My creative urge is a powerful part of my personality. I've been a
journalist off and on since I graduated from college, but I've always
felt something...lacking. My favorite kind of journalism is the
long-form narrative piece that reads like a novel, but is journalism.

Since it is obvious none of my fellow expats want to participate in
this project until it's successful, I've decided to throw out the
original concept and go with something much, much more fun and
innovative.

This blog will have two levels to it -- 1) that of an alternative
weeklyesque type blog that will actually provide "real" information to
expats, and 2) that of an interactive, real-time roman à clef about my
life here in Korea. Imagine if you were to watch that now-canceled show
in the States, Sports Night, and the actors were expected to present
real news during the course of each show.

Since the dawn of man, writers have wanted to talk frankly about the
stuff in their lives, but for any number of reasons they couldn't -- so
they hid behind "fiction" that was based in stuff that actually
happened. This way, everyone is happy -- the writer gets to vent
frustration with themselves and the rest of the world, while the "rest
of the world" is either unsure that what's being written is about them
or clueless altogether. Meanwhile, the average reader gets a good tale
and a few, select, readers understand everything and get a hoot out of
how clever the writer is for hiding things so deeply and yet at the
same time getting their point across! How cool is that!

My concept of the blog fixes the key problem with the existing blogging
model -- most bloggers (myself included until recently) act like not
only are they on the Jerry Springer show but they have some sort of
magical "everything proof shield" that protects them from alienating
friends, lovers, enemies and everyone else when they post What They
Really Think in such a public forum as the World Wide Web. Traditional
journalists have hundreds of years of tradition to fall back upon to
protect themselves from such stupidity from getting published in their
publication, while traditional authors have the roman à clef.

The reason many bloggers do such stupid stuff is they are bloggers and
not "writers" with a background in either journalism or fiction.
Hopefully, one day blogging will come up with its own traditions that
don't involve chairs being thrown.

So how will you tell the difference between real stuff and the stuff
that I just make up? Simple -- if it's posted by a "person" then it's
roman à clef stuff that has facts in it but they'll be all garbled to
such an extent that unless you know me and the people involved, you
won't be reading the "facts" of the matter but the "truth."  I plan to
have a HUGE backstory that will make sense of what the hell is going on
between people as they write stuff for the blog. If it goes according
to plan, before it's all over with, it'll be very X-Files/Twin Peaks in
the amount of complicated relations involved.

Meanwhile, if it's posted by the "Ahssa! Staff," then it's real
(besides the fake by lines and the obviously fictional bickering
between staff members in the copy) and you can take it at face value --
that will be my journalistic urge being fulfilled. <span
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italic">Please note, if a "real"
person wants to actually wants to contribute something to this project,
they are more than welcome to and their work will be duly noted as
coming from someone born from a real womb at some point in the past and
not from my fevered imagination.</span>

Whenever I want to go straight into fiction that steps away from the
whole concept of Ahssa!, I will use the world "interlude" in the title.
That will mean whatever is being written in the roman à clef style and
should be treated as such. <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE:
italic">DO NOT GET OFFENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</span> I'm just
talking to myself. Whenever I write roman à clef stuff in a post, it's
because I have an creative obsessive/compulsive itch in my mind that
needs some serious scratching.

Lastly, anything negative I write about a real person will be so deeply
buried in fiction that only I will understand what I mean. Also -- a
lot of this stuff is just me talking to myself in an entertaining way.
So if it's nasty and ad hominem in nature, it's probably "<span
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italic">Me, Myself and I</span>"
having one of our periodic horrible, knock down, drag out fights.
<strong>And repeat after me, gentle reader: "<em>If I sense something
is about me, I will not get all huffy and write nasty comments on the
blog or sulk privately about said belief and act all weird the next
time I see you in person.</em>" There are two reasons for this 1) if I
was so eager to hurt your feelings, I wouldn't be using the roman à
clef style writing, now would I? 2)email me privately or hunt me down
and beat the shit out of me. You know you want to.</strong>

Yours very truly,

Shelton Bumgarner
Ahssa! writer and creator
http://ahssa.blogspot.com