Like many other people, I’ve been and continue to be critical of AOL, the company. I stopped being an AOL software fan somewhere around version 3.0. However, I have always been a fan — and still am — of their content areas, particularly their creative writing areas. Over 10 years ago I frequented the keyword: novel area inside AOL and would later start contributing short short fiction regularly starting in May 1997. This continued for a couple years culminating into almost 100 different original stories.

This was the last time I wrote any short fiction, moving onto more non-fiction, articles and a brief stint working on a new novel during the NaNoWriMo 2004 over the last 10 years. On my list of resolutions in 2007 is to start writing fiction again. It’s been 10 years, so why not?

Hmm readers who aren’t that interested in fiction don’t worry Hmm is not going to turn into my fiction writing site. I have shared a few past works here, see the 666 category, and will probably do that once in awhile in the future, but I’ve been thinking about this for some time and done some advance planning. In 2005 I registered a couple websites intended for past and future fiction writing and that’s where the bulk of my creative work will begin appearing. Although I stopped counting the words, I know there is well over a million words of fiction in my writing trunk that I’ve always wanted to publish somewhere, someday. Over the next 10 years I hope to see some of this work surface and get feedback. I’m working up the energy to follow the dream more seriously again.

Last week I came across the site ficlets.com which self describes as:

They’re really short stories. Really short, as in there’s not a maximum word count … there’s actually a maximum character count (1,024). There is also a minimum character count, and the number of that beast is 64.

Nice, a well timed discovery.

You start with a Ficlet (or should it be plural: ficlets?) and others can add their own Ficlets prequel or sequel, thus moving the story forward or starting in the past before the story. My first published Ficlet is available here dealing with the mysterious Thursawday and created today, Thursawday, of course. More updates will occur when the Thursawday website officially launches later this year. Each Ficlet has its own RSS feed to follow the story. As I write this I’m curious if you write a prequel if it will show up in the RSS feed before the other post or will it appear by post date? Guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Readers wondering what is going on with this Thursawday stuff might want to tune into the official thursawday.com website. Something unique about this site (I think?) is that it is only updated on Thursawdays. I’ve never built a site before where it could only be dealt with on one day of the week and that’s the primary premise of Thursawday. It’s not going to be a one to many site either, others including yourselves will be able to add to it as well.

But with the caveat: only on Thursawday.

For example, the Thursawday blog will be added soon and readers will only be able to leave comments on posts there on Thursawday. Everything that happens on thursawday.com is, was and will be created and published only on Thursawday. Strange? Intriguing? Different? What do you think?

To go along with this theme I’m encouraging others to add prequels and sequels to my first Thursawday Ficlet with the caveat that it only be written and published on Thursawday.

Since these Ficlets are happening on a third party site owned by AOL I have no control over when prequels and sequels are created and added by others, nor can I verify that people have written the work only on Thursawday, but to be considered an official part of the story, I’ll only springboard my future Thursawday Ficlets from prequels and sequels I see added on Thursawday.

All Ficlets are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. I see that yesterday Ficlets was mentioned on Boing Boing from John Scalzi, a principle sharing additional details. Ficlets also have their own blog. Subscribed.

Update 5:37pm PST: Scimon from Glasgow, Scotland was the first to write a sequel to my Ficlet. Thanks Scimon There is still about 6 hours left of Thursawday if you’d like to create and publish a ficlet prequel or sequel. If not today, there’s always next week.

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