From Ten Words to Ten Sentences

When we started this 10txt blog two years ago, we wanted a creative outlet that would challenge our use of sparse words to tell interesting stories.  We limited ourselves to “10 words only.  No more.  No less.”  We even limited our comments to Ten Words Only just to be evenly odd and challenging.  Last week, we celebrated the publication our 100th Ten Word Story.  This week, we announce a change in our mission.

Starting next week, we will no longer publish Ten Word Stories.

We will now be writing Ten Sentence Stories.

We are making this change because I feel our 100 Ten Word Stories so far feel much too poetic and too hieroglyphic and too… “Twitterish” for serious contemplation and consumption.

Moving forward, we will be more contextual and exciting and dramatically demanding.

To make for the easy measuring of sentences, and to keep our meme intact, each paragraph will count as one “sentence” — and that notion, in turn, leads us to a larger, fascinating, question:  “What is a Sentence?”

Is a sentence a single word?

Is a sentence a predictable sequence of subject, predicate, and modifiers?

Is a sentence wholly definable or even terminally dissectable?

We will endeavor to answer all those questions, and more, starting next week!