SansPoint

So, I’m a few weeks in on my two personal projects: 30 Minutes With the Lights Off (in Color), my podcast with associate Mr. Mike, and Fifty-Two Stories, which is self-explanatory. So far, I have to say they’ve been going very well.

The podcast has gotten a few subscribers, as far as I can tell. Feedburner says I have 3, or sometimes 4. I can’t tell. There’s been 377 hits on the Episode RSS feed, and about 11 RSS hits per day, so I’ll take a guess and say we have in the neighborhood of 10 listeners. More than I expected at this stage of the game, that’s for sure. I haven’t gotten any feedback yet, so I’m going to put in a request for e-mails and comments in the next episode. We’ve managed to consistently churn out episodes for the past four weeks, and they’re getting better as I learn how to pace and edit the shows. All we need to work on at this point is the content.

So far, in three and a half weeks, I’ve written three stories for my year long writing project. I’m quite proud of the most recent, Week Three. It feels very organic, and reminds me a bit of some of Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories. The idea sort of came to me as I stared at my computer screen and looked at the temporary title I’d given the document in CopyWrite. Even more impressive is that I had this story done early. The first draft was done on Wednesday, which was a neat trick. Last week’s story was churned out on a Saturday night crashing at my parents’s place for Easter, almost the last minute. Next week, I’ll probably have to bang one out early as I may be out of town that weekend.

Still, it’s so far, so good with these projects. We’ll see how things are in another month or two.

Fifty-Two Stories has launched. Enjoy. The first story was basically inspired by thinking of the title, a pun on the concept of the MacGuffin.

I’ve been considering starting a masochistic little writing project. I will spend 52 weeks writing short stories. One story each week. I’d be lying, if I said this wasn’t inspired in part by Jonathon Coulton’s “Thing a Week” project to record 52 songs over the span of a year. Also, a cursory Google search shows that some people have beaten me to the idea. Despite the idea’s unoriginality, I’m really itching to do more writing than I do now, and this seems like a good excuse. I’ll write a story and post it by 12:00 AM Monday of each week.

Of course, I have tried something like this in the past. I’ve competed in NaNoWriMo three times., and failed three times running.^[1] Still, a short story a week, no set minimum length, might be a bit easier, volume-wise. I can just toss off a little bit of flash fiction in weeks where I’m running behind, but I’d like my stuff to have some substance. I figure I can reward myself with something if this works, but I need one really good carrot. I’m thinking treating myself to a steak dinner at a good restaurant would be a fine reward.

To this end, I’ve set up a subdomain on the site. When I start this project (should happen soon), I’ll post the link and a snazzy logo, like I did with 30 Minutes With the Lights Off. I’m gunning for having the site up by April 1st, and the first story by April 2nd, with any luck. If I have to, though, I’ll simply bump the start back by a week.

Wish me luck.

1. The most I ever managed to churn out was about 11,000 words out of the 50,000 needed. Not good. ↩

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