Bloggers are creative people, right?

I mean, posting about our ideas in an organized fashioned that appeals to others takes a bit of talent. We’ve always enjoyed talking about anime in our blogs, or stories crafted by others discussed in a few paragraphs or so. We love being creative in how we discuss about certain topics, and it really just proves that we are creative people. All of us, and now we have a chance to let that shine. For once, let’s all gather and create stories of our own.

This has always been a big project for me, but it never really panned out in my first attempt. I’ve tweaked the idea, and I gathered Keiko and Leap to help me in this endeavor. We’ve designed a Create-A-Story tag for everyone to participate in. The entire thing is basically a creative writing exercise, but with the added bling of a tag. Tagging people into doing something also has a communal vibe to it, since you’re not just talking to the wind hoping someone would hear you. Instead, you’re extending a hand out to them asking them to join in. Personally, I’m a weird recluse so the tag would certainly motivate into doing this creative writing exercise. So what exactly is this about?

Well, this project basically serves two purposes. One, it’s a community activity featuring the uniqueness and the creativity of each and everyone one of us. Secondly, it’s like a time capsule capturing the landscape of the community. Bloggers come and go, and it’s not really a surprise if you’ve been around as long as I have, but it is still kinda sad to see awesome people just go away. It’s a constant cycle, to be honest, so why not celebrate each individual right now. The tag is all about making short stories, and it’ll be compiled in a hub by Keiko but it’ll also be stored in a google document. We’re basically making a book featuring each and everyone’s creativity and talents as bloggers. It’s an ambitious activity, but I do hope you guys play along with my random musing.

So let’s discuss the rules of the Create-A-Story tag.

1. You pick your “word”, your setting and your story genre from the list below. As individuals, your brand of creativity is unique to yours, so we want to highlight that by letting you choose from a bunch of words and creating something beautiful out of it. Yes, some people will choose the same combination as others but I guarantee you each story will be unique as per the individual. The options are really just there to cater to you specifically. You can challenge yourself, you can work with your strengths or you can take creative risks. It’s all up to you and how you express your creativity.

Now, we do understand that some of the options are broad or vague, but Keiko explains that creative writing excels on vague stuff. Basically, how you interpret the choices is part of the creativity. After all, this is your unique brain spinning a unique story, so by all means, go f*cking nuts.

2. The short story will have a limit of 1000 words. You do not need to write a story with 1000 words exactly. It could be 300, or 500 as long as it doesn’t surpass a thousand. Easy enough, right? I do know writing a short story with a max of 1000 will be tough. I’ve already written my story, and I had to constantly edit this. So, why the word limit? To be frank, we want to avoid people overthinking this challenge. It’s not about how you stack up to other people. It’s not about your sentence construction or your grammar skills, and it’s not about wowing people with your talents. It’s none of that. It’s about a celebration of your uniqueness and your creativity. There is only one YOU, and this YOU will create a story that truly represents you.

I work with a lot of people on a daily basis, and I know a lot of young people think like perfectionists. They want whatever they do to be perfect or majestic, and please set that thinking aside. Your flaws are part of your uniqueness, so just write a story that stays true to you. 1000 words is short enough for people to actually read it, trust me, so just make a story that represents you.

3. YOU HAVE TWO WEEKS TO ANSWER THE TAG. This is honestly just another way to ensure none of you overthink this. It’s not supposed to be your magnum opus. It’s just a fun short story to share to people. If you cannot answer within two weeks, the tagger can tag other people.
4. You must tag three people to participate. Keiko will collect all the short stories and compile them into one giant hub featuring all the stories.
5.  Don’t forget to link back to Keiko (this is her story) so she can collect all the stories. You can’t just link back to her wordpress, since she won’t be alerted of the pingback. You need to link back to a post or a page, because wordpress works like this.
6.  Use the Create-A-Story picture in the post. I don’t really know why, but a lot of tags do this so might as well, right? But seriously, it’ll mostly help people recognize all the Create-A-Story tag posts.
7.  Copy and paste the rules in your tag post as well, so others can be clued in to the Create-A-Story rules.

Naturally, we’ll get the ball rolling. So for TPAB, his story is untitled (Music + Hospital + Drama).

Keiko’s story is also untitled (Forest + Fall + Tragedy), but please, you’re free to put a title on your stories. .

Leap’s story is titled “Of Yesterday” (Rain + Street + Tragedy).

It looks like tragedy will be a popular choice for this project. Aren’t you excited to see how two different people use tragedy in their story? I know I am.

Please stay tune for our stories and the people we’ll be tagging. Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for joining this little side project of ours.