open writers
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”
- Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author known for his economical writing style. He committed suicide with his favorite gun.
This is a 6-word story. Hemingway called it his best work. It may be short, but it’s definitely not simple. As a reader you can sense the world in-between these words. Depending on who’s reading it when, this world will be different. The gaps are mirroring the reader and the context.
This story is like good teacher who gives his students a direction, but no solution. He acknowledges the different realities and allows students to walk their own path.
When the margin of a text is opened (soon), every reader can write his thoughts between the gaps. The purpose is not to fill in the gaps, but to open them even further with new gaps. When participants build possibility on possibility the text will be ever-expanding and the perspective on the subject will become broad, very broad.
openmargin has different incarnations. One is a tool, which gives you the possibility to publish your notes within a public margin. Another incarnation is the ‘way of writing’. Writing with an openmargin in mind means raising questions, leaving gaps and expressing half-baked ideas. The tool has no use without the mindset.
