Existential Challenge
There is a limit to how many times you can post an entry with no words in it as part of a “post every day” challenge, and that limit is one, one time, and only on April First at that. So I’ve shot that particular bolt. Now I have to start writing stuff again.
It’s a bit daunting, though, to know that I was four thousand words low in March and only got by on my previous buffer. That means I have to start posting twice as much again just to keep up. I’m not sure that the respond-to-random-stuff approach is going to hack it.
To be continued.
2 April 2012
I don't think a word count goal is an existential challenge unless you've, through profundities, grunts of exertion or whatever, grown wearisome at meeting the word count.
I suggest trying different tones, fake opinions, etc. all with the goal of gleaning something from the experiment which helps advance your own understanding of writing in general and the writing you like in particular.
Of course, identifying writing you 'like' is a bit of a lame description which can lead to lame attempts, but . . . hmmmm, maybe word count goals are an existential challenge.
Added by Gs on 3 April 2012.
Hey, a real comment! Thanks, Gs. (And that’s not being sarcastic—you should see the volume of comment spam that gets caught in my moderation queue. Seeing a comment that actually addresses the post in question is startling.)
Pay no attention (or not too much) to my offhanded choice of blog titles. This entry would never have been posted if it weren’t for my self-imposed challenge, which is why it’s so forced. The big change brought about by forcing myself to post every day is holding my internal editor at arm’s length even when he’s scrabbling to snatch the keyboard out of my hands so that I don’t post tedious writing-about-not-writing filler.
The writing I like in particular—mine, or other people’s? There’s plenty of mine that I like just fine in the archives, ten or more years’ worth, but the problem was that I’d drifted into barely posting each month, so something had to be done. And although the proportion of hits to misses in the past few months might be lower than in 2002 or 2004 or 2006, at least there’s more reasonable stuff in absolute terms than there otherwise would have been. I’m fairly sure that without the self-imposed challenge, these few months would have been yet another gap in the archives.
Not that I really expect anyone else to care—other sources of words are available—but I would have.
Added by Rory on 3 April 2012.