December 2011
1 post
1 tag
RANDOM!
Yes. Six Minute Story now has random prompts (clicking will get you a random prompt, right this second).
And I fixed whatever was preventing Flickr prompts from loading properly.
Now, stop tumbling and get back to writing. Write on!
October 2011
1 post
4 tags
“Dream dreams,
then write them.
Aye, but live them first.”
– Samuel Eliot Morison (via 90years)
September 2011
2 posts
1 tag
So this is fun
At the end of August, Six Minute Story broke through 25,000 visits from all you happy people. And those 25,000 visitors saw about 4 pages each: we’ve now had over 100,000 pageviews!
So that’s nice, considering I started this as a hobby site to help writers cure writer’s block!
Your stories are getting read. And that’s just increasing as time goes on, as you promote your...
1 tag
New Prompts For Ever
I pulled myself away from work for a few hours this weekend – just long enough to update the code behind Six Minute Story to ensure there will always be fresh prompts.
In the event I haven’t set a prompt for a particular day, the site will pull one of the most interesting photos from Flickr for your writing pleasure.
Hopefully if the photos are interesting on Flickr, they’ll be...
June 2011
4 posts
3 tags
3 tags
30 of the Harshest author-to-author insults →
(missing the myriads more)
3 tags
Into a burning puddle of fire
Update: By speaking very softly and tempting them with Oreos, I was able to coax the servers back to their desks. They’re now humming along to a delightful mix of Bill Henderson and Count Basie.
In the midst of making some very minor upgrades to Six Minute Story tonight, the servers got confused and thought it was New Years. They consequently took off work and got serverly [sic] drunk.
...
1 tag
Chuck Palahniuk on writing without "thought"... →
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
2 tags
February 2011
5 posts
3 tags
New way to earn reputation
If you’ve visited Six Minute Story today, you may have noticed some small changes.
The biggest change: you can now agree or disagree with comments other people make.
It’s basic at the moment: click agree or disagree. If you want to change your mind, click the other option.
This provides a new way to earn reputation (formerly called “karma”). If someone agrees with...
1 tag
Broken Comments
I noticed today that comments were requiring two clicks to post. I’ve turned off the feature that was causing the bug and will sort it out in the next couple of days.
In the meantime comments are working again. Thanks for your patience. :)
3 tags
“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and...”
– Ray Bradbury via lovelyasadream (via quote-book)
2 tags
How to edit your stories
There’s three tiny new features on Six Minute Story:
1.
Tonight I made it a bit easier to browse through stories, by providing some buttons for timeframes. Click around – you’ll probably find something delicious.
2.
I also added a new way to respond to stories: emotions.
3.
Writers who have earned five karma can edit their stories. The hope is that you’ll edit for...
2 tags
“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more...”
– Pablo Picasso Thanks to trellbrennan and arsvitaest . (via luzfosca)
January 2011
14 posts
2 tags
4 tags
2 tags
“Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that...”
– What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker (via Instapaper)
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
A Year in Six Minutes
First off, I measure success in relationships, not numbers. So really, developing friendships and a community around Six Minute Story has been my reward.
But numbers are fun.
So, here’s Six Minute Story by the numbers, for 2010.
Stories
You are writing champs. All 606 of you. You wrote 933 stories to 168 different prompts in 2010.
Even more impressive, the majority of those (886)...
2 tags
“What an astonishing thing a book is. Across the millennia, an author is speaking...”
– Carl Sagan
4 tags
It's darkly January
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed a strong theme in the past few days stories. As in, they’re depressing as a kitten in a house fire.
January in the northern hemisphere is bad enough without dark stories to read late at night. Or so I used to think. Then I heard a lecturer who insisted if you’re sad you should listen to sad music. Or read a sad story....
1 tag
“A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much...”
– The Economist (via mudd up!) (via ericmortensen)
1 tag
Rare (lost) Words →
tristifical - causing to be sad or mournful. eternitarian - one who believes in the eternity of the soul. cosmogyral - whirling round the universe. siagonology - study of jaw-bones. autexousious - exercising or possessing free will. nepheliad - cloud-nymph. gardeviance -chest for valuables; a traveling trunk. ictuate - to emphasize. senticous - prickly; thorny. interfation - act of interrupting...
1 tag
“When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first...”
– Ernest Hemingway on the merits of getting up early. (via ideas are awesome)
December 2010
2 posts
3 tags
“My spare computers, all small and very powerful beyond any understanding I ever...”
–
Author brags about her wealthy writer character’s amazing technology, in 1996. I won’t name the book because you’ll judge me for reading it. (via forcessweetheart)
Vonnegut said, “I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by...
4 tags
The Office of Letters and Light: November's over,... →
lettersandlight:
NaNoWriMo has been over for a week, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up writing daily. I find writing to be excellent stress-relief, and I would kinda like to sell a novel or two someday.
Now, I’m not talking NaNo-levels of production (though if you can keep up that pace, by…
Absolutely agree, whether it’s on your manuscript (how are those coming...
November 2010
3 posts
3 tags
His Face All Red →
Perfectly crafted, enchanting “comic”.
thelastbite:
Creepy.
via ialas:
A comic by Emily Carroll. The execution is terrific.
October 2010
4 posts
1 tag
4 tags
“ “I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see...”
– Egon Schiele (via cavesoflilith)
April 2010
1 post
2 tags
Meta-prompting
When we started Six Minute Story in 2005, we wanted to keep things simple. So we only had one option to prompt writers: a hero, a villain and a hero’s goal.
Now we’re discovering the best stories are written to ambiguous prompts. That leads us to believe we’ll see even better stories if we make the prompts even more open-ended.
To that end, we’re redesigning the...
March 2010
2 posts
3 tags
The End of Freedom?
After an excellent Friday of Freewriting, we’re back to Healthcare week. Is it the end of Freedom? Or a new beginning full of opportunity? That’s up to you. It’s your Six Minute Story. So, there’s new healthcare based prompts for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Have at it.
In other news, we’ve grown by 40 fans this week, so thanks to all of you who’re reading and...
It's Medical Week! →
To mark the passage of universal healthcare in the United States, we’re making space for you to celebrate or protest via stories. Prompts from now til Sunday are healthcare themed (excluding Free Form Friday).
Are you happy about healthcare? Write stories in which universal healthcare saves the day. Are you up in arms over the bill? Tell the story of just how bad it’s going to get!
...