Typetrigger Grant Program Starting March 1

Good Morning! Or, afternoon. We can't tell because we are still tired from last night's amazing launch party at Sole Repair in Seattle. It was great to meet many of you and to feel the incredible excitement about what is going on with Typetrigger. It was fun to put faces to names and to see people talk who had previously only known one another by their writing.

For our live trigger writing contest, we had guest write trigger suggestions on overhead projectors. Once the winning trigger (world music pants guy) was selected, people wrote trigger responses in 30 words or less and taped them to the wall for a live action mini Typetrigger experience.

The biggest news of the night:

The Typetrigger Grant Program

This June, Typetrigger will award our first $500 grant to a member whose writing inspires and amazes us. This program will be open to all members, writing in all genres. We will begin accepting applications on March 1, 2011.

Here's how it will work:

In order to apply, you will need to throw your hat in the ring. A simple application (no fee) must be submitted by May 1st, 2011. Application details will be posted on March 1st.

To qualify, applicants must participate on Typetrigger for the quarter leading up to the award by writing 3 or more times a week (we might make some small exceptions). This is not a word count requirement, but a post requirement of about 32-40 submissions over a three month period. On June 1st, we will review all applicants and a panel of writers and artists will come together to make the final decision on the winner, which will be announced in mid-June.

The grant is open to writers in all genres. We love that we have fiction writers, memoirists and poets here on Typetrigger, and we love to see when writers experiment with form. There is no penalty in this program for genre jumping. The winner of the first grant will become a panel judge in the next go round, allowing writers to pay it forward. Grants will be awarded again in September and December of 2011, and it March, June, September and December of 2011.

At the end of the year, we plan to publish an anthology of the year's four grant winners, and their work will be featured prominently on Typetrigger throughout the year.

Stay tuned for more details!

Typetrigger is Open!

Holy Smokes! It's for real!

Typetrigger is now open to the public. Now the throngs will be able to venture in, set their words down, and start sharing with us. This is gonna be awesome.

So what is new on Typetrigger?

Three privacy settings! Your writing can be totally public, totally private or you can keep your habits and be accessible only to registered users. We hope a lot of you are going to take the plunge and go public so that visitors to Typetrigger have something to read and can get excited to see what we are doing. We have so many fantastic writers, there is really a lot to share.

Speaking of sharing, we have implemented a sharing feature, making it easy for you to spread the word about Typetrigger to those who have not seen it yet. Share your own work or that of a writer whose work makes you glad.

In addition to this new public stuff, we have made some navigation changes, which should make the site more intuitive and easy for members and visitors alike. The trigger submission tool is now right up top, so you won't forget to share your ideas with us. Navigating to your profile, home and message areas is simpler than before. And lots of things just look tidier. Additionally, we have renamed the "info" panel on each user's profile to be "stats." Same content on the page, but now with a title that will better fit the information that we will be adding to that area as we grow.

You are sure to have opinions about what you like and what you still think needs a fix, and we sure want to hear your thoughts. So many of you have put in great ideas and requests, and we have a backlog of features that will make their way into future releases. One step at a time, baby.

Hey, come have a drink with us to celebrate this milestone! Join us at our party on Thursday this week!

Typetrigger Launch Party: Jan 20!

Four months and change after we launched, Typetrigger is preparing to open the gates to the public! To celebrate this major event, we are having our official Typetrigger Launch Party, and you all are invited.

 Sole Repair Shop

1001 East Pike St

Seattle, WA. 98122

Thursday, January 20, 7-11 p.m.

Free (with some perks for Typetrigger members!)

At 8 o'clock (ish) we will be announcing a very exciting new program for writers. At 9 p.m. Seattle's Shenandoah Davis will be performing live. There will be live mini-trigger writing events with prizes from Typetrigger and Top Pot Doughnuts.

Come! Bring your friends! We couldn't have done this without our amazing community of early adopters, and we really wish every one of you could be here to celebrate with us.

Check out our event page on Facebook and invite your favorite writers and readers!

We are LIVE!

Yes, ladies and fellas, Typetrigger is up and running, expanding and becoming exactly what we had envisioned it would be. We just barely made our launch date of August 24: like a stubborn baby, it was born just before midnight. Invitations started going out 10 minutes later, and now, about 36 hours into this thing, momentum is starting to build.

We have about 100 users signed up (Thank you! Thank you!), and a few dozen people are writing. We know we have a lot to learn about how you all experience TT, so please communicate with us. We are opening a Discussion page on this blog so that people can easily keep us posted on issues they are having or features they would like to have.

This is a gidddy, giddy day for us, and we hope that Typetrigger is as fun for you.