you will find on Scriggler lie more in the lessons you learn than the stories you will find and they are real and personal gems which are essential to your journey to success.
L. x
Links:
