Ficlets Blog

Inspiration: Castles in the Air

2008-05-07T11:42:00Z

“Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”—Henry David Thoreau

My pal Kevin Smokler posted that today and I thought it would make a perfect little inspiration for a ficlet or two.

And yes, I know I’m week behind on posting a challenge roundup, and have been slacking in the blog department. Travel and then the worst case of stomach flu ever have kept me… limited. I’m back to normal now, though, so expect more entries later this week!

Inspiration: One of These Things Doesn't Belong

2008-04-28T18:55:00Z

I’ve traveled quite a bit for work over the years, and it never fails to amaze me what American stuff gets exported. I’ll never forget the horror I felt the first time I went to Dublin, hoping to get a taste of Irish culture and get away from all the garbage here at home, when I walked down the main shopping street and saw not just Burger King and McDonald’s, but… TGI Fridays. See, we don’t export the good stuff, like Thomas Keller, mom and pop diners, Annie Dillard or John Irving. We export the mass-produced unoriginal corporate “stuff” (I’m trying to be polite).

Of course, when I was in China last week, what did I see? Another TGI Fridays, in a hotel right in front of the new Beijing Olympic Stadium.

My romantic notions about the rest of the world are pretty much shattered at this point. I know I’m going to run into American brands pretty much where ever I go… that even in the farthest flung reaches of the world, I’ll never be far from a can of Coke or even a McDonald’s.

Your inspiration for today is: Take an every day object, something we all take for granted as just being there, and take it away. What would the world look like without cars, phones, airplanes, fast food or indoor plumbing? Could you remove those things in isolation without affecting other things? What would happen if we lost one of those things completely?

Inspiration: The Changing of the Masks

2008-04-25T20:51:00Z

I’m back! Did you miss me? I had pretty decent internet access in China, but… my laptop decided to protest and committed ritual suicide by frying its hard drive. That happened the evening I got there, so I spent most of the meetings taking notes longhand in a notebook and checking mail on my blackberry, which meant no ficlets and very little surfing.

The picture above is from a three hundred year-old traditional Chinese dance called The Changing of the Masks. It’s basically a five minute magic trick, and it was amazing to watch. The dancer is constantly changing masks, and it was really hard to “catch” him doing it. I’m going to see if I can find a video of it online and share it, but it was fun to watch.

So, today, let’s think about the masks we wear and the traditions we practice that make those masks harder and harder to change.

In completely unrelated news, it’s THX 0477 birthday today. Don’t ask me how I know, it’s a trade secret. But, let’s all wish him a happy birthday! Happy birthday, THX!!

Inspiration: A Tribute to an Artist

2008-04-17T19:46:00Z

Unless you’re a real animation geek, you probably don’t know the name “Ollie Johnston”. I have to admit that until this week, I didn’t either. But I know his work… we probably all do. He died this week and was one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” who created some of the greatest animation in the history of the art.

Why write a blog entry (my third in three days – it’s some kind of record!) about an animator on a site about writing? In this tribute from The Incredibles’ Brad Bird, he says something that I think applies to everyone who considers themselves an artist, professional or otherwise.

Ollie was one of the best that ever was and will be. He lives on as an entertainer, a teacher and inspiration for all generations to come. Needless to say, I’ll miss him. But I plan on visiting him as I visit Milt, Eric, Frank and all the others who taught and/or inspired me – through their work.. which will be around forever.

We all want to leave a legacy, something that will live on after we’re gone. Working on the web for the last decade, I realized that none of my work is timeless. Web applications get replaced all the time. There’s no concrete thing I can hold in my hands from the projects I’ve worked on (t-shirts don’t count). Out of the dozens of things I’ve built over the years, only the most recent resemble what I worked on or even have a scrap of code that I wrote in them still.

I’m off on a plane to a far-away land tomorrow, and I have no idea what my connectivity will be like. I’ll check in when I can (hopefully, ficlets isn’t blocked by The Great Firewall of China) and hopefully post a couple pictures from Beijing.

Try to behave without me, OK?

Inspiration: Dreaming During the Day

2008-04-16T13:16:00Z

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”—Edgar Allan Poe

I found this quote this morning and just had to post it. “Dream by day” sounds so much better than “daydream”, doesn’t it?

Inspiration: Heroes of Nice

2008-04-15T19:44:00Z

“Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, existence is simply illusion.”—Fred Rogers

I’ve been thinking a lot about heroes. I had a discussion the other day among my pals on twitter about being “nice” and I started thinking of the people I’ve looked up to over the years as being nothing but “nice”, completely unblemished by controversy, scandal or wrong-doing (at least that I knew about). The list isn’t very long, mostly due to my poor memory, probably. You see, we were trying to come up with the date for yet another holiday (my friend Jason’s not quite ready to announce it yet), and I was picking my heroes’ birthdays as possible candidates.

There were several people I know in real life who came to mind (my father, a couple people I’ve worked with over the years, a friend from long ago – but you don’t know them), but the two who stuck out the most to me were Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson (Doc Searls and Sam Ruby were right there near the top).

Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson are the only two people I didn’t know in real life that caused me to break down in tears when they died. They both spent their lives bringing joy, gratitude, wonder and, yes, niceness into the world.

So, there’s your inspiration, or something like it. In a world that seems to promote selfishness, vice, death, war and decay, there are still heroes that bring joy, a spirit of giving and wonder to the world. It’s something I’ve seen heaps of in this community, and I hope it continues. You guys are supportive of each other, and use your imaginations to help each other to create narrative worlds that didn’t exist before you threw the bits across the world for the world to see.

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.”—Jim Henson

Who are your heroes? What have you learned from them? How can you honor them with your craft?

Challenge Roundup: The Challenger is Still Standing!

2008-04-08T00:28:00Z

Before I get to the challenges, a little thought on craft. I write code for a living. Usually, other people tell me what they want, and I go build it. Yes, it’s more complicated than that, and more collaborative, but at its essence, I take orders and produce things. I took a long weekend as a mini-vacation to get away from stress at work and started a project just for me. There are no orders, no requirements document, no design, just stuff in my head slowly turning into working code (oh yes, no deadlines either).

I’ve been feeling burned out, tired of dealing with all the “stuff” that goes in to working for a large company. I started this project as a way to rediscover my craft, to do something selfish with my skills, like I imagine a carpenter has the pet project in their shed that’s crazy and big and may take years to whittle down to the end goal, but there’s no hurry. I have to say, being able to wallow in the tiny little bits of code that go into the whole without time constraint or constant interruption has been freeing and a lot of fun. I guess this goes back to my Living Out Loud post. Instead of living out loud right now, I’m living inside, just for me, re-discovering the parts of my job that make me happy.

And after that little diversion, on to the challenges!!

There you go! It’s off to watch some Canadian situational comedy (just discovered the ultimately quirky Corner Gas) and do laundry… and rediscover my craft.

Inspiration: Living Out Loud

2008-04-04T16:30:00Z

“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.”—Emila Zola

My friend and author Kevin Smokler posted that quote on his blog the other day, and I love it.

Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, Zola’s talking about “drinking life to the lees” (lees is the crud at the bottom of the wine bottle) and that’s not something that’s always easy to do. It’s hard to stay inspired, motivated and keep giving everything you have to whatever it is you’re working on. In fact, I’ve been struggling with it myself lately. The tedious stupid annoyances of life keep getting in the way of living out loud.

So, my fellow ficleteers, how do you live out loud and stay inspired?

More on Community Standards

2008-04-02T15:40:00Z

I’m back again. I just want to clarify a couple things. As far as Community Standards go, quality is not something I’m going to police. Please don’t report a story as offensive if it offends your sense of taste, you feel it’s poorly written or is a little provocative. Ficlets is not a puritanical state, and we should accept other peoples’ art, even if we don’t think it’s art or disagree with its point of view. When people step over a line from mildly offensive or “makes me feel oogy” into truly obscene, then it should be reported and we’ll deal with it. If you look at the Community Standards page, things don’t have to be marked mature until they reach the equivalent of an R rating. For the most part, you all have set your own rules and mark things mature that would safely fall under PG-13 or even PG. That’s great, and I don’t think you should change. But, you shouldn’t report other users who are following the rules. Maybe you should send them a note and ask them nicely to mark their story mature or change the language that offends you.

Look, I’m no expert and we’re going to have to play some of this by ear. We have the Community Standards page and we have common sense. I don’t want ficlets to spiral into an unpleasant place. There should be plenty of room here for everyone to express themselves as long as we follow the rules and are accepting of each other – as writers and as people. We have folks of all ages and skill levels here. Bad grammar, poor sentence structure, spelling mistakes and, let’s face it, bad stories, are going to happen and should be encouraged with constructive criticism, not degraded or picked on.

You guys have built one of the most supportive communities I’ve ever seen on the web. Let’s not let a couple hiccups spoil that, and let’s not overreact.

I want this to be a discussion. You all are what makes ficlets what it is, and I want to make sure it stays as open, inclusive and supportive as possible. If I’m wrong, let me know. If we need to re-examine the community standards, we can do that. If there’s something else that can be done that we’re not doing, bring it on. I’m open to any and all ideas.

Community Standards

2008-03-31T15:06:00Z

I can’t believe it’s been a year and I’m only having to write this post now. A lot of you reported offensive stories and comments over the weekend. I’ve dealt with them, but it’s probably time to reiterate that we have community standards here that have been in place since the beginning. You should probably go review them again just so we all know what’s expected of us.

I try to be hands-off in day-to-day stuff here. You guys do a better job of self-policing than any community I’ve ever been a part of, and I thank you for it. Unfortunately, in any community of sufficient size, there will be trolls. I will continue to try to be hands-off, but if you guys see stories like the ones that were reported (racist, full of excessive profanity, over-the-top violence, abuse, etc) or that you feel truly violate the community standards, please report them. I don’t read every ficlet that gets posted (sorry, I just don’t have time – you guys are prolific) and there is no ficlets police force. If you haven’t seen it, the “Report this story as offensive” link is in the right column at the bottom under the tags and licensing info.

If you have any questions about the community standards, either post a comment on this entry or send me a note.

One last thing… I didn’t reply to all the reports I got this weekend, because there were a lot of them. I saw them all, and the offending stories have been “taken care of”.

Challenge Roundup: This Challenge May Experience Some Turbulence

2008-03-28T19:31:00Z

Ouch, I really didn’t mean to go a week without writing a blog post. Yeah, things are a little hectic at the moment. Let’s start off with another video from 20×2, this one starring one of my favorite people in the world, the brilliant George Kelly. His piece as all about his friends and the difference they’ve made in his life. Moving stuff.

DYKCTV: 20×2 (George Kelly) from Do You KNOW Clarence? on Vimeo.

And of course, here’s the latest batch of challenges!

Story Challenge – It’s a pick-one-of-two duet of snippets.
The Double Bump – Love it! Go find an older ficlet that doesn’t have any sequels and write one!
The 64 Byte Challenge – Write a ficlet in 64 characters. Good luck!
The Animated Archetype Challenge – Ahhh, I watched so many cartoons in the ‘80s, I should enter this one.
Count the strange languages on your fingers – Use two very challenging vocabulary words in your story. Bonus points if you use my favorite word: “polymath”.
Injurious – I should be good at this one. Write a story about a time you were injured mentally or physically – but keep it fictional, of course.
Cliff’s Notes – Summarize your ficlets… or something.
The Beauty in the Ordinary – Like the plastic bag in American Beauty.

There you have it. I’ll try not to be gone so long next time.

Challenge Roundup: Setting a Table of Challenges

2008-03-21T17:39:00Z

20×2 : What’s The Difference? from photojunkie on Vimeo.

The video above was my favorite entry in this year’s 20×2, answering the question “What’s the Difference”. I just had to share it. My friend Rannie is the photographer behind it, and my pal Neil makes an appearance in the middle. I just love all the images of happy couples. It’s kind of like a two minute version of Love Actually. But, enough with the love stuff, let’s get on to a hearty dose of challenge stew!

We’ve got a drawer full of challenging cutlery for you to cut and serve your ficlets with. Without further culinary metaphor, here they are on a silver platter:

The Cup Runneth Over – Choose your own challenge, just be sure not to choose the wrong one.
It’s Funny How – I smell some Jerry Seinfeld bits coming.
Author Shuffling – Take a scene from a book or movie and do it in the style of another author. I’d love to see someone take the Clarence Darrow scene from Inherit the Wind and do it in the style of Dr. Seuss. Please?
What If? – Lots of possibilities here… pick one and answer the question. It’s funny, at 20×2 last year, I answered this very question with a video.
The Genre Bender – Someone please take Terms of Endearment and make it a slapstick comedy. That would make my day… heck, my week.

