Procrastination, yes. But in a good way. Since my dissertation is all about the Twitter, it seemed relevant to take a moment to accept copyblogger’s challenge to write a story in a 140-character tweet.
“The Hollow Moment” (an entry in the Twitter Writing Contest)
This isn’t the first time Twitter and writers have come together. The size constraint has been both incentive and inspiration to compose short, efficient messages on that channel from Day One. Journalists have begun to embrace the medium as a source of information as well as a backchannel for discussing the process of reporting a story. Writers also used Twitter effectively as a way to disseminate news about their winter strike. Recently, someone offered prizes for the best six-word tweet, a la Ernest Hemingway’s “For Sale: Baby shoes, never used.”
Back in December, some writers organized a collaborative story project, Twittories. 140 Twitter authors signed up on a wiki to take one line in the work-in-progress, passing it along to the next person. The effort never completed, as far as I can tell, but a record of the work (“The Darkness Inside“) remains with 86 authors contributing. Plans for a second project died in January with 110 people signed up for the twequel.
There is still time to enter Twitter Writing Contest. Compose your 140-character novelette-ette, and then post the link on the copyblogger site as a comment by 5p Central on Friday, May 23.
If only my dissertation could be written in Twitter.
Tags: choices, constraints, copyblogger, creativity, inspiration, stories, Twitter, writing contest
10 Comments
Nice post and nice entry! I saw your trackback over on Copyblogger. Just thought I would let you know that I put together a makeshift solution for viewing all the entries in one place (because I got sick of going back and forth between CB and Twitter.) If you or your readers are interested in checking it out, the link and quick explanation are on my blog Smithereens, here.
Cheers,
Daniel
Thanks for going that. It is a LOT easier to watch the screens play here than click through all the links in the comments.
gl
Thanks Kevin. Just a note, though- as I mentioned in my post [linked above], the WedSlides app isn’t quite working (it’s only showing 20 of the 286 entries) and Diigo says they are working on it. The list with Preview buttons viewis working and still pretty handy in the meantime.
I will be adding the newest entries tonight.
Daniel
I’m curious to find the best way to post reviews on Twitter. There’s a #twitcrit hashtag but surely somebody’s collecting TwitBookReview items into a feed somewhere.
The little menu only shows 20, but the play seems to work. I got much further than 20 slides before I had to stop to watch a capstone presentation.
You’re right – it’s working now, Diigo must have fixed it!
Just thought I would let you know that both the list and slideshow views have been updated to include all 455 entries to date.
Cheers
Daniel
455! And still 37 minutes left on the deadline clock.
It ought to make for some interesting reading this weekend.
Tell me about it… I’m almost Twittered-out lol
I don’t envy the judges, either for having to read 455 (and counting) entries, or for having to choose the winners…
By the way, your comments plugin is so flattering – it thinks everything I say is pithy! Aw, shucks
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