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| Hemingway’s 6 word short story. |
Time for a new project. I call it Shorties. And I need your help. You, the unknown 120 people who come to my blog everyday. You the 127 friends I have on Facebook. You, the 2000+ people (and bots) that follow me on twitter. You, the 5 people on the favorite’s list of my iPhone. You, #sgMS, the reason or my existence and being. And finally, you, the curious onlooker reader. I need your help. All of your’s.
What is the idea?
In one line, starting tomorrow (20th Sep) I would write and publish one short story (less than 5000 words) everyday, for next 100 days. For each story, I want you, all of you, to help me with ideas, plots etc.
How can you help?
Send me a story idea, a keyword, some characters, a plot, interesting links, oddities and anything else that can be converted into a short story. And I would write a story inspired by what you send in.
I’d select a story idea at 9 every morning and write a story by 8 the next day.
The first week, I’d do stories on plots that I have been wanting to write for some time. After that, I’d hopefully get you guys excited enough, to send in your ideas, plots etc.
The fine print. Why am I doing this? The future? Etc.
You may know that I am trying to write my first full length fiction (a book, about 80000 words). And the process of writing is making me aware of my shortcomings. As a writer. And as a human being.
To be able to write the book well, I need training and practice. Time and again, people have said that if you want to improve your writing, only thing you could do, is to write more. And hence the Shorties. Shorties would make me write fiction everyday and would hopefully make me a better writer. Good enough to be able to write something that publishers in India would want to publish.
That (getting better at writing) is one. The other bit is the dire need of discipline. I have realized that when I have someone to report into, I get my act together and work better. With Shorties, more than one boss, one man, I have you, all of you, to report into.
So these are the two reasons. I know that a lot of what I write, will be crap (for want of a better, milder word). But I would write something everyday. I would ship. And if I do it for next 100 days, at least one of the 100 stories would be good enough to get published in a magazine of repute or something. No? If not that, I am hoping that I’d see some tangible result in the way I write!
Thats it. Wait for tomorrow morning. For the first of 100 Shorties.