Creative Efforts in March 2010

Pencil forced to write
Can you crank out poems at will?
A timeless vision

In the midst of midterms, protests, programming, TAing, grading, rehearsal, and restoration of hacked websites (…), I’ve decided to add one more (small) piece to my life. Remember @VeryShortStories? The idea was cool enough to make me want to try some, and unlike full stories or even Ensorcelled-sized short stories, these are of a convenient size such that even if they’re not that good, they won’t take too long to come up with.

So. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I designate March 2010 to be JoMoWriPoShoSto, or Jordy’s Month for Writing Poems and Short Stories—one a day. The haiku above (written some time last year) questions whether this is possible, but for me it is (even if some are bad). Most of these will probably be very short stories, but it’d be cool to cover everything from six-word stories to multilingual haiku. I’m hoping to even try a newspaper blackout poem some time this month (maybe over spring break).

Here’s the catch. I’m not posting any of them.

Unless, that is, you post an equivalent short work to me. This is a challenge to stir up friends’ creative juices. For each person who posts a poem/VSS/etc. to me, I’ll post one of my March works back to them. At the end of the month, I’ll post all of my work and what’s been received.

I am still not (usually) going to do more than one piece per day, so if I get multiple responses on one day I’ll spread them out over the coming days. And to get more people involved, each friend only gets to make one response per calendar week (starting Monday, since that’s March 1st). Of course, I’d love to see more, and I might post some extras if I have them anyway.

Fifteen minutes of self-enforced creativity a day? Totally worth it. Are you willing to join me?

“Too late!” Matt gasped. He reached the bridge just in time to see the splash.