This might be a new speed record in book collaboration and instant publishing. 2:46 Quakebook. Call for submissions: Twitter’s @OurManInAbiko. Three weeks later: an online version of the book. It’s going to print. Sales benefit Red Cross Japan.
It’s too raw to be history or memoir yet. As a genre, it’s closest to e-mail. Imagine Twitter posts with unlimited characters, or unedited radio interviews on the street, combined with fundraising, connection, catharsis. Here are two excerpts from longer entries. (As I choose these vivid lines for you, they become sound bites and Twitter posts.)
“My 70-year-old mother refuses to go to a shelter and insists on staying at home. She says she’s not bothered by magnitude 3 earthquakes. Even though the government seems to have forgotten her, she is perfectly calm.” Yuki Watanabe, Tokyo
“I won’t forget the first video I saw of the tsunami. This black mass rolled over the landscape, gulping, chewing and spitting out everything in its path. I waited for the ebb to come, but it didn’t. The black water just kept going and going. I reversed the video and hit pause, staring at the scene frozen on my computer screen. I was frozen, too.” Sybil Murray, UK
I can see this idea catching on. Perhaps in the future, we’ll call these instant disaster anthologies “quakebooks.”
Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011
Writers' Resort LLC 
Every moment captured here is honouring and valuing each individual caught up in the unfolding drama. A rare and precious opportunity to share in the stories of so many otherwise nameless and countless numbers effected. Great job.
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Hi, Naomi Lynn! Were you involved in the project?
Or did I sound as though I were? I wasn’t–just learned of it hours ago.
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