Your Challenge, Should You Choose to Accept It

It's short story time, and I need your help!

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As I have started designing my own website, I have taken a lot of time thinking about what type of content I would like to feature. One of my prime goals was to include some form of creative content. Regular blogging is hard to keep up on posting, and even harder to want to read. But I have encountered one major problem in my quest to include more creative content: I’m just not that creative.

To help combat this, I would like to invite a handful of my friends and family to take part in this creative process. I had an idea about five years ago that I never executed, and I think now is the ideal time to try it. If you feel like you have an hour or three that you would like to use to practice some creative writing, then please keep on reading!

The goal is simple: write a short story, poem, or essay. This shouldn’t be too long; think about how long you would want to spend reading someone else’s work. My initial instinct says one to three pages, but if you end up writing ten, good for you!

The only hard and fast rule is that you must open your piece with the exact same line as everyone else. I am fascinated to see how many different directions a single line can take us.

With your permission, I will post what you write to allow others (the few people that look at my website) to also enjoy your creativity. If you would like to associate your name that’s great! If not, I can post it anonymously. Just let me know what you prefer. If you don’t even want me to know that you wrote it, send it through a friend! It goes without saying, I will never take credit for your work.

If you choose to participate, please let me know so that I can look out for your work. You can email me, text me, or message me through my website. There is no deadline, but I would love to start receiving stories in the next two or three weeks.

If you choose to accept this creative experiment, please use the following opening words:

It was only water