Sister and Writing Excuses

Last night I felt prompted to ask my sister to set a deadline for me.  She's wanted dibs on one of my finished stories for a while and I promised her that she would be the first family member to read this novel.  When I asked her to give me a deadline, she said 30 August 2012.  It's official.  That is when Ness Swan will be completed.

I did this because I am so much more likely to keep a deadline that somebody else sets for me than when I do that myself.  Maybe it's a carryover from school, the dedicated student turning his assignment to the teacher on time thing.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed that she didn't set an even earlier date for me to get it to her but she may end up being wiser than I.  I have a lot of free time now but school is coming up in less than two months and I will need to get another job before then.  Where now I can have entire afternoons to myself, by then, I may only be able to squeeze in a couple hours at night and have to sacrifice my Saturdays then.  We'll see how the schedule works when I get to it.

Two days ago, I got myself up-to-date on all of the Writing Excuses podcasts.  For any interested in the writing craft, I highly recommend that you check it out.  The podcasts are run by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler (Brandon's brother Jordan does the producing.)

They are successful authors.  I've talked about Brandon and his amazing fantasy works before.  Dan is a horror novelist and I can vouch for I Am Not A Serial Killer as being an excellent novel (it is the first of the John Cleaver trilogy and I am in search of the sequels.)  I haven't read any of Mary's published works, however, I do remember her from the online Hatrack Writer's Forum several years ago and I found her comments insightful and intelligent (I am on the search for her books now.)  Howard writes the webcomic Schlock Mercenary, which is a hilarious satire set in the 31st Century.

You can find them at http://www.writingexcuses.com/. Again, I highly recomment.  They are smart and they are funny.

I didn't bring this up just to plug them (though I'm sure they won't mind.)  I brought this up because of a challenge that I haven't taken them up on.  Towards their second season, they began putting up writing prompts, or ideas to write something on an idea they give to their listeners, and stupid me, I haven't done anything about it.

Well, no more.  I've decided to do a challenge myself and start from the beginning.  Over the coming months, I will be follow each and every prompt that they give and see how I do.  And so that you can see how I do, I will post the results of my efforts every Saturday unless I think that I can get somebody to buy it, in which case, I will still report on what I wrote.

Wish me luck.