The Year of the Humpback Whales
Newsletter 004
Dear Writers,
As killer whales continue their assault on human vessels at sea throughout 2023, insofar as to inspire “The Year of the Orca”, many of us have indulged in this drama and perhaps rooted for nature's revenge in general.
On the tail end of that, imagine this: 2024 is “The Year of the Humpback Whales” and it begins with you as one deep in the Bering Sea.
You travel, pumping your immense heart, perhaps halfway around the world to meet other humpbacks, unrelated to you by blood, yet bound by the desire to practice a more playful tradition to sustain yourself – “bubble-net feeding” – and it goes like this:
You and your fellow whales start swimming in circles and take turns blowing bubbles to cast a cyclone net around a delicious swarm of herring fish. One of you suddenly wails with such force that a wall of sound fills the net's empty spaces. The cyclone net, now filled with fish, bursts through the ocean's ceiling and you all simultaneously leap from underneath with mouths wide open to delight in a shared catch.
Scientists will study this coordinated frenzy for the first time in 1929 and conclude that you could have fed as effectively on your own, individually, but you elected to do it together, at least once a year, and for decades throughout your life as a playful way to reconnect with other whales outside your pod. They also conjecture joy in the act.
As social animals ourselves, might we also choose, or elect, to write a collaborative story for similarly social or creatively joyful reasons? As the new year tends to invite new practices, why not craft a story with another writer instead of alone?
This coming year, we’re excited to make a big leap. We’ll begin to invite many more writers and organizations to join Switch-Lit, with the aim to unlock the collective imagination of their diverse communities, and insofar as to inspire “The Year of Collaborative Fiction” for 2024.
- Ken
p.s. We’ll be launching Switch-Lit on Instagram soon, so feel free to tag along…
Did you know?
The largest living single organism is an Armillaria fungus, which can be found in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. It is a mycorrhizal network that weighs more than 500 humpback whales, stretches three square miles, and was borne from a single spore 8,000 years ago – an event that predates the invention of human writing by almost three millennia.
Prompts
This is the last day for December 2023 story prompts inspired by our inaugural theme of tea. If you want to write a story with the December prompts, then start a story before they disappear on January 1st!
On January 1st, we will be releasing a fresh set of five (5) story prompts, inspired by a new theme for the entire month of January 2024.
Don’t give up…
“I discovered in nature the non-utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.”
– Vladimir Nabokov (Russian writer, poet, and entomologist)
Connect with us:
📟 Ping us with any questions, requests, or proposals for Switch-Lit:
editors@switch-lit.com