Temporal Tales

Having got the bit between my teeth with this whole idea of streaming real-time stories through twitter, I've now created a new twitter channel @TemporalTales that will be dedicated to the format, but how is this new way of telling and distributing short fiction through twitter even going to work?


No, the wheel has not been reinvented, experiments in real-time storytelling, like Jeremy Bushnell's Imaginary Year, have been created before, but the demands of the twitter medium calls for a new format to put over the stories in a much more immediate way.
After the successful tweet broadcast of the Bad Hair Daze story in April 2010, I started writing a Christmas story that would be broadcast in December of that year, but workloads being what they are, the broadcast was delayed until this year and @HoBloodyHo will begin tweeting on the 15th December. I’ve been excited getting it all ready and working out the bugs to be able to schedule the tweets. Making a new twitter account for each story has worked for these first two pilot stories, but I’ve realised that to broadcast more stories on a regular basis needs a different solution. Having a tailor made twitter stream for a story looks great, but having to build up a following prior to the story launching is hard work, and most of that following will drift away once the story is over. The idea of a dedicated stream is a much more attractive option, allowing stories to be broadcast back to back (if I can get enough submissions). @TemporalTales has been created to do just that.

The channel is intended to be a platform through which new and established writers can show their ingenuity and writing talent in what is effectively a new format (in the same way that flash fiction is a new format) of real-time storytelling. It also allows links to blogs, books and websites to be placed in the credits that can directly promote the writer to a receptive audience. A supporting blog-based website with an archive will provide additional information about the stories and the writers.
The Temporal Tales twitter account is already up and ready for new followers and will start delivering tales as a channel in the new year. As a test it will be mirroring the tweets from the @HoBloodyHo story, but with a time delay so that the tweets can go at at Eastern Standard Time. The Temporal Tales website and blog are still being designed at the moment, but will up and running before @TemporalTales begins tweeting in anger.

In the meantime we are looking for submissions for new and imaginative stories to deliver when broadcasting begins. Please email stories in .doc or .pages format including a brief outline of what it is about to:

muse (at) simoncornish.com
(I’ve used (at) instead of @ to defeat the bots. I’m sure you can figure out how to reassemble it). 

As a guide, stories should be from one day to two weeks in output duration. Please bear in mind the constraints of the medium when submitting stories, @BadHairDaze is an existing example of how a real-time story has worked. More details about @HoBloodyHo can be found here.

I'm a Writer, but is that Enough?

Now I’ve finished my MA, I’ve spent a few calm days reflecting on all I’ve learnt and all I’ve achieved in the last two years. Somewhere on that journey, I became a writer. I can’t put my finger on the exact day, but it was around the same time I stopped being self-conscious about my abilities and just got on with it.

To put this in context, I was an indifferent student of both English language and literature at school; which were taught in such a way that I was left with no desire to read more classics and I perceived grammar as a form of slow torture. That my early creative instincts in writing were not encouraged, was entirely down to the tired and listless attitude of my secondary school teachers. Even after escaping from a career path of science for one in animation, it wasn’t until I began to write scripts, (both animation and live-action) that I wrote anything creative. These scripts were not to sell, but to satisfy my own urges to write narratives. At the same time I had also been steadily collating my chaotic notes for the fantasy role-playing system I had created, which, by the time I began my MA, had been distilled into two good sized, non-fiction books. And even then I didn’t think of myself as a writer.

The very reason I applied to do the Professional Writing MA at Falmouth was to earn that badge, to gain the confidence, skills, and understanding, of the written medium.Now I’m here at the point of completion, there is a temptation to think of it as some sort of big deal; certainly it’s a personal achievement, having got this far, but though I can now say I am a writer, there is more to aspire to. That I can string some words together to good effect is all very well, but the internet is full of writers: posters, bloggers, commentators, reviewers, critics, and tweeters who claim to do that. 

Even saying that I’m a writer, brings some negative baggage –’Is he actually earning a living at it, or is he just being pretentious?’ ‘It’s not really a proper job.’ ‘Anyone can be a writer these days with the aid of technology.’– Perhaps my aim should be something that implies a much greater mastery of the craft than merely being able tweet; I want to become an author. By definition the title of ‘author’ implies the creator of a piece work, it implies an omnipotence over the project that is more than simple technical fluency of the words that make it up, it cuts away all the baggage, it says I am established, successful, and published; it says I have ‘authority’ in my field.

When someone asks me what I do, and I am able to reply with simple conviction that ‘I’m an author’, is when I know I have achieved my objective.