Foolish Words: January 2009

Are you in?

Let me know! Also, please feel free to tell your writer pals. The more the merrier!

Foolish Words - An Introduction

If you're like me, you spent a fair amount of your classroom time in junior high not paying attention to the teacher, but composing silly stories with your friends. Someone would start with a sentence or paragraph, then pass the incomplete oeuvre onto the next junior wordsmith, and so on, and so on, until you had... a mess. But a pretty funny mess! Ah, I remember with fondness the adventures of Luke Sikorskywalker and his merry band of misfits.

Over the past five years we've realized this to be a legitimate genre unto itself. Well, that may be stretching it. It's certainly not a legitimate genre. It's something silly, though, and something silly is something we all need to do now and then, and what better time than April Fool's Day? That's when the entire shooting match is read at the Leaf & Bean by the writers themselves.

The experience is also a great way for the writers in Bozeman, of all different levels of establishment, to for once in their lives get together and do something with each other.

So, here's how it works: Everyone who's interested gets e-mailed the progressively growing oeuvre for three or so days, and in that time he or she needs to come up with no more than 400 words to add to the story. When all is said and done, we all band together on April 1 and read our parts at the Leaf and Bean.

Foolish Words was founded in 2004 by Bozeman writer Jessica McNew, and 2007's version was organized by poet Sam Louden and myself. The entire text of Foolish Words 2007 is presented on these pages (the edited version was published in the Tributary between May and December 2007). I can't really explain how or why, but somehow this weirdness is going into its fifth year. Please let me know if you'd like to take part.

Ray Sikorski
logorhythmic@hotmail.com

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Foolish Words 2009 Draws Nigh!

Foolish Words

Foolish Words - An Introduction

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