I, like most people who consider themselves Writers, have historically encountered two obstacles to claiming that title:
- I’ve never actually, technically been paid to write.*
- I sometimes go years between writing.*
* E-mails, status updates, and postings for my job don’t count, as eloquent as they may sometimes be.
Sure, I’ve had glimpses of success, like that shining moment of first being published in a third grade Reflections contest and coming in 2nd place in a short story contest held by the Dictionary’s Twitter account, but in general it’s been a pretty discouraging lifetime of trying to write (and write well). It was too easy to go from August 2011 to March 2014 without writing anything worth having been written, let alone read.
If I’ve learned anything from Sun Tzu (I haven’t), it’s that you have to use extreme force to create change. What’s the best way to make sure I start writing again? “Gradually ease your way back into it over a reasonable amount of time,” you say? Don’t tell me what to do! I’ll do it my way! Because I’m stupid, and that’s what stupid people do.
THE CHALLENGE!
Every day for a year (more accurately, every day for 365 days in a row), I will write a short story!
(Which was pretty open-ended, so I probably needed to make it a little harder on myself.)
Each story will be exactly 365 words long!
(Hey, that means it’s 365 X 365, like that one international smash hit blog’s title!)
If I miss a day, I have to write two the next day!
(But not, like, an extra one or anything. This is already punishing enough.)
Those are the important rules, although I have lots of others that are significantly less interesting/important to any potential readers. I’ll post those at some point.
Speaking of posting, I’ll try to update the blog as I go along (luckily I started a while before starting to post, so I have a bit of a backlog, in case I get behind on writing or posting). But keep in mind that one of the many ancillary rules is that I can’t go back and edit any stories after that first 24 hour window is up, so if something sucks about a given story, I probably finished it up at 11 PM. Which is, like, super late, guys.
So, um, enjoy?
-Alex D.
365 TIMES 365 