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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2009-10-07, 05:21

So Halloween is 25 days away and since we have this beautiful new forum I thought that I would make a sort of "announcement" thread for AppleNova's first ever (?) short story exchange! Capella and I have been sort of bouncing the idea between ourselves for a few days, and so here it is. There are lots of writing types on this forum, but everybody is welcome to exchange a story, as long as they finish one!

The goal is to write a short story of at least 1,000 words by October 31, at which point the equally-important other half of the goal is to work up the courage to share it! Those of you who know short stories know that 1,000 words is nothing - you can get there by writing just forty words each day, between now and Halloween, and you'll want to write more than that each sitting, I promise. If you don't make it to 1,000 words by Halloween, that's okay too, and you're certainly welcome to share it for feedback, but the goal of this "challenge" is to write 1,000 words. (And 1,000 words is by no means the limit; mine will probably be much longer, provided school cooperates.)

The rules guidelines:

1) The theme of this exchange is "Halloween." It's Halloween, so come to our CE Campfire and share a scary story! But we're leaving the theme deliberately open-ended - if you write a story that doesn't have monsters but still has a lot of fear in it, that's okay, and if you write a story that does have monsters but is more of a mystery that's okay too...all it really has to be is appropriate for Halloween, on one level or another. Not that you couldn't post any other non-Halloweenie stories anywhere else on this new forum! But one reason we're focusing on Halloween is that one of the goals of this is to...

2) Write something new. If you re-write something you've written before, that's great, as long as at least 1,000 words were new I guess. But this is, again, pretty open to interpretation, so if you consider it "new," we will too. Not that there's any way we'd know if you straight-up reposted something from a decade ago (unless you mentioned a character's brand new tangerine computer or something). The real goal is just to...

3) Have fun! I mean, really people, that should go without saying. Also, be sure to follow the Posting Guidelines and be constructive regarding others' work, but that should also go without saying, and I don't really feel I need to tell any of you that...we're all adults here. And speaking of that, feel free to use [NSFW] tags when appropriate, though if you're caught reading entire short stories at work, I doubt the lack of boobage will help your case.

I think it would be super awesome if lots of people participated. It's easy to be shy about creative work but I agree with Stephen King in that sharing it is sort of the final act of the creative process - it's what helps people improve, more than anything else. Plus, who doesn't like reading ghost stories? So don't be shy - even if it's the first thing you've ever written, we'd love to read it!

When you finish your work of creative genius feel free to create a new thread for it, for feedback - we have a wide-open* new forum, after all! Just put something like "[Story Exchange]" in your thread title so we can all be sure to read it. This thread is just for the announcement, and for any questions, and for people to post committing to participate (hint, hint).

As the thread title might suggest, I'd love for this to become a sort of regular thing, in this new forum of ours, so we'll just see how this one goes. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or PM Capella or I, but keep in mind that we're basically making up the "rules" while we go.

I look forward to reading all of your stories very much.

*) Keep in mind that this does seem to be a "wide open" new forum in all senses of the word, meaning that it's viewable to the public without a login. If that is a problem, let me know, and we'll see if we can work out something else.

And once again, thanks to our admin team for this new space! They truly are movers of mountains, makers of worlds, &c. &c.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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