Next Thursday is June 12, Independence Day here in the Philippines, an occasion which I, and a growing number of Filipino writers, like to commemorate with a little something we call #RP612fic.
For anyone late to the party, here’s all you need to know:
- What is #RP612fic?It’s Filipino authors coming together on Twitter to create tweet-length stories (130 characters, because you need to leave space for the hashtag) and sending them out into the wild with the #RP612fic hashtag. When the event is over, I’ll collate all submissions into a single post here on the site.
- What’s a Hashtag? It’s a word/code you put in your tweet after the “#”. It acts as a label of sorts and makes it easier for me to find all participating stories.
- When does this take place? At least once a year on Independence Day, but sometimes we participate in other events, such as a Blog Action Day. For any compilation or selection post I do, I’ll be looking for stories sent from 6PM on June 11, to 6AM of June 13.
- What kind of stories should I submit? For Independence Day, I’d love to see alternative history stories, but it’s not like I’m going to tell you to delete your 130 character realist micro fiction opus.
- What if I’m not on Twitter and I want to participate? Just send me your tweet length stories via rocketkapre[at]gmail.com and I’ll try to tweet them or include them in any compilations of the stories that I do.
- I may, time allowing, be doing a “Notable Stories” post, to highlight tweets/stories I found to be, well, noteworthy. The simple fact is, participation grows every year, and while this is a good thing, it’s reached the point that it’s no longer practical for me to compile everything.
- That being said, I’ll try to throw up a RAW file of all tweets with the #RP612fic hashtag – I say raw because I won’t have the time to separate the actual stories from non-stories, or original tweets from retweets.
- Artists are also free to participate. Just tell your stories with a single picture instead of a single tweet, and send it out on Twitter, or to my email account, with or without text (but if you put text, keep it to the Twitter limit, which includes the link to your image, if possible.) If you decide to illustrate one of the old RP612fic stories, from my previous compilations, please indicate the username of the original author, as found in the list.
Spread the word! For those who want to see the previous RP612fic stories, you can check out these links:
