It’s almost a year since I started hashtagstories – microstories written with current Twitter hashtags.

Sorry? Stories written with what? A year ago this was weird even to me. But it was just so inspiring to combine the world of hashtags into a piece of a literary fiction that I gave it a try. I also wanted to use it as a way to enter English writing. It was looking like a pretty easy job to do – just collect meaningful, emotional hashtags and scrabble them into a story.

After a year I can tell you – hashtagstories are not easy. They are a hard work. I had to go through many Twitter-based services to find the best source of hashtag info. Previously I was using Hashtags.org, now it’s What the Trend.

There are spam hashtags. There are misleading hashtags. There are secret abbreviations. I always have to be very careful to avoid using a wrong word. And the wrong word with a tag is a way worse than the wrong word alone.

Like many unusual projects, hashtagstories had big chances to fail. As the primary way to build meaning is the order of words, there is a danger a story can be misinterpreted. It’s hard to decode a story when it’s told with nouns only. I managed to write only few stories, which read as a sentence. One of the best ones is:

#iwish #iseeyou #inmyhood #beforethestorm

I have a warm feeling that I’ll stay with #hashtagstory for a long time. It’ll not be a day-to-day love. It’ll happen in bursts. But it’s good to write them. When I was publishing a book at Feedbooks, Hashtagstories Vol. 1, I’ve worked out a good, decent description of what the stories are: a literary memoir of social media trends.

Yes, this is what they are. It’ll take some time to find in them the emotions of the past. It’s not gonna take too much time, though. Social media life is changing so fast.

Last thing, I’m happy to share with you, that Hashtagstories Vol. 1, has crossed 1,000 downloads. Thank you all for showing interest and sharing #hashtagstory with your Twitter friends.

Second volume is coming soon.

When you go to a Twitter profile of @420watch, you’ll see in a sidebar an awesome visual art made from animated avatars. The idea is brilliant, as well as execution. One of those ideas answering a question “what else can we do with the old good Twitter”. One of those inspirational ideas which make you think, until you come up with something new.

And here it is: an #avatarstory. A story from animated avatars. Each avatar is one letter. The letters can appear in a speed and order, which are best to tell a story. We’ve got 36 characters. It’s an average length of a #6wordstory.

I imagine to have one account, let’s say @avatarstory, which follows 36 other accounts created specifically for this purpose. A new story could come every weekend. It’s not as easy as tweeting it, you have to change 36 avatars, but it’s definitely much more interesting.

Wow, I got excited… but I know it’s much beyond my tech skills. I’ll try to contact @420watch tweeps with a decent proposal. If you feel the energy and want to co-create and develop a story with me, just send a DM or mail me. Two of us can make this thing happen!

And God bless all the folks behind tile avatar Twitter art.

2009 is over. In a couple of days all traces of our last year’s activity will disappear from Twitter search results. Everybody wants to shorten a year to a couple of sentences. Same with me. And I’ll naturally do it using #hashtagstory.

As I described in a kick-off post, hashtagstories were intended to bring fiction to a new level of decoding, as every hashtag means something different for a person which is using it. One line of text means much more than just one line of text. But it took me long months to realize that there is something more about hashtagstories than just that. Those stories told with a sequence of Twitter hashtags are unexpectedly good way to describe the current state of mind of Twitterverse. In a long run they will become a literary memoir of Twitter.

So here are the best (in my opinion) hashtagstories written in 2009. Decode your own story and #enjoy

#hashtagstory :: #hello #3hotwords #3drunkwords #3wordsaftersex #bye

#hashtagstory :: #iremember #clothdiapers #thingsmummysaid #crapsuperpowers #firstrecord #goodsex #myweakness #cocaine #nothing

#hashtagstory :: #lonely #followfriday #musicmonday #ecomonday #woofywednesday #lonely

#hashtagstory :: #bestweekever #3breakupwords #alltimelow #therapist #alltimelow #therapist #alltimelow #fail

#hashtagstory :: #iwish #iseeyou #inmyhood #beforethestorm

#hashtagstory :: #love #marriage #endofstory

Here it is – a Twitter literary project called #hashtagstory.

A couple of days ago I decided to stop #twitnovel. The last one I wrote is here. I realized, that as a non-English writer I would be just a 7th-or-sth-level imitator of the best Twitter writers. So I started to look for a good alternative.

And, believe me or not, this was easy. Three hints got me to the point. [1] was Boing Boing’s post on “Remix the Remixer” competition, where the task is to mash up any of Lawrence Lessig’s existing work and create something new, unique and creative. [2] was my two-weeks old (=outdated) idea to make a Twitter story out of url shortened links (#urlstory). I’ve been pretty enthusiastic about that – for two hours. A need for an extensive web search to find great sites to be #urlstory’s heroes – this was too much. [3] was Twitter Magnets – a beautiful site where from random words you can create a 140-character poem and send it to Twitter.

This was leading my mind to a single morning coffee conclusion: you don’t have to write down words to create something new and meaningful. You can use the existing ones. We are living in the times of over-content. Maybe instead of adding up it’s good to mash up.

My first #hashtagstory has already landed in Twitterland. It’s ironic, that’s my style:

This was fast. So to be sure nothing escapes, please spend some more time to read “how” and “why”.

How am I doing this?

hashtag mash-up :. As you see the idea is pretty simple – I’m mashing up a few hashtags into a tweet, trying to tell a story.

trendy hashtags :. I’ll try to use as much trendy hashtags as possible. It’s always a way to get a bigger response than trying to draw attention to #goognology.

at least one story a week :. I’ll be delivering at least one #hashtagstory a week, at Sundays. Weekend is good for writing, reading and in my case – hashtagtelling.

Why am I doing this?

new area to explore :. I’m a tech-absurdist. I love technology and at the same time I hate it. With my projects I’m trying to find new ways for literature to express – and all the recent achievements of technology can be useful here. Today’s writer should try to expand into fields never explored before – and prove that technology is no limit for a man.

new dimension to hypertext :. hashtag is a next generation link. So far we had a hypertext literature leading from one single place to another single place. With hashtags you can open an almost endless world of associations and relations. Especially that one single hashtag means something different for anyone who is using it.

the sequence is back :. I’ve been always under a great influence of a story being told by a sequence. Those two stories are not the same: [1] #iPhone #mother #wishes [2] #mother #wishes #iPhone. With a task limited to selecting popular hashtags from the Twitter stream the biggest challenge is to build an interesting story by putting all elements in the right order.

flash fiction is the future :. extremely short pieces of writing are the ones to bring a lot of fresh air into literature. Nanofiction is for me the future of fiction. The new generation of readers is distracted by too many things, the attention span gets shorter and shorter. 5 000 words for a continuous reading – no chance. That’s why any idea to close a story in fewer words is worth considering.

a next step in “write less, tell more” :. this time the simple character, which is pushing the thing forward is “#”. I love it.

language is not a limit :. I’m a Polish writer. I’m not good enough to write short stories by myself in English. But Twitter is such a fantastic place, where you can feel free to create and share what you feel is your best. And find a best way to do it. I’m not good enough for #twitnovel, but I’m good enough for #hashtagstory.

This was supposed to be a short introduction to a piece of literature, but we are living in such times, that an introduction is hundreds times longer than a piece itself. Like this one: #hashtagstory #twitter #inauguration

PS. 25 best hashtagstories are published as a book at Feedbooks.