I haven’t written in a while. But I have a plan.
This is inspired by Flickr’s “365 days” project, and more specifically by the work of Arashi, whose work I watched flourish as she took photo after photo, day after day. Though it may seem the height of narcissism and self-aggrandizement to take a self-portrait every day for a year, the true value in the challenge was the enforced practice – every day she had to come up with an idea, do the work to set it up, and put light to lens. There was no room for endless seeking after perfection. No time to tinker endlessly. Instead of nursing one or two treasured ideas, never producing work because those ideas were always in the process of being made perfect, she had to shoot and move on. Incidentally, her photography went from quite good to spectacular over the course of all that practice and exploration of the medium
So what does one do if one’s craft is writing rather then photography (and incidentally, if one doesn’t show up on film for some reason the doctors can’t quite explain)? Well, a story a day for a year seems unrealistic. But what about a story a week? 52 stories, 7 days each. No perfection, no endless tinkering. No cherished ideas held on pedestals to the detriment of a thousand other ideas.
The rules:
- 7 days. The first story doesn’t count, it just starts the counter, but a story must be posted every Thursday night, before midnight, for 52 weeks.
- Complete stories. They can be related, they can be sequels, but every story must stand on its own, and be understood as an independent work.
- No off-the-shelf prose. Stories have to be original, written within the given week. No using beginnings, endings, or scenes from previously written work. Old ideas are ok, but all text must be originally written within the week.
They aren’t all going to be good. Honestly, a lot of them are going to be crap. But I hope they will improve, and that the enforced writing will carve habits into my daily life so that I am writing constantly, rather than thinking constantly of things I ought to write.
We’ll see.
I think this is a fine idea, and your writing will almost undoubtedly improve, whether that is your goal or not. Of course, I think you’re quite a good author as is, but fiction is a particularly challenging medium, especially compelling fiction with characters that are something like believable and interesting.
Bored though? Not I. I’m frankly going a bit mental here trying to keep up w/ nature’s schedule and get things planted while also planting the seeds of a real business selling produce to my favourite restaurants. I’m taking a bit of a break from the writing, quite frankly, though being able to do so with some small amount of clarity (and, hopefully, brevity) is a *very* handy skill to have.
I look forward to reading more of your work.
-Marie
[...] what’s with the numbered stories? Read about the 52 project here. [...]
They’re excellent so far. I may try it myself.