#BeMyGuest

Tags

420 characters, Facebook, Fiction, Halva, journal, Lou Beach, online character counter, Online Writing, sketchbook, Social network, Twitter

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E.B. White said, “Use the smallest word that does the job.” Tweeters do just that. Here are some of the most-used words in the Twitosphere ~ you, please, post, blog, social, free, help, thanks, time, work, home, retweet.

Small words that do the job. In addition to the minimal letter count they share, popular tweet words show that we are keen to reach out, talk, invite, connect, and participate in the larger community.

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And the same is true of the 420 character piece. My writing group is smitten with Lou Beach. Here’s the author note in his book, 420 CHARACTERS, drawn from his early days on FaceBook.

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THE STORIES you are about to encounter were written as “status updates” on a large social networking site. These updates are limited to 420 characters, which include letters, spaces, and punctuation. They provided a daily exercise in fiction writing for the author, who hopes you enjoy them and return to read more. They will be regularly updated.

PROCEED

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And proceed we did.

Below are two of Beach’s stories and two of ours. We’re thinking it’s time we wrote our own book. Want to give this genre a try?

You’ll find a character counter here ~ http://www.lettercount.com/

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GRANDMA spoke to the back of my head. ‘Never make no eye contact with nobody, hear? It’s a challenge or invite, insult for sure.’ I wore sunglasses, the darkest I could find, from that day on. Folks thought I was a celebrity or musician or blind or stuck up. I didn’t care. I met a girl with sunglasses and we got married. We don’t go out much at night, never take our shades off, even in bed, but we see eye to eye.

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Rumor is the six children are home schooled. But I think that house is empty, save for the driver of a red diesel truck who feeds one operatic rooster and one wheezing mule. Kids play outdoors. They yell and laugh and call to each other and climb across stone walls. But there have been no other raucous notes, no snowmen, no bicycles on the long driveway, no little beggars of treats or threats or tricks.

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THERE IS A PLACE I visit, where no one else goes. The rocks are slippery and sharp, the drop to the dark sea below makes me dizzy. The sun never muscles its way through the gang of clouds that hover overhead shedding a mist that plasters my thin hair to my head, makes me turn up my collar. No, you can’t go with me, I don’t want a sandwich to take, thermos of hot chocolate, though your asking may keep me home.

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I LEFT my husband at the back porch of the house, the old family homestead buried in layers of paint and secrets. He’s there to help his sister whose husband has left her for a woman named Honor. And I am driving in to town, to sit in the dark and watch Leonardo di Caprio, in old-age makeup, nose into private lives. Life is hard, I think to myself, and drive further into the darkness, the headlights only going so far.

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We also love the sketchbook/journal genre. Here are a few of ours.

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