About Exactly 500

My name is Mickey Blumental and I'm a writer. Find out more about me on my blog 14legs.

As a writer it’s important to always keep writing and I use my blog for casual writing when I’m not writing “proper’ material, mostly comics and movie scripts, in my free time and writing for websites at my job. Sometimes I can go for days or even weeks without having a good idea for a blog post and I end up doing no writing at all, Facebook notwithstanding.

So I came up with this idea to write a five hundred words story every day. I don’t have to literally write one story every day, I can stock up on stories by writing several a day, but I must publish one a day. It'll be interesting to see how long I can last.

Sure, many of these stories could turn out to be crappy, but they are still five hundred words stories and I get to do regular creative writing. As a writer I arguably improve more from writing bad stories as they are bad stories I now worked out of my system. Hopefully there'll be more good than bad!

The artificial restriction actually forces me to be more creative in my writing. I come up with big concepts that could be told as much longer stories, maybe even a full-length novel, but then I have to wrap it all up in five hundred words. I have to trim all the fat and focus only on the absolute essentials with very tight editing and concise writing.  

In most cases I think the end result is better than if I had another five hundred words to flesh out the scenario and characters as it leaves many things unsaid and open to the reader’s imagination and interpretation.  I like the anecdotal feel it gives the stories. I hope you like it too.

The end results are bite size stories that are perfect for short breaks at work, your bus ride or that precious quality time on the can. I intend to cover all genres: romance, comedy, horror, sci-fi and more.

If you like these stories all I ask is that you spread the word and share your favorite stories on Facebook or Twitter. Also, leaving comments will let me know that I am not writing entirely for myself and which stories are more popular. Comment directly on the stories or email me at bladybladyblah@gmail.com

Thanks,

Mickey