Tag Archives: News

NEWS: Year Two Drawing to a Close

News, , , , , , ,

This coming Tuesday, July 5, marks the completion of a second full year of daily stories for FiftyWordStories.com. Join me in a big “Yay!”

So much great stuff has happened over the past year. It’s been a ton of fun. But what you want to know is what this means for the site, of course. At the end of Year One I took a bit of a hiatus to get started on putting together Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One, to recharge my creative batteries, and to make some adjustments to the website. I’m going to be doing something similar this time.

Year Two will end on Tuesday, July 5, 2011, with a final story written by me. The plan for Year Three is that it will start on Monday, August 1, 2011, though that could possibly change, depending on if I need more time to prepare. I’m going to do my best to fill the time in between with as many guest stories as possible. To that end, I have over two weeks’ worth of stories from King Kool lined up already, as well as some submissions from other writers. I’m always interested in receiving more submissions, of course!

During the hiatus, I’m going to be working hard on writing my Master’s thesis, as well as preparing Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Two for a release sometime this fall. More news on that front will become available as I continue to make progress on it.

I’m really looking forward to continuing to entertain people with my writing and the writing of all the talented people out there who have submitted guest stories over the past two years. I hope you share my enthusiasm for where the site’s been and where it’s headed!

NEWS: 2010 in Hindsight; 2011 in Foresight

News, , , , ,

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope and pray that you had time to relax and enjoy family and friends, and to remember what Christmas is really all about.

Christmas means, for this site, that another calendar year is nearly over. This year I finished my first year’s worth of stories, took a hiatus, came back refreshed, and have been going strong on Year 2, which started July 5. I’ve been fueled by all of the comments, star-ratings, suggestions, title submissions, and retweets supplied by everyone who reads the stories on this site. Thank you so much to everyone who provides me with feedback and reader interaction! It’s a huge encouragement, and it’s the reason I write.

I had hoped to have the Fifty-Word Stories book out this year at some point, but unfortunately a variety of circumstances have prevented that. I’m expecting to have the book ready some time in January or February, though, so even though it won’t be a Christmas present, you’ll still have a chance to get some microfiction in paper form for your shelf, your coffee table, your bathroom, your ceiling, your front door, your fireplace, or wherever else you may want to put it. The draft copy I received has been getting pretty positive reactions, especially from people who haven’t been following the website for the past year-and-a-half, so I’m feeling pretty good about how this is going to turn out, and I think it will make a good gift, for yourself or for people you know.

I have some other thoughts and plans for the coming year, including another Mere 50 Words guest-submission contest, live-writing events, site enhancements, a possible return to nanofiction, stories from special guests, and as much reader-interaction as I can make available. I want to break out of the box a little and make this a unique and interesting year.

I’m excited about 2011, and I hope you are, too! Keep on reading, and I’ll keep on writing…

NEWS: Book Getting Closer?!

News, , ,

It’s true! The 50-Word Stories book has taken a step closer to actually becoming available.

Crazy. I know.

I’ve been so distracted by other things and busy with school and life that I’ve been negligent in moving the book forward. But today I sat down and hashed out some details, found the files I’d been using, and decided it was about time I made this happen.

There’s not going to be a fancy cover design with a half-hidden story written on the binding or anything clever like that. I had some ideas, but in the end, I’ve realized that one of the biggest reasons I haven’t gotten the book done yet is that I had all these little ideas and tweaks that I wanted to get just right, and I was getting discouraged by any imperfections that I saw. So taking a cue from the Cult of Done, I made up my mind: forget about the imperfections, forget about whether the cover is pretty enough, forget about whether people are going to nitpick the final product; just get it done.

So to that end, I’ve finalized the (very simple) design at Lulu.com and ordered a proof copy. Once I have that and am satisfied with it, I’ll open up sales. I don’t know if I’ll sell 2 or 20 (maybe 2 is optimistic!), but regardless, I’ll be able to say I put the book out there.

And I’m planning to make a downloadable PDF version available for free, as well.

Finally!

NEWS: Facebook and Twitter Integration

News, , ,

FiftyWordStories.com is diving further into Web 2.0!

I’ve added some new functionality to the site, so that readers can now post comments using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, and can “Like” posts using their Facebook profiles, as well. Hopefully this will make it easier for people to get involved with the site and share it with friends.

Let me know what you think of the new features and functions in a comment.

NEWS: FiftyWordStories.com Celebrates One Year

News, ,

You may not realize it, but today, February 22, 2010, marks one year since I started updating this site with a new fifty-word story every single day!

