Another Update!
The final results from the first photo are in and can be found here (at the new site).
Thanks to everyone for participating. I look forward to seeing where this takes me…
Update!
This was a huge success. So much so that I’m going to continue with this project and eventually put a collection together to raise money/awareness for charity. I have started the 1000 Word Picture (100 Words at a Time) #2 here. Once I get roughly 1000 words submitted for that photo I’ll post another, and so on…
More information to come on the project as a whole and the charities / foundations it will help support.
Thank you everyone!
Out with a concussion and unable to string together more than a half hour on the computer (and having deplorable handwriting) I’m in a bit of a creative holding pattern. Then I got an idea… maybe it’s not even a new idea, but it’s new to me, so I’m running with it. It is said that a picture is worth 1000 words and I’d like to put that to the test.
Here’s the picture (thanks to Instagram for the iPhone – and yes, that is me):
Now, I need 10 people out there to each lend me 100 words of their own based on what they see. I need exactly 100 words in the form of complete sentences. As few or as many sentences as it takes, but totaling precisely 100 words when you’re done.
Post them as a comment here or email them to me or Twitter DM them to me or whatever, so long as it’s electronically transmitted to me somehow and there are exactly 100 of them I’ll take it. I’d prefer if they were written in isolation, free from the influence of other responses (I must try to maintain some semblance of scientific control over this experiment, you know)
I will then rearrange the complete sentences as I see fit (without taking single words here and there) to put together the 1000 words that this picture is worth. Read my blog, go through my Twitter feed, send me an email asking questions… all good ideas to start the words flowing. All I need is 100 words from 10 people, and I’ll do the rest.
I’ll post the completed work here and then credit each contributor with a link to their original words in a footnote. Please let me know if you are not OK with that and I’ll omit you from the list.
Go!
There were a hundred reasons why he should never have left that day, but she was the only one that mattered. The man in the mirror looked different after that day: hit in the head. He filled her dog's water dish before he closed the door behind him for the last time. He told himself he wouldn't look back, but he did. It was as if he was looking back through the years to the day he carried her across the threshold. No one ever sees it coming. That and the mirror was the hell of it: All for naught.
It was just one of those moments in life where you wonder, is this my life. Customers were driving me nuts at work, and then I got a text message from my girlfriend wanting to end things. That’s fine, no big deal as I wasn’t really attached to her anyway, but I had made the mistake of giving her my house key. When I got home there was a note saying she took Rover, a hound dog, with her because she claims he loves her more. So I opened the freezer, pulled out the whiskey bottle and drained back a few mouthfuls. It didn’t take long and I started feeling better. I took it with me to the living room, and dropped onto the sofa.Yep, this was my life. No girlfriend to nag me, and no dog howling at five a.m. It was really my roommate’s dog anyhow.–Well that's 149 words – very short for me! 🙂
Thanks Chazz. Appreciate the 100 words, and the shout-out on Twitter to my secret boyfriend Kevin Smith.Once I get a thousand words I get to try my hand at editing. Be sure to comment on the final piece so I can get a real editing perspective.
That's 50% too long Carolyn! It's OK, I'll go into editor mode and ensure the final piece only has 1000. Thanks for doing this. It's turning out to be a lot of fun!
With an eyebrow cocked and a burning question behind his eyes he finally spit it out. “What are you making?”“I’m going to make the world happy,” she replied without looking up. She couldn’t look up because there were more pressing matters. The matters of pressing the crayon to paper. The matters of staying on the paper. “Do you think you could use a bit more purple?”She hesitated for a moment and shifted her perspective. Tongue slightly peeking out and her chin resting on her hands she considered it. “Yes.” She took the purple crayon that he handed to her.
Thank you Tera. For the record you were the seventh person to respond with words. Seems lucky, don't you think? Today I will wear purple (if I make it off the couch and out of my pajamas)
The site says I need a profile pic, and I guess it's better than the dopey little silhouette thing. I know if I don't put one up, she'll wonder why, and since she's the one who said I needed to get going with all this social-networking crap, I just better do it. \”It'll make life easier,\” she said. \”You know how hard it's been for you lately.\” All I can say is: 21st century technological age notwithstanding,there's got to be an easier way for zombies to find victims.
I'll play!================================I despised the man I saw in the mirror. It wasn't because of any one thing I had done, but rather a litany of bad decisions that seemed to cascade in to a constant stream of horrible repercussions.The latest of which was me telling her \”I love you\”. I care for her, sure. I like her. But love? Well, that was bad for both of us. My job didn't allow for 'love'. Hell, it barely allowed for bathroom breaks. The simple truth was that her getting close to me could end up with her killed. Probably by me.
Thanks Gordon and Darian, your comments put me over the top!I'm in editing mode now. I am thinking I'll need to do some light revising to the text I received. We'll see. The trouble I'm having now is that the 10 submissions are all in a different tense from a different perspective. It's making it really difficult to piece together and still be coherent.At the same time, I don't really want to alter any of the text. I just want to rearrange the sentences to put the most interesting 1000 words together that I can. Somehow I think it makes the art more \”pure\”.We'll see… Definitely another opportunity coming in a minute. I am hoping to get a collection together and do something worthwhile with it (local charity / awareness / etc….)
If the perspective bothers you, work it so your MC is schizo. :p
Enh, sounds like you're collectively writing a country music song. 🙂 Let's change it up:“We’re keeping people safe,” they’d been told in orientation. That it wasn’t about privacy; it was that people didn’t understand. They didn’t take good care of themselves. They needed us.So we were there.Peering out at hundreds of people, every shift. What’d you think your webcam was for? Christ, it got boring.Of course, that was only the tip of the iceberg. The rabbit hole went much deeper. Harddrive contents, social web activities. Hell, even “status updates” on their own bodies, but only for the early adopter types with the newest hardware. Online? Offline? No such thing, my dears.