Slaughterhouse 53 - State of the Abbatoir

START TIME: 10:40 PM, a bit of a late start.
END TIME: 11:38 PM
WORD COUNT: 509

Projects can take on a life of their own sometimes. This is one that certainly did.

I started Slaughterhouse last year to force myself to write, every single week, to never let it get too far out of my grasp and stay in practice. Some of the fun has been going through the next morning and sorting out all of my typos, wondering who or what I insulted, and trying my damnedest to see if I wrote anything that would stick around in someone's mind.

I've had more responses to this than I would ever have figured. There were 203 e-mail submissions over the past year, and I'd get email from friends from all over, particularly when I linked the blog up with Facebook. A few times, my friends sent what I wrote on to their friends, and then it traveled the world, and for an example of how this can work sometimes, Google the phrase "cabinet appointees were mushwits"; you may recognize the author's voice. (It's how I got published in the Times of London, even though it wasn't really me talking. And if that were kind of a proto-Slaughterhouse, that took 35 minutes to write as an email to a close circle of friends.)

So since this started as a New Year's resolution, it's a fair question to look at how it's evolved. While I don't know if I'm a better writer, I've certainly got the hang of documenting events very fast, because I don't give myself much time to familiarize myself with the topics. Usually I've known for about two minutes what the question is going to be when I send out the update. There are a lot more times where I find myself a few words over the line and really close to the deadline, and rather than actually finish the point I'm making, I'll close it out right there.

So I've proven for a year (with a couple of breaks, which I don't think anyone would begrudge me) that I can do this. Many of you have thought so as well. So the goal set is changing for this year. All of the rules will still be the same, and I'm still going to try my damnedest to cover 4000 words toward the projects during the week; I made significant progress on two of the three projects that simply wouldn't have happened if I didn't have this deadline every week. It had me thinking about it.

The other thing I'm thinking about is the sheer volume of places that are looking for content. I think I could land a recap in a triathlon magazine. I think, every once in a while, I'm capable of turning in something that a lot of people would enjoy. But if this is the only forum that it appears, it won't happen, because I won't have chased anything larger.

So this year's goal is to get something - a magazine article, most likely - published.

Wish me luck, and as always, ideas aren't just welcome, they're desperately needed. Thanks.