Stories by
Ben White (@benwhitemd)

We’ve been at this a while. Over 3.5 years in fact (a lifetime in internet years). So if people are going to be writing and talking about Twitter Fiction, you can bet your tweets that we’ll be publishing right alongside ’em. There’s a five day festival going on, and we’ll be publishing a brand new piece every day in a daily contest.

For the festival, our submissions process has changed. Unlimited submissions, every day. Send as many as you want, as long they are inspired (loosely) by these daily themes:

Wednesday:  the classics, revisited
Thursday: generations
Friday: legen—wait for it—dary
Saturday: the practical and mundane
Sunday: an alternate present

Send your pieces to editor@nanoism.net. Try to leave room for the story to end with “#twitterfiction” and don’t forget your third-person bio. All submissions will be considered for regular publication (naturally). Each winner will be published the following day.

Happy writing.

After over three years of Nanoism and reaching our 500th story last week (milestone!), we’re making a very significant change to our publication schedule. In fact, it’s a pretty big change for a site featuring such tiny tales.

From now on, Nanoism will be publishing one story per week (on Wednesdays). Everything else stays the same. Okay, so maybe not that big of a change.

We still love reading these tiny tales. Our new schedule will give each new selection some serious time at the top of our site.

This year we converted $50 in prize money into $400 of charitable donations to wonderful organizations working from animal health to global health, clean water to fighting hunger. Thanks to everyone who donated! Without further ado, here are Robert Swartwood’s selections for this year:

1. Johnna Talbot
2. Pat Tompkins
3. Sarah Stanton

Honorable mention: Jackie Bateman

Winners will be published beginning this week, starting with our honorable mention and running through Monday the 23rd, when our big (but equally small) winner will go live.  Thank you everyone for your generosity.

Dearest Nanofans,

You may have thought 2011 would come and go without an opportunity to participate in yet another great bite-sized creative-writing contest extravaganza. But you’d be wrong, since we’re squeezing our annual contest into the last sliver of the year. For those of you familiar with our charity contest last year, the gist is the same. It’s the holiday season, and what better way to end the year than with stories that fit anywhere and with money flowing to those who need it most.

The Details:

• The contest is open starting now until 11:59pm on January 1st, 2012.
• Everyone and anyone gets one free entry to the contest.
• Every dollar you donate to the charity of your choice (after December 5, 2011) gets you another entry.
• Every dollar you donate also nets you a chance to win one of our randomly-awarded prizes, which are listed below.
• This year’s judge is none other than Robert Swartwood, the father of Hint Fiction (our well-titled sibling in the world of itty bitty stories). Mr Swartwood has also graciously donated an ebook copy of his new very short fiction collection, Phantom Energy, to all donating contestants.

(If you’re in need of a charitable inspiration, we heartily recommend Partners in Health, an NGO healthcare group that help build hospitals as well as staff, teach, and provide healthcare in some places that need it desperately, including Haiti, where their amazing work continues).

Cash Prizes (+publication/fame):

1st place: $25
2nd place: $15
3rd place: $10
Honorable mentions: A virtual pat on the back.

The prize pool (for those who donate)

Everyone will receive an ebook edition of Phantom Energy, as well as a chance to win prizes from some amazing publications that deserve your support all year long:

• From PANK: PANK 5 and Ethel Rohan’s Hard to Say.
• Artifice Magazine
• From Rose Metal Press: the flash anthology Brevity & Echo  and Color Plates by Adam Golaski
• From Robert Swartwood, a copy of the anthology Hint Fiction and Phantom Energy.

Logistics:

• Email entries to contest@nanoism.net (once again, you get one free one) up until 11:59pm on January 1, 2012.
• Please also email proof of your charitable donation (dated after December 5, 2011) in some form or another (forwarded confirmation email, photo, scan, whatever) to let us know to count your additional entries. All entries will be considered for publication.
• You can send your free entry first then charitable ones. All together. Some now, some later. It doesn’t matter.
• Other than your new donation, all we need for now is your name and the stories. Cover letters, extensive contact info, and bios are unnecessary.
• If you’ve been randomly selected for a raffle prize, we’ll contact you for your info (and to make sure you don’t receive a prize you already own!)

Questions, concerns, want to donate something for the prize pool? Ask in the comments or email us.

Today marks the official debut of Nanoism’s first international chapter: Nanoismer!

I’m thrilled to see the nano spirit and framework in another continent and language. Thanks to founders Ebba Åkerman and Elena Tillman Sperandio for being inspired and embracing Nanoism with such gusto. Check out the site, follow @nanoismer on Twitter, and “like” Nanoismer on the digitally-bound social contract that is Facebook.

And go learn some Swedish!

Thanks to the generous support of the folks at Folded Word and many fine writers from across the globe, our contest converted $100 of student-loan debt into $650 for Partners in Health, a fantastic NGO that does astonishing work as a healthcare-provider and local-health-infrastructure-builder in Haiti (and around the world). As a bonus, thirty people will receive great literature from the independent publishing community; many more than that made a tax-deductible donation; and Ethan Canin got to read himself some Twitter-fiction!

Without further ado, the winners:

1. Ann Marie Gamble
2. Ann Marie Gamble (yes, that’s right—she won twice!)
3. Tara Barnes

Honorable Mentions:

• Tara Barnes
• Jackie Bateman
• R. Gatwood

We’ll be publishing the winners next week: 3rd place on Monday, 2nd on Wednesday, and our big (but still tiny) winner on Friday. Notable entries (and there are some exquisitely good ones) will appear in the coming months.

Thank you again to our readers, writers, and supporters. You are all generous, wonderful, and assuredly good-looking people.

[This contest is now closed. View the results here.]

