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30 November 2011

Short Story Challenge!

Sort of like a New Years' resolution. Dean Wesley Smith inspired me to challenge myself in 2012. Paraphrasing his example (100 stories in one year), I will challenge myself to write 50 stories in one year. I will also take his example of writing them from titles, but instead of looking at books and short stories for my titles, I've got a huge list of adoptable titles from the NaNo forums.
I'm not sure yet how I'll choose--I might print out a list of titles and find some way (darts?) to choose at random; I might print out a list, cut it into bits, put them into a large bowl or something, and choose a new title out of the bowl; I might just pick a handful and make a poll on the blog for my readers to choose from. I may do a mix of all three ...
Regardless, I will strive to write, publish, and make a cover for 50 stories (that's about a story a week, which terrifies me), in addition to my regular writing (novels and novellas), NaNoWriMo, and attempting to do a blog post at least once per week.
So, there's that.

In other news, I finished NaNoWriMo, getting to 50,171 words before I went to bed last night--and I'm not planning on writing any fiction today--I'll do a little work, including this blog, and maybe working on some kind of system for my Challenge--lists of names, titles, etc., just so I don't have to think about names, etc., for too long and can hopefully have the next title stewing my brain before I have to jump into it.
Then it will be food and decompression time: an episode of Castle or Doctor Who, something warm to eat, (dark) chocolate (almond) milk ... yum.

2 comments:

  1. Woot and congrats! Decompression day sounds delightful--I'm looking forward to spending mine with Netflix and Skyrim this weekend. :D

    About your goal for next year, Julia and I were talking about doing something similar, since we both enjoyed Story a Day. We were planning on having our own, more laid back version, since neither of us made it the whole month in May. Something more like a week every month devoted to cranking out short stories, with plenty of time for rest and editing the rest of the month; January sounds as good a time as any to start with this plan. The one problem I see is the dislike I have for New Year's resolutions, but I like the way you put your goal. Even if they sort of amount to the same thing, a personal, year-long challenge sounds like a much better way to go about it!

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  2. Yeah, I'm not a fan of New Years' Resolutions, either, and as Kristine Kathryn Rusch says, "The writer who gives up on herself is the writer who stops learning", to which I add, "and challenging herself".

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