A slow end to a long hobby

The more intrepid readers of this site may know that one of my more unusual hobbies for the past 13 years has been running an indie lit mag called Nanoism. Back when it launched in March 2009, you see, I was doing more short fiction writing than blogging or other writing (oh how times change). Some of you even submit stories from time to time, which I always enjoy.

Nanoism was and remains relatively unique because it is a venture dedicated to the admittedly absurd artform of tweet-sized fiction (I promise I don’t take it too seriously). There are many independent literary journals, and they rise and fall with the seasons. This has been a pretty long run compared to average, but it’s near time for this chapter to end.

Here is part of today’s announcement post:

Nanoism wasn’t the first “twitterzine” in the world (that would be the long-defunct speculative fiction account @thaumatrope), but it was one of the first, by far the longest continuously running, and remains the only paying venue for literary/nongenre stories of this extremely tiny size.

Over the past thirteen years, we’ve published 948 standalone tweet-sized stories, multiple longer serials, ran contests to raise money for charity, been on NPR, and had stories featured in best short fiction anthologies and books on craft. On a personal note, I got married, finished medical school, finished residency and fellowship, and had two kids. I did a lot of blogging and less and less fiction. Such is life. I’ve been an overscheduled and generally poor steward for the form and this venture, but it’s been a lovely little journey.

Now, I believe we’re reaching the end. I think that our 999th (or maybe our 1000th?) story would be a nice number to complete the collection. With our current weekly schedule, that means Nanoism will cease publishing new stories around April 2023 after 14 years of continuous operation.

So this will be my final year of reading thousands of submissions and publishing new weekly stories. If you’re a closet writer or are even just curious to try, check out the announcement post, read a few of the collection, and then try your hand.