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Monday, January 7, 2013

Skipping the Resolutions

I'm not doing the resolution deal this year. Like 99% of the rest of the world, they just don't ever end up doing much for me. I think change has to come from a deeper place than a calender. Or I'm lazy. Or both.

I did recently make a decision to change my writing direction a little, but I decided and started that just after Christmas. I've read in a few places over the years about a writing challenge of writing a short story a week for a year. That sounds fun to me, but I don't like the 'for a year' part. So I'm going to take this a quarter at a time.

So for three months, I'm going to write short stories, one after another, aiming for one a week, but if one goes longer, I won't stop it. I'm already on my second story (as I should be) and I can tell this one may take me more than a week to finish.

Some things that I'm hoping for with this experiment:

I will be finishing a lot of stories. Finishing is my worst writing area. I need practice.

I can play around in some other genres like I've wanted to.

I'll have things to submit, since I will have to finish.

I'd like to try submitting again to Writers of the Future every quarter until I win or am disqualified for my pro sales.

I'd like to have some fiction to post here, and if I finish enough stories, I'll have plenty to post. 

This is good timing I think. My novella is ready for revisions, and my next one is started, but I need to do research before it can really go any further. So short stories will keep me writing, but hopefully also leave me time to read and revise some too. After three months, if I like how it's going, I'll commit to another three months. If I'm ready to go on the novel, I may switch to that then. We'll see.

3 comments:

Margo Berendsen said...

My goodness where do you get that many ideas for short stories??? I'm envious! Though I do know about the cascade effect - once you start one story it spawns ideas for others.

Kara Hartz said...

Well the first story, I used a writing prompt. The second was my own idea, and is running longer than I'd expected. Don't know yet for the third, but there are always prompts. Not every story will be a winner, but I'm really enjoying the shorts so far.

Amanda Borenstadt said...

Very cool! Write-write-write!