03.16.07
Twenty-Eight Days (Plus 2; Sandra Bullock Not Included)
One of the things that I’ve been trying to do for a while now is to find a few good fiction contests to enter, partly to flex my creative muscle, but also partly for the very brief shot at glory. As it turns out, there’s a lot of contests out there, but some of them have, ahem, strange themes. For example, one contest wants an unpublished 3,500 words of science fiction, fantasy, or horror on the topic “Fewmets At The End Of Time”. Yeah, I’m sure I’m not the only person to immediately think of Madeleine L’Engle. Actually, as it turns out, I have been internally debating signing up for a “30 Days”-style challenge, akin to what has been completed– numerous times– by the admirable Eric. Granted, it would only result in 3,000 to 6,000 disjointed words, but given the choice between having no topic (and thus no drive to finish it) or having a difficult topic, I’ll take the topic.
So, as they say, here is the deal. I’m going to open up the floor, as it were, for suggestions for topics. Stuff you send in, I’ll try to write about; bear in mind, though, that how I interpret your suggestion is entirely up to me. I’m also going to throw in a few snippets from challenges that I found interesting here and there. What you should do, then, is to e-mail me your topic, quote, or other thing you want me to write 100 words about to my usual address. If you don’t want to use the link, that’s cool, but make sure you put “30 Days Challenges” in the subject line so I don’t throw it away. Keep suggestions brief and open to interpretation; “death knights in los angeles” or “the wages of sin are death” are OK, while “write about a kid whose dog dies in a firey car crash on the pennsylvania turnpike on april 22, 1994 at 3:34pm” is a little too in-depth. I reserve the right to ignore/alter/ridicule suggestions as I see fit, blah blah blah I’m not writing anything political or that I don’t want to.
On March 30th, I’ll post the list of entries, and on April 2nd, I’ll start writing. Each piece will be exactly 100 or 200 words. Work may contain characters or scenarios not created by me, but I’ll be sure to at least make an effort to be original; whenever the piece uses existing characters, it will be accompanied by a notice stating that (which does not count as part of the 100 words). More than anything else, however, this won’t take the place of my daily blog entry for April; I’ll still have to post something. Just like, more or less, I post something daily now.
Let’s see how this works out, folks.