A note

From: "Chris Klimas" <cklimas@hotmail.com>
To: undisclosed recipients
Date: forgotten, sometime August 2001
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

Dear Everybody I'm Sending This To,

Editing the Collegian was probably the best thing I ever did when I
was at Washington College. It was fun, it was rewarding, it got me
dates (eventually... and unfortunately, did not get me a
girlfriend). And though it was nice to take a break from it, I don't
really like the prospect of never ever doing something like it
again. I don't want it to be one of those amusing things you look back
on and laugh wistfully, because I don't want to be the kind of person
who laughs wistfully.

What I'd really like to do is to bring the fun, reward, and potential
for macktaculation of the Collegian into the big old arena of the
Internet. And I'd like you to join me.

I've worked with most of you at the Collegian, but I'm also sending
this to people who I know are really good writers who have, through
some strange manipulation of fate, have avoided the Collegian
yoke. Let me say right up front that I think that we have the skills
to stand up to nearly everybody else out there right now. Partly
because a lot of writing on the Internet sucks. But more importantly,
I think we were doing really good work on the Collegian.

So here's my plan. Or lack of plan. Right now, the whole thing is a
very nebulous idea in my head. So I'm going to try to lay the whole
thing out using the Socratic method:

WHY DO IT ON THE INTERNET AT ALL?

Mainly because it doesn't require a lot of cash (i.e. a real magazine
costs quadrillions of other people's money), and also because it's
still the Wild West out there.

Thing is that the climate for Internet publications is not exactly
great. A lot of online publications have shut down. Suck and Feed are
probably the most prominent. The two big online magazines, Salon and
Slate, are not exactly rolling in the money. (Salon's probably going
to go under in a few months. Slate has Microsoft to prop it up.)

Which means two things. One: it will be easy for this adventure to
fail. But there is also great opportunity for it to succeed. Right now
is probably when the next generation of Web sites is going to
establish themselves.

SO, WHAT'S THE GENERAL IDEA, THEN?

See, this is where I'm not exactly sure. My instincts say that we
shouldn't do exactly what the Collegian did before. There has to be
some sort of angle — a kind of directed existence. I was thinking
maybe that a magazine themed around tales of adventure — which could
be as mundane as a trip to the 7-11 — but I'm not sure if that's
completely tenable. Do we have adventures every week? — Which brings
up the other question nagging me.

WOULD THIS BE PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK, EVERY MONTH OR WHAT?

That's a big question. I don't think monthly would be tenable, because
when Web sites don't update for a month, most people guess that
they're dead. Weekly makes more sense, although it would be sort of
interesting if we spread articles over a week's time. Maybe. It would
require careful planning.

WHAT ABOUT MONEY?

This whole enterprise isn't going to be about money
(unfortunately). This is the most dicey part of things, because most
of the sites that have used ads for income have totally floundered.

The new thing seems to be the equivalent of opening up the guitar case
on the street and playing. It's sort of an interesting theory in that
it's a lot easier for people to pay $1 to a site they like. So I think
that's what we should go with.

The bottom line, though, is that there's not going to be a whole lot
of money involved here. It's going to be honor and glory.

For all my bravado it was fear that made me want to start Crunchable. This was four years ago — four years, think of it — but it was only last winter that I saw my fear with my own eyes:

Chris Klimas, he kept saying to me. He was wearing a trucker cap and wide silver glasses and he knew me. He had to — spotted me in the Ottobar right before a concert — even though he mispronounced my last name. Are you Chris?

Yes, I kept saying but I could not recognize him. And then he took off his glasses and it was Ben. The best writer I knew in high school. He wrote like I wished I could. I thought over every word, wrote every sentence like my grandmother, my unborn son, and God himself would all be poring over them. (I still do.) And this made my sentences good in a way but my stories were no good. Ben wrote naturally, wildly. He put poetry and sketches side by side in his journal, like Blake. I kept lists. I wrote screenplays. I drew diagrams. (I still do.)

After we graduated I lost contact with Ben entirely. He tried going to college, for maybe a year, but it didn't work. He wrote me a letter from a kibbutz in Israel maybe a year after that. Or at least he said so — there was no return address though there were weird stamps on it. I kept that letter in the backpack I carried everywhere in college. And then my backpack got stolen, and it was gone.

But we had found each other again. He had a southern accent now — he had lived in Missouri for a while — and he was divorced now. Worked food service. Whatever. I didn't care.

I finally asked the only thing I wanted to know: are you still writing?

No, he said. Not really.

I am scared that if I stop writing, I will become nobody.

~~I am scared that if I stop writing, I will become nobody.~~

I am scared that if I stop writing, I will find out I always have been nobody.

I started Crunchable to keep myself writing. And I wanted to save everyone else. It worked well, when we were all struggling to figure out what we were doing. We had much more free time then. Many of us hadn't found jobs yet, or had jobs that stunk. (And maybe we still do.) But we wanted to write. We had something to say.

But things change. We got married. Some of us are even having children. Some of us got complicated jobs, real ones that take long hours and determination. Maybe we still had something to say — but then maybe we didn't have time to say it.

I kept doing Crunchable. Even when we had almost nothing to publish, we kept going. I was still scared. I am still scared. But then I was in a bar, a different one whose name I don't remember, and I was talking to a girl I barely knew. First name, not last — but she had a kind voice, and I was telling her about Crunchable, how hard it was. I didn't tell her I was scared. I told her I was frustrated instead, that I was thinking of just calling it quits.

Maybe Crunchable just needs to change to fit what everyone's become, she told me.

It's funny how you don't realize simple things — all just because you're too scared to think straight.