'The Hundred Things'

For two years or so I've been going on and on about my hobby of writing 100-word prose pieces at 100words.com.

I will now be shutting up about it, because I've 'finished' what I'd been wanting to do with it. I've put them into a collection of one hundred 100-word stories.

I actually wrote quite a few more than 100, but a lot of them were rubbish. These are the decent ones, by my reckoning anyway.
Thanks very much to those who helped me with this. Really, to me (I have a very limited imagination) this was quite a challenge and I feel like a boss now.

Another 6100 words

I haven't written much this year at all. I finished the first year of my creative writing degree in May, and then promptly fell into a 'writer's block' that lasted the entire summer.

After starting a story five or six times and not getting anywhere I eventually decided to fall back on my 100Words.com entries. This is kind of interesting, because when I first began writing on that site, it seemed like a great challenge and now (after writing four months' worth of entires) it seems a lot easier and less daunting than the short story I had planned.

If I've never explained it or advertisied it at you before, then 100Words.com is a 'social tasking' website where writers, bloggers and others commit to writing a piece of exactly a hundred words every day for a month, no breaks and no exceptions. In my experience it gets tricky around two thirds of the way through the month.

Anyway, last winter I wrote four 'batches', with a general mix of rushed poetry, story ideas from my notebook and little 'funny' entries, which I ended up relying on. After the last one I decided that I was out of ideas and that I ought to end there. But I guess I thought up some more, because...


Here's two more! My August batch is here and rambled a lot and has a very vague theme about dreaming and celebrity... and my September batch (just finished) has an even more vague theme about school and childhood.


So there you go - I've written something. I am still technically a writer. And I enjoyed myself with these batches, too, even after I realised I had nothing interesting to say about school. But here are two of the more random excerpts that turned out all right:


1.

Catharine stared and wept for hours before she finally made a shaking V-sign with her fingers and dropped it onto the skin just above Jane's eyes. She dragged the eyelids down with far too much force, jamming them shut and pressing slightly into the pupils, like holes in a pair of bowling balls meant for someone more slender. She had expected less give, some kind of stretching sensation.

'Are you still a--wake?' Catharine was going to say 'alive' but caught it just in time. She already knew the answer, but she didn't see any need to rush it.


2.

My first partner had a saying about situations like this. Said there were three kinds of cops, regardless of rank. First there were police officers: the ones who pray their life is never on the line.

Then there were asshole cops. Guys who dream of killing some perp, just so they can sleep without jerking off.

And third, you've got movie cops. These are the people who plan for everything, don't enjoy it, and don't let on until it happens. And suddenly they're amazing. Heroic. And they truly save the day. And ninety minutes later, they're dead.

Well let's see.


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Thanks for reading. I've now written six months' worth (six seperate months, too) so I may return to this next year and end up with one batch for every calendar month. That'll be 36,500 words of flash fiction, so... maybe.

If you're a writer of any description, especially one who needs some practice or wants to get out of a rut - give 100 Words a go. I love it.

Happy October!

12,000 Words

Yes it's another '100 Words.com' post from me. On the plus side, this will be the last one!

After writing exactly 100 Words of fiction / poetry every day in October, November, December and now February - I'm just about done with it. I've hugely enjoyed the challenge of it, and the unusual / difficult experience of writing such short bits. But now I'm out of ideas, I'm repeating myself, and I'm a bit bored of it.

So - here is the last little advert from me. My FOURTH BATCH of 100 word-stories is now done! Because it was February I went with the ingenious and original theme of 'love', and sometimes I even remembered to include it. There seems to be an accidental theme of 'whining misery' in there too, which caught me by surprise when I re-read them.

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Like I say, I've really got a lot out of this curious online writing game. It's a brilliant website - I urge you to look through some entries (there are some amazing ones hidden in there) or better yet, write a 'batch' yourself.

I maybe might have another go sometime in the future, but for now I'm tapped-out and could do with writing something of decent length for a change. However, I like to think of all 120 of my entries as one piece - or at least four pieces - of writing. They kind of flow together and I even put a (very flimsy, extremely silly, half-arsed) motif in there which connects all four parts!

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One last plug for this.
Here are my 'batches' for October (Halloween theme), November (memory / remembrance theme), December (Christmas / Christianity theme) and February (love theme).

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All right. Thanks. For what it's worth, next time I post a writing update I swear it will be a proper story.

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100 Words Part 3: 9,200 Words

So damn close to 10,000 words... if only they would run an 8-day special event and I could have a round number!

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So it's the end of the month, and that means I have another batch of 31 100-word-long stories to show-off.
Last September, Battlechantress at the Fanfic Forums let us all know about 100words.com - a 'Social tasking' site, or a writing' game where, once you sign up, you must write exactly 100 words every day for a month. Some people use it for a blog, some people write poems, some stories, and some like Battlechantress, Knightfall and myself use it for a combination of them.

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This month, I wrote a Christmas and Christianty theme, as well as an ongoing fantasy story with a daft twist. I wasn't going to bother after October and November, but my mate Chris was doing it and I wanted to write alongside him.

So here is Chris' batch for the month.

And here is Chantress'

And here is Knight's excellent October one...

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AND - here are MIIIIIIINE.

My October batch (Halloween/superhero theme, ongoing mad scientist story)

My November batch (theme of memory / history)

And my all new, super-smashing December batch!

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After coming up with 92 ideas for these little pieces (some of them good, some of them clearly rushed...) I am exhausted. I have really enjoyed this game, and will almost certainly be having a few more goes sometime in 2011.

Till then, here's a few of my entries from this month:


1.

