a river of stones: January 2012

The river of stones started in January 2011 with a blog and an invite: "Why would you want to join in? - Because choosing something to write about every day will help you to connect with yourselves, with others, and with the world. It will help you to love everything you see - the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the beautiful and the ugly. You don't have to be a 'writer' to get involved. The process of paying attention is what's important."

The result: more than 350 people across the world paying more attention to what was around them, and writing small stones. The birth of a new community of daily writers. A new movement - a river of stones. Which turned into a book in summer: pay attention: a river of stones - and induced an ongoing twitter stream: twitter/smallstone.

The River: January 2012
Now the next river is taking first shape with an announcement and an invite to join. 'The river' consists of everyone writing small stones during January, whether you keep them in your notebooks or publish them somewhere on the web. This January we will be cheering you all on by organising 25 guest posts by all kinds of marvellous writers. All infos are online at: The River: Jan 2012 

About the river organizers
Fiona Robyn is a novelist, Buddhist and creativity coach and blogs about being a writer at Writing Our Way Home. Kaspalita is a Buddhist priest and blogger and is married to Fiona.

>language >place anniversary edition "Streets, Signs, Directions"

> Language > Place is a joined blog cyber journey featuring international perspectives on language and place.

One year ago, the first edition of the language/place carnival went live. Since then, almost monthly, a new edition followed - each a journey in itself, hosted by different bloggers in places that reach from Hong Kong to Slovenia and New Zealand to the States. Now the anniversary edition launched. The theme of this edition is: Streets, Signs, Direction.

Following its own theme, this edition offers 3 ways to explore and visit the contributions: a found poem, based on single lines from each contribution, an itienary of contributions with notes and links and a geographic map which also includes the former editions.

Call: Edition #12 of > language > place will be hosted by poet & writer Linda Hofke. The feature theme for edition #12 is “Food" - but as always, a wide range of contributions is welcome. Submissions are now open, deadline 20th November, guidelines.

About the  >Language >Place blog carnival
To create a collaborate cyber journey that features international perspectives on language and place, in different formats, and with different languages included - that's the concept of this collaborate project. The main language is english, the carnival consists of a central page that links to all participating blog. An overview of previous editions and more background information is available at the Language Place info page.

> language > place anniversary edition (#11)
a web project

related links: web projects, anthologies

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.

Writers wishing to participate first register on the project's website, where they can post profiles and information about their novels, including synopsis and excerpts. Word counts are validated on the site, with writers submitting a copy of their novel for automatic counting.

Pep talks give advice along the way, and the extended NaNoWriMo forums offer the chance to interact, motivate each other, and procrastinate.

About NaNoWriMo
This writing project was started by Chris Baty in July 1999 with 21 participants in the San Francisco Bay area. In 2000, it was moved to November "to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather" and launched an official website. With more writers joining each year, NaNoWriMo turned into a global event. In 2010, over 200,000 people took part - writing a total of over 2.8 billion words.

NaNoWriMo Website

related links: other web projects; on writing

#fridayflash

#fridayflash is a twitter-based flash story share+spread, organized by Jon M. Strother, who put the story + guidelines together for Daily s-Press

the story of #fridayflash:
#fridayflash, simply put, is an experiment in crowdsourcing word-of-mouth marketing for flash fiction on the web. Writers are constantly told they have to build an online presence, develop a following if they expect to succeed in the current environment. Who is to say whether that advice is right or wrong, nevertheless it is fairly constant. So, like many writers I started a blog and watched week after week as posts went without comment, and often times were unread. It got quite discouraging.

So I decided to try a little experiment in crowdsourcing. Twitter was already well established for calling attention to blog posts on everything form writing advice, to funny videos, to bad hair day rants – so why not fiction? I knew in order to succeed, the draw would have to be bigger than one writer shouting into the Twitterverse, so a meme seemed in order. The #followfriday meme was quite successful, so staying with that alliteration, I launched a flash fiction meme, initially called #fictionfriday, and announced it on the writer forums at Editor Unleashed, Writer's Digest, and The Writer's Chatroom. A handful of writer's on these venues joined me that first week.

Within a week or two of start up I discovered there was already a web-based writing site going by FictionFriday. Not wanting to encroach on the name, I asked for suggestions on a name change. I believe Keven J. Mackey suggested #fridayflash, or #fridayflashfiction. Character count being at a premium on Twitter, I decided to go for the short form. I also started putting out a list the next day with links to the participating author's posts. Thus was born The #fridayflash Report.

If there was a breakthrough moment it was when Maria Schneider allowed me to guest post on her blog, also called Editor Unleashed. We suddenly went form a handful of new participants per week to a dozen or more. I owe Maria a huge debt of gratitude for that, and miss EU immensely.

