Why 500 hundred words?

Why 500 hundred words? Why is that such a magic number?

If you look at it 500 words is a very good amount to convey a message, it doesn't matter what the message is. It gets you to the point of your message allowing it to be clearly articulated and presented, with some style.

For short stories, to be honest, that's a bit short, you can't really develop a character, can't develop a lot of scenery and setting, but you if you're efficient you can convey the message and get your idea across. It's not the perfect amount, for sure, but at it's most basic you can get that idea out there and it's a good starting point. You can use this starting point to expand further if you want. 

If you look at it from the perspective of a student, say a high school student, they encounter the 500 word mark on a regular basis. The teacher wants an essay on a topic and they say it needs to be 500 words. Most students grumble and try to put something together. If they're ambitious this suggested length can be blown out of the water, others struggle with it. But from a basic essay perspective this length allows you to introduce your topic, put in an argument and support it. Its just long enough to be meaningful without being verbose.

Finally from a business perspective, 500 words is huge! To put it into context that's a very long email and can you possibly imagine a PowerPoint presentation that long? But there are times you need to write longer form documents at work and it becomes important for things like proposals to get the idea across correctly.

So why 500 words? Well the premise behind the name of the site and the amount is: its enough to convey an idea, its a great starting point for a story. Its not really about the word count but the ability to convey an idea, your idea and make it good which is why we've also got the "Or so..." in the title.

Its NaNoWriMo!

What is NaNoWriMo and why is it up on this site you ask?

Well, November is the National Novel Writing Month and its a very cool concept, you take the month of November to write your novel. The site itself is run as a non-profit to help you track your progress.

At its core the concept is pretty simple if you write about 1,650 words per day you end up with about the length of a novel in a story. And if you're relatively quick about it and the idea flows then that goal isn't that much. But you aren't limited to writing a novel you can use this month to track pretty much any type of writing.

For example if you like to blog or are thinking about starting one up then the 50,000 or so words that typically make up a novel this would net you a whole lot of blog posts (500 one thousand word posts). That amount of writing would be enough to keep many a blog going for a very long time. But this site is meant for writing a novel.

Writing a novel, even one that never gets published is a huge accomplishment and one that many people would love to do this is one way to help encourage yourself to do it.

The idea is very cool, I highly encourage you to check it out.

New Approach for the Site

I want to revitalize this site and get it back up and running with a bit more info than a few odd stories. I was thinking of moving forward not only with short stories but also what I've learned writing including all kinds of writing. The difference between this site and other writing sits will be that we'll still post short stories.

Over the years I've realized being able to write and communicate through writing is incredibly important. Hopefully this site will help people express their thoughts and ideas through words. From stories to presentations to a well crafted emails. There is an art in words.

What can you expect?

A continuation of the writing I've already placed on here; that's what prompted me to revisit the site in the first place. Life is busy but crafting a good short story can be done at least every week or two along with some posts about writing and how I and others approach it.

Finally I also want to open the site up a bit and include stories and articles from others; if you have a story or post idea you'd like to share let me know and we can see about including it on the site. 

Revitalizing the site

UPDATE

I know that originally I posed a couple years back that I wanted to revitalize the site. Not much happened at the time but as you can see there are some changes slowly happening. I read through some of the writing and liked it; some of it definitely needs editing but at the core it was something I liked. I enjoyed the writing and the reading.

There will be some changes coming as well, not only fiction but other things will be coming because 500 words or so applies not only to creative writing but to everything!

updated: Oct 16, 2013

August 7th - Part IV

The day went by rather quickly after that which was rather nice since I was really looking forward to the evening. When you’re busy preparing for winter you don’t have the opportunity to just spend time with someone whenever you want. I really wish that was a possibility but even today, knowing I was going to be seeing Em I still had to work with my dad till almost 7 before I could just take off. Normally this wouldn’t have even happened simply because of all the regular routine tasks that have to be done every night and day just to be able to be as productive as possible during the daylight hours and I might add during the warm hours.

I digress, the day went quickly and I found I was taking my shower before I even knew it and I definitely needed one today. I’m glad my parents didn’t mind me using the extra water; the heater runs on electricity and you don’t want to be wasting that unnecessarily. I got dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a nice shirt, I don’t have many of those since most of my work is fairly physical so it was a bit of a treat, even if we’re only going to the pub.

I was ready, I got my shoes on and I was about to put on my jacket when my mom looked up from her papers, “Have fun Joseph, you’ve definitely earned it.”

“Thanks mom” I replied putting my jacket on then I walked over and gave her a kiss on the forehead, “I’ll try not to be out too late”

It was already getting dark out and it wasn’t even that late, maybe 8:30 when I closed the door to the house behind me. The walk to the bar was pretty quick since most of the buildings in what’s left of the town are clustered together. The building was fairly large in that it was two floors with the pub also being a local inn or hotel. There wasn’t a great deal of travel so keeping a full hotel up and running really didn’t make much sense. It also meant that whenever someone came to town everyone knew about it.

I opened the door to find the place about half full, people often came here to have a drink or just to socialize before heading home. There was also a bit of a buzz that was a bit louder than normal; maybe a traveler came into town. I saw Emily instantly sitting in our favorite booth in the back corner and headed over there right away.

She noticed me coming over and smiled warmly her eyes lighting up, “You’re late you know!” she quipped in my direction as I came to the booth.

“I wanted to look my best for you!” I jabbed back and leaned over giving her a kiss. Taking off my jacket I asked, “What’s with all the noise? Someone new in town?”

Continued from: August 7 - Part I
Story: The Longest Winter