The rules!

Here are the rules I've decided to set myself for this month-long short-story writing project!

• Every night of November, my sister Annette and I will shuffle the Story War cards thoroughly and Annette will choose 4 cards for me; 2 characters, 1 object, 1 setting. I'll study the cards, post them to the blog so you know what the new story prompt is, and brainstorm about them while I sleep.

• The following afternoon, I'll set aside an hour or two to write a complete short story that must include my 4 chosen plot elements. Once I've finished writing, editing and making the story as good as it possibly can be, I will post it to the blog and share it on Facebook. Later that night, the used Story War cards will be set aside, 4 new cards will be chosen, and the cycle will begin again!

• The daily deadline for posting my short stories to this blog is 10:00pm. Failure to meet my deadline means I'll have to endure some form of minor punishment. Readers may suggest possible punishments for me in the comment section at the bottom of the punishment page. ^,~

• For the entire month of November, I will avoid YouTube like the plague. That doesn't mean I'm completely swearing off using the Internet (I need it to write my blog, after all!), but when it comes to YouTube, I'm going cold turkey! And that goes for any other web-video sites too!

Some extra details:

My Story War card deck contains 50 characters, 25 objects, and 25 settings. This allows me to write 25 short stories each containing 2 characters, 1 object and 1 setting. Since there are 30 days in November, this'll let me take a few days off! I'll say every Sunday, plus Thanksgiving (Nov. 28), I can take a break from story-writing. ^,^

So I'm writing 25 short stories in a month. Because I'm aiming to write at least 50,000 words by the end of the month, each story should have a minimum length of 2,000 words. 1,667 words will be enough to satisfy my daily NaNoWriMo count, but since I'll be taking a few days off, I'll have to do my best to make the 2,000 word goal every day.

You can track my writing progress with the help of the NaNoWriMo Word Count widgets in the right-hand sidebar.