Ficly (formerly “Ficlets”) is back – and better than ever.

I wouldn’t have used this description over a year ago, but Ficly is like Twitter for fiction writers. And like Twitter, there is great freedom in restraint.

A long time ago, I followed a link recommendation from Wil Wheaton, which brought me to the most wonderful, awesome site for writers I’ve ever known: Ficlets.com (I won’t link because that site is now dead.) Ficlets restricted your story to a mere 1,024 characters, or a few brief paragraphs.

Some of the things you could do with it included prequel or sequel any author’s story and hopefully get a chain of different authors adding to one story; issue writing challenges; write your own little series; comment/rate stories (leading to one of the most instructive, constructive feedback sites I’ve used); use creative commons pictures from Flickr as inspiration for a story; use quotes or starters as inspiration.

A lot of fun packed into a neat little site. Ficlets (and the nifty Flickr inspiration) helped me break through a problem I have always had whenever I tried to write a long story – namely, I could never write anything longer than a short story.  But Ficlets helped me create a story, with characters I fell in love with and storylines galore. and with the help of being able to write brief sequels, I found myself with a workable outline that eventually grew into what I hope will be a book in the near future: CherryPopMcGee.com.

So I have a deep love for Ficlets. Imagine my dismay when I learned it woul be closing down. For reasons I won’t go into, the creator of the site was made to shut it down. Oh we had warning and most of us were able to save our stories – our babies really – before the last day.

And then, one day, came the word that he was rebuilding it. That he was taking his time to make the improvements he couldn’t make before. That he and a core group of people, out of the kindness of their hearts and love for the community they had originally built, were going to bring it back.

And after a very long wait, this weekend Ficlets returned with a new name, Ficly, a beautiful makeover, and a crowd of voracious writers ready to make it what it once was. As of this writing, already over 600 Ficlies have been written. To me, that is phenomenal and worthy of a visit, if writing is your thing 🙂 I give it the highest of recommendations I can give it.