And that’s the end of this round. Remember, if you want me to see your challenge, please tag it with newchallenge. Please, only tag challenges with “newchallenge”. Don’t tag entries to challenges with it. It makes me sad.

Tuck in that napkin and dig in to a heaping plateful of challenges!

(And since Blusparrow asked, the kidlet’s doing great! They didn’t have to do surgery, and he’s up and around wielding his cast like a deadly weapon.)

Quiet for a Bit

2008-03-16T19:37:00Z

Things will probably be fairly quiet around the blog this week. My youngest broke his arm on Friday and I’ll probably be spending the week ferrying us to doctors’ offices, playing Wii (he tells me what to play, I play it) and fetching things.

He’s OK, and thankfully, this is our first real injury for either of the boys. Compared to my almost quarterly trips to the emergency room as a kid, we’ve gotten off easy so far.

I’ll be back with a challenge roundup and maybe an inspiration post or two when time permits. Until then, bask in the warm glow of oncoming spring allergies (and the lovely antihistamines that come with them) and keep writing.

Very Important: Identity vs. Persona

2008-03-13T21:11:00Z

We’ve been around for a year, and a lot of people are here now. We’re not as small as we used to be, and I’ve seen a couple things lately that I think I need to address. This is really important, especially if you’re one of our many younger ficleteers. I know it’s a little long, and may be a little complicated, but it’s important for everyone to be on the same page.

Before we get started, though, we need to go over a couple of definitions:

identity: who or what a person is

persona: The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one’s public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.

There are social networks out there, like Facebook, that pretty much demand that you represent your identity. It’s supposed to be an accurate-as-possible representation of your identity. Then, there are places online, like Second Life or World of Warcraft, that are all about creating personas – imaginary alter egos for you to take on. They are worlds of imagination, not reality.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. At SxSW last week, I saw two great documentaries: Second Skin and We Are Wizards. They’re both about online or fan worlds where people take on the personas of either the characters they love from the world of Harry Potter or the characters they play as in online role playing games.

Now, you may not think this has anything at all to do with ficlets, but it does. When you signed up for the site, you were asked to create a pen name and fill out a profile. When we first launched, I tried to be “Chuck Dickens” but realized very quickly that I couldn’t have a persona on ficlets that’s different than my real identity because I’m the public face of the site. This made me kind of sad. I wanted to play with the anonymity that ficlets provides. I loved that I knew my friends and co-workers were signing up for the site, but because of the pen names and the fact that we never reveal the identifier you use to log in, I had no idea who was who, unless they told me.

We have many many young people on ficlets. First off, I think this is awesome, and I love watching you guys grow as writers and how welcoming the community is of the younger ficleteers of us. But, there’s a danger here that’s very serious, and something I want to make sure I address so we don’t run into trouble in the future. There are… less than helpful or kind people here. It’s unfortunately a fact of life that there is evil in the world, and though we’re mostly nice here, we’re not immune from it.

Here’s the important bit: If you’re under 18, please please please don’t reveal anything that could let people find out who you really are or where you live. This includes:

your age
where you live, go to school or play sports (including the name of the league)
your real name
any contact information about yourself, including links to other profiles you may have

I’m not going to enforce this yet, because it’s very easy to lie and it’s something that’s onerous to enforce. If we have problems, then we’ll be forced to implement something, and I really don’t want to do that.

Ficlets is about imagination. It’s a place to experiment with expressing yourself in new ways and becoming better at creating plots, characters, dialogue and experiences. I’d hate for that to be ruined by a few bad apples, or something bad happened because they revealed too much information about their real life.

So, please go look at your profiles and make sure that you’re not revealing too much about yourself. Remember, that includes your age, where you live, contact information or anything else that could be used to identify you in the real world. And remember, no one from ficlets (which right now, is just me) will ever contact you and ask you for any personal information, especially if I know you’re under the age of 18.

If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to send me a note.

Challenges: Unknown Challenges Cause Unexpected Results

2008-03-13T14:27:00Z

It’s been a while since I posted a challenge roundup. I’ve got a big blog post brewing about a serious topic that I’ve been thinking on, SxSW of course, and being on cramped little flying tubes doesn’t help either. No more excuses, though! It’s off to the challenges!

You guys have been on fire with new stories, which I think is great!

