30-Day Flash Fiction Challenge

[Ned Marcus]

For interest and just because I wanted to do it, I've set myself a personal challenge to write a flash fiction story every day for 30 days. Today is day 18. I've managed to write a first draft on most days, although on three days I deepened a couple of stories I liked. I spend 20-40 minutes a day on this and try to write quickly. I don't want it to take away from other writing I'm doing.

One thing I've noticed is that I'm getting more fluent at writing quickly. Ray Bradbury said "Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row." I think he's right. Probably writing one short story a week is more sensible.

Have you ever tried anything similar?

 

[Prince of Spires]

I once started with the short-story per week. Though some of them became a bit too long to fit into a week of writing. Then I ran into NaNoWriMo and I switched to writing novels (which I love more). I did get 3 or 4 stories done.

In a way NaNo is a similar kind of challenge. It's "forcing" yourself to write to create a habit. And along the way you improve as you do it more and you learn about yourself and your writing process. I can definitely see the value in doing so (for some people at least).

 

[Ned Marcus]

I prefer writing novels, too. But this is interesting. I'm not sure if I'll continue beyond 30 days, but I'm getting a collection of shorts and experimenting a lot.