Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Six Sentences

Check it out: http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/

After learning about the six sentences blog, I went back through all my fragments, the little bits of writing I've been putting on this blog since I opened it. Can you believe that none of them are six sentences long? There were a couple of fours, fives, sevens, and eights...but no sixes. Unbelievable!

Perhaps I think in strange cadences, requiring that extra breath, that last word. Could you write something incredible in six sentences? Every time I think about what I might write in six sentences, I feel afraid to suck. I think I'm going to have to just keep doing what I do, and hope that some day, something works out to be six sentences by lucky accident.

That last paragraph was four sentences, by the way, as was the one before it. Maybe I do tend to think in multiples (and factors!) of four.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Then write a 4 or 8-sentences blog! There's no need to force your style into another box, regardless of how nice-looking that box is.

I, for one, am quite happy reading your "strange cadences". =)

Melanie said...

That's an interesting perspective, Seth.

Opportunities for self-publishing are limitless, of course, but I think that at this point in my writing career, I'm looking for legitimacy, bestowed by someone else. Hence the drive to get someone else to publish me.

When I think about it in those terms, I think, "Wow, that's pretty pathetic!" ... does it mean that I'm just mired in the Old Model of publishing? Old-school notions of how an author should communicate to an audience?

I think later today (if I get through enough laundry) I will post about Wil Wheaton's most recent electronic self-publishing experiment, and also the Kindle 2 audiobook controversy.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I thought you were just talking about the blog, not the self-published bit.

I don't think that's pathetic. It's very healthy and smart. In spite of what all the people who have uploaded their personalities to the web say, publishing is not so dead as to be unable to assure you fame and, if not fortune, beer money for a few years.

I look forward to your thoughts on K2. When they can clone voices so a deceased loved one is reading your books aloud...Amazon will have triumphed. =)

Robert McEvily said...

It's interesting - 6S attracts writers for different reasons. For me, sometimes the complete wide open freezes me - if I have a little window to write to, or create in, I can do it, enjoy it, move on...