wordplay
n : a humorous play on words

If there’s any month in the year that I feel most creative, it’s got to be November. Why that month? For the simple reason that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The month generates words and creativity like there’s no tomorrow, and in the end I always feel a great hangover, even more than when I drink alcohol.

But in the months before and after that, what do I do? I do other things not related to writing. If writing takes the first priority during November, it gets a lower priority on other months. When I pick up my pen/keyboard again the following year, I have to battle with awkward prose, cliched and undeveloped characters and plot holes the size of Manila. I kid you not.

So what does Wordplay have to do with all that? Wordplay is an attempt to keep myself writing for the rest of the year aside from November. I keep on telling myself that I want to be a writer but I know that writing needs practice, and I have to devote my time for it everyday. I know that working on one thing for the entire year is going to burn me out, and I can’t keep writing a novel every month because the novelty will be gone. I need something small, manageable and quick.

And Wordplay is born.

This is a 365-day writing challenge for me: to write a piece of short piece, fiction or non-fiction, every day for 2009. This is a fiction blog that should help me write more than I usually do, because I feel that I never write enough fiction other than November. So here I will write. Each piece will vary from 100 words to 1000 words, depending on the idea, the inspiration. I’ll be taking inspiration from everyday things and from prompts gathered from other writing sites. If I feel like it, I may even try my hand (again) at poetry. The important thing is I keep on writing.

Yeah, I know it’s no novel, but one of these can spark a novel idea again. 🙂

Other things:

• This is a personal challenge, so I’m not really asking for critiques. Comments are welcome, but please do remember that I won’t be editing most of the pieces here, so excuse any mistakes. Again, this is for practice. 🙂
• Feel free to bug me when I don’t update. 😀
• Please respect my rights as a writer and notify me if you’ll be reposting/using any of these in anything else. In case you wrote something that came from any of the things I wrote here, please inform me as I’d like to read about that as well.

Credits:

• WordPress 2.7
• Dreamhost
• www.genaehr.com
• Blog title from Jason Mraz’s song “Wordplay”