I decided to make a new blog because that way, people can comment without breaking a site rule which I forgot about when making the original blog. I also want to draw attention to the original, which I keep updating.
Introductory Statements[]
In January of 2024, I started my New Year's resolution of writing stories on this site. I honestly thought that I would fail immediately, post all of my old stories to the Writer's Workshop, and then give up entirely.
Instead, I ended up posting seven stories to this site before "failing" in a broad sense.
Some of the stories were directly based on ideas I'd been working on for a long time. Others were basically written in one month. For some reason, the ones written in one month did better.
I somehow got a Spotlighted story and a Pasta of the Month, both of which were written in one month.
I technically wrote a series, in a sense. Maybe I should write more series.
Why Did I Succeed?[]
No idea.
I wish I could tell you how to write a story a month, but I still don't know.
I think the following things might have helped:
- I was alone in an apartment, which meant I didn't interact with anyone outside of phone calls.
- I read books such as "The Institute" by Stephen King, "Renegade" by Marissa Meyer, and "Vita Nostra" written by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko and translated by Julia Meitov Hersey.
- I wrote the end and beginning at the same time and filled the inside with text as it went on.
- I didn't write interesting plot twists or anything like that.
- The site's quality standards aren't that strict and I had some leniency because the stories I wrote weren't inherently bad.
So I guess my magic advice is "Get a backlog of ideas, then isolate yourself in an apartment and read other people's books in order to write passable stories on a site where you can do that." Wow, that sounds like actual advice. Honestly, I would've expected more stories.
Technically, I wrote a lot of stories in 2020, so maybe I write a lot of stories during American election years when one of the presidential candidates is Joe Biden.
Why Did I Fail?[]
This June, I was trying to write a story about exercise. The idea was to combine those rituals with no upside and the fact that people stay still a lot in current society even as it slowly hurts them. However, that idea didn't really take for some reason, probably because I started on June 28 and didn't really know the right framing device. I also didn't write the end and beginning at the same time.
In the end, I posted Lies and Walls and Beer, though I tried to change a lot. That said, I didn't fix all of the problems. I feel like this was a poor showing, even worse than the other times, so I'm going to post the original story in the Writer's Workshop and link to it here.
As you can see, I failed in a broad sense. I failed myself, because I posted a story I didn't really like and wasn't planning on posting just because I wanted to write a story every month.
I also failed to write a story every thirty days in the period between April and May. It wasn't one of the punishment conditions at that time, but I have retroactively made it one.
What's Next?[]
I'm not sure whether to write the exercise story at all, because I think the original framing device was bad and I can't think of another framing device.
Maybe this is the turning point, and I'll end up posting all the other punishment stories and giving up.
Either way, I will definitely stop once I don't have any more punishment stories.