I'm finally going to do a 24-hour story tomorrow. The idea, inspired by 24 Hour Comics, is to write a complete short story, start to finish, in a contiguous 24-hour block of time. What really makes this kind of thing fun is if there are multiple people participating separately at the same time, but I picked the date a little too late to let anyone else know, and I think most people I know would deem it too crazy and time-consuming anyway.

Here are the rules I will set for myself:

• The story must have a coherent introduction, development, and conclusion, i.e. no significant hanging plot threads at the end.
• The story must be at least 5000 words in length.
• The story should be free of obvious grammatical mistakes and other mechanical errors.
• Every creative act--plotting, outlining, writing, editing, proofreading--must be included in the 24 hours. That means I cannot continue an old story, or write on plot seeds that have been going through my head over the last week.
• The 24 hours begin the moment I start thinking about the plot or setting or characters.
• I cannot fix a word after the 24 hours are up.

These rules are specific, arbitrary, and somewhat absurd. They have nothing (or at most very little) to do with the subject matter and the quality of the story-telling. They are designed to focus on the exercise of writing, in spite of perfectionism, exhaustion, sloth, excuses-making, and such bugbears that otherwise get in the way of doing something creative. These rules force me to come up with and develop a completely new idea--it can be derivative in aesthetic or theme, but not something I've thought a lot about before. They also completely preclude the chance of procrastination and require that I follow through to the end. I threw the word-count rule in there so that I don't work for only six hours and then call it quits to hit golf balls at the driving range. I think 5000 words is a little ambitious, but it's a target to work towards.

I sort of anticipate fumbling around with three or four ideas for a few hours, picking up steam around midday, and then getting completely miserable after the 12-hour mark. I will probably sprint through the last few passages, finish the job half-ass, and fall asleep six hours short of the mark. But it doesn't matter if the the thing is shit. The important part is that I actually do it. With any luck, it won't be completely embarrassing and you'll get to read it. If this works out really well, I might do the 24-hour song recording (or EP) in the future as well.