One Week Story Challenge

It seems after the amazingly inspired progress I made in July, I burned myself out somewhat... I've had several false starts and wonderful ideas but have been having a difficult time initiating anything. I got up to a relatively intense and important scene in my novel, one that starts a climactic upward slope where the whole story changes, and got stuck. I KNOW what comes next but I find myself just staring at the screen like an impotent frog afraid to leap.

This past weekend Joe Konrath ("A Newbie's Guide to Publishing") issued a challenge on his blog for people to write, edit, format, create a cover and upload / publish a book in 8 hours (one work day I suppose?). He did his in one hour while drunk, and while it's not any work of literary genius, it was fun to do and he did it, not with the intense pressure and stress of writing a novel and fretting over every little detail until it's polished perfect, but was instead done just for the pure joy, creativity and FUN of it.

I honestly think that is what I need right now. With my self appointed deadline seeming to speed towards me faster than I can blink (we're already 6 months into this and I've only done 1/4 of my FIRST DRAFT? WTF I'm so screwed!!!!). The frightening amount of work I have yet to do is weighing on my mind and making it that much harder to get it done.

Now, I'm nowhere near ready to tackle a book in one hour, or even eight hours - I'm still too new to the process - but one week to write a decent short story, self-edit and format while my husband creates a book cover sounds doable to me. Because it's not "my novel" / "my baby in book-form" / "something I've been agonizing over for YEARS" it doesn't carry with it the intense pressure I've been feeling lately with Firechild. And I'm playing with it - writing in a slightly different style, using humor, and just plain being silly. I'll probably clean up a lot of the nonsense when I edit, but for now I'm enjoying writing things like "The darkness of my apartment was suddenly ripped open like a vibrant claw rending the belly of an enormous hippo." Yeah I know, absolutely ridiculous and it probably won't make it past my editing eyes, but it was a lot of fun to write.

I started brainstorming the idea for Imaginary Self on Saturday after deciding to do this challenge. I started writing the first page and outlined some of the plot yesterday. I'm anticipating having it finished and (*fingers crossed*) uploaded to Amazon by Thursday night (8/29/13). It's two days short of a full week but I have to work at my real job on Friday.

If anyone wants to follow along, I'll probably post updates on my progress on my Twitter and Facebook throughout the week, along with an announcement when it goes live. (Ohhh I got a tingle when I typed that. ZAP!)