49'er Story: Mystic Mouse and Calamity Cat

______________________________________________________
This one's easy, only two criteria:

1. 7 lines/7 words each line, for a total of 49 words (contractions count as one word).

2. The last line brings the story full circle, perhaps with a twist or change in the power structure between two characters or character and important personal quest.

Now, let's try one, perhaps a children's story (also posted on twitter):

Line 1: Mystic Mouse played tricks on Calamity Cat.

Line 2: Calamity Cat thought he was Swiss Cheese.

Line 3: EEK! You're full of holes," Mystic said.

Line 4: "So I am!" exclaimed poor frizzled kitty.

Line 5: "What's to be done? I'm yucky cheese!"

Line 6: "I'll fix you up," said Mystic, "Abracadabra!"

Line 7: Calamity Codfish hoovered Mystic Mouse whole: "BURP!"

Ten 49'er blocks could be developed into a child's picture book.
______________________________________________________

39'er Story: The Monkey

______________________________________________________

Line 1: Maura let the Monkey go away.

Line 2: "Monkey, go away to the sereng[h]eti."

Line 3: "To the serengeti, onward!" Padre shouted.

Line 4: "Onward!" Padre shouted. The monkey smiled.

Line 5: The monkey smiled. "No way, Padre."

Line 6: Monkey liked his pad and three...

Line 7: Squares per diem.

______________________________________________________

New 39'er Story: "Bling!"

_______________________________________________

Line 1:"Bling, Bling, Bling!" Rang Ruby's phone.

Line 2: Rang Ruby's phone: "I'm NOT here."

Line 3: I'm not here for ordinary people.

Line 4: For ordinary people, call my assistant.

Line 5: Call my assistant for special jewels.

Line 6: I must file for Chapter 11.

Line 7: Missed Oprah's call.

_______________________________________________

The 39'er: New Story Form?

____________________________________________________
I believe I have just invented a new story form: 39 words, 7 lines:

1. I played Powerball, won big jackpot.

2. Won big jackpot, my children sued.

3. My children sued, moved out West.

4. Moved out West, met rich rancher.

5. Met rich rancher, married his brother.

6. I divorced the rich rancher's brother.

7. To be continued.

Characteristics of the 39'er story:

1. Sentences 1-6, six words each

2. Sentence 7, three words

3. Lines 2-5: the last three words of the previous sentence are the first three words.

4. However, line 6 does not repeat the last three words of line five.

A New 39'er based on the first one above:

1. The state divides our martial assets.

2. Our marital assets include Powerball winnings.

3. "Include Powerball winnings??? Are you kidding?"

4. "Are YOU kidding?" said my ex.

5. Said my ex, "You owe me!"

6. I married my ex's rich brother.

7. Bore nine children.

Each 7-line block could build into a larger story, or each block could act as a starting point for a traditional short story or even a novel.

In these two blocks, I have the bare bones of a rich ranching family's saga; those two feuding brothers (of course they're feuding--they have both had a crack at the narrator!) and those nine spawn of the second marriage (likely the third for the narrator) will be jockeying for control of the family riches, some of which have been built from the narrator's lottery winnings. Also, those original children from (presumably) the narrator's first marriage are likely to show up at the ranch with their hands out for a piece of the pie.

The reader knows that there are least 11 children are involved, maybe more, which means a lot of delicious possibilities for various dysfunctions: alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling problems, sociopathy, mental illness, spousal abuse, etc.

Very cool form, perfect for the Twitter platform.
____________________________________________________

Twitter and Third-Party Streaming

_______________________________________________________

All my Flash Story tweets from Twitter have now been posted on Anonymous.

I have decided to leave creative tweets 1-212 on Twitter, but I won't be adding any more creative work there. By posting my work on my own site, I'm probably in a good position to defend my work against infringement.

Also, I have not copied the non-creative tweets (for example, announcements) to my blog; from an intellectual property standpoint, these are not of special concern.

I'm not upset with the good Twitter folks, but I do wish that they would add an opt-out option for third-party applications without requiring a member to go private.

After all, the whole point of Twitter is the possibility of a thread going viral, but allowing unknown (and sometimes untested) third parties to use someone else's creative work without permission creates a slippery slope practice.

Twitter ought to follow YouTube, which allows members to disable the video embedding feature. Thus, members still enjoy the public airing of their work but not the copying of it on outside sites.

For Twitter, I would suggest offering members the following options:

1. Granting a blanket Creative Commons license for unlimited third-party applications to stream content.

2. Granting a limited Creative Commons license that would grant limited streaming rights, only to Twitter and its approved subsidiaries and/or approved (tested) third parties, such as well-known rss feeds.

3. Granting no Creative Commons license, but still allowing the member to keep his/her account public.

4. Allowing the member to keep his/her account private, available only to followers.

In the meantime, creative writers need to read Twitter's Terms of Service before posting original poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and drama. Twitter has done a great job of presenting a clear (and fairly short) TOS page, and there is no good excuse not to read terms before agreeing to them.

_______________________________________________________

"I once complained I had no shoes

until I met a man who had no feet." -- Anonymous
...

New Tweets to be Published on My Blog

_________________________________________________________

Lesson learned: always read the Terms of Service (TOS) before signing up and posting on a service--know what rights are being assigned to third-party applications.

Twitter is pretty much open source, which is okay for everyday tweets. I get the concept: allow third party feeds access to content with the idea that one's tweets "going viral" would be very possible.

FYI, a link to Twitter's TOS.

This paragraph is especially important to note:

The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display data hosted on Twitter.com must provide a link back to Twitter.

For those of us who are creating original creative work, especially anonymously, Twitter may be the wrong place. Who would stop a third party from claiming rights to a writer's content?

Twitter does respect copyright and offers remedies for writers to lay claim to their original work:

Copyright (What's Yours is Yours)
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.

We encourage users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms.

Twitter undertakes to obey all relevant copyright laws. We will review all claims of copyright infringement received and remove content deemed to have been posted or distributed in violation of any such laws. To make a claim, please provide us with the following:

A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or the person authorized to act on its behalf;

A description of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;

A description of the infringing material and information reasonably sufficient to permit Twitter to locate the material;

Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and email;

A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and

A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under the pains and penalties of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

All claims to copyright must be snail mailed or faxed (with the writer's signature).

One can understand why Twitter would require such comprehensive proof, but what does this mean for anonymous writers? Once one's work is out there on the internet, how would an anonymous writer lay claim to his or her work without revealing one's identity? What would stop someone else from claiming a tweet as his or her own?

At some point, I expect to reveal my identity. Meanwhile, I need to protect my intellectual property, so my future creative tweets will appear on Anonymous, a sister blog to Just A Writer. I'm now in the process of copying my past tweets on the new blog. On Twitter, I'll post info and links back to the blog about the Flash Story. Followers can then decide whether or not to link to the story.

_________________________________________________________