I like twitter fiction. It’s a good exercise for packing in lots of story in tight spaces (which is important at my job, writing video game dialogue in tiny boxes). Also, arbitrary restrictions are the mother-hubbard of creativity. Give me an infinite vacuum and my eyes dilate, and I float about the room with no purpose. Give me restrictions or complications and my creative problem-solving skills get primed. The itchy-itchy sand grain forms the pearl. Find an irritant, and it will make you write things you might not normally have written. A 120 character coffin to cram in is a nice irritant. Here are some bits of twitter fiction I’ve written, on the theme of fractured fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and the like:

• The clock ate the mouse. Patient is the clock. Waiting is the clock. Churning gore greased gears. Hickory. Dickory. Dock.

• Peter Piper picked a penny to pay to peek upon a pack of pickled punks and promptly puked at the presentation of misspent spunk.

• “I swear my first born to thee.” The goblin trades me the glowing key. I then go to my second errand of the day: a vasectomy.

• Little Dead Wolf-Head Hood walks to grandma’s house, stained axe in hand. Nobody calls her by her old name. Not anymore.

• They gather once a year at the pumpkin patch, pick goblins in embryo, trade grimoire recipes and gourd-hatching tips. Then, fly away.

• “Have to go or I’ll turn to a pumpkin,” she said. We laughed. Made out. Then she cried, rolling down the hill, leaving me alone. Again.

• Wanted a prince. Kissed a frog. Transformation. Consummation. I can feel our thousand young grow under the mucous-slick of my new body.