If anyone is planning to, oh I dunno, write a novel in the next month or so, and needs inspiration, may I direct you to the wired site. They have some 6-word stories that are really great. This concept springs from Hemingway who wrote a phenomenal 6-word story which I will now quote in its entirety:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
That actually gives me shivers.
I like Margaret Atwood's contribution too:
"Longed for him. Got him. Shit."
and Frank Miller's:
"With bloody hands, I say good-bye."
I'm guessing if you can just get down those first 6 words, everything else will fill itself in.
Thanks for MsMushrooms for bringing this to my attention.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html
8 comments:
Thanks for that- I'm supposed to be participating in a novel-writing workshop at nanowrimo.org. It's a 50,000 word challenge, everything written in the month of November. I have a title, now all I need is a plot and some characters and I'll be set!
I liked the middle one, "shit".
not to mention the link to nathan whitlock's site...
Sorry, I didn't include the link to whitlock. Here it is for anyone who is interested:
nathanwhitlock.blogspot.com
Anne,
I didn't know you were doing that novel in November thing, too. Is this a Southern thing? I hope you will include some parts on your blog. Good luck!
Ignore my question. I just went to the nanowrimo site. Sounds fun.
About 20 years ago, I participated in a 3-Day novel contest over Labour Day weekend (in the days of typewriters!). It was actually pretty fun, if stressful. I don't know if that contest still exists. Perhaps MsMushrooms can inform us. She is the literary person here.
ha! literary shmiterary!
if you're talking about the anvil press one out of vanc it's still running they even had portions of the people writing and participating in dumb word games on book tv this labour day
it's like the reality tv thing has infiltrated everywhere...
3 days!
I'm on my 8th year of the thing I'm slogging thru (not to mention the battered bodies of discarded and mained mss abandoned along the way)
grumble, grumble
8 years! You are positively Proustian, my dear.
no just no time
(tho I do long for a cork-lined room...)
I just now saw this - thanks! A few days in, I think I'd prefer a six-word limit... given a month, I could produce six good words. 50,000 is proving tougher.
Post a Comment