First Post!

Today, on the Locution and Megatokyo Creative Writing forums, Marrow posted a writing challenge, which reads thus:

Hi people. I have a little challenge for you all. Are you ready? I hope you're ready. Here it comes!

I challenge you all to write something creative every day for the next 30 days. Every day you will then post your creation in a blog for everyone to see. It does not have to be heavily polished, but it does have to be new work. The idea is just to get creativity flowing, which I know from personal experience can be a real bitch to do.

I was planning to do this regardless of whether or not anyone else joined in, but then I thought to myself that it might help if other people were doing it, too. That way we could keep track of how each of us is doing throughout the challenge. Plus, we would be able to leave crits in each other's comment boxes.

As a final note, I'd like to mention that you do not have to all start at the same time. I'm planning to start today, but you do not have to. Ideally, you would start around the same time, but it does not have to be exactly the same day.

Let me know what you all think about the idea. Maybe some of you will join in...?

Note: the blog I created for this challenge (for myself) can be found here.

I have created this blog for that purpose—starting tomorrow I'll begin posting a piece of creative writing every day for 30 days. Why embark on such madness? Like quite a few people (such as Marrow himself) I don't write as much as I'd like. I get caught up in perfectionism, in writing the best story I can, so when most of my ideas and efforts fall short of my (admittedly too high) standards, I end up writing nothing at all. And the whole point is to get better and grow as a writer, which proves a bit difficult when there isn't any actual writing going on.

Outside motivation, however, can often help (a bit like a kick up the backside to get one going). As I've found in contests on the Megatokyo forums, when other people are expecting you to finish something it keeps you writing even when you think it isn't good, or when you just don't feel like writing that day. The threat of public shame, whether real or imagined, is apparently a great motivator.

So, let's get going! Hopefully I shan't bring shame to my name. ^_^