The very first “regular update” story I posted on the site was called “CPR”. If you look a little further back in the archives, you’ll see a handful of other stories which I had written before I started the site. I put those up to give people an idea of what I was going to be going for.

So at this point there are over 350 fifty-word stories on this episode, the majority of which I wrote, though many have been contributed by some great guest writers. There are also quite a few “nanofiction” stories, which are stories told in less than 140 characters so that they can be posted on Twitter.

Unfortunately, there are a few gaps in the post calendar over the past year. There have been occasional days when I haven’t gotten around to posting a story, especially recently. (In fact, yesterday and Saturday both went story-less, as you may have noticed.) Some of that has been due to busyness with other aspects of my life, and some of it has been due to a bit of waning creativity, I think. In short, I feel like I’ve been burning out very slowly…

So I’m taking a break from new daily updates. Sorry!

My first task, at this point, is going to be going back and filling in all the gaps in the calendar. If you’re following the site on Twitter (@50wordstories), the new stories should still show up there, so you’ll know as they go up. I’m going to try to keep track of the new ones as I write them, too, and then maybe make a news post with links to all the gap-fillers once I’m done.

After that, I have some ideas for maybe compiling the stories into a book, or doing something else interesting with them. I’m going to explore some options. Any feedback along these lines would be greatly appreciated.

Hmm. That was a bit of a dense newsbomb. Time for some more frivolous behaviour: YAYAYAYAYA ONE YEAR WHEEEE!!

NEWS: A Mere 50 Words Update

News, , ,

I have all of the entries everyone sent in for the Mere 50 Words contest, and there are some really great stories in there!

I apologize that I haven’t chosen winners yet; I’ve been really busy with moving into a new place and then going to staff a summer camp for a week, so I haven’t been able to sit down and start picking favourites yet. I intend to do some reading and choosing this week, and then I’ll reveal the winners as daily updates from Monday to Friday, starting on either September 7 or September 14.

As a reminder, if your story is chosen to win a prize I’ll be contacting you at the email address you used to submit the story. If your story comes up as a winner and the email address you submitted it with isn’t going to work, just send me a note at tim@fiftywordstories.com and we’ll sort things out.

Is It Irony?

Amusing, , ,

“Now to Tom, with heart-wrenching news.”

“Thanks, Sarah. A man is feared dead after telling his girlfriend he was ‘going to play video games all day’ and that ‘nothing could stop him.’ His home collapsed in the earthquake this afternoon. We have Jack Thompson on the phone for a reaction.”

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones

Puns and Wordplay, , , , , , ,

“Thanks, Chet.

“I never expected to broadcast from a place like this! I’m standing amid chaos, and I can’t help but wonder if we, as a nation, have made a mistake in creating this Ministry of Wordplay.

“I’ve been dodging portmanteaus and malapropisms all afternoon! It’s complete pundemonium in here!”

NEWS: Submissions Page Clarified

News, , ,

There has been a little bit of confusion over the copyright system as explained on the Submissions page. I’ve clarified some of the language a bit and tried to make the system a bit more transparent.

Essentially, any story you submit to the site, whether via email or in a comment, becomes the property of www.FiftyWordStories.com. If that story gets posted to the site, it is copyrighted by the site under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. This means that anyone is free to repost the story elsewhere, so long as they give credit to Fifty-Word Stories and to the original author.

However, the story is still the property of Fifty-Word Stories, which means that if you submit a story and don’t put any extra limits on its use then I have the option of using it in a retail compilation or a calendar or however else. (If you don’t want me to use your story that way, then please say so when you submit it. I will definitely accommodate any requests of this nature.)

Also, the site’s ownership of submitted stories is non-exclusive. That means that you are free to repost your submitted stories elsewhere, so long as those other locations do not claim exclusive rights and recognize that Fifty-Word Stories has the right to use the story, as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this process! I’m definitely not out to steal anyone’s work, and I don’t want to confuse anyone about how I intend to use submissions.

Thanks,

Tim

NEWS: NameYourTale Posts My Story

News,

I met up with Nick from www.NameYourTale.com via Twitter and really liked the new microfiction website he and some friends started up. The concept of their site is to take story titles submitted by readers and write 100-word stories based on those titles.

It’s a really cool idea, and you should head over there, read the stories, check out the illustrations that go along with some of them, and submit some titles of your own!

You should especially go over there and read and comment on the story I wrote, which was based on the title “Wrathberries“. It’s wonderful, and I’m not just saying that because I’m the one who wrote it. Ok, fine, that is why I’m saying it. But still.