HiLobrow’s sister website, Significant Objects, will soon take a long winter’s (and spring’s) nap.

For the first two-thirds of 2011, while Rob Walker and I finish up the Significant Objects book which Fantagraphics will publish in the fall, slave away at our freelance gigs, and spend nearly every other waking moment tinkering with our various other projects (like Rob’s Hypothetical Developments), Significant Objects will be hibernating. We’ll start publishing again in the summer or fall.

One of the most rewarding parts of the Significant Objects project has been collaborating with literary outfits like Litquake, Electric Literature, Fictionaut, and Underwater New York. So before Significant Objects retreats to its den for several months, we’re doing one more collaboration — with Thumbscribes, a recently launched “platform for collaborative authorship.”

The first of two stories in this collaboration — about the “Decorative Egg-shaped Object” shown here — was published yesterday. It was written by Thumbscribes users Alex Rendon, Chris, Goldcat, Jacqueline, lickicon, and Rafael. Excerpt:

I began to wonder of the similarities between the human brain and an egg, specifically of the hidden being inside one’s mind, yet to form, but when it does — turns into an animal independent of the body. Then it hit me. Square across my face. In the throes of such a metaphysical quandary, I didn’t see that egg coming. “You must free yourself of all that Oedipal guilt,” said Dr. Ljunggren in his thick Swedish accent as the oval object bounced off my cheek.

View the story at Thumbscribes, and click on “view details” to see who wrote what. We’ll publish the second story from this collaboration tomorrow.