Links to the #fridayflash-stories
- If you have a twitter account, you can simply follow the hashtag link: #fridayflash
- Webpage: www.fridayflash.org

The rules of #fridayflash...
The rules of #fridayflash are few and simple. Write a story of 1000 words or less, post it to your blog or some other venue readers can access, then tweet about it on Friday with story link + #fridayflash hashtag. It is also strongly recommend that the author polish the piece before posting, as the intention is to showcase their abilities as a writer.

The rules are intentionally loose in keeping with the free and easy spirit of the thing. No one sweats it if you go slightly over 1000 words (though really long pieces are not much appreciated). Friday is defined as anytime it is Friday anywhere in the world. In fact, not everyone uses Twitter. We have the Collector, which ensures your story will be in The #fridayflash Report, and a Facebook group where an author who is not on Twitter can announce their story. Plus we have a wonderful group of very sharing participants who will tweet and retweet stories once they are aware of them. It's a very open and supportive group.

#fridayflash is open to all writers at all skill levels. There is no prompt. There is no theme. It is completely open ended, which always makes for a great diversity of stories every week. The only proviso is that graphic, gratuitous sex and violence are not appreciated. I reserve the right to not list such pieces in The #fridayflash Report, and will not retweet them.#fridayflash anthology
There is an anthology of #fridayflash due out very shortly – The Best of #fridayflash, Volume One. It contains more than sixty stories from both current and past #fridayflash authors. Like #fridayflash, there is no set theme or genre. It is a real mix of the types of stories one encounters on a weekly basis. It will be available both in ebook and print-on-demand format later this month (August 2010).

About Jon M. Strother
Jon M. Strother is a writer of fact and fiction. He lives in an inner suburb of St. Louis and enjoys cycling, gardening, and wasting far too much time playing Civilization III. For more about him, and excerpts of his writing, visit his website Mad Utopia.

related links: writing events, friday specials

summer writing: Folded Word 24/7 Writing Month

This summer is good for writing - if you look for inspiration and motivation, there is A Year of Flash This Summer (a flash writing initiative with a weekly task), the August Poetry Postcard Fest, and now Folded Word just announced their first writing month:

Folded Word invites and encourages everyone to join them for a month of writing. This August, Folded Word will be holding their first writing month event called 24/7: "For the first 24 days of August, everyone will dedicate time each day to write either a piece of twitter fiction (up to 140 characters), prose poetry (up to 100 words), short poetry (up to 9 lines), micro fiction (up to 250 words), or flash fiction (up to 500 words). The last 7 days of August will be dedicated to revising these works."

If you would like to participate just follow these simple steps:
1.Send an email to editors[at]foldedword[dot]com with the subject line “24/7”
2.In the body of the email, include your legal name, the name you prefer to use online, city, state/province, and country.
3.An invitation to join our Basecamp group will be sent to the email address used for the request.
4.Accept the Basecamp invitation when it comes and follow the directions.
Once accepted, feel free to look around and become familiar with the Basecamp. At the end of August those who participated throughout the entire month will receive an “I wrote 24/7 in August” e-badge as well as some special publication opportunities.

related links: writing events, summer special

August Poetry Postcard Fest

Everyone loves getting postcards. And postcards with poems, all the better. That's the idea that lead to the August Poetry Postcard Fest: for 1 month, poets commit to writing a poetry postcard a day, and send it out. In return, they receive poetry postcards from fellow poets.

"What's unique about this approach: Rather than submitting poems for possible rejection, you are sending your words to a ready-made and excited audience awaiting your poems in their mailboxes. In addition to writing 31 wonderful poems yourself, you'll receive these wonderful postcards in your mailbox too."

The August Poetry Postcard Fest invites poets who are interested in taking part to register online now, more here: guidelines and registration link.

How the Poetry Postcard Fest works:
• Get yourself at least 31 postcards.
• On or about July 27th, write an original poem right on a postcard and mail it to the person on the list below your name.
• Starting on August 1st, ideally in response to a card YOU receive, keep writing a poem a day on a postcard and mailing it to successive folks on the list until you've sent out 31 postcards.
• What to write? Something that relates to your sense of "place" however you interpret that, something about how you relate to the postcard image, what you see out the window, what you're reading, using a phrase/topic/or image from a card that you got, a dream you had that morning, or an image from it, etc. Like "real" postcards, get to something of the "here and now" when you write.
• Once you start receiving postcard poems in the mail, you'll be able to respond to the poems and imagery with postcard poems or your own. That will keep your poems fresh and flowing. Be sure to check postage for cards going abroad.

A reflection on poetry postcards:
"This was an exercise in community, in discipline (as poets were expected to average a poem a day) and in consciousness. Some poets used the image on the card as inspiration, as in an ekphrastic poem. Some would continue a theme from a card they received as they wrote to someone completely different. Other poets wrote with no connection to the image, or to the poems they received, but developed their own themes. Certain themes started to emerge." - Paul Nelson, Postcard Exercise
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52/250 - A Year of Flash

For some, the best summer reading comes in short bursts. If you are looking for a blast of color this summer, check out 52/250, a site that features flash fiction from a variety of authors, some published, some entirely new to the scene. It began in late May and already has a small following – devoted writers and readers both.

