A Doll's Graduation

    I joined WDC initially for the interactive stories.  When I was growing up, my friends and I would often involve ourselves in such exercises.  I would write a sentence, a paragraph, sometimes merely a thought and it would be someone else's duty to throw in their two cents, then another and another.  These simple activities often resulted in a form of mental jousting, as one of us would try to challenge the next.  They might entirely disregard the course you tried to take, kill a main character, or leave you trying to complete an idea they had left in mid-sentence.  In any case, when enough people had added their two cents, sometimes you would end up with something worth a million bucks.

    But I digress.

    Although I joined for the interactive stories, I quickly realized what an immense resource WDC really was.  In the same vein, I was also completely lost as far as the potential of the site.  "Alice In Wonderland" leapt to mind.  There is a part where, in a fit of exasperation, Alice simply states:  "It would be so nice if something made sense for a change."

    Enter the Dolls.

    THERE is something worth a million bucks (and you can't beat the price).  I was approached out of the blue, scooped up and transported to this place where, nineteen other folks, much like me, were put to the task of learning the ins and outs.  In many ways a trial by fire, but what better way to absorb something than being immersed in it and having a stake?  Also, it seems to me there exists a strange parallel between my sophomoric efforts at authorship in the past and the Paper Dolls Project (and not in the sense of being sophomoric).  Instead it is the impression I have of the community.  The idea of helping newbies, transformed into a well-oiled machine through the efforts, ideas and inputs of an ever-growing band of contributors.  It is quite the legacy, Hannah, fearless leader, that your baby has become what it is.  You have created something that offers practical knowledge of not just WDC, but also of the industry that so many writers strive to be a part of...and that's even if one decides to walk away from the experience without a friend or two in tow.

    So as not to bore anybody, I'll end here with three points I have learned about writing in my own time which I hope may prove memorable to an aspiring writer:  One, know that it will never be "right"; Two, try to leave out the parts that people skip; and finally, never, never interrupt when you are being flattered.


    Thank you, Dolls.



    Kyle Curcio, August 2009









Featured in Shadows:  A Paper Doll Gang Publication Volume 1, Issue 2

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