Tuesday, April 12, 2011

10K Day: A Writing Challenge

No, not poetry ~ even if this is National Poetry Month (and I do have posts in mind, some waiting in queue waiting to be clicked off into cyberspace). That would be a challenge of literally epic proportions. Of course, poetry dominates the plog, April or not. Shifting that emphasis to cover other writing and the Writers part of our name is on my list of makeover goals. Consider this, written for and x-posted the Manzano Mountain Scribes writing group (minus this lead in) a start.

Live in the area? Scribes meets 2nd and 4th Saturday mornings  at 10 am at the Alpine Alley coffeshop in Mountainair, North Summit (NM 5). Email Ben Steinlage for more information or just come on. Scribes are online too for the convenience of those unable to make meetings: email me about joining that one. 

Back to the challenge: more like a marathon or an extreme writing challenge I'd say! "Science or Magic," a post on 10K Day showed up in my feed reader today, . Intrigued, fascinated and not a little horrified, I went a-googling and came up with the articles liksted below. There were more, most from the Fear of Writing blog.

There are writers who do - or attempt - ome a month, posting updates along the way. It's either the ultimate blocked writers high colonic or aversion therapy. Recalling page based (pre Word Count tool) rules of thumb for student papers (heaven forfend anyone write a word more than required), 250 words is the standard count for a double spaced paper in a standard font such Times or Arial. If a four pager = 1,000, then 10K = 40 pages, 20 if single spaced. All I have to say is EEK!

I bet this would be a walk in the park for Ben, but I don't think I'm ready to try it just yet, not this month (not unless I can count daily blogging output for a dozen blogs and clutch of Facebook pages... tweets thrown in for free, like after dinner mints), perhaps not even in this quantum universe. Still though, it's filed away for another time.

All in all, a productive search. Plus I discovered purple kangaroos while searching.  

If you’d like to try one or both of this month’s 10K Days—Wednesday, April 20 or Saturday the 23rd, start by posting your RSVP in the Comments section. Don't forget to specify which day(s) you’ll be attending.

10K DAYS on the page menu takes you to more information. ON APRIL 20 OR 23, return to the Fear of Writing blog HOME PAGE on the morning of your chosen 10K Day. (Each writer determines his/her own start time.) You’ll find a special post called 10K Day: Live While It’s Happening! where you’ll post check-ins. The post will give you pointers on what to post for them.

Posted via email from Just Writing

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