In the middle of October I was trundling around twitter when I discovered that @FrogCroakley (he of Daniel Barker’s Birthday fame) was planning on setting up what could best be described as a writer’s cabal. The plan was that we’d all pitch in a prompt for a sci-fi story (no longer than 100 characters.) These prompts would then be randomised, redistributed and we’d have a week to churn out a story based on it. The story hard a hard limit of 1,000 words. Does this sound conceptually familiar? Obviously I was up for it. And thus I became embroiled in the relentless behemoth that would become SFSwap.

After some teeth gnashing and pondering (as my prompt was a real pig) I knocked something out in about an hour and a half. My story has since been posted and can be read in its entirety here. There’s also another 50 or so short stories up there, with perhaps another 14 or so yet to be published. And this is just for “Week 1.”

I also wound up doing a bit of editorial work to help Mister Croakley out, but that’s another story for another time. The pertinent points are that I had lots of fun and wrote something I didn’t hate. If you fancy joining in yourself either visit the SFSwap website or have a nose around the #SFSwap hashtag on twitter. If memory serves the current plan is for “Week 2” to start at the beginning of December.