This constraint based fiction writing project focused on Twitter’s 140 character limit as well as a 24-hour period for performing them in social media, inviting and incorporating participation from others. Her artists’ statement provides
It took the discipline of Twitter and the tyranny of the 140 character rule to force me to cut stories to the bone. I have attempted to do so without utilizing much in the way of abbreviations, so common to Twitter but that make some tweets difficult to read and resembling a foreign tongue to those unfamiliar with it. Where possible I experimented with omitting punctuation, like quotation marks and non-essential commas. I suspect that social media is, indeed, influencing English usage greatly in this regard––I see evidence of it everyday in my students’ writing. With the space I am allowed, I have tried to achieve what Brautigan did so elegantly in his work over 30 years ago: build conflict, create character presence, offer catharsis and surprise––and I hope capture for those of us living today a sense of what it is like to live in the 21st Century.
