A few years ago someone bought me a book called 642 Things to Write About. It is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of writing prompts designed to spark ideas when writers get stuck. You can buy it for yourself here.
Most people probably flip through it occasionally and answer a prompt or two.
I decided to do something slightly more unreasonable.
The goal of this project is to write at least 1000 words for every prompt in the book. If completed, this project will produce 642 essays totaling at least 642,000 words.
Prompts completed: 1 / 642
Words written: 1,006 / 642,000
The rules are intentionally simple:
The prompt itself is only a starting point. The writing might end up personal, technical, philosophical, or something else entirely depending on where the idea leads.
In many ways I would like to think I am a creative person. While I enjoy writing about technology and my experiences with it, I often find it difficult to do this in a creative way. Much of my writing ends up being project write-ups, integrating my personal philosophy and past experiences.
This project gives me an opportunity to create rather than recount.
I also believe this will help me become a better writer overall, and encourage me to write simply for the sake of writing. Many of the posts will not have a reason for existing beyond “I wanted to get the prompt out of the way.” I think that is a good thing.
Writing like this encourages a more free-form approach to blogging — writing about things when I want to write about them, rather than waiting until I have all the pieces together to build a perfectly structured narrative.
Systems should be predictable. People rarely are.