Well, there's only so much my Moderator access will let me do. I can't commandeer a section of the zine's filespace, but I was thinking about this while working on the next challenge.bottomdweller wrote:Another ezine is running a new flash story each week - in addition to the regular monthly stories. It continues to draw attention to the ezine every week instead of the zine just sitting there, same old same old, for the entire month.
Someone could take on a similar project here at Aphelion. Flash stories are easily read & really fun...Nate.
If the goal is to keep things fresh and also keep the regulars engaged and interested in our little community, we could do something similar to the old fiction challenges they used to run over at Absolute Write. As I recall, they used to post a prompt on Sunday nights, then everyone would have like an hour and a half to write whatever they could about it. Authors posted whatever they had, done or not, after the deadline. To make it fair for other timezones, they gave the 90 minutes from whenever you saw the prompt in that next 24 hour period.
The prompts were simple like A Dog's Life, The Witching Hour, etc. There was also no voting, just comments after the story was posted (stories and comments mixed together in the thread).
So... is that something you folks would be interested in? Simple prompt, an hour or two to work on it, and the guts to post whatever you have done. You could have everything from a brilliant, horror haiku to a 5,000 word unfinished stream of consciousness meant to be a romance. It could be what you'd consider horrible and off-topic, or it could be the best thing you've ever read. Probably it won't be very polished, but that's part of the fun, and you keep your creative juices flowing.
If this sounds good to you, let's talk it out and work out details about time limits or what day of the week works best for everyone. If not, let's hear that, too.