The story of 52/250
The whole thing started when one writer decided to set herself a goal of writing one piece of fiction each week for a year. She planned to post the stories on her blog under the heading 52/250 – 52 weeks, 250 words each week. She mentioned the idea to an old friend who, wanting to unsheath his own rusty pen, declared: “I’m in!” So they built a website, fixed it up nice with the help of a third writer whose html is as pretty as his prose, called it 52/250: A Year of Flash, and invited other writers to participate.

Each week follows a theme, which is unlike a prompt in that the words do not have to appear in the stories. The stories must simply be inspired by the themes offered. The process begins and ends in a democratic fashion, in that the editors of 52/250 choose the weekly themes from ideas suggested by writers and readers. They also welcome all writers – submitted stories generally make the cut, so long as they do not exceed the 250 word limit. In addition, each week features one piece of art, and thus far the pieces have come from architects, amateur and professional photographers, and students of art.

52 themes + more than 40 authors so far
The first week opened in May with 17 different stories about Breadfruit. Who knew you could find that many perspectives on a spongy, bland thing packed with nutritional value but more likely found in books than on the shelves of supermarkets? Writers turned out for the challenge put to them that week, and they’ve been doing so ever since. Several writers have met the challenge every week, but everyone is free to come and go. On average, twenty new stories are posted each week, some from new authors and some from old hats. Since writing about breadfruit, authors have contributed stories about fancy me, little worlds, cartography, lovelies on the beach, the balance of terror, broken camera, and corrected vision.

“This site is a little gem,” says Susan Tepper, one of the regular contributors. “I really look forward to the mini-challenges each week!” Other writers agree. Jane Hammons should be writing her novel but instead found herself writing flash back in May. Even poets have tried their hand at flash over at 52/250. You can read poems by Sam Rasnake, Darryl Price, and Peter Larsen at 52/250, and stories by writers as diverse as Beate Siggriddaughter, Sheldon Lee Compton and Linda Simoni-Wastila. And alongside those experienced hands, you'll find other writers such as Ajay Nair, Matthew Hamilton and Martha Williams making their mark, as well as newcomers like student Eddie Kirsch, scientist Michelle Fuller and horsetrainer Liz Irvine.

About 52/25052/250: A Year of Flash is edited by Michelle Elvy, with the help of John Wentworth Chapin and Walter Bjorkman. You can find also find Elvy and Bjorkman at Voices, and, if she's not flashing at 52/250 or listening at Voices, Michelle is sailing on Momo.

Writers, artists, and readers are all welcome at 52/250.

100 Days Project

One Hundred Days is a summer collaborative project put into motion by artist volunteers:

"The 100 Days Project gathers story writers, poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, and programmers together for one hundred days of creative effort: a piece a day for 100 days. Each artist’s work will be unique yet build on the work of others in the collective. Here we make, remake, shape and reshape."

The main page 100 Days 2010 has all the feeds of the participants’ weblogs so that the updates are made and seen automatically. There is also a 100 Days group blog and a group page on Facebook. This year, the project runs from Saturday, May 22 until Sunday, August 29. This endeavor seems to be taking on status as a tradition and is open to all interested in taking part.

About 100 DaysThe history of 100 Days is pretty simple: the first One Hundred Days began as a collaboration between Carianne Mack Garside and Steve Ersinghaus that resulted in a pretty cool book available on Blurb and wildly fun gallery showing at Tunxis Community College. Garside painted a watercolor a day and Ersinghaus followed her painting with a poem interpreted from the painting. The joining was demanding, fun, a great opportunity to problem-solve.

The 2009 One Hundred saw a larger project, which began every day with a story written by Steve Ersinghaus and followed, this time, by Carianne Garside, as they decided to flip the 2008 procedure. They had fifteen other collaborators join in, from fiction writers, poets, photographers, designers, and programmers. That project can be found here: 100 Days Summer 2009.

For 2010, they’re continuing the tradition with John Timmons starting off the summer work with a short film. People who’d like to take part in One Hundred Days 2010 choose to develop a daily project that follows Timmon’s work or other work that develops from it. “We’d love to see how a larger body of work develops, like a massive root and plant system from either the films or other work that develops from the daily films.” In both years, self-constraint, like the confines of a sonnet, really opened up the flow.

Ersinghaus made some suggestions to help inspire the participants:
1. Follow the daily film, which will be available when the film maker uploads it his blog, and develop a work from it
2. Follow a person working with the film and develop a work from it, extending it, reshaping it in another form
3. Figure out a project and then work it back into the collective body of works in some way.

100 Day Links:
project main page: 100 Days 2010
group blog: 100 Days group blog