The origins and incarnations of Shotgun Prose

The origins and incarnations of Shotgun Prose

Unlike the shifting origin of Wolverine, Shotgun Prose has a simple and easy origin.

Back in my college columnist days a fairly prissy copy editor did not like my writing style. He said it was like I was just blasting with a shotgun and hoping to hit something. I paraphrase here, but the gist is clear.

So, I actually took that as a badge of honor, since so much of the stuff I continue to read is narrowly focus and lacking in context. I might meander and ramble at times and find tangents to be a normal way of discussing and defending topics, but by doing so I am able to draw all of my thoughts together on a subject.

In 1999, I started something similar to a blog on a tripod.com web page. I was going to do a monthly recap of thoughts and ideas. But, at the time the limited computer access I had made it impossible to really make that work. There were several months of attempts, but I could never really get it going. I did manage to get some thoughts down on issues related to the WTO Riots, Hillary running for the Senate in 2000, and the like, but it never really panned out.

A few years ago when attempting Nanowrimo (www.nanowrimo.org) I used the Shotgun Prose name to blog about it.

However, when I decided to really give this blog thing a shot, I still felt like the name needed to be used. I like it. Hence, the Shotgun Prose blog on blogspot.