Announcement - A challenge to you, and myself

Announcement - A challenge to you, and myself

I will be proposing a challenge to myself, and to the people who read my blog. Whether you be a writer or not, let's do something together, shall we? For the rest of the year, I will be writing thirty short stories, which is approximately one short story every 8.5 days.

The challenge starts today and will end on New Years Eve of this year. Prizes will include:

• self-esteem. 
• An impressive library of short stories to bother some editor at a magazine with. 
• Most of all will come the discipline of doing a thing you love every day for a year!

The rules are simple:

• Stories must be at least 500 words, and free of as many grammatical errors as possible.
• Story must be a story and not just random thoughts. Ask a question, then answer the question by the end of the story. You know, plot.
• Stories must be posted at the end of the week, Sunday before midnight, or you're tardy for the party. (doesn't mean anything, just means you should be ashamed of yourself)
• Once your story is up, post it at the #ShortStoryAWeek on twitter so we can all read it!

If you are one of those rebel types, and just not into following rules, join the club. I'm not a fan either. Post anyway. Everyone is welcome in this big bus of love (which is really just a utility van without windows).

So come on people. Join me. Let's do this thing and prove to the world that success is just another word for will power! And beer. Lots of beer. Or coffee. You know. Whatever drug you need.

Join us at
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23shortstoryaweek&src=typd

Middle Aged - Drama Monologue

M I D D L E   A G E D

I've come to a place in my life where I am middle aged. When I turned thirty, and people did that thing where they like to make fun of you as if you were an old man, it rolled off my back. I was in the best shape of my life, living my dream in California. I did stunt work, I did photography professionally, and I boxed with guys much younger than myself, and came out on top nearly every time.

I recently blew out my knee boxing. That's when the realization hit me, as I laid on my side in that ring, grasping at my knee, trying to extend it. At thirty-six years old, that kind of injury ends any hope of continuing that hobby. The first in what will probably be a series of things I will have to give up on as time beats away at me like sea water worn wood. Eventually I will be nothing but deep ruts, knotted coils of flesh, brittle bones, and forgotten dreams. A pile of misery draped over a lazy boy in a room without lights, unable to sleep because it feels like something is missing.

At some point I will give up on whatever dreams I may have had for being a published writer of renown, and I will give my life up to servitude. Begging for the scraps off the president of the companies table.

I've gained weight. Heavier now than I have ever been. It's probably why my knee went out. I think about my weight daily. I think about, how even now as I write this, about all the things I need to do, but haven't done, and I forget about them the next day. If I am to die a no one, it will be because I felt like no one, and my weight will be The Sword of Damocles hovering over my head, never knowing when it will break it's tiny tether and kill me.

I had always wanted to write this. I tried many times to include so much of my life in the fiction that I've written, but it never felt right. It felt like a cop out to write about my life, and disguise it as imaginative. Like I could have plausible deniability for everything that had happened to me, every horrible decision I made, every person I hurt, every dumb thing that I did, while getting the same feeling of release when a massive weight is lifted from one's shoulders.

It isn't right. You have to take credit where credit is due.