Launching My 365 Fiction Writing Challenge: Here Are The Rules
For the next year, I’ll write fiction for at least 15 minutes a day
I write every day for a living. I write non-fiction. I write journalism. I write under other people’s names.
But, I don’t write every day for me. I don’t write the stories bubbling in my mind. I don’t explore the characters I want to get to know. I don’t sketch the scenes that hide behind my eyelids before I go to sleep. I don’t narrate the conversations I hear in my imagination.
Instead, I hide behind work and billable hours and business development. I prioritize emails over prose.
That stops today.
Every day for the next year, I am going to write some bit of fiction. Here are the rules I will follow when doing so:
- I must write/edit for at least 15 minutes but for no more than 60 minutes every day from July 20, 2018, to July 19, 2019. That includes weekends, birthdays, holidays and the day after Thanksgiving when I know I won’t want to write. Suck it up, future Annie.
- All writing must be fiction or fictional observations of real situations. No personal essays. No repurposing of non-fiction content I otherwise create for clients. No journalism.
- I can use prompts.
- I will post my writing every day on the same day it was written — except when technology doesn’t allow for it.
- I will not over edit my writing. To free myself from my inner editor, I will use some of the guidelines from Patchwork Farm Retreats that I received on the Isle of Cumbrae:
• Treat everything as fiction
• Refer to the narrator/speaker, not to the author, as the voice of the piece
• Respond only with what I like, what stays with me, what moves me — and not, at this stage of vulnerability, with what will make the writing stronger.
Let’s get this show on the road.
Index of published 365 Fiction Writing Challenge pieces by day
- 1/365: In The Ashes Of Memories He Found Absolution
- 2/365: The Strange Thing That Happened In The Highlands
- 3/365: Ascending Into Loneliness — An Elevator’s Story
- 4/365: Bill Loves Gretchen, Five Love Stories
- 5/365: Tina the Tooth Fairy Finds Redemption
- 6/365: Machinations From The Storymatic
- 7/365: What Makes A Clown Smile?
- 8/365: Millennial Abandons Bae For A Day
- 9/365: Three Interactions, One Bar
- 10/365: The Day The Mountains Disappeared
- 11/365: Floating On Memories
- 12/365: Volatile Missives From The Past
- 13/365: Search Engine With Sass Enabled
- 14/365: The Dream I Can’t Escape
- 15/365: A Bit Of Off-Season Serenity
- 16/365: If Nothing Else, They Both Hated Instant Coffee
- 17/365: Standing In The Footprints Of Giants
- 18/365: It Does Not Follow
- 19/365: Blooming Under Moonlit Skies
- 20/365: What Loss Sculpts From Us
- 21/365: Max’s Daring Escape
- 22/365: It’s Over There
- 23/365: The Room Where Time Stops
- 24/365: Down Down Down
- 25/365: The Ghosts Among Us
- 26/365: Mother of Mothers
- 27/365: A Haiku For Wednesday
- 28/365: Mysterious Fathoms Below
- 29/365: By The Pricking Of My Thumbs
- 30/365: Not Under My Umbrella
- 31/365: On This Foundation, I Am Found
- 32/365: Do Not Pass Go
- 33/365: 40 Years In The Airport
- 34/365: Are We There Yet?
- 35/365: I Smell Fall
- 36/365: Hair Of A Different Color
- 37/365: The Orgastic Future
- 38/365: Burn Baby Burn
- 39/365: Almost There
- 40/365: What I Didn’t Mean To Pack
- 41/365: Those Clinging Thoughts
- 42/365: The Muse Chronicles - 1
- 43/365: The Muse Chronicles - 2
- 44/365: Life Is The Bubbles
- 45/365: The Muse Chronicles - 3
- 46/365: The Muse Chronicles - 4
- 47/365: The Muse Chronicles - 5
- 48/365: A Rose By Any Other Name
- 49/365: The Impermanence Of Building
- 50/365: The Joy Of Stopping
- 51/365: Tell Me A Fable
- 52/365: Teshuva
- 53/365: A New Year’s Prayer
- 54/365: Breaking Through The Monotone
- 55/365: Screen Time
- 56/365: Not Too Proud To Be Basic
- 57/365: A Matter Of Perspective
- 58/365: An Unwelcomed Engagement
- 59/365: Upside Down
- 60/365: Neither Vows Nor Pledges Nor Oaths
- 61/365: The Beauty Of Clean Slates
- 62/365: Between The Lines
- 63/365: Indestructible
- 64/365: Secrets To Keep
- 65/365: Harbinger Of The Future
- 66/365: Harvest Moon
- 67/365: A Life Noticed
- 68/365: Too Quickly Gone
- 69/365: As The Crow Flies
- 70/365: A Glimpse of Modernity
- 71/365: A Tisket A Tasket
- 72/365: On Writer’s Block
- 73/365: When the Mountain Comes To You
- 74/365: Fragile Adhesion
- 75/365: Undertow