The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

Last month I decided to try an experiment to get myself writing fiction, again. It was two experiments, really, two hypotheses:

1. Since blogging seems to come easier than longer-form pieces for print, would it be easier to get through some of my writing barriers if I composed “in the cloud,” i.e. using Google Documents or some other cloud-based word processor?

2. Would self-imposed deadlines spur some creativity?

Deadlines work wonders for writers because we know someone is expecting a finished piece by a certain date and time. (Of course, a lot of writers blow through deadlines on a regular basis, not that I would ever do anything like that.)

So, with that in mind, I started a couple of stories using Google Docs, putting the date at the top and giving myself one month. The first idea I had went nowhere, but the second, which I started on March 22nd, stuck with me and developed.

Writing it in Google Docs didn’t help. I didn’t succeed in fooling myself that I was writing a blog post because I was giving myself a month. It wasn’t immediate enough. So I switched back to MS Word and tested a new hypothesis: writing in full screen mode (hiding the “ribbon” and the task bar and Twitter, et al.). That seemed to work better.

However, the deadline thing was only half-successful. I got some writing done, but it’s by no means finished. If you’re curious about what I did get done, and if you’d like to read it, click here: The Zine.

Now that I’ve “gone public” with the experiment, maybe the deadlines will work better. So here’s another one:

By April 30th, one week from today, I’ll have a finished version of “The Zine” published here on the site.

And a month after that, I’ll post something else.