The Tuesday 200 started many many moons ago, when I was in one of the eleventy-billion writing classes I’ve taken with the estimable Shaun Levin. If you like writing, or reading for that matter, he’s definitely your go-to guy—the antithesis to “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
The Concept
I write a 200-word piece and publish it every Tuesday, prompted by something within the previous week’s story.
They started out as a weekly thing within my then-current blog, Bobzyeruncle (the more things change, right?). I originally said I’d do 20, and went beyond that. I even got so cocky as to create a domain for them. After a while, they (I?) lost steam and I never really went back to them. Until now¹.
The Inspiration
During one of Shaun’s classes, a lovely (and talented) woman named Lynne Rees read from Messages, a book she had co-authored with the equally lovely/talented Sarah Salway.
Messages was written as a collaborative creative writing project. As the preface states:
Using email, 300 pieces of exactly 300 words were exchanged in total, each one returned within a limit of 72 hours. Links were made creatively — words, theme, character, object, form, or even mood. The project took eighteen months to create.
The pieces she read were fascinating. Some short fictions, series of lists, as well as poems from a separate collection. There were no boundaries in the Messages project, except to make a link, any link, and get them back to each other within 3 days.
As I ast listening, I got inspired.
Why not do Tuesday 200s? A 200-word piece every Tuesday, hopefully each a self-contained contained tale — or at least a reasonable snippet. I’ll make some type of link each week from the previous week’s post. I’ll do it for at least 20 weeks (I guess 200 would be cooler, but I don’t know if I’m ready to commit to a 4-year project).
Note: I published my first T-200 on July 7, 2006 and the most recent one, T-110 on April 25, 2017. As Taylor says, “it’s been a long time coming.’’
Why I’m Bringing them Back
Writing used to be fun for me. I had a blast creating 200s as well as random blog posts.
Then I did my Masters, got all caught up in moving abroad for the second time, joined a cruise cult, went to a place somewhere between rare and well-done and was intrigued, then put off, by curations then boosts then way too much AI (my students love it and still can’t figure out how I know they never read 1984, despite their grammatically quasi-correct review) and … well, if you know, you know.
It all stopped being fun. I stopped being silly. I started worrying more about product than procces. I stopped hitting “publish.”
Anywho, I’m doing the London Writer’s Salon Summer of Creative Joy, and word on the street is “you can actually just have fun writing.”
What?
So here I am. Back to having fun. Back not caring about likes or target audiences or niches or monetization. And, this is the hard part, back to not caring if it’s just right.
Nope, for Tuesdays at least, it’s gonna be just write.
So, the first one’s gonna launch in a hot mintue. Have a read if you like. If you’re inspired, write one of your own. Or not. Whatever brings you joy.
¹ Reader, please — I started this post six months ago. FFS, Bob, just do it already.
Never heard of it, but it's a cool concept. Probably helps to keep you accountable to writing regularly.
Also, do I need to read them in order?