A Year of Stories
Monday, April 02, 2007
I've had a long break from the blog and it's time to get back to putting stuff down. I stopped posting because the blog wasn't what I wanted it to be. Now, however, I think I can focus on what's important. Important to me, of course. It didn't have a theme before and that was frustrating for me: I was writing about things I felt I should write about rather than things I wanted to write about.
So, books and writing will no longer appear occasionally in posts: books and writing will be what this blog is about, post after post.
We;ll see how long that holds.
Oh, and there's one thing more.
Not one to see a good idea and leave it alone, I've decided to give myself a huge challenge over the coming year in an effort to overcome my monumental creative writing block. Here's the plan: over the next 52 weeks I shall write 52 short stories. Each Monday - give or take the occasional unavoidable rhythmic blip - I shall post a new story. This starts next Monday - the 9th of April.
The inspiration for this comes from Jonathan Coulton - a talented singer/songwriter - who did an annual stint of creating a new song every week. (I came to Jonathan's blog via an interview he did on The Merlin Show. And if you have ever worked in IT or been any sort of cubicle hamster, I would recommend listening to Jonathan's song, "Code Monkey".) Perhaps it's been done with stories, too. And if it has? I'm not claiming this is an original idea: I'm doing this to get myself writing. I hope there may be some originality in my stories, though.
As a professional writer, I know already that I work best (only!) to deadlines. But that's writing for other people. This will be for me and I need something - like a self-imposed but public schedule - to drive me on.
That's the plan.
I've made some additional rules:
So, books and writing will no longer appear occasionally in posts: books and writing will be what this blog is about, post after post.
We;ll see how long that holds.
Oh, and there's one thing more.
Not one to see a good idea and leave it alone, I've decided to give myself a huge challenge over the coming year in an effort to overcome my monumental creative writing block. Here's the plan: over the next 52 weeks I shall write 52 short stories. Each Monday - give or take the occasional unavoidable rhythmic blip - I shall post a new story. This starts next Monday - the 9th of April.
The inspiration for this comes from Jonathan Coulton - a talented singer/songwriter - who did an annual stint of creating a new song every week. (I came to Jonathan's blog via an interview he did on The Merlin Show. And if you have ever worked in IT or been any sort of cubicle hamster, I would recommend listening to Jonathan's song, "Code Monkey".) Perhaps it's been done with stories, too. And if it has? I'm not claiming this is an original idea: I'm doing this to get myself writing. I hope there may be some originality in my stories, though.
As a professional writer, I know already that I work best (only!) to deadlines. But that's writing for other people. This will be for me and I need something - like a self-imposed but public schedule - to drive me on.
That's the plan.
I've made some additional rules:
- Each story will be a real story - no prose poems or pretentious sketches of mood or place
- A story can be of any genre
- Each story will be self-contained (i.e. no multi-part tales, although characters may appear in different stories)
Labels: Jonathan Coulton, Merlin Show, stories
