Fantastic author Neil Gaiman launched A Calendar of Tales, a short fiction project, this month. It combined prompts from his massive Twitter following, and now he’s soliciting art to illustrate the final calendar, a story for each month.
It’s a pretty impressive challenge, so I thought I’d grab on to his long, black, mysterious (very well-fashioned) coattails and have a crack at some short fiction, too. It’s good practice.
I’m only a *little bit* of a fan, as you can see.
To really emulate one of my absolute favorite authors, I’ll try to follow his rules:
- Write a story off the Twitter prompts.
- Don’t poach Neil’s ideas. I read his stories once, but I’m not going to peek again until after I’ve finished. They’ll use similar themes, I imagine, as I’m starting from the same prompts, but we’ll go different places.
- Between 500 and 1,100 words (I did a word count on each of his stories to find this range).
- Spend no more than 3 hours on each story. (This is gonna be tough! I got this figure by assuming he spent 12 hours per day writing for each of the three days it took him to complete this challenge. If I was able to write full-time, I might try the three-day sprint, but this is going to have to do.)
Thanks for the inspiration, Neil!
-ME
My first three stories are up!
January (Dangerous Veteran)
February (Grandma’s Pendant)
March (Anne Bonny Dreams)
M.E. Kinkade 