Three-minute Drill Inception

The one-minute drills worked well last night. I’m tempted to try them again this morning in lieu of trying to hard. Or to count something as writing that really isn’t.

Let’s try a variation on the 0ne-minute drill. Let’s take the time up to three minutes. Enough time that I cannot be saved by the bell exactly.

Robert stepped into the drug store. Crider Family Drug never bussled with activity. On Wednesday afternoons when the school down the street let out ten minutes early it could be said to be busy. But it was never a loud place. Today, now, it was uneasily quiet. Robert drew his weapon and loosed the saftey.

Spring water damped the soil and wetted the moss. It rose through the fissures of granite from an underground stream. It dripped and ran to a bowl and collected to a clear clean sink of the iciest water you might imagine. When the volume crested the downhill…

Dogs barked everywhere. They barked in my dreams. They barked in the apartment over. They barked in the apartment across the hall. They barked in the alley below. Everywhere. Something oily slipped over the edge of the roof and ran like slime down the brick and in through the open window. I watch it bubble over the sill and into my room.

Gail settled her hand onto Greg’s knee like the final leaf fallen from a winter tree. She had already done anything she could do. She had covered for him when it first came. She had helped him to the bathroom as it grew more obvious. She had fed him, bathed him, and clothed him in the middle. She had made arrangements for a nurse to help in the end. Now the time lay past the end. All she could…

The fence ran from the log house down the meadow and back up into the treeline again. You couldn’t make out the entirety of the thing, but an occasional break int he trees showed that it drove back the direction the sun set in Spring. On the line that paralleled the back wall of the log house it was lost entirely, but it was still out there, built by hand, built alone. It saw-toothed back and forth because wood was too precious to waste on a post and the ground to stiff to dig without a metal…

Cicadas fucking ruined the evening air. One or two in the distance and a third near up might be fine, but John sat in the center of what must be the Thursday night cicada nexus. There were so many around him and so close he could actually see two of them shivering like fire alarms ringing.

462 words on day 529

Twelve Twenty-nine Two Thousand Eleven

I began this 1000 day writing habit on August 13th 2007. I recall on that day not knowing what I’d produce in the next thousand. I recall my uncertainty I’d make it through a week, but I did. I recall my next uncertainty I’d make it a month, but I did.

Then I started failing to write on one day or another. Sometimes my misses were circumstance, sometimes laxity, sometimes prideful justification. Weekends soon presented themselves as a waste of effort: a poor combination of circumstance and quality. The quality and length of writing done on Saturday and Sunday didn’t measure up to rules I don’t have for such things. Rules I still leave uncodified. Then there would be other gaps: vacations, ennui, whatever.

Whatever habit you begin wants to continue until you introduce a new habit. Try to make the new introductions positive.

So here I am. Here I am at 500 days of writing. Here I am past my 1000 day mark by 99 days. As much as I’ve accomplished and as much as I’ve learned in 500 days of writing I’m disappointed I don’t have twice as much experience at this time.

At day 500 my accomplishments in 1000 Days please me, but I’m not ecstatic. Not joyful, not celebratory.

I hereby renew my efforts to write each day. I hereby vow to write each day even when my words are crap–even when they are few. I hereby resolve to figure out the mystery of the weekend writing. I hereby swear that come 12/29/2011 I’ll not be disappointed.

263 words on day 500

Eighty-Four Weeks to Go

This weekend we painted the familyroom.  Thus no writing.

As I said recently and as I drug out over several thin weeks of real writing I enjoyed writing toward a deadline.  Naturally I realized and then immediately began to sublimate that realization: I must learn to write toward my own internal deadlines if I wish to become any sort of useful writer.

Despite my poor adherence to the daily aspect of this blog over the past two years the time has come.  I need to push to the next level.  From now on 1000 Days will have a weekly cycle.  Beginning today I will devise and plot a new 1000 word minimum story each week.  I will release them Sunday nights.

Here are some guidelines:

  • 1000 word minimum
  • First five weeks will capitalize on existing characters or threads from the first 400 days
  • Five different characters or threads
  • After that who knows
  • Releases will be stories with beginnings, middles, and ends.
  • Monday: Brainstorming and loose plotting; Tuesday: plot outline and writing; Wednesday and Thursday: more writing; Friday|Saturday: draft release; Sunday: final edit.

Now to find the five.

Day 410