August Writing Challenge

It's July 31st, so I'm not too late to be posting this announcement here. ai731 is running her August Writing Challenge again this year. I highly recommend it for all my writer friends out there: last year was a blast, and this year promises to be even better, as tons and tons of people have joined!

Here's what she wrote in her introductory post:

Jan's August Writing Challenge
Write something every day in the month of August.

Sounds tough! What do I have to do?

Write. Something. Anything. Any length. Prose or poetry. Every day. For a month. And share it.

Sounds cool! How do I sign up?

Join the august_writing community if you're not already a member
Link to this post in your LJ so that we can get as many people involved as possible
Post either your writing, or a link to your writing to the community every day in August, starting on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006.


Sounds simple! Are there any other rules?

Nope. Well, not really. It has to be creative writing - prose or poetry, of any any length, on any subject. Stuff you would normally be writing anyway counts (so, for those who write serials, that counts) but stuff you write for your job doesn't. But it can be anything. Short fiction, short-short fiction, essays, character studies, stream-of-consciousness, writing exercises (like last year I'm going to try to post a different writing exercise every day for anyone who would like to use it), sections of a larger work you have in progress, etc. Anything at all, so long as it's a self-contained piece of writing that you did that day. It would also be really cool if you could read and comment on a couple of other posts every day.

Last year's was a heck of a lot of fun for everyone who joined in, whether they managed to finish or not. I loved reading everyone else's stuff, and I learned a hell of a lot about my own writing. I'm really looking forward to seeing amazingly creative output again this year.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done

I still won't be around much online this week. I have taken five days off work (which is about all I can afford), and this week will be spent cleaning and getting my life together in various ways.

There's a sizeable to-do list for this week, although I'm keeping it relatively flexible so that it doesn't feel as though I'm spending my entire week running around like a headless chicken.

It looks like I won't be volunteering for Suicide Action Montréal anytime soon. The training would in theory be this weekend and then a weekend two weeks from now. Needless to say, this weekend is highly inconvenient, what with a good friend of mine getting married on Saturday, and forthright's game starting Sunday.

:::ETA:::

Looks like the next session is September 9-10 and September 23-24. Not too long a wait, luckily.

:::end ETA:::

Bah.

Well, with any luck I'll be able to get in on the next round of training later this year.

I have to get my hair cut, close my bank account with CIBC, and generally do a lot of very boring things that I wouldn't have time to do otherwise when I'm working. I also need to get myself an answering machine.

I'm also applying to Videotron for a job in customer service. It pays better than what I'm making now, it's unionised, and I hear that they don't place nearly as much of an emphasis on sales as, say, Bell. So that's what I'm doing now.

So much to do, so little time...