So next month, February 2011, I have a personal writing goal. I am describing it here as part of a campaign of guilting myself into succeeding (this is what counts as being serious about a project, for me). It’s called
STORY STARTER MONTH
and it’s about stretching out those writing muscles. Each day in February I’m going to write the opening page to a new story and posting it right here. The rules are as follows:
- 250+ words. Each day I have to write at least 250 words (around one printed page) of a new story. They’re not to be stories in their entirety; they’re just story starters. It’s about variety and momentum and turning off filters.
- New story each day. That means new characters, new settings, new conflicts. Futzing around with a story from earlier in the month is against the rules. When March rolls around, I can look back and see what caught my interest, but for February, it’s new new new.
- One day, one story. I can go over 250 words if things are rolling well, but I can’t do two story starters in one day. By the end of the month, I’ll have the first pages of exactly twenty-eight stories.
- All written in February. I can sketch out some notes or whatever during January, but I can’t start any of the actual writing until February. The exercise is about getting ideas down on the spot.
- Do it or else. If I miss a day, I get punished. Not sure how yet, but it will hurt. As a writer I think I am pretty good at thinking up bad things to happen to good people, so believe me when I tell you that I do not want to run afoul of this.
So… that should be craziness. I expect the story ideas will get odder as the month wears on. That is kind of by design. I want to use up the obvious, I-am-conscious-of-having-these ideas in the first week, use up the oddballs that I was secretly harboring in the second, and then tango my way to Crazytown from then on. Crazytown! Where the tango is transportation.
My goals for STORY STARTER MONTH are these:
- Focus on hooks. The first page of a novel has to grip the reader. I’m going to work on my skills of creating a first page that takes one of those big meat-freezer hooks and impales you with it. I want these pages to make you sad that they are unturnable.
- Focus on voice. I want to practice writing characters that feel like they’re climbing out of the words and having a seat next to you. That’s true in general, but I want to work on breathing life into these people from page one. They should come across with a real, human point of view.
- Write every day. I want to get back into a steady writing rhythm. This blog is already part of that goal. So was NaNoWriMo last fall (which I “won,” meaning that I wrote 50,000 words during the month of November). I respond well to deadlines, so I’m creating twenty-eight of them.
So join me, won’t you? Check out my lunatic procession of opening pages, starting February the First. And feel free to run a STORY STARTER MONTH of your own.
Dinner: Chicken breasts sauteed with whole garlic cloves and drizzled with a Meyer lemon sauce. Mashed potatoes with butter, garlic, and parmesan. For dessert I had a nice, crunchy cranberry-chocolate biscotti from a batch I baked over the weekend, dunked in a glass of milk. *stomachpat* EDIT: A toasted piece of cranberry-walnut bread, also.
In reading your self-imposed rules and your goals, I felt as though you were “climbing out of the words and having a seat next to me”. Great fun for your readers and a lot of work for you!
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