In the beginning was the word. The word was 'Strewth': God's truth. It was a contraction. It was the beginning of the evolution of language.

God had created Uluru, and around that he had created Eden. It was a land of desert and grass, which held and blended every facet of the beauty of the Earth. Monsters roamed and patrolled Eden, and coral lay around its edges like a halo, but more colourful. The people he would place there would be beautiful.

It was an experiment, a prototype. He thought maybe it was a bit much. But it was good.


14.

Sophia has one of those wedding dresses that actually looks kind of boring, plain. It's basically just an ordinary dress, except white. We could have bleached one of her regular dresses. But she doesn't need a fancy costume. Nothing could make her more beautiful t- no, it's a bad dress. I wouldn't have picked it.

She likes it, obviously. I catch her eye and she gives me her new smile. It's like the awkward, secretive one she gave me for ten years, but now it ends with her thrusting her head forward a touch, sweetly. Yeah. I finally won you.


25.

An angel watched over the spectacle of the messiah's birth, its expression unreadable.

This was not a handsome man with feathery wings and white clothes. Angels are indescribable. And I don't mean like you think that very lovely view you saw is indescribable, or the beauty of the girl you loved. I mean truly. It's not just that I can't describe it, either. I don't mean to use the word as an excuse for my poor vocabulary. Not this time, anyway. The angel was indescribable. Incredible.

The mother below held God incarnate in her arms and worried about a census.

100 Words - November 2010

This is just a post to boast that I'm done with my second batch of '100 Words' - here's the link.

That's 30 super-short stories or little poems, one for every day of November, each exactly 100 words (at least according to 100words.com's lousy word counter.) This is my second batch, and contains only two poems, no running story and one entry made up purely of YouTube comments, but I am pleased with how it turned out, much more than my October batch.

Sadly Knight didn't join / trounce me this month, but I was joined by my mate Chris - here's his entires.


I am doing December as well, so there'll be another one of these at the new year...

100 words - October 2010

Knightfall and I finished our first 'batches' of entries at 100Words.com!

It's been a really interesting writing game, which we were both playing along with a bunch of others from the Mass Effect Fanfic forums. I think writing alongside four friends makes it much more enjoyable! Espescially when it's something tricky and fun like this.

If you missed our earlier blog about it, it's a simple but surprisingly hard challenge. Once you sign-up you have to write a 100-word piece (any subject, any style, fiction or non-fiction) every day for a month. If you're too late writing, you're out. If it's not exactly 100, you're out.

So we had a lot of fun! Knight wrote a series of hilarious skits, impressive poems and little prose vignettes that were like something Joss Whedon took out of his new show because they were too good for it. I wrote... mainly about Frankenstein and superheroes.
Regardless, we both full enjoyed it! here's Knight's October batch, and here's mine.

And here are our final entries:

As he began to fall, the elf's life flashed before his eyes; and given the density of his lifespan, that flash seemed like a very long time.

He saw the Kastarn Spire as it glowed bright with energy just beyond the Nightwisp Hills. Then came the Breaking of the Clan, where he received his weapon and the one direction he would follow for three years.

He saw the Edge of the World.

The last thing he saw, before everything got crazy, was a single arrow flying across his periphery. The rope around his neck went taut - then severed.

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Mister Laurie crept up the stairs, swaying from side to side, eating smarties. Up the spiral staircase of Castle Frankenstein. When he reached Peter's door he peered into the thin strip of black, widening it by half-inches and giggling. In his hand he clutched three Brandon Routh 'Superman Returns' action figures, painted green.

Peter is wearing his Ben 10 pyjamas. This does not make him any less of a genius.

Laurie creeeeeaaks open the door and steps through. The moonlight is weak but the atomic supermen glow in the dark.

'Mah-ster,' she whispers, 'the first batch is finished!'

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I've decided to have a stab at the November challenge too! that's 30 days instead of 31, so it should be easier. This might be the beginning of a beautiful hobby. Expect another post about it in a month ;)

100 Words

On October 1st, Mister Buch, myself, and several other members of the Mass Effect Fanfic Forum began contributing to the very interesting website/encouragement tool: 100words.com

It's a pretty interesting website. The rule is essentially this: Write 100 words a day, no matter what the subject, without fail. That means if you slack off for a couple days, you're out. You have to keep it up and write those 100 words. Every. Single. Day. It sounds remarkably easy, but thinking of something new to write every day isn't so easy, and limiting that thought to 100 words is even less easy.

So far, for me, it's been a lot of fun thinking up random things to post, and watching what the other members of the forum decided to write.

You can find the thread HERE! And I'll throw up some examples, the stories that Buch and I made on the first day.

By Mister Buch:

The experiment was over, for now.

Contained white bolts of electricity still reflected off the glass bottles, lighting the room in flashes. From below, dark shadows crawled up the walls and around the silent corpse at the laboratory’s centre.

Peter, his fingers still on the lever, smiled.

“No matter,” he said to the darkness. “We’ll try again, after some strudel.”

“Yesss Mah-ster,” Laurie replied, his twisted backbone making it sound to Peter as if he were only four feet tall. Even the wretch's voice seemed beneath his station. Quite fitting.

The lightning failed, the shadows died down.

By me:

On the brink—here at the end of all things: they stand in rank with the fires at their backs and their goal in sight. Days beyond the wandering fools who had led them here, years beyond that fateful instant when morality had died behind their eyes, their spears rest burning in their hands.

Another portrait before the carnage, another breeze before smoke fills the air, one last moment to disregard all caution. Their march signals the end of another world as everything suddenly cuts to black. They will add them to their number. They will number them amongst the dead.