In a nest, an egg, / small, white, empty. And somewhere, / a hawk, belly full.

July 27, 2009 1:56 PM

7x20 is a twitter zine, publishing 140-characters-or-fewer short stories and poems. [via mefi projects]
posted by filthy light thief (21 comments total)

Direct links: title poem link, author's biography tweet
posted by filthy light thief at 1:58 PM on July 27, 2009

So I guess a twitter zine looks a lot like a twitter feed. I bet this was really hard to put together.
posted by snofoam at 2:06 PM on July 27, 2009 [2 favorites]

That's cold snofoam! Didn't you see all the votes it got on MePro?
posted by Mister_A at 2:07 PM on July 27, 2009

I liked these better when they were called haiku.
posted by m0nm0n at 2:11 PM on July 27, 2009

I've yet to see Twitter do poetry well. I like anything that gets people writing, but as a reader I don't really see anything here that invites readers to linger, ruminate, or even slow down long enough to digest individual entries. It all slides past the eyes a little too easily for individual voices to be able to distinguish themselves.
posted by hermitosis at 2:15 PM on July 27, 2009

I like this because it's self-contained and not full of cross-messages to and from folks. There are other twitter zines, though the format isn't always so orderly.

Another twitter zine/publication: twitter-based horror zine - tweet the meat.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:16 PM on July 27, 2009

At store, bought milk and cookies. Going home.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 2:21 PM on July 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

I think it's instructive that Hemingway, the putative inventor of the six-word story, used the form but once.

There is such a thing as a surfeit of brevity. It's like a meal of nothing but garnishes.
posted by Iridic at 2:29 PM on July 27, 2009 [2 favorites]

At my local grocery store they started giving me a little zine at the checkout line with short articles about each item I purchased.
posted by snofoam at 2:30 PM on July 27, 2009 [17 favorites]

Just glanced: Super short poems, maybe. 140 characters really isn't enough room for a short story, certainly not something traditional with conflict and rising action and so on.

The medium seems well suited for aphorisms, however.

I wonder if Schopenauer and Nietzsche twitter.
posted by notyou at 2:39 PM on July 27, 2009

What is a twitter? A dwarfish whole; Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
posted by geoff. at 2:51 PM on July 27, 2009 [2 favorites]

Laconic merits drown
under repeated twitching.
Ernest's gun goes off.
posted by weston at 3:11 PM on July 27, 2009

nickadams

started a fire with some chunks of pine I got with an ax from a stump.
about 11 hours ago from web

opened a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into a frying pan.
about 12 hours ago from web

@oleanderson I was up at Henry’s and two fellows came in and tied up me and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you.
8:25 PM Jul 24th from web
posted by Iridic at 3:16 PM on July 27, 2009 [2 favorites]

I think it's instructive that Hemingway, the putative inventor of the six-word story, used the form but once.

There is such a thing as a surfeit of brevity. It's like a meal of nothing but garnishes.

Stick with it long enough, and you can feast on garnishes alone.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:44 PM on July 27, 2009

The standard slash-marks to suggest non-existent linebreaks are kind of a butt move. Why use twitter to pretend you're writing in a medium other than twitter?

I'd guess that it's because the carrier (twitter) is so widely adopted, and there is still a desire to create the standard structural pause within the forced limitations (single line of text, 140 characters max).

At my local grocery store they started giving me a little zine at the checkout line with short articles about each item I purchased.

I bind these publications into quarterly compendiums. Nice reading for winter evenings.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:51 PM on July 27, 2009

This reminds me of ¶, "A magazine of paragraphs." Sadly, no longer publishing.
posted by william_boot at 4:08 PM on July 27, 2009

I'd guess that it's because the carrier (twitter) is so widely adopted, and there is still a desire to create the standard structural pause within the forced limitations (single line of text, 140 characters max).

It's wrong headed. Write for the medium.
posted by empath at 4:43 PM on July 27, 2009

Write for the medium, how about this:

RT RT why can't someone RT me?
posted by smackfu at 5:33 PM on July 27, 2009

If your entire schtick is the medium and your irrelevant writing would get absolutely no attention if you weren't jumping on some bandwagon, then darn tootin' you'd better write for the medium. What if Weird Al recorded "Eat It" with his own original music and melody that bore no resemblance to "Beat It"? How great would that be?
posted by snofoam at 6:00 PM on July 27, 2009

What if Weird Al recorded "Eat It" with his own original music and melody that bore no resemblance to "Beat It"? How great would that be?

Much of the "schtick" comes from knowledge of the original material, but his songs aren't just swapping out a few words. His writing is humorous by itself.

On that note, I liked some of the pieces posted by this twitter profile. If the writing is no good, there's no amount of schtick that could save the effort.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:11 PM on July 27, 2009

Yeah, Iridic. That's what Twitter fiction should probably look like: a character telling the story one tweet at a time. Previously.
posted by notyou at 6:41 PM on July 27, 2009