What can I say about seventy-eight stories written by three guys in fourteen-and-a-half months? Well, let me speak about what it’s like to commit to writing two short stories a month for thirteen months . . . besides how easily it turns into fourteen months and change.
Most stories came in at around three thousand words, and some people — people who have not tried writing — might look at that and say something like “Three thousand words in two weeks? No problemo!”
Let me tell you that despite our talent as writers, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Ideas are easy, but the devil is in the execution. What seems like a brilliant jewel in the perfect environment of one’s mind can suddenly take the form of cheap colored plastic once transferred as words onto digital paper.
Ideas are mainly visual, and the ability to transfer ideas from one’s mind to another person’s mind via words is why good writers make a living at it.
To be clear, we’re doing this for free and none of us make a living from writing. That said, I’ll go out on a limb and say that we can rightly be proud of much of what we wrote. Throughout the challenge, we’ve gotten enough compliments about our efforts so that I feel justified in saying it’s not just our vanity and egos speaking.
I asked Perry and Gary to pen their thoughts about this effort, so here are their thoughta about the challenge.