Back in February of last year, I challenged myself to write 500 words a day for the whole month. I was successful at it, so I expanded the challenge to 1,000 words a day in March. I once again managed to kick some ass. April I continued doing the same thing, and on into May. By the time May came around, I was 95,000 words into a novel called Sunny & Gray, and I was feeling more like a writer than I ever had before.
But then I had to move to Houston. This was quite an involved process, and it kept me very busy for weeks on end. I've heard bullshit about how you only have to do something for 30 days in a row to develop it into a habit, and all I can gather from that statement is that if you want to make a bad habit, do it for 30 days. Good habits take much longer to develop, because all it took was one missed day, and my writing habit was dead.
After moving to Houston was finished, I never got back to writing, despite having absolutely no good reason not too. Hell, for the first thirty days or so that I lived there, I didn't even have a job to occupy my time, and I still never wrote a single word.
Being a writer has been a lifelong goal of mine, however, so something has to be done about it. The pressure in my head has been building. It's also gathered from outside as well. My nephew, who has listened to the show for years, was asking me about why I don't write. We texted back and forth, one thing led to another...not like that...and now he's texting me every morning telling me to write.
I talked to Rish the other day, and he was lamenting his inability to find motivation for writing as well. One thing led to another...again, not like that...and now I'm here to announce to you that Rish and I are challenging each other to write. It's going to be a sort of Broken Mirror challenge in which the two of us write stories based on a similar thing. This time around, it's Metallica song titles. Rish has always had a weird fascination with Metallica song titles, and has long had a desire to do a Broken Mirror event between the two of us in which we base our stories around a Metallica song title. So, we're going to do it.
We've given ourselves a deadline of March 9th to finish the story and deliver it to the other person to be read and edited by them. I'm going to be calling my story "Frayed Ends of Sanity" and Rish said that he might be calling his story "My Friend of Misery". When we're done, we'll produce both of our stories for the Dunesteef podcast, so you will get the opportunity to hear just how we did.
While this isn't an official contest for the Dunesteef like previous Broken Mirror events have been, you are certainly encouraged to also write. Write a story based on a Metallica song title and have it done by March 9th as well. Good on you if you do. The more people fulfilling their dreams of being writers, the better. That's what I say.
I just thought we needed to put this out there so that everyone knew, and could hold our lazy asses accountable.
