An odd habit, I think

So, John Scalzi has this thing where he tweets his next band name. He's been doing it long enough that a website dedicated to his next band names has been created. It is best read with the random button on the site.

It's amusing, except that it is also a fantastic kick in the seat of creativity.

Seriously, here is a list of weird-ass titles just waiting for a story to be told about them.

While I've pondered most of my two-new-habits-a-month habits for a bit before committing to them, this one I'm not even going to think about it long. It's something I wished I had done with Hugh Genin on a regular basis: give him a phrase / book title, have him give me the one sentence summary of the book from the title, and write the book from his summary. I think that would be delightfully amusing and a lot of fun. Using Scalzi's list, I can skip the "think up a title" and see what plot comes to mind when I read the title.

Given the point of this is to be quick, to be creative without being critical, to write a story frequently without beating myself up about it (much like I do with the themed picture a day habit), the stories I write are going to be subject to the following limitations:

1. I have 20 minutes to write and post the story (which means really, 19 minutes tops to write and 1 minute to post).
2. The story has something to do with the title.
3. Write one every day for a month

I'm not sure if I'll "cheat" and look ahead to another random band title early, to think about the plot ahead of time before writing about it, or even skip over a band name (actually, I see two I'll skip over if I get them), but we'll see.

I figure I'll keep this post private until two things happen:

1. Scalzi notices the stories.
2. Someone wonders who is writing the stories.

Should be fun.

• Log in to read full content