What, Who & Why

We all know that questions are more interesting than answers... so in the hope of keeping your life engaging I've tried to be appropriately vague. You're welcome.

This is all a mistake... a mistake I tell you...

I joined Twitter in 2007. Influenced by Hugh Macleod's "How to be Creative" I started telling small stories. I figured the 140 character limit would make it interesting, and aggressively non-commercial. And it sounded like fun, something I could fit around my daytime gig, and family life.

And as it turned out it was fun. I told the odd story when the mood (or the muse) took me. Absolutely no one was reading, and that was just fine. It was a pointless piece of creativity just for me, and in turn I followed only three other people on Twitter... one of whom was Hugh himself.

A year passed like that, then I cocked up. I wrote a "story" that was posted as a reply to one of Hugh's tweets. Normally I'd have been gutted but the truth was I didn't even realise. I'd just gotten Twitteriffic on my phone and didn't understand it. Here's what I wrote.

She stared at the painting, and was afraid. It was rendered exquisitely, lovingly even. But she had no idea who had painted her.

Hugh didn't slap me down. He did the opposite. Perhaps he realised I was a fucking idiot and took pity.

gapingvoid: Neat. This guy writes short stories in 140 characters or less.

A gent.

Thirty minutes later more than one hundred people were following me on Twitter. One lady berated me for not following anyone else, which made me smile.

They say being watched changes how you behave, and the truth is I write more stories now. And I started this blog because if people are watching, I sometimes feel the need to explain myself. Otherwise I try to keep telling the "stories" I want to tell... five minutes of selfish, pointless creativity at a time.

Who knows how long it will last.

What?

I tell short stories on Twitter. That means they have to be really short, which makes it kinda easy.

Of course they aren't really stories, they are just moments. If a novel is a marriage and a short-story is a love affair... then I guess these are just kisses. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Why?

Because I'm a lazy show-off with a short attention span.

And because I recently made a promise to myself. I promised that I'd spend at least five minutes a day doing something for myself. Not work, not entertaining the kids, not in response to some opportunity. Just five selfish minutes making stuff up.

If you like the stories I couldn't be happier... because frankly some of them aren't so great. On the other hand, and to be brutally honest, they aren't for you. They're for me. And actually, it's more about the fun I have making them than the stories themselves.

Who?

I'm Nick Warren, and the other reason I like really short stories is that I can squeeze them in between my other main gigs; husband, father and running the UK's most relaxed web design studio.