gemini://gem.acdw.net:1965/page/2020-10-13-Themable-months

I'm not sure why, but it seems as though I just /need/ to have some kind of a theme in order to do anything of any worth, creatively. This month, for example (October if you're not paying attention or somewhere in the future; the Internet is forever, after all), is Inktober, which I've decided to convert into my own Paint-tober, the posts of which (as of this writing) are here:

Next month (November, if you forgot where we were because you clicked every single link above and got lost in the beautiful artwork) is NaNoWriMo, where people all over the world try to write a novel (defined as 50,000 words) in the month of November. I don't want to do that, but I was thinking about trying for #1kaday, where I write ... 1,000 words a day. Hopefully that was pretty obvious from the hashtag.

December is usually pretty busy with Christmas and the New Year and all, and in the past I've tried starting one-poem-a-day-for-a-year challenges in January. February and March aren't much of anything, but in April, a.k.a. National Poetry Month, I try writing a poem every day. I've done that now for a few years I think. May isn't anything that I can think of. With June comes #AudioMo, where I make a recording every day and post it somewhere. I'm not sure if anyone else participates in that, really. July is my birth-month, so sometimes year-long challenges that didn't "take" in January get restarted then. August and September are currently free, and that brings us back around to October.

It does seem as though, historically, I've been more likely to output creatively when I have something to /do/ -- the blank page with no requirements is a bit onerous, I suppose. I've been considering adding more prompts to the year, so that every month has something for me to do -- but I worry that it'll stiltify my output. However, isn't stilted output better than none at all?

Now that I'm thinking about it, I /could/ decide to give myself a challenge to, I don't know, create a longer work, like a book or something. /That/ could be my "December challenge" or what-have-you.

Anyway, thought over. I still have to finish my #paint-tober for the day. I think it's going to be pretty good.

2020-10-13-Themable-months

themable months