ficlets - really cool project for writers

So this week I've been a capital-w Writer, and I'm the happiest and most creatively satisfied I've been in a long, long time.

I don't have any free time, and I'm draining my creative well daily, but it totally rules. In many ways, I feel the way I did when I was in the home stretch on the final draft of Just A Geek: empty house, unseasonably warm weather, lots of loud writing music from U2, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Wilco and Depeche Mode, and a sense of tremendous satisfaction with the completion of each page.

. . . and that's just after two full days on a first draft!

So while I still can't get into details on what this project is, I thought I'd share something today that's a little cooler than more pictures of my day at the beach.

From Scalzi (who else?) comes a collaborative short fiction site for writers, called Ficlets:

What does "collaborative short fiction" mean in this case? Simple: You, as a writer, post a very short (not more than 1,024 characters) piece of fiction or a fiction fragment on the Ficlets site. People come to Ficlets to read what you've written, and to comment on your piece. If they want to, they can also write a "sequel" to your story or story fragment, carrying the story forward from where you left it. Or, alternately, they can write a "prequel," explaining how you got to where you are in the story. All sorts of people can write all sorts of sequels and prequels -- and of course, other people can write sequels and prequels to those. What you end up with is a story with multiple authors and multiple branchings -- lots of possibilities and surprises.

Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? If nothing else, it'll be a swell place for some of my half-baked fiction ideas to get closer to fully-baked. (yeah-ha-ha-ha, turn it up, man!)

Scalzi says, "For those of you out there who are worried about what this means for your rights to what you write on Ficlets, you should know that all the words written on the Ficlets site are licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license."

There is one significant problem which is pretty much a deal breaker for me: it's owned by AOL, so they want you to have an AIM screen name to sign in. There's something for OpenId, but I couldn't get it to work for me. It works. As usual, it was user error. If it's going to force me to get yet another login (I just don't want AIM, people, okay?) I won't be able to participate, which is a drag. Note: You do not need an AIM ID to use it; you can use any OpenId, which makes much more sense and is very cool. However, the documentation on the login page could be a little more clear on this point.

However, if you're not uptight like I am about that sort of thing, or if you already have an AIM or OpenId identity . . . write on!

(See what I did there?)