Also, you may have noticed a little bit of weirdness on the site. We got some extra traffic with the whole award thing, and something else happened on the machines ficlets is running on. Super Dan, Operations Man is taking care of it. If you notice anything weird/broken (well, more weird/broken than normal), please post feedback so I can check it out.

We Won!

2008-03-10T01:38:00Z

I just got back from the SxSW Web Awards, and we won!!! Ficlets is the 2008 SxSW Web Award winner in the CSS Category. Flock won in community, and deservedly so.

I had to trim the acceptance speech way down unfortunately. A friend got a video of it, which I will upload as soon as the hotel network comes back (and/or I get back from Fray Cafe).

A huge thank you to you guys for writing the acceptance speed, and to Jason Garber who wrote almost all of the CSS for ficlets.

I’m gonna go celebrate! Yay, us!

Update: The video finally finished uploading, and… here’s the acceptance speech. As you can plainly hear, I was really nervous and the speech is way shorter than the one I posted last week. I practiced and even going very quickly, it was over three minutes. I’m sorry I could read all of them, and I’m sorry that I had to cut out some really good stuff. That said, here it is:

(and have you decided what your feat of awesomeness is going to be yet?)

Happy Birthday to Us!

2008-03-07T12:16:00Z

A year ago today, we flipped the switch and ficlets went live to the world. We had some hiccups out of the gate, but March 7th was the day we shoved our preening little darling on to the stage (and posted the first story). Since then, you guys have told a lot of stories, well over twenty-three thousand. You’ve sent each other over ten thousand notes, and posted over forty-five thousand comments. You’ve linked to ficlets over forty thousand times on your blogs, profiles and other places (according to technorati). Ficlets has won a W3 Award and is up for two SxSW Web Awards, been featured in a couple newspapers, and even shown up on Canadian Radio.

The numbers, awards and press are nice and fun, but I’m in love with the community, and I can’t take any credit for that. That was all you guys. We were worried when we first launched about what community would form on the site, because that’s not something anyone can control. It’s an organic thing. You can help it along with cues in the design, the voice used (we couldn’t really go wrong with Mr. Scalzi, could we?), etc, but the community just “happens” and there’s very little you can do to control it. Thankfully, I didn’t even need to worry about it. This is the best and most self-sufficient community I’ve ever seen on the web, and all the credit for that goes to you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

I loved building ficlets with Jason, Ari, Cindy and Jenna. It was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. They’re all professionals at the top of their games, and it was an honor to work with them every day on the design, code, voice, all of it. They’ve all gone on to other things (Ari’s starting a restaurant, which I think is awesome), but they’re still very much a part of the ficlets family.

I have so many emotions and thoughts right now, I don’t even know what to say. I’ve worked on many projects that get more traffic, made more money and were more visible in the industry, but I’m most proud of this. I’m so thankful AOL let me build it and launch it. Ficlets started as an “experiment” to see if Ruby on Rails would work for building community applications. I wanted to see if a small autonomous team could actually build and launch something of quality in three months. Thankfully, my management let me steal the folks I did and go off and try it. It worked well enough that they let us launch it without ever going through the regular QA (quality assurance) process.

When we started all this last January, I figured that “success” for ficlets was getting out the door. Just going through the process of creating it was rewarding. That people actually use it and like it is more than I could have hoped.

I’m off to celebrate, much like I did last year, by going to SxSW Interactive. The Web Awards ceremeony is Sunday night. I won’t have my laptop with me, but I’ll most definitely twitter something when I know the results.

Thank you for making ficlets’ first year a success, and I hope you’ll stick around for our terrible twos.

Help a Doctor Out!

2008-03-05T21:06:00Z

Our dear doctor, THX 0477 is trying to write a very scholarly paper about us. I’m all for being a guinea pig, how about you?

Here’s his note:

Ficlets is fun. That much is obvious. At least, it is to those of us here or we wouldn’t be here. But is it more? Could it be more? Is there something inherently psychologically healthy about not only pursuing a creative endeavor but pursuing it in such a collective and cooperative fashion?
This is the question I intend to explore in a research paper, hopefully for professional publication. But this is the edge of the digital frontier, and there is absolutely no research on anything like ficlets. Beyond that, there’s almost no research literature about the benefits of creative writing. In other words, I’m out on a limb here.
So, in an attempt to collect some preliminary data, I’ve created a survey. There are only 3 rating scale questions, one yes/no question, and an optional comment question. I would really appreciate as many people completing the survey as possible, even if you’re new to ficlets or even an occasional visitor to the site.
Your Friend,
THX 0477

If you’ve got a few minutes, help a doctor out and go fill out his survey

In only tangentially related news, The International Day of Awesomeness is approaching rapidly (it’s on Monday)!! Have you chosen your feat of awesomeness yet? I’m dying my hair blue, my wife is donating blood, my next door cubemate is making cupcakes with little Chuck Norris beards on them. What are you going to do?