Nanoism just passed its first birthday, and to celebrate we’re doing a big contest. This time, we’re doing it to raise money for Partners in Health, a fantastic NGO that is a major healthcare provider in Haiti. We have both free and paid entries, cash prizes, giveaways from some great independent publishers, and a most excellent judge, Ethan Canin. The details:

What we want:

• Twitter-fiction.
• Really. A story must be 140 characters (spaces included!) or less, no titles.
• Read our submission guidelines and archives if you’re unfamiliar with the premise. There are a surprising number of  different approaches to this form.
• Every submission will be considered for publication. We wear glasses; it will be okay.
• Contest ends Friday, April 30 at midnight.

The cash prizes (+ publication/fame):

• 1st:  $50
• 2nd: $30
• 3rd: $20

Details:

• Everyone gets ONE free story submission to the contest.
• A $5 donation earns you another 5 stories.
• Every paid entry also earns you a chance to win something great from our prize pool of great literature from the independent publishing community (listed in detail below).
• You can enter as many times as you want. In fact, we encourage it.
• To recap: $0, 1 story; $5, 6 stories; $10, 11 stories; ad infinitum.
• Ethan Canin—award-winning and best-selling author of America, America and other books—has kindly agreed to be the final judge.
• The very generous folks at Folded Word have also pledged to match the donations up to $250, which means the first 50 paid entries will effectively double their donations!

The prize pool

We’re giving away dozens of great raffle prizes from fine publications that—contest or not—could also really use your support.

• Artifice Issue 1
• Multi-issue packs of Faultline.
• From Folded Word: subscriptions to inQuarto Volume 1 and Volume 2 of FW’s Signature Chapbook Series, Mel Bosworth’s When the Cats Razzed the Chickens, as well as Jessie Carty’s The Wait of Atom and Paper House.
• Issues old and new of Hobart, as well as their minibooks: Michelle Orange’s Sicily Papers and Mary Miller’s Big World.
• Magazines and chapbooks from NOÖ Journal.
• From PANK: PANK 4 and Aaron Burch’s How to Take Yourself Apart.
• Issues old and new of Quick Fiction.
• From Rose Metal Press: Peter Jay Shippy’s How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic, the collection A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness, and the anthology Brevity & Echo.

How to enter:

• Donate $5 (or more, donate more!) directly to PIH by following this link. You must also forward a copy of the email receipt to us from PIH to prove that you’ve donated after March 25.
• If for some reason you can’t do that, contact us via email and we’ll work it out (paypal, personal checks, cash in envelopes, whatever it takes—we’ll make sure it gets there).
• Send your entry/entries to contest@nanoism.net by April 30.  If you are using a different email address or name than the one on the donation receipt, make a note of that in your submission.
• You can send 1 entry then 5. All 6 together. Another 5 later on. It doesn’t matter.
• Other than the donation, all we need for now is your name and the stories. Cover letters, extensive contact info, and bios are unnecessary.
• If you’ve been randomly selected for a raffle prize, we’ll contact you for your info (and to make sure you don’t receive a prize you already own!)

Questions, concerns, want to donate something for the prize pool? Ask in the comments or email us.

Here is a list of Nanoism’s 2009 nominations for Best of the Net, Best of the Web, and The Micro Award. A big New Year’s thank you to the writers who have given us the honor of reading their work. And as always, thank you for reading.

Sundress Best of the Net 2009

• “Dakar 1989” by J.S. Graustein
• 8 (“Machine”) by Mari Ness

Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web

• 3 (“Wearing purple shorts…”) by Lauren Becker
• 20 (“His parents had told him…”) by Steve Calvert
• 36 (“She works cleaning”) by Jennifer Tatroe

The Micro Award

• 96 (“She hadn’t wanted one”) by Marcelle Heath
• “Can You Hear?” by David Erlewine

The contest is over. The results are in (alphabetical order):

Winners

• “Can You Hear?” by David Erlewine
• “He Hardly Remembers the Crisis from Childhood” by Ann Marie Gamble
• “Thump Thump Thump” by Ruby Welsh
• “Break it Down” by Dale Wisely

Runners up

• “A Song of Loss” by Brad Chacos
• “Black” by Karl Kudrej
• “Ursari” by Jennifer Tatroe

Each winning story will be published Monday through Friday during one week of December and will receive the jaw-dropping monetary prize of $10. Huge thanks to everyone who entered the contest for giving us the chance to read your work. We want to keep hearing from you, so keep submitting.

[CONTEST OVER; SEE THE WINNERS]

We want four life stories.

For the last four weeks of December (ending on New Year’s Day 2010), we’ll be publishing four different five-tweet serials. Each piece in the series should be a complete and engaging story (like always), but all five should come together to form something bigger and better. You could write about the same character and tell us his or her biography, but you don’t have to—the interpretation of “life story” and how to do it is up to you.

We’ll be accepting these serials through October 31st, at which point we’ll make the decisions and pick four. One submission per person. The four winners will receive $10 and (more awesomely) a whole week of Nanoism just to themselves. No Entry fee. Please submit using the snazzy form below. Questions welcome in the comments. Please tell your friends.

As a special incentive to get the word out, if you mention this “contest”-type thing on your website or blog before October 20th, you may submit two serials (just include the link with the second submission). Regular submissions remain open (our current response time is 0-1 day, despite what our last contest did to our Duotrope response times).

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December Serial Contest

Fill out all of the little boxes. Remember, each chapter/story can only be 140 characters. No bios, philosophies, or extra info needed for this, we’ll get it all when the time comes. Submissions will be read blind thanks to our Google Apps ninjutsu. We’ll email you when we see it, so if you don’t get a notification in a day or two, submit it again.

[CONTEST NOW CLOSED]