Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A Break and a Challenge

I'm sorry, I just can't get to the next story notes post on those micro-fiction stories tonight. I'm a little too whacked out about what's going on in Japan. (All four reactors having serious problems. Ay!) Among other things. Among many other things. This is going to be a busy week, because we really do live in interesting times.

But further pondering on the Hemingway story gave me an idea. I'll post more about this Friday night, but for now, I'll give you a heads up: I'm thinking of doing a "Baby Shoes Blogfest."

I mentioned to David in the comments that I felt that ultra-minimalist stories, such as the baby shoes story, feel like bullying when they demand that the reader supply their own story to dry facts that don't really mean anything. Most of the readers here are writers, or enthusiastic readers. So why don't we each supply our own story to the Hemingway Baby Shoes non-story?

It can be anything from a full blown story to microfiction, to a simple explanation of what the ad means or can mean. I'll post more about how we can handle the logistics. (That is, people can post stories on their own blog, and I'll collate links here, or we could use one of those "blogfest" widgets, or I could host the stories on my "Daring Adventures" blog which gets almost no traffic, but we could link to it from wherever.) Any comments or opinions are welcome.

2 comments:

DavidRM said...

I'm interested. I'd want to use the 6 words as the title. Which might make it hard to publish the resulting story as an ebook. ;-)

-David

The Daring Novelist said...

Well, you can't copyright a title. (Which should not be construed as legal advice.)

If you feel uncomfortable using the whole thing in the title, any of the phrases (or any pair of the phrase) would make a kick-ass title:

Never Used
Baby Shoes
Baby Shoes, Never Used
For Sale, Baby Shoes

And since people tend not to look back at the title (or tend to skim it) you may want to start with it, rather than use it as a title.