Oh, and completely unrelated, you may have noticed a change to the Most Active list. It now shows the most active story (that’s some algorithm that takes views, counts, and comments into account) over the last 24 hours. Most Popular is over the last seven days, and uses slightly different data. Now, there should be quite a bit of difference between the two lists, and everyone should be happier. I know I am.

Sorry, one last thing… I made a ficlets shirt

Our Acceptance Speech... I Think

2008-03-03T19:48:00Z

There are nine sequels in the chain starting at my acceptance speech opening. I’m still in the process of combining all of them into something resembling a two minute acceptance speech, but I wanted to get you guys this version so you can help me fix it up. Thanks to everyone who posted comments and sequels. I’m sorry I can’t just read through all nine, but I checked with the organizers and they said two minutes was about all the time we had. I’m pretty sure I can get through this in that much time. Of course, feedback is welcome, and I’ll probably be fiddling with it up until Sunday night. I’ll post here as soon as I can after the awards to let you know if we won (remember, this speech is in case we win… we’re only nominated for two awards).

And, here’s the speech:

Because ficlets is all about storytelling, I let the community come up with the bulk of this little acceptance speech, but before that, there are some people I have to thank, because without them, there would be no ficlets to write.

First, Kerry Parkins and Bert Arians for letting us do the experiment that became ficlets. Then, the awesome team that actually built the thing: Jason Garber, Ari Kushimoto, Cindy Li and Jenna Marino, Dan Bradley for being our awesome operations guy, John Scalzi for giving the site a voice and writing the ficlets blog. And lastly, my wife for putting up with me and being my greatest inspiration.

But my biggest thanks has to go to the thousands of writers who make ficlets what it is. Here’s what they have to tell you…

Any writer will tell you that his is possibly one of the loneliest jobs on the planet. He sits in a room by himself, staring at a computer screen, and hoping that somehow lightning will shoot from his fingertips and become something worth reading. Ficlets alleviates that isolation. Writers who post to the site get feedback on their work relatively quickly, and are encouraged to provide feedback on the work of their peers. Members are also encouraged to add to each others’ work by writing a prequel or sequel. This combination has created an atmosphere where members are largely supportive of each others’ work, and a community has arisen from it.

Where is fiction king? Well, everywhere online. We all know that the blond, flirtatious, perfectly sculpted chat buddy is really a dumpy truck driver named Ron, but don’t ever confront him on it.

The difference with ficlets is that we’re supposed to be creating fiction. Every ficlet is like a snowflake, beautiful and unique in its own right, a tiny sparkling crystalline treasure. But together they form a vast winter wonderland, accumulating in bluffs and branches, forming families of snowmen and snow angels, a veritable playground for the creative sledder.

Here it truly doesn’t matter who or what you are. There’s no inflated resumes or bragadocious claims. You write. If it’s good, people comment and rate it as such. If it’s not, you get constructive criticism and try harder next time. Ours is a community based not on who you are but what you can create. And we create some awesome stories that don’t technically end. Even if it is a series of stories and you put an ending someone still finds a way to add on. It is not like a book where when the pages end and it is over.

There's already a ficlets addiction support group on the site. When people ask us if we're on crack, we say, "Of course not! We're on ficlets!"

Inspiration: Unintended Consequences

2008-02-29T16:02:00Z

I owe you guys a challenge post, but I just saw this quote in someone’s e-mail signature, and thought it was a good springboard for something I’ve been thinking about lately.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. —Voltaire

It makes me think of well-intentioned folks who don’t realize they’re a small cog in a big disaster. So, that’s your inspiration today. Can you tell a story that conveys both the mundane nature of day-to-day life, but also tells the story of one person’s small role in a larger tragedy? Or, how can one seemingly small act lead to something much larger and unintended?