The nurse left work at five o'clock...

NPR is holding a contest called "Three Minute Fiction." In the current version of the contest listeners were challenged to come up with a short story that begins with the words "The nurse left work at five o'clock." The winner will be selected shortly. I submitted a story, one which was based on a theme I suggested some time ago. I'm pretty sure my story isn't in the running, but in any case I'll hold off on presenting it until the winner is announced.

On yesterday's All Things Considered there was a story about "The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, an online serial story written by a posse of children's authors. " I have heard of the Exquisite Corpse collective writing technique, in which a series of writers build upon a previous writer's contribution until a complete story is created, one sentence at a time. I learned about the Exquisite Corpse technique (which started out as a parlor game) a few years ago from the Wikipedia entry while trying to find out more about the journal of the same name. It has occurred to me that this could be an interesting writing exercise to do with the many, many writers I know online. Maybe someday I'll get around to inviting people to join in on this. If you think this sounds interesting, feel free to get the ball rolling yourself!