Thursday Thirteen #12

This week I’d like to introduce the Short Story Writing Month that will begin September 1, 2007 and will be hosted by Paula, at Basset Knitter.

1. The purpose of this short Story Writing Group is to meet together for one month to have fun sharing, learning, inspiring and supporting each other in short story writing(s).

2. Many will be upcoming NaNoWriMo participants and this is a wonderful place to help condition our minds and fingers for that brain bending November event.

3. There will also be some fun contest and prizes awarded. Because we are only together for four short weeks, Paula will post the first contest this week in order to give everyone’s creative mind a jump start.

4. This group will run from September 1st to October 1st. Signups will end on September 1st at midnight central standard time (give or take an hour or a day.)

5. Paula will be adding helpful writing links to the sidebar for the rest of this week so please come back and visit often.

6. A special Participation Button has been created to place on your sidebar or blog.

7. The short stories entered need to be between 500 and 5,000 words.

8. Edgar Allan Poe said that a Short Story should: "Be complete by itself. Be able to be read in one sitting. Have every word used for important effect. Have a good opening sentence that is developed throughout the work. End at its climax. Have no more characters than those necessary for the action."

9. Kurt Vonnegut gives 8 tips on writing a short story: I like the last two the best: "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

10. And…"Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."

11. hee,hee…"should cockroaches eat the last few pages" has special meaning to me. One of my daughters is and illustrator and she while was working on a project in a place that she had just moved into, the cockroaches came and ate the watercolor off of her painting at night.

12. Hope you come and join us for the Short Story Writing Month… After writing short stories for Cats on Tuesday, I've become a short story nut.

13. Please visit the Short Story Writing Month site to join and for the complete list of rules.



The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!