Story Lines

"Now it seems like there might be a Spanish version of A Much Married Man, and the only way this could have happened is through the internet. The game is still what it's always been--a labor of love. But now it's a labor of love with more readers." Sward describes the Internet as a construction of trust between writers, not only in the work they put up, but even in the links, which act like personal recommendations for other work: "There's an intelligence, a filter behind each link--it's not so much word of mouth, but it's virtually word of mouth."

Word of mouth is what stories and poems have depended on for thousands of years. But now that the word is buttressed with electrons, it seems like writing could enter a new golden age, where readers and writers who would otherwise never have encountered one another can, and do. Maybe that's what happens when free grows freer.