Entries from February 2008 ↓

I’m writing four installments of 250 words each for Mel Favara’s 1000 Word Reading Series, along with 3 other writers.

The setup is this:

The theme is ‘The Future’

Each week we get our assignment, which includes four words we must use – this week they are: granular, montage, tablecloth, and spurn and one phrase: “And the thing I most fear may come to pass, that”

Assignments are due on Sunday night (or punishable by…?). It’s awesome fun writing under these kinds of bonds. Your story is half yours, yet at the same time you look for ways to wickedly foil the assigner – can I use all 4 words and the phrase in a single sentence? What if a dog bargs and the main character thinks it’s saying “Spurn! Spurn!” etc

If you are unfamiliar with the art of word counting, it’s a sort of addiction – however in writing novels I always count in the opposite direction. A 5,000 word day is a total blow-out that needs later the tender care of black licorice and bourbon to bring the brain back from the brink. For me, 1,000 – 1,500 words is a solid day’s work. If I hit 300-400 words only, they better be well done.

Trying to write 250 words is a tremendous challenge. I’m a long distance runner, not a sprinter, I guess. And so each week after we get our assignments I easily bang out 600 or 900 or 1200 words, and then I spend the rest of the week fretting and deleting and fretting and removing ideas and removing characters and jettisoning the garbage and so on.

Secondly, it’s my first all-out 100% science fiction attempt, and it’s a blast.

The reading will be at Maiden in the Mist, 639 SE Morrison St., Portland, OR in the first week or so of March. I’ll post date, etc. when it gets closer.

Unthinkingly is looking to start work on building a free, open web app to help CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture – organic farms that sell a share to a family, in essence) facilitate ordering, billing and member management.

“The basic use case comes from my mom : she doesn’t like very much lettuce in her box. Last year she got six heads of lettuce at a time. So ideally mom could just login and set her preference, pay her bill, update her address, give notice that she’s out of town for a month, etc. The farmer then knows exactly how many heads of lettuce to harvest, and can keep the rest in the ground until going to the market on Saturday.”

Most of the CSAs I’ve belonged to have a share box. When you pick up your share if there’s anything you don’t want you put it in the share box, then anyone else can browse that box for things they do want. It’s hard to beat the efficiency of this. However, there could be a lot of benefits to an app like this if you have a CSA where you pick up your share. A few things I think would be very interesting are:

• seasonal recipe sharing – in my experience, you need a recipe to go through 40 tomatoes RIGHT NOW. Next week it might be something different. I love this kind of crash or adapt cooking. It reminds me a little of cooking via The Five Obstructions
• A social community for the shares to help the farmers plan their crops well ahead of time
• tools to help organize pickups/deliveries/work parties
• robust calendaring for the growing season

What I like about this idea most of all is there should be a robust social community around your farm. I can’t think of a better natural community – you’re local, you likely have similar goals via food, and by extension lifestyle, and that community could easily expand beyond the farm. Since we don’t live in tiny communities any more and with the advent of social software this seems like a perfect fit to build a social web community around a farm.

As a sort of disclaimer, I run the Portland Area CSA Coalition’s website here: http://pacsac.org

Drop by Unthinkingly to talk about the app

I have this sort of problem too. Just the other day I lost my glasses for probably the fourth time in a matter of 45 minutes. It was unexpected, of course.

One: I’ve started a blog. That much should be obvious at this point. Actually, Levin and I have started a blog together. We’ve decided to call it ‘Secret’ – in part because we both love secrets, and also because we’re both secretive. It’s an admission that running a blog, an inherently open medium, is going to take a little learning.

Two: I have a short story, The Coder, which appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wrislet #21.

Three: Small Beer Press has purchased my novel, Couch – a book about three guys who carry a somewhat opinionated couch to South America.

Hooray! What a fantastic way to start 2008. I wrote Couch while Laura and I were living in South America in 2002. It was a magical time, and I am very excited to be working with the fantastic people at Small Beer Press.