First, a name.

About a year ago, I came up with the idea of starting a forum for Edmonton news – but not your ordinary headlines, there’s plenty of that out there already. I wanted something more my style: something that would be creative in approach, less concerned about fact than impression, something that could show off the soul that I know this city has. The title would be clever: I would reverse the name of our city’s main newspaper, at the same time alluding to the more casual, creative form of my project. Journal Edmonton.

About a year ago, I abandoned the idea, leaving little more than a few preliminary sketches saved on my computer, and an empty blogger page. It wasn’t that I lost interest, I just didn’t know how to get a project like that off the ground. I wanted a collective of writers, but how would I recruit them? I wanted lots of readers to comment and open discussions, but how would I attract their attention?

I still haven’t really figured out the answers to those questions, but circumstances have lead me to open this idea once more. I’m now a student at the University of Alberta, where one of my courses focuses on Edmonton literature. As part of the course, we’re required to keep a blog that reflects our interpretations and discoveries of the city. So yes, I’m doing this for credit. But it’s more than that – I finally have an excuse (and yes, I know that I shouldn’t need excuses to do the things I love) to do something I’ve been pondering for some time.

By nature of my circumstances, this will begin as a classroom blog, and for the duration of the course, all of the posts will be my own. And the comments, for the most part, will likely be by my classmates. But I’m hoping that a few other readers might jump on board and write their comments too. And maybe, by the end of the semester, I’ll have the beginnings of a community forum like I envisioned a year ago. Maybe I’ll have the means to open this blog up to more writers, to let it grow with the life of this city. Maybe, after this semester, I’ll be too burnt out to ever write on this blog again. But either way, I’ll learn something about the feasibility of this project, and my place in a city that I call home.