1K Per Day

I wrote a long post about a journalism controversy that peaked at the beginning of this week, but it's...long, and I have this sneaking feeling that it's not especially interesting. So I think I'll save it for Friday or Saturday.

In the meantime, I am dealing with...just...bullshit. Life bullshit. From so many corners. Most of it's meaningless drama bullshit that'll be over in a few weeks, which makes it easier to step back but harder to withstand. You know? 

Despite this, I made a mini-resolution to try and write something every day. Most of my story ideas do not appeal right now, or I'm intimidated by the idea of writing them, so until I'm ready to write something for the outside world I'm writing stuff for the sake of it. It's a great lesson for me, to write with no real likelihood of the work seeing daylight. Something I've needed to do for a long time. 

Yesterday I did a writing exercise from a prompt book I've had for years but never yet used. I wrote 1,000 words about a guy doing an open mike, a guy who was extremely terrible at music but deluded about his terribleness. I rarely do humor and I know I'm not especially good at it, but it was still fun to write. (I was inspired a little by Silver Linings Playbook, which I saw over the weekend and truly loved. Flawed and deluded male characters, generally those played by Marky Mark, have been some of my favorites to know.) 

Two days ago I wrote a flash piece for a real live idea that I've been kicking around for a couple of months. I wrote it basically as a straight-up tell, a "this is what happened" from start to 75% through, and such a blatant violation of the rules means that it might not go anywhere (or that it sucks). I'm letting that one sit and might ask for readers on it in a couple of weeks. 

I marked many more exercises in the prompt book, and I hope to do those every day until the juices are flowing enough for me to write something significant. Matt floated the idea of posting them here, for your amusement and subsequent tearing-apart, but I shy away from that idea. Why would you be interested in my unpolished, ungood writing exercises? 

That's all I have today without lapsing into talking about music. Oh, except I'm reading an incredible book about the Beatles, Revolution in the Head. Such amazing insights into the 1960s and into the band, and I've only read the prefaces and half the introduction so far. In that spirit: