The Challenge Begins

A little while back, I issued a challenge to my best friend and associate blogger, Alex.  He politely declined, despite my best efforts to goad him into accepting.  Nevertheless, I have decided to forge on ahead and undertake this task of Herculean proportions:  I will write a 50,000 word work of fiction starting today and ending on or before September 30^th, 2011.  Furthermore, I will (as stated in the original challenge) start the work off with the sentence “He could not grow a very good beard”.  I will be focusing on quantity of words over quality of story (as you might imagine, 50,000 words is a lot to try to create in only 30 days).  I will be trying to create an interesting story, though I have not decided how and if I will distribute said story.

I have been thinking a lot about how to accomplish such a momentous task.  My strategy is thus: I will attempt to write between 2000 and 1700 words per day.  The minimum average daily word count is 1,667 and so if I can stay at the top of that range (close to 2000) I will be able to accrue a cushion so that I can take days off from writing if need be.  This will be something that I will be trying to avoid but sometimes life gets in the way of hobbies (just look at my ability to run with anything resembling consistency.

I have also done some thinking and outlining of the story, though the proof is obviously in the pudding.  I could start and decide to take the story in an entirely different direction as I originally thought as the characters begin to develop (and hopefully, take on a life of their own).  At least for now, I know where I am standing and in which direction I am facing.  I don’t want to give anything away, but I will be writing a science fiction piece.  Writing entertaining stories has never been my strong suit but this is mostly for my own enjoyment so the story will be what it is, however good that might be.

Wish me luck!


-Lane


Edit: Day 1 is finished.  I started around 9:00pm after procrastinating.  It took me quite a bit longer than I expected but I wrote 1,729 words in about 2.5 hours.  Hopefully when the story gets rolling it will be quicker!  I have also learned the cost of procrastinating and will work harder to avoid it in the future.