So, yeah. Les Pages aux Folles is twenty years old this week. If that blows your mind, imagine how I must feel! When I started the web site in 2002, I worked on a strictly week-by-week basis. I was impressed by the fact that I managed to maintain a weekly schedule on the first anniversary of the web site – 20 years later, my mind is beyond blown. It is positively…porridge!
Yeah, I know. If you have a better description of what lies beyond blown, feel free to let me know.
To give you some idea of what an accomplishment this is, Les Pages aux Folles has been updated for over 1,040 consecutive weeks. There are over 3,700 individual pieces of writing on the web site (not counting excerpts from novels, short stories not written for the site and non-fiction). The web site now contains somewhere between 2.25 and 2.5 million original words. <switches to academic hat>And keep in mind that this is in a medium where studies have shown that over ninety per cent of blogs are abandoned within six months.</hat>
Porridge, indeed.
To celebrate this accomplishment, I have put together a dozen samplers of different features of the web site that have accumulated over the years. I call this 12 From 20. Each volume contains: samples from the feature; an introduction exploring different aspects of the feature; and “The Back Story,” which discusses the creation and evolution of Les Pages aux Folles generally.
Always Trust a Smiling Humourist is the first volume of 12 From 20. As I explain in the introduction, Les Pages aux Folles started as a print project way back in 1985; I had written enough material to fill four books before the project moved to the web in 2002. This volume collects some of the articles that were written during that period.
While I know that I’m supposed to hate everything that I wrote before yesterday, I must say that I enjoyed revisiting my past work while putting together the material for Always Trust a Smiling Humourist. While it’s true that not everything I looked at worked for me, my attitude has long been to shrug and say, “While I may not write that today, it was the best I could do at the time.” What I find exhilarating is that so much of it still does work for me.
Future volumes of 12 From 20, which will be released on a monthly basis, will focus on (among other things): The Daily Me (inspired by an idea by Nicholas Negroponte); The Bag of Crazy/Basket of Deplorables; cartoons (because an artist shouldn’t let a lack of technical proficiency get in the way of having fun); and poetry (because, uhh, what he said). There will also be a volume About the Author, which is more than anybody other than my mother (Hi, mom!) is likely to want to know about my experience over the last 20 years.
If you would like a free copy of Always Trust a Smiling Humourist, click on the link: http://www.lespagesauxfolles.ca/TFFS/New/12From20/20thAnniversaryBook001_Cover.pdf
Enjoy.