A few days before author Andrea Askowitz turned 50, she encountered a Ray Bradbury quote on Twitter: “Write a short story every week for a year. It’s not possible to write 52 bad stories in a row.” And with that advice in mind, she wrote 50 essays in year.
After reading Andrea's No. 50 Year in Review, published last month, I decided to follow suit and write 50 essays over the next year as well.
When I'm not in the middle of a house move like I am right now, I have a solid writing practice that works for me. I wake up around 5 am (I am a morning person), start water for coffee, pee and brush my teeth, make coffee, and write until 6:30 am when I have to get my kiddo out of bed for school or camp. Mostly I fill my comp books with stream of conscious garble, or attempt to work out one small idea, or make lists, or spend the time looking up lexicon words. Some mornings I pull out a prompt or a piece a rough piece of generative writing from a class or workshop. But I haven't been finishing things lately. And it's discouraging. The slow speed of my writing is painful -- I'd like to think it's thoughtfulness but mostly it's fear or shyness or laziness or life getting in the way of forming solid thoughts. So the 50 essays in a year is my push toward completeness -- to shitty first drafts to full drafts to some polished pieces that I'll cast into the ether of submissions.
We can do this, right? Yes. Yes we can! Are you in? Feel free to comment below and please post links to your published essays (or stories or poems) that come out of this challenge.
After reading Andrea's No. 50 Year in Review, published last month, I decided to follow suit and write 50 essays over the next year as well.
When I'm not in the middle of a house move like I am right now, I have a solid writing practice that works for me. I wake up around 5 am (I am a morning person), start water for coffee, pee and brush my teeth, make coffee, and write until 6:30 am when I have to get my kiddo out of bed for school or camp. Mostly I fill my comp books with stream of conscious garble, or attempt to work out one small idea, or make lists, or spend the time looking up lexicon words. Some mornings I pull out a prompt or a piece a rough piece of generative writing from a class or workshop. But I haven't been finishing things lately. And it's discouraging. The slow speed of my writing is painful -- I'd like to think it's thoughtfulness but mostly it's fear or shyness or laziness or life getting in the way of forming solid thoughts. So the 50 essays in a year is my push toward completeness -- to shitty first drafts to full drafts to some polished pieces that I'll cast into the ether of submissions.
We can do this, right? Yes. Yes we can! Are you in? Feel free to comment below and please post links to your published essays (or stories or poems) that come out of this challenge.
