white noise

On Tuesday afternoon, I decided to walk down to Crossroads to take our movie back. Levi was quite thrilled to be my personal escort; he bounced and twirled in dizzying circles when he saw his leash and collar coming out of the closet. It was a nice walk, took us maybe 40 minutes to get there and a little extra time to make it back. It was warm, so I was thankful I decided to put my fleece jacket in my backpack and bring it only in case it started to rain. The clouds had pretty much dispersed by the time we got to the movie store, though, and it felt like spring had finally settled in Blacksburg.

While on that walk, I started wondering what sort of effort it might take to write 1,000 short stories (and/or 1,000 poems). To accept such a challenge, surely those stories would have to be written in the same spirit as NaNoWriMo, where quantity matters far more than quality. At one story a week, 52 stories a year, it would take 19¼ years to write those 1,000 stories.

Phew, that’s a long time!

Wikipedia gives this definition for a short story (brief): “In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000.”

In my own experience, any story shorter than 1,000 words is considered either a “short-short” or “flash” fiction and a story between 1,000 and 7,500 words is considered a short story. Anything beyond that number range and you start getting into the novelette/novella categories. Between 1,000 and 7,500 words, I can do. The word count most magazines seek for publication seems to average around 2,000 to 3,500 words. I think for the 1000 Club, a short story should be four to eight pages in length, a size most writers can manage in one day. I think the real challenge would be in coming up with 1,000 individual ideas. Ow.

Okay, it’s a little ambitious. I’ll throw in that stories one has previously written count towards reaching the 1,000 mark. Doesn’t that make it so much more appealing? Are you with me now?

Oh yeah, I’m so gonna be a member of the 1000 club. Heee!

In less loftier ambitions, it suddenly dawned on me the other day that my bestiary might fit beautifully into a wiki. I installed Wikimedia and started noodling around with it to see how much of a brainiac I need be in order to get such a project up and moving, and with a style of its own. Well, I learned one has to be smarter than the average geek, but if one can tweak one’s own website or blog, one can certainly stylize one’s own wiki.

Now I have a place to stuff ALL the information I’ve collected on bits of paper and note cards and put them in one place, accessible to me without having to drag a 50 lb. tome around as I go (or in this case, three-ring binders). As well, Jon will probably be very pleased to watch the shrinkage in all my little piles around the house.

Tadah! Man, I impress myself so much whenever I function above average. :P

Okay, does it matter if the backpack is still heavy because of the lap top? The more I pare down, the less I need a little red wagon to get me around town. Wait … I think I wanted the little red wagon.