I know, I haven’t updated in longer than forever… But if you’re interested in a quick story that’s updated every day, check out my new project: Word Plus One.

From the about page:

Word Plus One is an experiment in very short stories, called “micro fiction” or “flash fiction“.

Starting November 1, 2006, I will write a new story every day for a year. Each day, the number of words in the story will increase by exactly one. Yes, the first story is only one word long. If your attention span is anything like mine, this is great!

After the year is up, perhaps I will start over again at one.

I would really like to hear what you think about the stories, so please feel free to add your comments!

What is it about used book stores that makes me love them so much? They’re full of already-read books, which are mostly like new ones, but dirtier and more beat up. So why are they so great? For me, I suppose it’s a combination of two things.

First, I’m a big fan of old sci-fi and fantasy novels, many of which are out of print, and a well-stocked used book store gives me a chance to pick some up that I might not otherwise have access to. And second, not only do I get to enjoy a story, not only do I get transported to another world bounded only by my imagination (am I starting to sound too much like Reading Rainbow here?) but there’s also a bit of mystery around the idea that this same book was in someone else’s hands. Where did they read it? What did it trigger in their imaginations? It’s the same kind of curiosity that fuels ideas like BookCrossing. Keeping these questions in the back of my mind adds something small but satisfying to the act of enjoying a story.

Having recently moved to within walking distance of a used book store, I find myself enjoying previously-read books much more often than I normally would, and I especially enjoyed my latest read: Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s nonfiction, half autobiography and half advice on writing, a fraction of the length of the average Stephen King book, and it might just be his best work yet.

It inspires me to write. Short stories, blog entries, a novel, whatever. Reading that book just made me want to write something. Of course, I have the attention span of a gust of wind, so by next week it might be back to woodworking or wire jewelry making. Who knows? That’s why my life is interesting.

In On Writing, Stephen King describes his working environment and habits, and his process of taking a book from an idea, through editing and rewriting, to publication. The care he takes when refining his work, his methods for working around the second-guessing every writer does. The personal problems he struggled with while writing some of the stories I have since enjoyed reading. To know something about the author’s state of mind sort of extends further the feeling of intimacy with a story that I get from reading previously read books.

If you like to write, or maybe just have enjoyed the occasional Stephen King book and want to understand something about the author’s motivation, you could do much worse than to read this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I love interactive fiction, or “IF” for the acronymically inclined. Or “text adventure” games if you’re less familiar with the Infocom of the 1980s. IF as a genre, fundamentally unchanged for more than twenty years, evolved in a world of gaming where graphics were non-existent and words were the sole medium of expression. The game described locations, objects, and actions in text, and the player controlled the story’s protagonist by typing commands in English (or any other natural language in which the story was written). As a player, you had to rely on your imagination to fill in the gaps.

In the time since, technology has allowed designers to create games that realize their visual ideals. And many of these games have captivating stories and excellent puzzles, just like good IF games. And there are entirely different styles of games whose pure entertainment value is graphics-based, like a first-person shooter or even a simple puzzle game like Tetris. And that’s great! But it’s also different, and IF still has something to offer today.

I like to think of the relationship between IF and popular modern games as analogous to the relationship between books and movies. It’s not much of a stretch. It’s words versus pictures. Both words and pictures have their place, both can be entertaining, educational, and otherwise enriching. But I personally prefer words.

If you’re a fan of words like me and you’ve never played interactive fiction, or perhaps if you played Infocom’s Zork back in the 80s and remember it fondly, you might be surprised to learn that the medium is far from extinct. An active hobbyist community continues to produce new titles, and as a result IF has grown tremendously, both technically (in terms of language parser sophistication, availability of IF writing/development tools, etc.) and as an art form. Now there are countless modern IF titles currently available for free, representing an amazing array of genres and story-telling styles. Erstwhile players of old-style text adventure games might, for instance, notice the trend toward emphasis on a game’s plot and story-telling as opposed to disjointed puzzle solving. That’s a severe generalization, as classic puzzle games are also certainly still developed — I just want to emphasize that the diversity of titles now available surpasses anything imagined in IF’s “heyday” of twenty plus years ago.

Playing them allows me to simultaneously experience three of my favorite things: reading, puzzle solving, and playing games (or four if I happen to play IF while eating peanut butter!). If you also enjoy the art of the crafted sentence, do yourself a favor and read this Beginner’s Guide to Interactive Fiction. It may or may not be your cup of tea, but it has to be nice to know that people are telling stories in interesting new ways.

I can’t believe I haven’t come across this before now. It seems I’ve been letting my attention slip away from all of the new and cool crazes in my post-college, married life.

Anyway, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a (multi) nation-wide event in which many thousands of insane people each try to write a 50,000-word short novel, from scratch, in November. After excitedly reading through the site, including many of the forum posts, I found myself halfway through a detailed plot outline before I started thinking rationally about this. 50,000 words in 30 days? That’s 1667 words (or nearly five pages) a day, with no break.

I can’t even manage to take a vitamin every morning for a week!

I do think it’s a very cool idea. This is a terrific use of the Internet to bring a large group of like-minded people together to do something passionate and downright amazing. And the support network they’ve built around it is nothing short of stunning. There are local events organized throughout the month just about anywhere you might find yourself writing a novel.

In junior high school, I wanted to be a pulp novelist for a short while (yes, the random obsessions can be traced back at least that far). While the career plans eventually changed, I never did lose respect for the written word, though I more commonly find myself on the reader’s side of the relationship. If only for the sake of my erstwhile self, I would love to participate, but I know I just won’t make time to commit to such a large undertaking this year. Oh well, there’s always next year!